T
oday ended a week-long hiatus of the Evil Office Manager Women. At the end of the work day yesterday, several employees lamented the end of their freedom, the end of the large exhale we all felt when she first went on vacation. It kind of amazes me how I can almost totally ignore her, how she no longer has much effect on my work day, and yet there's that very subtle awareness of just how much more happy and relaxed I am when she's not around, even if I like to pretend she's wearing an invisibility cloak all the time when she is here.Besides her, work overall is going fairly well, despite the fact I haven't confessed my departure to my boss yet. Why? Because I'm a complete coward and my boss, whom I have grown to deeply like and admire, will be SUPER pissed. I'm the first person she's had to really help her out ever, (her workload is monstrous), and she's really enjoyed it. And I know she's thankful and thinks I rock, cause she literally said so in her own self-evaluation she handed in to her boss last week. Huzzah!
And one thing I realized a little while ago, is that although I'm getting paid fucking peanuts, and a good part of my job involves menial tasks, I am still learning a LOT. I feel like I have acquired, under her guidance, a real kind of expertise in certain academic areas of higher education. This would have been an ideal job for me about 10 years ago - a position to learn and grow in. Now, it's just kind of an interesting internship.
In other news, Beau and I are very slowly moving into freaking out-bickering mode. With the upcoming move to Missouri becoming more of a reality (we kind of
are in the "we'll believe it when we're actually turning the key in the rental truck" kind of mentality), a lot of the oppressive stress that accompanies such a big move is beginning to descend. As always for Beau that includes, "How the FUCK are we going to pay for all of this?!" For me, that includes, "How are we going to pack and get this place cleaned in time?!" Due to our awful student loan situation and back taxes, we will not see one single cent of our "stimulus" check. So much for that MUCH NEEDED help. All those who went out and bought new leather furniture or jet skis or a trip to Hawaii can kiss my white butt.And, being the World's #1 EXPERT on moving, I have already begun, with a great amount of gusto, to prepare for the move. I began taking pictures off the wall and packing away books the day after Beau accepted his new teaching job. We've already cleaned out our little storage unit and I have rapidly begun filling it with precisely-packed boxes. I'd pack even more, just so we could get a headstart on what I'm truly dreading -- the CLEANING -- but the slow disappearance of our worldly possessions from the small apartment is beginning to make Beau nervous. It's true, the simple act of removing pictures from the wall turns your place from a "home" to an empty hotel room.
Speaking of student loans - those beasts of educational burden - both Beau and I were finally tracked down by our loan people and forced (yes, forced) to start coughing up money again. Some guy kept calling my work (thank god someone else
answers the phone), and asking for me. When I looked up the private company he worked for, the website displayed a sort of creepy "We can find anyone, dead or alive!!!" motto. FREAKED me out. And I very much doubted that I was being sought out for an inheritance from an unknown rich relative. Still, though I knew it was most likely the student loan people (my credit is otherwise just fine now), it was rather scary that they would hire such a company.Well, after the guy called several times, and the receptionist was starting to give me the "I'm getting sick of covering for you" speech, I bucked up and took his call. Unsurprisingly, it was the student loan people, but in a weird twist of fate, it was NOT the people who own the 90% overall chunk of my loans, but the guys who have the other 10%. Seeing as I can only possibly pay one of these guys at a time, at least it was the 10% people who got me. If/when the 90% people get me, I'm going to fucking starve, and I'm not being cute.
M
y weight continues to be a big issue, and continues to aggravate my blood pressure. I've wanted to get off my blood pressure meds, not just because I hate having a host of pills to take every morning, but also to save me from the humiliation of my office mates watching me get up and go to the restroom every 30-60 minutes like some sort of pregnant racehorse. But my doctor said unless I had some sort of "significant weight loss," I had to take them or face a stroke. Lovely.I'm still pretty stymied as to why I've been so steadily and rapidly gaining weight, despite the continued dramatic changes in my diet. I've even begun running in the mornings, an activity I don't enjoy, so hopefully something will come of that soon. It's funny, many years ago I was a long-distance runner, and now when my fat ass runs a much shorter length, I feel so totally ridiculous. It's like my body is flapping and protruding all over the place. As I run, I swear it feels like I'm sticking my butt out in some kind of tarty pose. My feet pound on the ground like I'm trying to grind corn. And after my short run, I have the same heart-searing, gasping-for-the-breath-of-life feelings I once had after running an under-7-minute mile. To think I won that Presidential Fitness Award twice as a kid. Now? Pathetic.
One big joy has been our community garden which is again chock-full of tomato plants (20 this year!), purple and yellow beans, butternut squash, Thai chilies, basil, mint, kale, and THE most amazing sugar pea and snow pea plants I have ever seen, thankyouverymuch! The pea plants are beginning to take on a familiar Little Shop of Horrors look to them, which I am rather proud of. It was pretty touch and go for awhile, since just TWO FRICKIN
WEEKS AGO it snowed here! Yes, yes, it snowed! For TWO days! In JUNE! Death to tomato plants! Luckily, they pulled through (not sure if the Thai chilies will make a comeback), so I eagerly await their bounty.Oh, and another big joy has been the re-submergence into the glorious world that is Harry Potter. After a year or two of begging Beau to read the first book, he finally did, and with the second book, we continued our ritual of "Beau drives, J. reads," one of my favorite things in the whole world. So, to and from work, to and from the store, and muting the TV on commercial breaks at home, I read and read and read from the glorious books. We read a book, then immediately watch the movie. We just watched the Order of the Phoenix dvd this past weekend, and I'm already well past page 100 in book 6. It was so wonderful to introduce him to Lupin and Tonks and the awesomeness that is Fred & George and Neville and Luna and.... *happy sigh* We just need to finish Half-Blood Prince by November when the movie comes out, which I think will be no problem at all. I can hardly wait to start reading book 7!!!
7 comments:
I'm with ya on the stimulus checks. I had a dentist appointment today and it turns out I need a root canal, a crown, and 6 fillings. That's gonna cost over 1.5 times what we'll get from the government. We're behind on taxes, too.
Student Loans. Man. Paul is suffering from that burden too. For us it was also one HUGE one and then one for 20% the amount of the other one and we also got cornered by the small one first. We have made 9 of 109 payments. Yeesh. Fortunately we can semi-handle these payments (if you count clothing, haircuts and dates as optional things), but we know that the huge loan will also want us to finish in around 8 years and that means an astonishingly large payment once they force us to start. Student loans are...tragic, really. I would be hard pressed to tell a young person to even go to college if they will have to go $50 000 in debt to do it.
It's kind of an ironic thing -- I've always seen "The American Dream," that is, pulling yourself up to a higher socio-economic level, to be directly connected to education. And yet, if you were born a poor slob like me, then borrowed a bunch to go to college, you kind of come out of college with so much debt that you have a hard time rising above "your station."
I am doing better than the previous generation in my family salary-wise and job-wise, but because of so much debt, in some ways they did better than I (they could all buy a home, have more disposable income, etc.).
I always feel that this is temporary and it will get better... I still believe (hope for) that. But the older you get....
And just a second, a root canal, a crown, and SIX fillings!! What, have you been subsisting on a solid diet of rock candy? Holy crap!
Beau just cracked a tooth yesterday, so we know we're about to get screwed too. Thankfully, we had JUST signed up for the "super" dental insurance our jobs offer, but if it's anything like the unbelievably shitty medical insurance we have, we're fucked.
Heheheh oh, and Beau and I were just having the "how much longer can we wait to get a haircut" conversation this morning. My mother-in-law was here last weekend and had a fit over his hair (it's really not that long, but still). She kept threating to cut it herself - a thought that freaked both Beau and I out. I need one too, but like I said this morning, unfortunately, girls can usually wait longer, ugh.
No, no rock candy, but it had been seven or eight years since I'd seen a dentist (and some really bad oral hygiene during the years that I took crap care of myself). The root canal + crown are due to having a filling between two bicuspids fall out, and then the outer edge of one of the teeth broke off earlier this month. I'm lucky that the root is dead so that there's no pain.
I was about to say, OW OW OW! But at least the root is dead. Still will be a major pain in the ass dentist visit(s).
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