Spring Cleaning For The Broken Soul

I am so immensely in love with the idea of working “for myself” that I once considered starting a house-cleaning business.  I put the thought out of my mind as quickly as it arrived for two reasons: 1) there are people who are willing to work FAR more cheaply than me, and 2) while I love being in a clean home, I must admit that battling dust bunnies is not among my hobbies.

Oh, and 3) I have an obsessive-compulsive problem that prevents me from feeling like anything is ever REALLY clean.  For instance, I just swept and ran the Swiffer wet mop thingy across the kitchen floor.  There is still a piece of lettuce stuck, but moreover, the corners… the baseboards… there is enough grime there that the only way to really clean it most likely involves a toothbrush and bleach.  UGH.  Ditto the bathroom and laundry room and entryway.  Though I am not going to tackle that particular job today because I have more items on my to-do list than is feasible, I am going to have to attack the base of the toilet with disinfectant wipes because it’s grimy.  GROSS.

I am trying to regain (gain for the first time?) control of my life, and the environment in my home is the first battleground.  This place reflects my recent feelings of discontent.  The garage is still crowded with unpacked boxes and bags.  My roommate’s dust bunnies, which must have been growing for quite some time, have been ignored.  Trash can?  No, just a bag hanging from the pantry door.  The back yard has been overgrown for at least six months, and even though many of the jobs I’m doing today aren’t really my responsibility, SOMEONE has got to do something about it.  I guess I nominated myself.

We have temporarily shelved the drama around here, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Here Comes Halloween

For a change of pace, I present my latest slacker Halloween costume ideas (mostly poached from the internet, of course):

• Dust Bunny – Gray sweat suit, bunny ears & tail, dryer lint
• Ghost or Toga – Whichever way you want to go with the plain white sheet
• “Nice Nurse” – Very lame scrubs and a stethoscope.  A nice departure from the “naughty nurse.”
• Disguise yourself as Sarah Palin.  You are now “a joke.”
• Wear what you’d normally wear on a Friday night and act like your usual self.  You are now “a bitchy girlfriend.”
• Drape yourself in blinking lights and wear a glittering star on your head.  You’re a Christmas tree.  Bonus points if you wear a green sweat suit.
• Wear something that emphasizes all your flaws.  You are a “before picture.”

Cry In The Night If It Helps

Of my three possibilities, Chicago remains an option, South Carolina is under a hiring freeze til January, and Ft. Worth will work as a last-ditch effort, though it could take time (that which I don’t necessarily have).

I really don’t want to leave.  For every part of me that shows an interest in exploring a new city (did you know that Chicago has its own style of blues?), five scream back at me that Dallas is my home… Dallas, where you can get pulled pork nachos at 4 am and the dancers at strip clubs *bite* you.  Yeah, our Cowboys are flaky and the only reason people go to Rangers games is for the all-you-can-eat seats, but there is a special brand of Texas-meets-the-City here (especially in the mid-cities area) that has stolen my heart.  I actually understand why one would incorporate a Lone Star into one’s home decor.  I moved here thinking it was a sacrifice, loathing the Texas ego, and somehow it became a part of me.

I can’t really blame the man for this.  Granted, the timing is piss poor, but I guess there’s never really a good time to break a girl’s heart.  I just am not what he wants.  Probably I never will be.  I’m not his type physically, I don’t like video games or science fiction or football, and I am not even that great about basic things like keeping the house clean and the laundry done.  The things we have in common (identical IQ & Meyers-Briggs personality type, philosophical and political interests) really work against us more than for us.  And he’s too emotional of a person to remain in a relationship for practical reasons, I guess.  He’s not being cruel… It was just made really clear to me that we don’t work together.

I’d be lying if I said I was okay with all of this.  The truth is that I begged him for one more chance, and that nothing would please me more than for him to ask me to stay.  But I don’t think it’s going to happen, not this time.

I don’t know how to stop loving him.  And the fact that I don’t have options makes it all that much worse.  If I had my own car, my own job, I could just shack up in a cheap motel, eat coffee Haagen Dazs, listen to Willie Nelson, and drink tequila until it got better.  But instead I’m here, where I’m not wanted, and I KNOW I’m not wanted… And I don’t have anywhere else to be, other than at my parents’ apartment in Missouri, where even the couch is already occupied.

And so it happened that my regularly scheduled tear-fest was exactly on time.

Walk It Out

In the past 48 hours, I’ve cried enough tears for all the starving orphans in the world… and over my own stupid personal relationship drama.  Talk about being disconnected from everything around me.  Is it really the end of the world that my relationship has completed its slow spiral of death?

To me, yes.

I feel ugly and fat and unwanted… and unwantable.  I feel like I will be lonely for the rest of my life.  He was the one, I really believed and still believe.  I was meant to come to Dallas, meant to love him, meant to be in his daughter’s life.  I know I’ve spewed a lot of vitriol into this blog, but there were good times too, and as whiny and self-indulgent as it sounds, I feel like there will never be good times again.

Today’s agenda involves begging for a job so I don’t have to go back to Missouri.  Seven years of professional experience have earned me three possible favors to call in, so I’m casting my net and hoping something turns up.  One opportunity is in Chicago, one is in South Carolina, and one is right here in Ft. Worth.  None of them are guaranteed.  They are of the easy-to-offer but harder-to-deliver “if you’re ever in (insert city here) and looking for a job, give me a call” variety.

It’s not that Missouri is a bad place.  I have a wonderful friend who has offered to help me get home, and I appreciate that.  But I was crazy when I was in Missouri.  I was on a cocktail of medications (and none of them were fun medications either).  I couldn’t find a job – ANY job, not at a gas station and not at Blockbuster.  And it’s been made clear to me that if my parents help me out by letting me sleep at their house and drive their car, I will be expected to stay in that area… forever.

My heart is in Dallas.  I love it here.  I could learn to love a new city.  But I can’t learn to love Missouri.  It is Ground Zero for my own personal trauma and I don’t want to go back.  I’d like to visit because my family is there, but not to stay, and I know that if I go there now, I’ll be trapped… if not forever, then at least for years.

So today I am sending out the emails.  “Remember that time when you said to get in touch if I need a job…? Well… I do.”

This may or may not work.  I have absolutely no reason to believe it will.  But I’d be more than happy with just about any job I got from these connections — if it’s full time and has benefits, and if I will be able to afford to rent a cheap room somewhere and get back and forth to work, it will be fine for now.  It doesn’t have to be at “my level,” though that would be a nice bonus.

I’d just like to comment that — Holy Shit!! — one of my emails has already gotten a response.  I have now scheduled a conference call with Chicago for early next week.

It makes me feel a little better to at least have a hope to hold on to.  That is, until the next tear-fest.  I estimate that will be within the next six hours.

The Truth Is Whatever You Want It To Be

Want to know the TRUTH?

Too bad, because I missed the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  They left me a pamphlet that apparently answers questions such as:

• Does God really care about us?
• Will war and suffering ever end?
• What happens to us when we die?
• Is there any hope for the dead?
• How can I pray and be heard by God?
• How can I find happiness in life?

If I ever get super-duper bored, I’ll read the pamphlet.  But I don’t really get all that bored.

One thing that occurs to me is that those are all incredibly self-centered questions.  No one is asking “What will the almighty Jehovah do to help the plight of starving Ethiopian orphans?” Gah.

Also, I would like to comment that I have an incredibly stupid virus on this computer.  How stupid?  It demands that I “click here” to “pervent” spyware infections. 

In other news, I have been sick as all fuck here lately.  I actually went to the doctor.  Well, not really the doctor.  Actually it was the CVS Minute Clinic.  I was diagnosed with bronchitis and sinusitis.  I’ve spent the last several days hocking up science experiments gone wrong and dealing with DRAMADRAMADRAMA in the house. 

Roommate A’s mother owns the house, so he is kind of “in charge.”  Roommate B was an online friend of Roommate A, and moved here from out of town without a job or money or transportation of his own.  I guess Roommate A was unhappy with the timeline Roommate B was looking at to obtain things like employment, money, and transportation.  So Roommate B doesn’t live here anymore, which sucks because he’s cool, but is really none of my business because he wasn’t paying rent.  We are looking at getting a replacement for Roommate B.  Why this all had to be so “OH GOD END OF WORLD” I don’t really understand, but hey, whatever.

Some of my angst has faded, but I continue to experience aggravation because I am a private person, which makes me not that great of a roommate.  I don’t like talking about my plans for the day.  I don’t like laying out timelines for when I am going to do this, that, and the other.  I don’t CARE who ate the rest of the peanut butter, for chrissakes.  I like to drink diet soda even though water would be better for me, and I like to eat dinner at midnight even though 5 pm would be a more appropriate time for that.  As long as I don’t interfere with anyone else’s lifestyle decisions (by, say, having a midnight margarita party in the kitchen), I don’t see why on earth anyone would care how I live my life.

But again, WHATEVER.

Jeez.

I have important laundry to hang.

Improvement, Thanks To Claritin

Oh, Claritin-D, how I love thee, with all thy fabulous pseudoephedrine goodness.

This morning I woke up… well, functionally dead.  My whole body hurt, my head was spinning, I couldn’t stop blowing out and coughing up colorful chunks of mucus, and basically I was miserable.

But now I have Claritin in me.  While I don’t feel good by any means, I am far less miserable than I was this morning.  At a little over a dollar a pill, I can honestly say that the dollars I spend on Claritin are the best dollars I have EVER SPENT.

It’s not just allergies, because the man is sick too… But illnesses always seem to hit me harder.  I have some sort of underlying respiratory/sinus problem that amplifies the common cold into something utterly disastrous.  I grew up “toughing it out” and now I shudder to think about all the time I spent holed up my room, blowing my nose into cheap-ass toilet paper because my parents were too poor for either doctors or Kleenex.  When I get sick, it lasts so long that the skin on my nose begins to peel off from so much nose-blowing.

For the record, I would like to say FUCK PHENYLEPHRINE, the drug that has been substituted for pseudoephedrine in most over-the-counter medications.  That shit does not work.  Even Wikipedia agrees. It’s a hassle to deal with the pharmacist and have my driver’s license run to make sure I’m not under suspicion of manufacturing meth, a practice I believe to be facist and completely ridiculous, but I guess at least it’s available.

Not So Much With The Fury Anymore

It’s amazing how much a real, bonda-fide sickness can make you not give a fuck about the other circumstances in your life.

Boyfriend wants to talk to other bitches?  Let him.

Roommates want to be typical roommates?  Let them.

I honestly could give a fuck.

Tonight I “ran away” to the Barnes & Noble, where I spent a little under two hours writing in my paper journal and wishing I could have a slice of Pumpkin Cheesecake.  Then the chills started, and the pain when I swallowed became more than just a nuisance.  Still I stayed, because going home to deal with assholes was not on my agenda.  I perused cooking magazines and career books and tried to get back into Janet Evanovich’s Lean Mean Thirteen, which I have been trying unsuccessfully to read for about six months even though I really enjoy the book.  All this time, i was coughing and snotting, but trying to do so discreetly.

Then there was the vomiting, at which point I decided everyone at my house could get fucked.  I was coming home and no, I wasn’t going to entertain any conversations about whose turn it is to take out the garbage.

I feel like walking death right now, though the “walking” part is questionable.  I’d really call it more of a hobble.  Turns out I’ve been getting sick for a while, but the Claritin I’d been taking (and am currently out of) masked the symptoms.

To do:

1. Get more Claritin
2. Get orange juice
3. Tell everyone here to get fucked

If I Had A Thousand Dollars, I’d Get On A Bus Going Anywhere And Start All Over Again

I continue to be absolutely positively livid.  Had a conversation with my roommate this morning in which he said he was going to try to work things out with his mom so that we don’t have to move out.

Mom, Schmom.  Mom is not at the center of this.  I don’t even want to live here anymore, but it is affordable, so I guess we are going to stick around.

I’m pissed off for a number of reasons, and most of them involve people injecting their opinions about what it is I ought to be doing with my life right now.  I really do not fucking need it, especially when the people in question are not particularly successful human beings themselves.

I should be applying for any and every job?  Really?  If someone decides to interview me, how are they going to call me?  On my cell phone that has been given away and had its service suspended? NO.  On my Tracfone that doesn’t have any minutes left at all?  NO.  On the landline phone that WE DON’T HAVE?  No. No, no, FUCKING NO.

It’s not that I will *never* be on my feet again.  It’s that today, right now, people need to LAY THE FUCK OFF.

I don’t need for my roommate to assign me a “job.”  I don’t need to be the man’s “assistant,” a job which entails doing his laundry and handling his personal affairs.  I don’t need fucking advice on how getting involved in life would make me happier because TRUST ME, I FUCKING KNOW.

I used to be a full-time student with two jobs, a tutoring gig, a non-profit business, and a pretty unprofitable for-profit business.  I know what it is to flit around and do this, that, and the other.  I KNOW.  And I wish I were doing it again.  I wish I had a reliable vehicle of my own and a job that allowed me to be self-sufficient and pursue some of the business start-up ideas that are swirling around in my head.  I wish I were currently in school.  I wish I had money to invest in supplies so I could make crafts to sell at Christmas festivals.  I wish I had some chips and guacamole from Chipotle instead of a package of Top Ramen.  I wish I had a completely different fucking life, but guess what?  This is the one I have. And in this life, I rent a room in someone else’s house and can’t afford to get a Pepsi from QuickTrip.

And people need to LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE.  I feel cornered and the real problem here is that instead of putting people in their rightful places, I just turn it all inward.  I am the queen of inner rage and self-loathing.

Also, I have the beginnings of a sinus infection.

Fucking Hell

Wow, I am now officially in an even worse mood than I was an hour ago.

I was looking through Craigslist at housing ads for the area where I live, and I found some duplexes in my current subdivision.  What’s interesting about this is that they were very nearly HALF the price we’ve been told this particular place is.  Granted, they are 2-bedroom units instead of 3-bedrooms.  But you know what?  A third bedroom does not DOUBLE the cost of a fucking duplex.

It’s not that we’ve been paying the full amount by any means.  We rent one room.  It’s just that we’ve been told what a great deal we’re getting, how we need to pay a little extra because there are two of us, and how LUCKY WE ARE that electricity is included in our rent (which it’s not really, due to the aforementioned request for extra money).  We’ve been living with a thermostat set perpetually between 78-80 degrees, which we hate.  We’ve been feeding our one-year-old cat a senior formula of cat food because that’s what the other cats in the house eat, and it apparently doesn’t have the nutrition she needs because she will stand in front of a full food dish, look at us, and meow her little heart out.  If she were human, she’d be crying. 

In other words, what I’m trying to say is that we have made some fucking sacrifices to live here.  WHICH WOULD BE FINE IF WE WEREN’T BEING LIED TO.

Your electricity bill is higher than last month?  Kiss my ass.  You overestimate the total rent, and by extension our share of the rent, enough that SERIOUSLY YOU CAN KISS MY ASS.

For not a lot more than we are paying right now, we could have our own duplex.  With a room for the child.  With enough parking spaces for both of us to have vehicles.  With no fucking SIGNS HANGING IN THE BATHROOM demanding that the toilet be cleaned.  I could have more than two fucking cabinets for our groceries and instead of being full of my roommate’s garbage, the freezer could actually be full of groceries.

Let me say that again.  Someone who lives here seriously freezes garbage.  To the detriment of the storage of frozen foods.

I like my roommates, I really do.  No situation is perfect and no person is perfect and these guys are decent individuals who share our sense of humor, our values (except for freezing garbage), etc.  I believe that the lying comes from either desperation or, more likely, the landlord.  Either way, though, I am fucking unhappy about it. 

The bright side of this is that, potentially, we could get the smaller duplex by ourselves… and not have to move all that terribly far.

Does It Ever End?

I am in a spectacularly bad mood right now.

For one, I just finished cleaning toilets.  Multiple toilets.  Toilets without the Teflon coating that keep shit from sticking on them.  That is to say, toilets with dried shit stuck to them.  Exactly why this is my job, I am unsure, because (and this is a detail that no one really wishes to know) my shit is not runny enough to stick to the side of a toilet.

I am also in a bad mood because I have to wake up early tomorrow to go to some stupid job-searching seminar held by the Texas Workforce Commission.  I already *know* how to apply for jobs.  I know that I am supposed to network, and I know that I am supposed to follow up on resumes that I send out.  None of this is news to me.  But I am expected to go because, as is so frequently pointed out to me, I have nothing better to do.

And last but not least, I am pissed the FUCK off because I received the news today that my “landlord” (ie, my roommate’s mother who lives out of state) has decided to sell the house and is exercising the 30 days with written notice clause in our lease.  I JUST FINISHED MOVING.  Almost entirely by myself.  IN TRASH BAGS.  And now I am being asked to move again for absolutely no good reason that I am aware of.  Something was mentioned about an excessively high electric bill, which I find ludicrous because:

1. it is fucking HOT in here most of the time
2. We have only been here two weeks (meaning that whatever bill is being bitched about was run up before we moved in
3. We offered to throw in extra money for the electric bill.

I really don’t get it.  And it’s not even like our roommate made the decision.  His mom, from whom he was supposed to be *buying* the house, decided to sell it AT A LOSS instead of continue renting it to her OWN SON and a responsible adult couple (that being us). 

This woman and I are going to have words.  My words will probably be strong.  Because I really don’t fucking need this bullshit.