Constant Craving

Ok, so I owe you all an explanation. I've been blogging a lot less than I used to. And I don't post pictures of my meals with recipes anymore. And I don't do any baking to speak of. I haven't had the time or the energy. I've had bouts of really sad times balanced by good but busy and productive times. I'm working on posting more. I'm working on lots of things.

I am super proud of myself for my most recent accomplishment. My dissertation is in the hands of a good editor, and I'm turning it in in a couple of weeks for printing. But it's done. No extra work needed. That, in an of itself is a big effing deal. I get that. I do.

And I got to go home! I missed it much more than I realized. It was nice to see my family and friends, and even nicer to have something to celebrate while I was there. Seeing my friends and the old hood was pretty cool too.

While I don't want this blog to be a "pity me" blog, it bears mentioning that the day after I got back,  instead of ushering in a few weeks of rest and relaxation, my job situation really tanked.

Remember how I work at Wolfram & Hart, the evil law firm? And remember how they had me doing horrible foreclosure hotline stuff, where I'd have to talk to people who were losing their homes and tell them that they had to pay huge sums of money within a week or their house will be sold? Well that stuff sucked and was shitty. Also apparently a lot of it wasn't too legal. My firm is being sued in a class action lawsuit (along with our clients, big giant banks). This has resulted in a massive amount of layoffs.

My friends at work started to disappear. The week I got back, they started laying off people in batches of 15. Then they slowed down. Then I got transferred again. This time, to a department that handles out-of-state cases. Then they started laying off people again. Important people. People needed to get things done. People who have worked there for 15 years. People who were in the middle of celebrating their birthday. Yeah, that's right, one guy got fired ON his birthday. It hasn't been a month since I went out to LA for my defense and yet a huge amount of people at my firm are gone and each day has been incredibly stressful. Every time the phone rings, we jump because it might be HR asking for a private meeting. Even some of the demon lawyers are gone! Demon on demon crime, you guys! It's a crap shoot each day that I'll have a job. Which means an apartment and medical insurance and CABLE TV.

Anyway, I have been a stress ball each day all day! If I don't have a job, we're screwed. M. hasn't found decent employment, we've got a dwindling savings, and none of my teaching applications have yielded much in the way of even one adjunct class. I can't even get any kind of academic adjacent job.


I've tried to love Philly. I love parts of it a lot. But a year should be enough time to get a spot teaching one class as an adjunct with a PhD. And if M. can't get a decent job after applying for over 300 positions (ranging from full time benefited to hourly retail), then I think we have to reassess our long term plans. The major reason we came was to have a better financial future.

We're thinking of moving back to Long Beach. We've done some soul searching about it. M wanted to move back 6 months ago, but I thought we owed it to ourselves to give it one year. Now that the dissertation is done, I feel like I can finally think clearly about what I need and what I love to do.

Until I finished, I felt like it would take forever. I felt like I'd never be done. I was running in place for a long time. Doing whatever I could to avoid the work that needed to get done.  And now that the work is done and I'm actually proud of it, I feel like a million bucks. And Wolfram & Hart is destroying this million bucks feeling. They are tearing into tiny tiny pieces and crushing each piece.

I've got a very possible job situation happening in January 2012. A good one. One with possibilities for the future. One that would make it very easy to move back to Long Beach. I think it's happening. And I think I'm happy at the prospect. Some people would look at this Philly thing as a failed experiment. But I look at it as my last chance to do a big crazy move, to experience totally new things, to understand myself better.

I want to not be stressed out all the time. It's really messing with my mind and my body. And I want my husband to be happy. And this war of ovarian aggression will one day end. I want to be on the winning side of that one. Sigh. I've given up on the need to be a homeowner. I've looked at enough awful mortgages and ruined lives at Wolfram & Hart to never ever sign a mortgage. Not until I've got real stability and a hefty savings. And I've started to be OK with that. I can have a rental house someday. And I can take good care of it like it was my own until things get better.

So this was an apology (for being gone), an explanation (for why I've been gone), and an indication of what's coming.

Wish me some luck already, damn!

Night Turns Into Day

All of the art in this post is by Natalie Dee

Mornings are tough for the unemployed. Sure, at first you're getting up at a decent hour, showering and getting dressed, making coffee, having a bowl of cereal, checking email and looking for jobs. Then you start staying up later and watching movies until midnight on a Wednesday, so you get up a little later on Thursday. You still make coffee, get that bowl of cereal, look for jobs, writing, what have you, but just a little later. And maybe you save the shower for mid-morning.

You figure out that this could be over any day now. You could get a 9-5 and have to be up when it's still dark out. I mean, like that could happen tomorrow! So you let yourself enjoy a little late night reading and when the bed looks so warm and inviting after taking the dog for a his morning walk, you feel like you should take advantage of this beautiful time and snuggle up with a dog that also looooves sleeping in.

You say to yourself, "don't feel guilty, when you're working this will be a fond memory." You try to push away the realization that while snuggling, you are also anxious, because you really don't have to leave the house today, and that feels weird. 

You start to get a little bummed out when you wake up because there's nowhere to rush off to, so you sleep in more and breakfast starts to look a lot like lunch. I swear, I have had days where I get a bunch of stuff done in the morning and keep going going all day. Writing, doing bills, figuring out how to get medical care,  junk like that. And then I'll have a totally lazy day where I get up late and take a nap! I have so much time now and it feels like I'm either too anxious to enjoy it. Anxiety, by the way, does not make for good writing. My writing has been really sloppy and I've had the hardest time getting down my thoughts on paper the way I see them in my head. I need a reset button. I'd like to reset to the feeling I had when the apartment was finally free of the last box and my hopes were ridiculously high.

What if I start to get really odd from not having regular decent work relationship contact with people? Like how professors get when they go on sabbaticals that involve researching Civil War-era documents in a library in some small town. I remember one professor I knew looked confused when I said hello after a sabbatical. Not because they didn't know me, but because the situation of being talked to while they were thinking and processing was a strain.

What I'm basically saying here is that I'm not doing bad, but I'm not really doing good. I'm doing OK.

On days where I'm just OK, I'm less likely to post. I've hit a strange point, and not only because it is 3am on a Tuesday (or technically Wednesday). Though in retrospect, maybe check-ins with my psyche shouldn't be done at the witching hour. But having nothing new to write about...sucks. Here's hoping things change soon. I mean, it's Dracula Month so I have that going on. But it would be cool for things to start looking up on any of my fronts, Universe. Yeah, I called the Universe out just now, so what?

Ok, rambletron 3000 has been powered down.....

Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you all about my magical adventures in the nation's first library? Where you can almost hear the ghosts of library patron freaks of the distant past....

Can I move here?

I got a bunch done yesterday, but it was such a hard day for writing. I don't know why, but I would start these long sections and then get to the end and not have a way to connect them to the thesis. I couldn't remember why I went down the road in the first place. And I hate not having transitions in place as I'm writing, so I just got very frustrated and had to take a couple breaks. I made some headway on another chapter though, so that's good. This one was a "from scratch" chapter too. But I feel behind. Mostly because I set these unreasonable goals for myself. But still. I want at least two chapters that I can hand in to my committee next week. I hope I can make it happen. Today is the day, so keep your fingers crossed for me.

I took a walk around 3pm to get coffee and clear my head. It was worth it, but I still didn't figure a way to link that section I worked so hard on. Maybe today. I did notice on my walk that rent in this city is out of control. Here is one for rent sign that actually seemed reasonable:

"Beautiful 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, March 1st, $2975."

Every time I come here, I want to move here.

In the evening, I met up with CW & Tiny Heat. CW is a friend of M's from college, so that's how I found Tiny Heat's blog. Her blog was/is so funny that it inspired me to start doing this one, and you all are paying the price! Seriously though, we developed an online friendship so it was nice to finally meet in person. She's awesome, as expected. Any friend of CW's is a friend of mine.

We went to a great pasta place where I had eggplant lasagne. And I stuck to my diet pretty good. I ate all the vegetables, I didn't eat the whole thing (so unlike me), and I didn't have dessert. So afterward we went out for cocktails. So what? Tiny Heat's friend met up with us at dinner and joined me in a cocktail after. Even her friends are nice.


So now it's back to the grindstone. Sometimes I don't know if I'm going up, or coming down.


But I do know this: If I don't finish this thing, I will hate myself. Unless someone wants to offer me a job that will make all those feelings (and loans) go away? Anyone? No? Ok, then. I will get back to work.

Sugary-Computery-Goodness

Late to the game, I know. 2008. I tried to start something over at livejournal, but I could never get into it. The layouts were unsatisfactory. Bloggers start to win Oscars and now everyone is doing it. Whatever. I decided to have a place where I can write that isn't myspace-related. Too close to the real me, I guess.

If I subscribed you and you don't care to read this, I won't be sad! Just unsubscribe!

Here are things I learned this week:

1. Not worrying about the low level of air in your back tire is not a good idea.
2. Walking is so not fun, and transportation (air conditioned transportation) of any kind is the best thing to happen to civilization.
3. Sometimes your period is late for two friggin' nailbiting weeks and it doesn't mean you are pregnant at all. And then it comes with a vengeance
4. Eyes are important so you should take care of them.
5. Hanging out with old friends makes holidays nicer.

I am going to try and publish almost every day. Sometimes it will be interesting, sometimes less so. Bear with me, it's my first time.