Sunday, September 21, 2008

Birthday Plans

Jersey boys have a certain easy switch that I hit just by being me.

Case in point, the neighbor man (could be my granddad) rang my door bell last night just to have someone to hang with on the front porch. He ordered us a pizza, we hung out for a good two hours, were joined by the guy who lives below my apartment who wouldn't take my "no thanks, I'm good" when he asked if I wanted a brew from the store - he came back with two and handed me one. So then he and I were chatting into the evening, I was glad he was getting tired, he'd been at the hospital for 2 days straight and was there the moment his dad passed away, but something tells me he didn't go to sleep even at midnight when we went to our respective houses.
So this morning I get my bell rung again, it's the older guy asking if I want to take him up on his offer to go to Atlantic City for the day. Knowing I really don't have any money to eat with, let alone play with, and that I had stuff to do for the day, I wasn't accepting last night, and put him off this morning... so his son was going to be doing the driving, I get my bell rung when he was on his way to make sure I didn't want to just get in the car when he came, was asked to wait out front with him til the car showed... so then I'm meeting the son, who I happened to know was going to be bringing his girl on the trip (not his wife, his girl) and as I'm still turning them down with every excuse in the book, they are both agreeing with me that it's not a good time for me to go as they talk about how well I'll eat and how easy it will be for me to get to work in the morning... this player of a son then hears me say "maybe some other time, when I can plan for it" for the 12th time and decides maybe in 2 weeks it'll be better... so I finally get them to leave, the son goes in for the hug when I shake his hand and then gives me the wink before he lets the handshake go, and apparently I'm going to Atlantic City the weekend before my birthday. =)

Trouble with any of it is, well, there's a lot of trouble there, but I decided if I turned down the trip for today I might as well do what I told them I had to do, so here I am at the office and it is literally 90 degrees in here - absolutely no way I can even breathe, let alone concentrate on work. Perhaps when the sun goes down it will chill out a bit, I hear the vents going, but they must be on fan instead of AC because, dayum. So much for that, I guess I'm off to the laundromat instead. I know I forgot my book, maybe the TV will be on?? The walk in the park was lovely though, so I guess 2 of the 3 items on today's To Do getting done isn't too bad, right?

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Dude

Is not going well.

Full moon = no sleep = restless zombie like behavior = crankiness to all collections departments I have to wait on hold for an hour a day to talk to.

House has visitors. I'm ready to put pest control fees as a line item on my check for rent and deducting the difference. Receipts have been saved.

Job is not likable. Almost aggressively avoiding the work I don't want to do, maybe next week I'll point out I'm not doing it and remind them of all the reasons I didn't take the promotion offered 4 months ago - and why these job items belong to that position I turned down and not this one I accepted.

Commute is the pits. Almost livable now that the first day of school traffic has subsided a bit, but there are only 2 ways of my hill, I only drive one because it drops me right onto the street I work on and I refuse to circle the entire city just to get off my new brakes. Morning radio shows help, but they catch up on their commercial breaks by the time I'm in the car, so my 25 minutes has 2 sets of their standard "pay the bills" montage.

My postman has decided not to take my Netflix back for me. Twice in two weeks I've come home to find them still there. As this is my only form of fresh entertainment, I'm getting pretty impressed with how much fun I can have feeding the fish, dusting the electronics, and dancing like I'm on drugs I can't afford to CDs I haven't listened to in years.

Boys are decidedly lacking. You wouldn't know it by the texts, calls, emails, and cock-suck count for the month, however, take my word for it, if I had cable, I wouldn't bother. It's pure boredom keeping them in my phonebook, and half of them know it.

My haircut sucks. It's constantly in my face. I'm using the work headset as a headband if I don't have time to lock it back and spray it into a helmet.

I have to find flights that work with my timetable to go to CA in a month, I do not want to have to pay some chick at a customer service call center $20 to see the schedule in a usable way to do this. I also want to book miles to the meager account balance I started to build this time last year.

I prefer being naked lately, I'm having a very hard time keeping my clothes on much past 6:30pm Sometimes I start in the car. Sometimes I start at lunch. As I've successfully avoided doing laundry for an incredible amount of time now (I've lived in this apartment for nearly 2 full months and been to the laundromat once, I'm thinking well over a month ago), the wardrobe is proving that loosing 10lbs opens up quite a few options, and that underthings are often optional. As the weather is cooling, I'm finding I have to have clothes on at home, and this makes me cranky, as all my scrubbies and PJ's were big on me last year and I guess I've actually lost 20 lbs since then, tripping on my pants while carrying dinner to the table has become my practice of either a dance/yoga stretch twist move, or I'm planning to be part of a football team and this will be my diversionary tactic.

I've apparently decided being a bitch is alright. I don't offer a cheery hello to the masses at the office, I don't sugar coat my "I asked you that 2 days ago, you gave me the opposite answer, there is nothing I can do about it now" or the "there must be another way, you go find it, I'm busy right now" retorts that have become more common than "hello" and "thank you" in my vocabulary.

I live on farmers market food alone these days. I almost bought a family sized case of chicken cutlets and fish fillets last night just to avoid the grocery store that much longer, but didn't have $50 on me for it. I'm worried eggs and nuts won't satisfy my protein needs, but I'm willing to give it a few days of getting sandwiches and burgers from the local food joints and seeing if I can meet social and nutritional needs this way. To wit, I've heard of people meeting people at the grocery store, I don't see how that is possible if they don't see me enough to consistently run me over with with their cart, but at a restaurant, luncheonette, or farmers market I get noticed at least enough to ask what is up with the daily specials or the purple bell pepper, and this means I'm happy to drain my wallet of all it's cash to foster this experience.

My lunch break is over and I've been on hold with the same numbers every lunch and every dinner for the past 2 weeks, I'm learning why it's so easy for me to job jump without being unemployed. I'm going to go back to my desk and listen to the people behind me spew false information and backward processes and wonder how they are still employed.