I regret Everything.

I did something terribly stupid last night. Oh, why, oh, why did I think it would be a good idea? So much remorse. So much guilt.


Owing to the fact that it was 1:30am and I had finally gotten some cash money into my pocket, the decision to get fast food after a full day of work AND babysitting didn't appear so wretched. I hadn't had a full meal yesterday and there it was. Neon lights a'twinkling.

 So of course I curbed the temptation and just went home to sleep. HA. Nope, I had forty dollars in my pocket and had just listened to a baby scream for no less than four hours. I went through the drive-through and got two cheeseburgers and a milkshame.*

(*NOTE: I actually typed out 'milkshame' instead of 'milkshake' and I'm going to keep it. Some mistakes have great meaning.)

Owing now to the worst decision of the night, my stomach is trying to attack my intestines and while they are putting up a good fight, I think I might die. TMI. I know, I know, "tell more information." It's been so frighteningly horrid that my legs have begun to tingle from my shins down whenever I go to the bathroom.

...Someone call an ambulance while I do p90x and sob uncontrollably.

 I am calling off all junk food in the near future. I've got my sisters wedding (!) to get ready for and some other nice happenings that I would prefer not to wear a moo-moo to attend. Plus, I don't know how drunk-late-nighters do it, but--never again.

(Rita, don't you just love that your wedding gets announced on my blog in the same breath as my digestive problems? Love you, sister.)

So segwaying from the most American-esque story I know to the announcement I intended. I am still currently living in Kalamazoo. I was without internet for around a month, and when I did get it installed, it just so happens that I still have a full-time job that I work six-days a week. Not much time for blogging. Yet, time to save some money for...wait for it....a trip to Germany around Christmas!

I will again try to update more often. But no guarentees. This is a read-at-your-own-risk-type deal.


Here we go again. Welcome back, internet.

Dragging along

It's like I'm stringing this blog along. It's a good friend that wants to be more than friends, but honestly I don't have the time for it, and really I just like the attention that I get from the other blogs when I write on this blog and oh, my lord, my writing life has turned into that of a sorority girl...

This can accurately describe my feelings toward this blog right now.

Working full time will do that to you. It's an odd situation of mine because I haven't fully moved to my new home and residence and weekly I'm commuting to and fro--draining me of any time or excess money. This, thankfully is my last week.
Then I'll be full time on just ONE job.  For the first time in a long time.
 I'll be a construction worker, in the shortest sense of the meaning. The longer version is that I work on a crew retrofitting houses to be more energy efficient through BPI-approved techniques.

That sounds so much more...adult.

But then my boss will ask me "What are your goals" and, like a sad sad reminder slapped in my face, I realize this is not the end-goal for me and I still need to figure out my life.

I'm not eloquent. Fortunately this man is. And for that reason I leave you with his thoughts translating my babbling.

"One of the traps of adolescence is the sort of paranoid resentment that somehow you’re never going to match up, and that everybody else’s life is going to be better and finer and fuller, and everyone else attended some secret lesson in which how to live was taught, and you had a dental appointment that day or you were somehow not invited."
 

- Stephen Fry

50 days

I had my first day off in over a month.

It was nice.

I quit one job already in my resounding life choice to move to Kalamazoo and work full time at Better World Builders. Honestly, I just got woken up from a weird three hour nap that lasted until 10pm by my cat licking my forearm and I'm not convinced that I'm still not dreaming, so pardon me for not explaining BWB a bit more. You can look them up here.

On that glorious day, my first day off in an eternity, I looked around my apartment, packed a few boxes, and ultimately decided that I was a pretty boring person. Thankfully my evening was rescued and I spent the rest of it amongst friends watching youtube videos and petting cats named after candy. (Werthers and Andes Mints, respectively.) I suppose this is what all of the young, hip kids are up to these days.

Now I've got the whole weekend free and I've finally gone home again and I'm sort of floating. I'm not particularly looking forward to tomorrow, where I'll drive back to Kalamazoo and start work. I can't quite place it at this particular moment why that is. Something feels so definite, final, terminal, about having one full-time job.
No school, nothing else. Just working.

Granted, it's not like I did a whole lot apart from working previously. With four jobs, I was/am pretty caught up in punching in a time card. But there's something about FullTime that feels just, different. Conclusive. Before work was a means to an end. Pay for your education, your meals, your down time. Now it's my life. It's what I do.

So there you have it. My apprehensions and insecurities about life transitions. Seems to be a reocurring theme...

Can't I just get paid to sit on a couch and sing along to videos of songs from the 80's and 90's? I've gotten really good at it.

Today I learned the difference between heat stroke and heat exhaustion

So, do all y'all realize how hot it is outside?
 It's hotter than two brown bears fighting over barbecue sauce in a forest fire.

(My brain is turned to putty in the heat. So much so that I have reverted to my southern roots.)

Apart from working a lot here in Ann Arbor, I've started straddling a grown-up job in Kalamazoo. This one requires putting on a full-faced mask respirator and body suit in a pseudo-Darth Vader fashion and squirming into attic crawl spaces to re insulate houses. Thinking about it, being in the lava like atmosphere of the attic is a lot like how Darth Vader came to be in the suit... My job brings it full circle.

But until such time that my rent is up here in Ann Arbor, I'll be running back and forth. And back and forth.

Last night I arrived back in Ann Arbor after three-day stint in Kalamazoo. I was pretty much bushed from three days of looming in the constant threat of dying from dehydration and manual labor and laid straight down to sleep. I woke to find my cat panting on the laminate floor of the bathroom. Technically, she's not my cat, so seeing her matted hair and watching her puff made me a little nervous. I immediately changed out her water for fresh iced water and let her out on the porch for some night air. Granted the air outside was only slightly less than the steaming humid soup air inside.
 No dice.
I was going to kill a rented cat unless I did something pretty quickly.

Funny thing about Ann Arbor, the stores that are open 24-hours are kind of a trek away. It keeps the small-town-island-with-a-big-city-feel going.

And that's the story of how I ended up driving for twenty minutes at 4:30am this morning to buy a fan that "my" cat is currently trying to hide from. I think the noise scares here. Closest thing I have to a vacuum, I suppose.

To the Blueberry!

Right after Christmas this year, I got into a pretty bad car accident. Travelling back from home to make it to Ann Arbor for work is a three hour drive that would have been greatly compounded by an intense sleet storm, but most bosses (mine included) wouldn't care that I had decided to spend an extra day with my family for the holiday, I was supposed to work.

And this was a place that didn't close on Christmas, if it helps to paint the picture in your imagination.

As most moms would have, mine forbid me to head out with the storm pelting half-frozen sludge on the windows, but I assured her, guiled her, got angry at her, and finally convinced her to let me out of the front door.

Yeah, I got about ten miles before I hit a patch of ice and swerved off the road, hitting the ditch after having spun 180 degrees to face the direction I had just been traveling in, like my trusty car knew where I was supposed to be headed: home. How ironic.

I rolled and crunched down the steep ditch bank (if you've never visited rural Michigan, here's a human for scale...).

Seriously, they're huge. I got this picture from the Nature Conservancy where they have a special project set up just to level them out. The one I drove into was a bit larger.

Before I hit the point of being upside down in my car, my only thought was, "S&*#, I should have listened to Mom...." Not exactly the last thought you want to have on earth as a conscious human being, but there it was.

Thankfully, I walked out of the wreck with a sore back and minor bruising across my shoulder--Always wear your seat belts, kids!--but the passenger side of the car was smashed in, almost every window had been shattered, and I would be shaking shards of glass out of my hair for the next couple of days. Without having to take a second look at it, my step-dad knew the car was totalled. Also, I lost my Blind Melon CD. By far the greatest tragedy of the night.

So for the next couple of months I was on the market for a new car, just like every other driver in Michigan who experiences the snowy roads of death. It was slim pickings and I had almost resigned to wait until later spring to purchase a new car, not ideal, but more practical. Then I stumbled across the new Fiat... Oh, what a beauty. I knew I had to have one. I had never been a VW Bug fan, but something about the Fiat 500 struck my fancy in a strong way. Maybe it was the excellent gas mileage, or perhaps the cute as hell design, or more likely, it was the most unique compact car I had ever seen.

The long of the short, after weeks of research, haggling, and convincing my family, particularly my step-dad how safe it was and how easy it would be to park in the city, and how the gas mileage was amazing and how by golly, I am an environmental major and just doing my part to save the planet, I purchased my new car.

The ultimate kick was when I took it home and my step-dad drove it and came out admitting it was a cute little car, and probably well-equipped for city living. Success!!

Most recently I have started working with a construction company. This is the beginning of my big-girl life with a full-time job. The past few days, I've been shadowing the crew on-site as they retrofit houses for new insulation and other energy-saving renovations.

Let's keep this in mind; my first day, I show up, a skinny little young girl hoping to fit in with many of these middle-aged burly men....and I pull up driving this:

Doesn't it just scream, "Take me seriously!" Look it's even all dirty and muddy and rugged.