September 1: Job offer.
September 3-6: Home in Dallas for Labor Day.
September 7-10: LA.
September 10-13: Dallas.
September 14-21: Mexico vacation.
September 22-30: LA.
October 1-3: Dallas.
October 4-10: Istanbul.
October 11 – 16: Dallas, finally packing!
Today and from now on: LA.
What a ride! Now, just to get David out here. Then we’re all set to start the next chapter properly. And I’ll update properly too. Phew!
It’s been a crazy two months. I haven’t really done much of anything if it wasn’t work related. I think I maybe took a total of eight showers over the course of six weeks. I did take 3 days off for Nora’s wedding in northern California, which was nice (I think two of those showers happened during that trip). I had a work trip to west Texas, which was less nice. Updates on those trips later.
Right now, I am just so happy to see a light at the end of the tunnel and know it isn’t an oncoming train. There is still a lot to do before the August 31 deadline, but I can feel it slowing down.
I’m ready to get back to having friends, and going to dinner parties, or out for a drink, or those things people do when they don’t have to work all the time. I’m anxious to pick up the knitting again, and maybe sew a little quilt finally. Certainly practice guitar again. Have sex with my husband a lot lot more than in recent weeks. Enjoy Annie’s visit and my trips to Tuscon and Miami in October. Get to know the students who have arrived and I worked so hard for. All these things I can do when I am not tied to my computer and phone!
Thank you, friends, for being patient, and re-visiting the blog from time to time to see if I was still alive. I’m ready to write again, but it may take me a little bit of time to get back into a regular grove. But I have lots to report, so it won’t be too too long.
Indicator of having more free time: the exchange student and I went to a little in-store at Good Records tonight. The fellow we heard is JMB. He was a good guitar player. Very low-key. And very good-looking, if you must know.
Well, mercury retrograde went out with a bang by really bringing out the crazy and David lost his job at Double Wide. It is really fucked up and most of you probably know the story anyway. For those who may not, it really just boils down to the fact that the owner is bat-shit crazy. Mind you, I've always really liked Kim and never had a problem with her until this. She is cu-koo but it has always been in a pretty fun way. At the same time, one can always sense she is someone for whom you wouldn't want to be on her bad side. Problem is – she just gets a wild hair about something and suddenly out of the blue you ARE on her bad side.
She does not run the bar like a business, and makes everything personal, so instead of just letting someone go (like a normal, sane, business owner), she decided to make it a big drama and hurtful (and, as an added measure, about me too – WTF??). So David's been inconsolable for a couple weeks now (much better this week though) and I've just been pissed off that someone so obviously unstable is even allowed to run a business…
But whatever. It's done, and frankly, so much the better. David hasn't been given a paycheck since last February (I know it's a measly 2.13/hour but come on – I still have to file taxes), he never knew if he was going to piss her off so was anxious all the time, and the bar has gotten considerably shittier the past year anyway. I can count on one hand how many decent bands they have had in 2009. Despite the wonderful memories of our wedding, I'd grown pretty weary of the place and hadn't been much since summer. And I have to say, this aside, I feel like that place is headed towards something really bad. It's just a gut feeling. So despite all the shitty shit, I'm really so relieved David isn't there anymore.
It's kind of sad for Dallas though.
Plus, it is time for him not to bartend anymore! He's gone back to school and this is a good thing for him. We'll miss the money this month, but he'll get something part-time when we get back from Mexico and it will all be fine. In fact, better than fine. GOOD. GREAT.
In addition, we might move to Oklahoma City or Little Rock. I'll just let that sink in for a while.
And we're going to Egypt in December! I am so excited.
I feel like I have all kinds of things to share, and how I've started a list of 101 things I want to accomplish in 1001 days, and I feel it is a fresh new start, and I'm all excited for the future, even if right now we're still nursing some wounds. We're nice people and didn't really deserve it, but I believe karma is a bitch, and Double Wide and those involved sadly, do not have happy times ahead of them.
OK, I am finally going to pull my shit together. Let me outline what has been happening the past two months:
1. Dutch kid arrives; supposed to stay about 6 weeks; stays almost 10.
2. Jeremy arrives with adorable but energy-zapping toddler; I reconsider children.
3. My job changes and I play mad catch up to get to where I need to be.
4. Austrian girl needs an emergency home so comes into ours for one week.
5. Niko comes for a visit from Korea.
6. I work multiple evenings and weekends.
7. I am currently in Boston.
As you can see, the past two months have been crazy. It's not been all bad, but let's just say that when I have gotten any stretch of time to myself, sitting down in front of a computer and forming coherent thoughts just hasn't been a part of the equation. In fact, the past three months have really exacerbated what I had already been thinking might be an adult ADD issue.
Now that the house has finally cleared out, I may be able to actually form a thought. Two, even.
Here are some good things that happened the past couple of months:
1. We went to Vegas! Had a great time.
2. I'm in Boston! It is so nice here. Why did I leave, again?
3. David and I are entering a really nice point of our marriage. I don't know what it is. We were definitely stressed out during the summer and work was crazy on us in August, but I think we learned some really valuable lessons about how we handle stress, maybe?
4. My hair is looking good the past few days. Yeah.
5. We paid off our credit cards. We didn't have much debt, but it was the last from the wedding, so that feels nice.
6. I saw Kat the other night in Dallas. That was a treat. It had been a long time.
7. Started knitting quite a lot again. Needed something soothing.
8. The house, though it needs a deep cleaning, feels cozier all the time.
9. Even though I'm playing catch-up on the job, I think (hope) I'm going to do a good job, which makes me feel more at ease about the upcoming season.
10. We are going to St. Louis to visit Ann & Dab in a few weeks! Whee!
Right now I am working in Boston, in a big shared team space, and it is amazing how accustomed I've become to working alone – I find all the conversations and phones and general chatter EXTREMELY distracting. In fact, it is taking great effort to write the post right now. But I did want to pop in and say that I know I've been MIA, but that's about to change.
In fact, I'm going to do NaNoBloMo. That will kick my ass into some sort of gear. Even if it is a shitty gear, it will be a gear nevertheless. So stay tuned, people.
1. I polished all my silver flatware. I bought a whole bunch of silver at an estate sale years and years ago because I was throwing lots of parties and needed more forks and knives and such, AND it happened to be the same pattern my grandmother had. However, I never once polished them before now. They look really pretty! That isn’t all of it above, by the way, just a smattering. It really took me a couple days to do it all. I have no idea why I had not done it before. This behavior is hereby rectified.
2. Today’s activities included an extended excursion to Ikea to price out a new kitchen cabinet, and peruse other, more unnecessary items. I always love Ikea (always, that is, when it is the middle of the day and very very empty). I got random kitchen items and some curtain rods, as well as more fabric for the wedding which should be enough now (oh yes and lots of tealights for the wedding – woo hoo!).
3. BACHELORETTE! WEEKEND! IN! BOSTON! I leave on Friday. I sort of keep forgetting it is so soon. I’m so excited to see most of my wedding party ladies plus a few extras. Yay, Boston. How I miss you, despite how obnoxious the South End was growing.
4. I’m in this weird spending mood, which is bad, though fortunately with me they happen so rarely so I can’t give myself too much crap for it. Plus I’m all about SALE items, so I bought some nice white sheets for about $20, which is nothing; and I got a nice new shower curtain, which was not on sale and relatively expensive, but I don’t buy shower curtains very often so I consider it worthy of a non-sale purchase. Also I bought some naughty knickers. I AM having a lingerie shower soon but they were on sale and so cute and dirty I just couldn’t resist.
5. David just sent me a text and he is on his way home early, which at 10:30pm is early indeed for a Doublewide night. We’ll watch a movie and fool around before going to sleep. What a perfect evening.
I make no apologies for my own atheism, but Richard Dawkins I am not. Which is to say I own my belief, but I have no interest in pushing it upon other people, or really even discussing it at all, because this is really just an arena in which nothing one says can be right, and conversations with believers tend to disappear into some vacuum wherein logic and reason do not exist, at least logic and reason as I know them, and therefore I cannot find my footing, and I’d just as well stay in my own dimension, thanks.
But of course David and I share our comments and asides with each other, and feel pretty comfortable in being as judgemental as we want to be (or not, as is sometimes the case – honestly!) as long as we are in each other’s company alone.
Yesterday on the way home I listened to some Christian radio, and both enjoyed it thoroughly and was completely terrified by what I heard. When I got home I told David what I was listening to and he became curious too, so while we drove to the supermarket to buy our season passes to the Texas State Fair we listened to a show called, I believe, Bible Answer Man. The first thing we heard that caused both of us to stare at each other in utter disbelief was the following sentence – and this is almost word for word:
"Logic dictates that hell MUST exist, because if it did not, Hitler would suffer no retribution for what he did to the Jews, since he was not punished in this life."
LOGIC. DICTATES. My head almost exploded. Hey, Bible Answer Man! Did you take a SINGLE LOGIC COURSE in college? Wait, let’s start earlier. Did you ever do one of those little logic problem grids in FOURTH GRADE? Yeah, well, sir, I hate to break the news to you, but there is absolutely nothing logical about the sentence that just came out of your mouth. This is having faith. But it isn’t applying logic.
My other favorite was this one:
"In the recent Christian Research Institute Journal on hell, we used primary sources to prove hell exists."
PRIMARY. SOURCES. Lucifer’s diary? Photographs? An interview with Hitler, whom logic dictates is living there now?
Seriously?
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