Getting Oriented.

I swear I'm going to talk about my tattoos this week.

Seriously.

I just don't have the pictures right now. I feel bad because I've been saying I was going to do it for a month now.


First things first.

This weekend, three days stretched into two weeks.

My orientation for school was Friday, so one of my roommates (G-Raffe) and I drove down to Modesto Thursday night after I got off work. Our other roommate (Button) has been staying there with a couple friends for the last month and a half or so. We crashed on their couch.

I got four hours of sleep, got up at seven, and went to my orientation at eight.

Not that I wanted to go to orientation. I just wanted to sign up for classes. Which you're not allowed to do unless you go to orientation. And pay the $75 to attend orientation.

There was a warning that if we didn't get there by eight we'd be locked out. Yet they forced us to watch a slideshow with pictures of clubs and Katy Perry songs until nine.

Then they talked. Then they made us play games. Then they took us on a tour. Then we had to listen to them talk for another hour and a half before they fed us.

Lunch was close to an hour and a half long with tables set up in direct sunlight only.

I am white. (On the outside; internally I really identify more as Native American. My skin just doesn't really agree.)

By one I was red. And white. My dress had a square neckline. Now my cleavage is all weird.



My armpit is super sexy. Almost as great as my strapline.

After lunch we finally got to meet with our academic advisors and register for classes. I finished early, got my student id early, and still didn't get out of orientation until almost three.

I was grumpy, to say the least.

Since Button was at work, G-Raffe and I met a friend at his house and he made us dinner, which was quite delicious. It had been incredibly hot all day, so after dessert we sat around the edge of the pool in his backyard and soaked our feet in the water.

I went to check the time on my phone and didn’t understand why I couldn’t read the screen when I pressed the button. Then I realized a snail had wandered up onto my phone. It was kind of adorable, waving its little antennae at me.

I washed my phone immediately after.

We picked Button up from work and went over to Target, where we purchased a ton of cleaning supplies for our house.

Button got up super early and went to work at seven Saturday morning. We picked him up at eleven and went to the bank, then went to sign the lease on our awesome townhouse. We were able to start moving some of his things after two. Then we went to Home Depot to rent the flatbed truck in order to move the larger things. Their computers were down, so we had to go rent the truck from Lowe’s. We ended up not moving the furniture, so it just made moving the boxes faster and easier.

Driving the Lowe’s flatbed truck with three people in the cab and the back full of stuff is a lot different than driving my little Honda Fit. I felt like I would never be able to get my speed up, and as soon as I started to a stoplight turned red and I had to slow down really fast. Luckily, nothing fell out of the back. We must have done a good job packing. Maybe.

After returning the truck we tried to look at a few appliances. We realized how late it was and G-Raffe and I made the decision that it would be better to stay the night than to drive back as late as we were probably going to have to as tired as we were. This also enabled us to help Button out with a couple more things before we left Sunday. And we had a floor pizza and slumber party.

I’m kind of glad we ended up staying, even if we did have to sleep on the floor with hardly any blankets or pillows. Now we can say we spent the first night in our house together.

I feel like I’m trapped between two worlds for now. One is the world in which I currently live and the other is the world awaiting me in Modesto. The world in Modesto is ready for me to enter it (and in a lot of ways I’m ready to go) and the world here is somewhere between pushing me out of it and suffocating me so I can never leave.

I finally started packing yesterday.

I’ve never really taken my time to pack. Every time I’ve had to move since becoming an adult has been rushed. And when I moved into my old apartment I was able to make a bunch of trips. When I moved out I pretty much shoved everything into my mom’s CRV and a trailer and fled.

This time I’m moving four hours away and I have to take furniture and everything. I have to actually go through the crap that I’ve accumulated over the last three years of living here. And the crap from before that, as well.

That being said, between knowing my financial situation, knowing where I’m going to live, and knowing what my classes will be, I’m surprisingly less stressed than I’ve been in months.

The Battle of Me.

I feel like I’m fighting a battle within myself.  Which is pretty much exactly the opposite of fun.

There is one side of me that is independent and ready to get out and do things in the world of performing arts.  Somewhere other than where I currently live.  It’s the part of me that deals with the fact that I have to go to school and the part of me that has been making sure pretty much everything is set for school.  It’s the part of me that wants to be a singer.

The other side of me is done with all of that.  The other part of me is the accountant.  It’s the side that’s ready to have a family.  It’s the part of me that wants to kiss my husband and my baby every night before bed and every morning when I wake up. 

It’s the side I thought I didn’t have.  And, to be honest, it’s taking over.

But I’m still caught between the two.

If I don’t finish my performance degree soon-ish, I feel like I’ll lose any miniscule chance I might have had to do something great.  I have a great scholarship and a bunch of grants and other financial aid that is making at least the next two years of school practically free to me.  The only loan I currently have for school is a small one just to make sure my living expenses are covered.  Like, I have more left to pay on my car (which I’ve been paying off for 3.5 years already) than this amount.

I have an ideal living situation already set up with roommates I generally adore in a place I actually would even feel comfortable living alone (which says a lot). 

I will never get an opportunity like this again.

I know this and I’m not about to let it slip through my fingers.

So, what the fuck is wrong with my biological clock?  It's like a police raid on the party of my hopes and dreams.

Twenty-four is in no way old.  I only just now feel like I’m an adult.  And maybe that’s a big part of my problem.

A year ago I wasn’t really positive I ever wanted kids.  Two years ago I thought I didn’t.  Three years ago I practically had one and only wanted kids if I was going to have them with one specific person.  But I was still a kid myself in a lot of ways and not at all prepared to have my own baby.

Not that I am now or will ever really be. 

That doesn’t change the fact that in the last three months I have come to realize I really want them.

I want to be a big round pregnant woman with a man who loves me so much he is willing to rub my feet and help me put cocoa butter on my stretch marks and drive to the store at 2:30 AM because I desperately need mint gelato.

By "loves me" I mean "loves me and fears my hormones."

I want a baby that is a tiny reflection of our combined faces. 

At what point did my dreams and wants for my future become so…  Normal? 

At what point did they become about something other than me?

By the way, Patty, I still haven't forgotten about the tattoo post, but I want a good picture of each to put up for the explanation and I don't have the photos yet.  I'm hoping this week.

Work in Fiction.

I'm trying my hand at a bit of fiction today.  I like fiction because it's much more fun than my everyday life and anything is possible.  I just never know how to end it.

This is kind of a really short story.  I don't know what I want to do with it, yet.  For now I'll probably just toss it in the "Works in Progress" folder on my laptop.

Hope you enjoy!



"Oh, no one ever told you? They put an expiration date on love."


No. No one ever told me that.

You'd think that would be on the list of important things to tell a little girl. You know, always keep your legs together when you're wearing a dress; always wash your hands after touching raw meat; wear cotton or you'll get a yeast infection; high-heels will make your ass look tighter; love expires... Seems like it should be one of the normal necessities needed in order to get through adolescence and some of adulthood.

"It's still there," he said, his chocolate eyes watery from beer and glazed with some kind of filthy, disgusting satisfaction. "There are embers from what once was a passionate fire that still glow. But it's like when medicine gets real old; you have to take a bunch for the pills to do anything worthwhile. That's how it is with us now. It would take more effort than it's really worth to start the fire back up again. And what would we get out of it? Just more pain. Just like before. I like being your friend. And I like the new fire I have with her now."

Her.

Sarah.

Even her fucking name seemed mediocre.

"I'll always love you. But it's different now. And I'm happy with the way my life is," he continued. I knew what he was insinuating. Happy the way my life is without you in it.

I knew he wasn't finished with his pointless and uninvited lecture. I pulled my dark sunglasses down over my eyes, despite the darkness of the bar. The other patrons had been awkwardly watching us for twenty minutes, probably because I was the only female in the place. I didn't want them to see me cry.

"It was good to see you. I really have to go," I said. He shrugged and turned away from me.  I practically ran out of the bar and into the harsh sunlight and screaming cars.

There's nothing quite like running out of a meeting with your ex, the one person you have and will always love, telling you they don't want you in their life except to be a friend and then having to wait pathetically at a crosswalk in five o'clock traffic.

He'd been dating her a little over a month. Helping with some business venture and sleeping on her couch.

She didn't know he talked to me every day. She didn't know that once every week or so we got together for beers and inapproprate conversation. She didn't know he still told me he loved me. She didn't know about the week before when he took me swimming in the surf of the ocean, then laid me down in it and kissed me, like an old black and white film. She didn't know the love in his eyes as he wrapped me up in his old blanket under the cool stars. She could never understand how the stars exploded like fireworks when we were together. He would never have that with her. I will never understand why he chose to have it with me that last night. Why he chose to be unfaithful. Why he ultimately chose her over me.

She didn't know he didn't come home that night because he was holding me. And he, quite obviously, was not about to tell her.

If I had been cheated on, I would want to know as soon as it happened.

Would she want to know now? If they got married, would he tell her then? Or would he just keep this massive infidelity to himself, hoping I wouldn't say anything, for the rest of his life?

Would she care that the baby I had been carrying was his? That it had been conceived while they were a couple?

I never told him about the baby.

I never will.

Her name is Lydia, after his grandmother. And when I look into her big chocolate eyes, I see his face... And the way he loved me. Many, many years ago.

As if You Needed Proof that I'm an Asshole.

I was thinking about assumptions during my drive to work this morning. 

This young guy (I love how I say that like I’m old) drove past me.  I looked up at him and automatically assumed something about him.  He was a douchebag.

Generally I don’t hold anything against people until I know them because I know what it’s like to be judged by your appearance.  But I thought I'd list a few of the assumptions I make about people who I have no chance in meeting.

Now you’re going to know what a terrible person I am.

I assume…

A dude wearing big white sunglasses: douchebag.

A dude driving a giant-ass truck: douchebag with a small penis.

Guys whose vehicle has testicles hanging below the trailer hitch: super douchebags.

Guys who drive a giant-ass truck with testicles hanging below the trailer hitch: homophobic double douchebags with miniscule penises.

Guys wearing Tapout merchandise: douchebags.

Guys wearing Tapout merchandise with big white sunglasses: double douchebags.

Guys with tattoos: cool.

Guys with ICP tattoos: stupid douchebags.

Girls who are skinnier than me: stupider than I am.

Girls who drive expensive vehicles: boyfriend/dad must be old and rich.

Girls with straight, fake blonde hair: stupid whores.

Girls who wear giant sunglasses (especially white): whores.

Girls who wear Tapout merchandise: have a boyfriend who is a douchebag. 

Girls who wear Tapout merchandise and giant (white) sunglasses: whores with douchebag boyfriends…  Or a pack of men she fucks on occasion.  Who are douchebags.

Girls wearing low-cut shirts and tight pants/shorty-shorts: whores (I feel like this one's a given).

Girls younger than me with kids in the mall: bad parents/stupid whores.  (Note that I usually only think this if their child is running around a store pretending to fly or something.)

Really skinny women older than me: meth addicts.

People with COEXIST stickers on their cars: probably pretty cool.

People with Clinton stickers on their cars: probably like oral sex/pornography.  A lot.  Also, old.

People with a shit-ton of stickers on their cars: idiots.

People who don’t park well: inconsiderate idiots.

People driving slower than I want to: old.

People with those stickers that represent each member of their family on the back window of their vehicle: troubled home-life.

People with damage on their vehicle (big dents, missing bumpers): bad drivers.

You get the picture.

I probably shouldn’t be allowed in public.  Especially the mall.  Ever again.

Down with the Sickness.

So, maybe one person has by this point noticed I've gone kind of a while since my last post (for me, at least).  I try to be really consistent and post at least every three days or less. 

This week I failed.

But I have a good reason!

I've felt like crap since Saturday. 

Like, fever crap.  And I've gone to work the last two days.  (I don't really deal with the general public, so coming to work with a fever and no other real symptoms of illness isn't exactly the end of the world for me.)

Fever dreams kind of blow.  My favorite part is when I'm sleeping and the Tylenol I took an hour ago finally kicks in.  Then I wake up drenched in sweat and panting.  Which is worse:  freezing because you have a fever or the sweat after having meds break your fever?

I spent pretty much my entire weekend on the couch watching Netflix.  And a mini-marathon of Indiana Jones on Sci-Fi.  Or Syfy.  Or whatever the hell they call it now.  I realized something super important during the time I spent watching this channel.  There is an obscene amount of commercials.  They happen at regularly spaced intervals, but they go on for, like, six minutes.  That seems excessive, especially when you're interrupting my time with Harrison Ford.

Last night?  Also spent on the couch. 

Bet you can guess what I'm doing tonight.  After my nap and between doses of Advil.

If you're interested, my two favorite movies from my illness-a-thon were this-a one and this-a one.  Both are kind of amazing in their own I-can't-bring-myself-to-look-away-from-the-screen kind of way.


I just re-read this post.  Illness makes me fucking retarded.



Oh, by the way, I have happy news.  I found out today that my roommates and I got the townhouse we wanted for when we move.  Yay!

An Itch to Scratch.

I hate moving. 

I haven’t even had to do it that much yet and I already hate it. 

The last two times I moved it was just across town.  I could make, like, five trips in a row with my little car and if I forgot something, it was no big deal.  I’d just drive back one more time and get the thing I needed.

When I moved to Santa Cruz I really only needed to worry about my clothing.  So it was more like packing for a really long vacation than actually moving.

This time I have to get all my shit four hours away.  And it’s four of the most painfullying boring fucking hours of driving I think I’ve ever experienced consecutively.

An hour of four-lane highway with a giant center divider between them.  Sometimes there are grungy buildings on the side of the highway.  At one point there are train tracks and every so often there is a train on them.  Okay, more often than not a train seems to be on them.  But the best thing about the train is the graffiti on it, which is not so great because I like to look at the graffiti and it distracts me from driving.  Then I realize I’m moving and the train is moving and it’s pretty much all I can do not to yak on my steering wheel.  Stupid motion sickness.

There are some trees and bushes on the side of the road and in the center divider, too.  Not nice ones.  But, still.  It’s not like I have high expectations for the aesthetic appeal of the Stockton/Modesto area.  I have high expectations for the Mexican food and smell of manure. 

I think the most annoying part of this move is that I can’t wait until I get to move again…  To somewhere fabulous.  Like San Francisco, maybe. 

I know you’re wondering why I’m moving somewhere I don’t seem to want to live; I’m stuck moving to a Podunk town in an area I hate for school.  My theory is that I will get out of there faster because I don’t want to be there.  That’s good incentive, right?

This is the point at which I start begging God to let me become an amazing singer at this school so that I can sing with a major opera company and become more famous than Joan Sutherland (may she rest in peace).  

In other news, my side itches like crazy.  It's mostly done peeling, thank goodness.  But it's still tender-ish and healing.  Someone smacked it as a joke last night.  I think it was supposed to hurt, but, since I can't scratch the tattoo, it felt fucking amazing.  I guess it's a good think I have fair skin and was therefore forced to learn how to cope with sunburns, or I could not handle getting tattoos.

Happy Hump Day, all!

The Cork.

I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about him anymore. But I lied.

Sorry.

At least I’m honest about it. About the unintentional lying. Usually if I lie it’s on accident.

The more I write and am able to sort through my feelings, the more I let go of the person I made him out to be in my head. The person that was easy to hate. The more I let that person go, the harder it is not to miss the person he (for the most part) was. The more I write about it, the easier it is to talk about everything. Even the good things, which are somehow harder to talk about and remember than the bad.


On this date four years ago we officially became a couple. Three years ago we went to Santa Cruz for Fourth of July and our anniversary. We came back home Sunday night and had champagne and pizza for celebratory dinner.

I still have the commemorative cork from the champagne. I brought it with me when I moved out.

You’d think after all this time I would have thrown it out. After how hurt and scared and angry I was. For nearly three years.

But no.

I still have it.





I think this is a pretty clear indicator that I will always have love for him.

I guess maybe I should explain why I would ever miss the person I spoke about here, in the series of posts that probably made you want to kill him. But in all reality, I would not have stayed with him through all the fighting and abuse if there was not some kind of redeeming factor.

And there was.

It was love.

Not just my love for him, but the way that he loved me. That’s why it still hurts. Love so deep, my heart is permanently scarred.

I suppose if we hadn’t cared we wouldn’t have fought. And we definitely cared. There was a lot of unhealthy dependence on each other and some addiction issues that had absolutely nothing to do with drugs or alcohol.

Imagine dating your best friend in the world.

You could spend days together and still not be tired of each other. You have so many inside jokes that you might as well be speaking another language much of the time. You make each other laugh and understand why the other person is the way they are. But you are also completely attracted to each other physically.

Maybe it was because he was really A.D.D. and a little spastic and immature, but he was the only boyfriend I’ve ever had who could keep me occupied for longer than a couple of months. I never got bored. He wasn’t predictable, which is apparently really important for me. I think it’s because I sometimes tend to be unpredictable, so people who can't keep up bore me. Plus, we were both stuck somewhere between ages five and eighty, never settling on a particular age to be. Just generally choosing all of them with great inconsistency.

He was one of the few people in my life who actually understood me. The downside to that is that he knew how to really easily push my buttons and, since I was on-edge already, he could easily send me into crazy-lady screaming freak-out mode. Sometimes he did it on purpose because he was a dick. Sometimes on accident. And sometimes we would have a full-on raging fight because I refused to dispose of bacon grease and he would leave it in the pan for me to deal with when I did the dishes. (That was kind of a complicated recurring fight.)

The times that we weren’t fighting were good (no, fantastic) enough that it took me months to move out even after shit had hit the fan.

I wish I had known then that he wouldn’t stop for me because he needed to stop for himself. We both needed to learn to love ourselves more than other people. To do things for ourselves and not each other.

I wish I could have been mature enough to ignore his picking and not fight. I wish he had been mature enough to stop picking.

I think I can safely say that, if given the chance to go back and do it all again, we’d do things very differently now than we did at the time.

But, then, hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it?


So now you know. Despite all the time I spent hating and fearing him, Bambi will always have a special place in my heart. A place no one else will ever take over. Which basically means I’m screwed and I’m going to end up a lonely old lady with lots of cats. Unless I somehow become a famous opera singer.

A girl can dream.