L stopped by yesterday afternoon to chat and see her old home. In our conversation about relationships - the freedom I have with X - he treats me like an adult that can take care of herself - go figure, I am. Then it came up that CEF was the opposite - he is the opposite of X in every way - which is why I'm still with X and I would like to never hear from CEF again. Now we've discussed why I blog anonymously, why I am more vague than I really should be, my militancy about secrecy apparently is about as effective as the US/Canada boarder. It works most of the time, but well there are moments you do not ever anticipate.
Like I never anticipated that CEF would contact L's husband on FB.
My first reaction was what did he tell him, thinking please Lord I hope he didn't tell him anything of significance. That information made me realize that I cannot seal myself off perfectly - ever. Stupid Google, FB and even Twitter - I cannot guarantee that I won't find myself face to face with a man that would likely make me soil myself or just bolt. Hopefully I just turn and channel Kara Goucher and hope that no one is with me because I'm going to be one seriously hot mess after it all.
I keep hoping that we've put enough time between us - it's going be 3 full years this September. I just wonder - what happens when I get into graduate school elsewhere - away from family - my name will be Google-able - what then? Do I change my name? Do I tell my future school I've got a CEF I don't want showing up at my office hours? Or am I still talking and walking like the same wounded woman I was 3 years ago. I am not sure which is worse to be honest.
Sorry for my negligence of the blog - more changes - I just signed over all my future hypothetical progeny to the government and bank - yes it is officially really official. So much after giving my future to the government I found myself standing in H&M trying to figure out what the non-business world wears on a regular basis. I didn't think it would be so hard to switch the worker out of my brain - I mean I am counting down the days until I leave my job (SO excited), so should I be excited to give away most of my work clothes and shoes I really don't love and replace them with jeans, cardigans and flats? Apparently it proved too difficult to make that mental transition, the debt pricetag in my head definitely put the breaks on too.
So instead I came home and started purging, cleaning and reorganizing - yes the OCD in me comes out in full force when there is stress to be processed. On that note - I found 3 frames that need insides - I would like to have inspirational quotes in them.
So lovely people enough about my stress - what words inspire you?
Remember your future boss might be (probably is) on Facebook. Just a word of advice, you may love Playboy but we run a family friendly company, so try to avoid the bunny being your profile photo.
AB and I are still FB friends, so when his relationship status change came up, I being an ex, decided to check out who has officially come after me. Hmmm... she's his ex-roommate for whom he had nothing good to say about to me, apparently her antics and drama where so outrageous /unbearable that he moved out. The relationship actually does not at all surprise me. AB has a thing for these kinds of women, they came before me, so it is no surprise that they or she would come after. The question more for me is - so was I a moment of sanity or insanity for AB? Was I the 30's something part of his brain, saying time to man up and get a girl who doesn't lie, cheat, starve because she doesn't have a stable job and parties all the time. Or what I the experiment with on of those "straight-laced" kind, the rebel relationship equivalent for a hipster? Whatever I was, I am smirking, because honey your 30's may be the new 20's, in some respects, but it doesn't mean you should keep repeating the same mistakes. Good luck AB, not sure whether to hope you don't get an STI or hope you knock her up and it straightens you out, or neither. Let's go with neither and a splash of possible infection.
I tried to listen to Middlemarch on a free podcast - it was a disaster. I am feeling a little hopeless about the prospect about finishing the book. Given that feeling, I shelved the book and picked the next one up in the to read pile (I have about 6 books required for graduate school I've been cycling though - I'm stuck on all of them). I picked up A Clockwork Orange. I understand that it is a "required" or even "recommended" read. However, the book is in a whole other dialect - it's a hybrid of English and an English/Russian mix. More to the point, it has a three page glossary to go with the book. I had started to just translate the book, skimming for all the foreign words and penciling in the English versions. While it isn't a long book, it isn't short either and as such I gave up and shelved the book. I opted to rent the movie, in the hopes I would get a handle on the story and be able to grasp the book. I stopped after 20 minutes of the movie. A Clockwork Orange, like Martin Amis' Money is one of those books I cannot abide. I respect that it is art and like all art it does not need to or even strive to appeal to everyone. But who does it appeal to is my question.
Well not quite aside, of the twenty plus resumes we've received today, only 3 have been via fax and of those only 2 submitted hand written cover letters. So I guess I dodged a bullet, I don't have to weed the pile down to a half dozen to interview because so far I only have two candidates.
But it's not about the work, this is about that dastardly book called Wuthering Heights I've been having an epic struggle with. The struggle has ceased thanks to iTunes which offers a FREE (though I would have paid) audio book service for classics. It is a partnership with universities which offers a chapter by chapter reading of classic texts. Okay so I didn't technically "read" the last 6 chapters of the book, however I did listen to them while doing my GRE math preparation. I am actually considering using the service for other classics that I cannot find the patience or desire to get into like Middlemarch or EM Forester's works like A Passage to India, which are on my "to read" pile.
I manage a small business currently - that all will be ending in about a month or so, however, before we get to the joy of freedom I get to go through the hell of year end, hiring and training both my replacement and another staff person. I posted an advertisement which stated that ALL resumes are to be received by FAX with a handwritten cover-letter.
Before I continue I must *sigh*, now can I reiterate that you will not be considered for a job in my office if you cannot follow instructions. I already have one employee who refuses to do so, I (and my replacement CW) do not need another.
So that being said, you're already in the trash pile when you email me. You're even further into that pile if that is even possible when you have typographic errors, colloquial statements and emoticons in your non-handwritten cover letter. I am sorry to sound all serious and dower but I am not your "BFF," I am your semi-future boss (I'm still doing the hiring at this stage regardless of who is actually in management after). I absolutely refuse to accept a resume from someone who has yet to grasp the concept of a first impression. It makes my blood boil that there is an inability to work for job. Yes dear Gen Yer's you need to put out effort for an interview.
I've got to go purge the 10 emails in my inbox right now and maybe drink a little. For those in management what are your biggest pet peeves about the hiring process?
If you don't follow me on my unrelated Twitter account you probably are completely unaware that I laid the challenge down to Wuthering Heights, it was Bronte or me. More specifically I was prepared to not pick up another novel from my stack until I had finished Wuthering Heights. I had started it many times but always found myself throwing it in the bottom of the "to-read" pile, only to find it on the top a few months later. This time I knew I had to take it out of circulation permanently. I would have acheived that this weekend if not for my chronic migraine of late and my GRE preparation. Yes the GRE has the power to seduce me away from a novel these days. I know that I need to get cracking on both my reading and my studying so that come September the procrastination novel stack will be gone and the GRE will be prepared for as much as possible.
I was suppose to have this week off. I stress the word SUPPOSE. Obviously that didn't happen and I will be working 4 1/2 out of the 5 days this week. On my one day off I get a phone call from my boss who is on vacation - so much so that he cannot return an urgent email, that I need to go into work to let our computer tech person in to fix some damage the power outage in these parts did. Um no. I am not busing an hour each way to let him in, he can come tomorrow, we are all closed remember. Well thankfully CW was willing to sacrifice her day off to do it... How soon is it before I'm free from this job?
On top of that annoyance I get an email from the PU I don't talk to often. Yes she birthed me, but she's also birthed a lot of other crazy since then. She's all bent out of shape I didn't invite her to my convocation. She went on FB and decided in her head it was this big freaking party that she got left out on. Yes I marched across the stage in my glorious pursuit of more debt - but it was only Ms. J and my other PU present. We took some pics and Ms. J and I bused back to our hood went for food at our local diner. I had worked that morning, and in the end the whole thing was more about doing it, to say that after 10 years I was really and truly done - it wasn't about her. Why the hell does it have to be about her? I know you're going to say I should have invited her. What for? So she can drive 2 hours to see me on a stage for 5 seconds? or so I can uninvite my other PU who lives 5 minutes away? No way am I putting those two next to each other if I have a choice. I know my wedding whenever that is will be hell enough with those two going at each other about who was less horrible a PU... I know that I'm being a b*tch. But some days I just feel like when did these two think that they are entitled to my adult life when they sure didn't think they should be involved anytime before I turned 20? You missed your chance.
Just because I am not single doesn't mean that I don't still have man issues. Not X issues and even if I did we have agreed not to blog our relationship problems... whatever, not the point.
BB is the point. He posted on FB this week, that he up and moving. I knew this day would come, boy has roots as deep as a azalea in this city. I know he wants to be any where but here. That being said while he loves another major city in this part of the world I doubt that it's going to fill the void. So I sent him off with my best wishes that he finds what he's searching for - maybe he'll find a shrink along the way too. I mean that with with care - I know it sounds bitchy, but I've been there - you can run all you want, if the shit is in your head, it's not going to help you one bit. I really do wish I could have helped the guy out but there was just no way to do that and not end up with a bloody mess on my hands. As for the whole no more free coffee, it's probably a good thing for me, my waistline and well me - I was tired of feeling like I was cheating on BB with X. Yes you read that right - I had a relationship with my barista while I am in a relationship with X. I felt like BB was hoping the next free latte would be the one to send me over the counter and into his arms... oh honey, if it was a JJ Bean latte maybe.
AL: Well he pops in and out of my life. Look maybe I'm just too damn civil, or maybe FB allows men I'm vaguely friends with to comment and reappear in my life I don't know. I find it unnerving. It's like AB knows not to comment, not to talk to me. I might BBM AB once every 6 months to make sure he's alive but I normally comes down to a few terse answers back and forth and fizzles out. Well AL I think just bugs the bajeebers out of me due to our history - the more I look at the more I feel like I was being seduced for a pity something. To ask me on a date on the heels of knowing your friend and I got very whatever and he's intent on breaking my heart because he's a man child seems cold, calculated and oh ya who you are - Mr. Serial Cheater.
Aside: So reading through my old blogs I realize I have lost my writers mojo - happiness and writing do not mix - and now Virginia Woolf makes even more sense to me - you've got to be repressed, bitchy and drinking far more then you should and off the hormone pills to for that matter to get the kind of kicky, snarky and aptly observed stuff out there. So now the time has come for me to find another source, or just to switch to drinking and blogging.
Ms. J and even X to some degree insist that I spend too much time on culinary websites/detours. I contest that there is a really good reason for my searches - you never know what you can find. I went searching for a cooked vanilla strawberry jam recipe to make this weekend and found this website. That is an amazing discovery.
But that aside I am looking forward to a chunk of time so that I can plow through Wuthering Heights. I am half way through and I declared to the world and Twitter, or maybe that is the world, that I would not read another book until I finished Wuthering Heights. I needed to motivation to just do it, to get invested in it like I did Love in the Time of Cholera. I find that if I am not in a class where I have to read a book, if it doesn't grab me I shelve it. I have been known to shelve a book multiple times before I read it all the way through. Fingers crossed I don't shelve it once more.
Even worse then being stuck without good reading material, I realized that I might have to work in September after all. I do not want to work. Seriously I do not want to try and balance work and school. But that being said unless I find a benevolent benefactor or rent out my uterus I am not going to be able to afford school. Gah. So the plan at the moment is to consider looking for bursaries etc - I don't know what my chances are but being denied is better then not asking.
On the topic of money and work/life balance - well actually it's not really on that topic at all - my PU has started running! So glad he's got the old man belly going on and that is not good for anyone, especially him. So because I'm a mean daughter I've convinced him to sign up for his first half marathon. Bazinga! I managed to bring one person unwittingly over to the dark side. We're going to be hitting up SoCal in November - so really I don't know how dark side it really will be...whatever - will be updating you on the joy that will be my life trying to get my PU up to the 13.1 miles.
Too much to do, too little time - and don't even get me started on the GRE - oy vay.
My home city got its warm fuzzies on after a horrific week and I'm proud that we did. But beyond that I don't really have anything to say because I don't want to dwell on either mob that has arisen, those rioters or the courts of social media who has now decided to start vicious acts on the rioters, their families and homes. Justice is not found in acts of rage regardless of what incites that rage. So on that note, lest I go all pacifist on everyone.
Behold:
So if you need to get some pent up riot frustration out today that hasn't been pancake breakfast, post note on police cars, plywood graffiti or hug a stranger out of you, then just go blow up a green pig with an angry bird.
So it all comes down to this, eh? I remember the last time so clearly - too clearly to be honest - the tears, the fingers crossed, all of it. This time boys please win that inch so that the end result is different.
I am adding this to deflate the nail crunching and kvetching that is happening around town, if you haven't notice Hockey Night in Canada has been playing it as part of their pre-game.
I don't think X knows how weird I can be, but I'm okay with that - I honestly don't think that I need to let him in on every inside joke or more so subject him to everything I share with my girlfriends. Ms J and I love to use 80's colloquialisms - it's our thing. T and I have known each other through more shit than I think any man could or would need to understand. That is okay - I know there are moments where I want to say stupid things to X and then realize it would require way to much contextualizing so I say as I would to anyone other than Ms. J. It's actually kind of nice to share something special with all the people that are unique and special in my life...
So on that note, I'm going to let you in on a little secret *clears throat* I like to look at home decor and mentally plan my home. I know this isn't actually weird. Maybe it is completely normal, but I've pretty much got the whole thing clear as day in my mind. Problem is I'm a vintage loving girl with expensive taste. Yep, oh honey if only you knew how amazingly talented I am at finding normally the most expensive item in a room. Now that being said I don't buy those things - I'm not senile.
Where they sell things like this for crazy expensive prices and why would I pay $54 for 6? Because they're PINK! You think I'm joking don't you? Oh if you only knew...
