you are not going to believe this

some woman came into the store today with her ratty little dog, who promptly peed on my podium. peed. inches away from my foot. peed! did she say she was sorry? did she scoop the little bastard up and wisk him outside? NO. she said, "oh, he did that outside, i didn't think he had to go."

fucking inconsiderate batshit crazy lady. pee on my podium! are you serious? yes. i'm still sort of reeling.

also please note if you come into a store saying things like "what's your best deal?" "what are you going to give me?" or "i'll go to another store if i don't get the best deal," rest assured that you will not get the best deal. especially if you sound like a chipmunk and have come in right before closing demanding the very best deal on earth. in fact, we will lie and tell you we can't help you and call you a tool when you leave.

i got to talk to my favorite oregonians this morning, including the sweetest boy on earth who played me a little harmonica. i also found out that it's going to cost the cell phone company $2,200 to buy me from the temp agency. dude! i am worth over a thousand dollars! that was nice. in all, aside from the pee incident, valentine's day was like yesterday, only better. who would have guessed?

a very kraken valentine to YOU

green is my new favorite color

i found these one stars today for only $20! twenty bucks! i love converse. i wear my black low top chucks all the time, and while they had the one stars on sale in black too, i thought it was time to branch out. i have a lot of black shoes, not so many grey ones. especially grey with a cute green star. i seem to be wearing a lot of green lately. that is, when i'm not wearing my work shirt (which is black, to match my pants and shoes and the dark cloud of despair that follows me around as well). a few years ago my sister talked about how i needed a "fashion color" and she decided it should be green. she gets sick of me wearing only red and black. i'm sure she'd pick another color for me now, but as usual i am late in picking up on the trends and have just now picked up on the fact that green is indeed good on me.

i have nothing exciting to tell you. maggie gained a whole pound and is now up to eight pounds. she's huge and beautiful. i finally saw some photos of my sister at the end of her pregnancy, and i'm wondering how she walked upright those last few weeks. we got snow for a few days, then it went away and now new york is getting it all. i am knitting a scarf with a hood on it, so that i can keep my ears warm without a hat. hats smoosh my bangs, and i look ridiculous with flat bangs. i found out i'm older than almost everyone at my job by about two years and for some reason this bums me out. being a lot older than some kids is one thing, but barely older than the others is another. why that bothers me more is beyond me, but i think it has something to do with being insane. i'm going to watch veronica mars now and try to reign in the neurosis. send over a pizza if you don't hear from me for a few days, okay?

hey, today was better than yesterday

i was offered a promotion at work today! they want to make me a full time sales associate. evidently one of the girls that works there now isn't doing that well, and they think i'm more personable than she is and will make a better salesgirl. my boss told me he thinks i'm great with customers, but i told him that i just have chubby cheeks and people like that.

i know, i know, i'll be a salesperson, but i will also get to work five days a week and i'll get a commission. i'm sort of anti-commission most of the time, but i'm usually on the other end of the commission. maybe if i'm on the end that actually gets the money i won't hate it so much. i don't think i'll become a smarmy, freaky sales associate. if i do, i trust that you'll tell me.

i wouldn't normally be this excited about a sales job, but it's nice to know that they think i can do more than just greet customers and hand them over to the sales staff. it's a teensy vote of confidence, but it's one that i'm happy to take. plus, i'll never have to work early in the morning and i'll get to hang out with the kids i'm already beginning to like.

being a 28 year old cell phone store greeter was definitely a blow to my self-image. i felt weird doing it the whole time, and while this isn't like a huge step up, it's better. if anything, the job itself will be more interesting and fun. and i'll still get to draw the copy kraken. or rather, the cellular kraken. (the kraken needs a new name, i haven't yet decided what it is.)

p.s. one of the things that makes checking out books from the library cool is sometimes people leave their old check out slps in there. then you can see who else read your book and what else they picked up. it's interesting, and it makes me wonder if i thought the same thing about the same book that someone else might have.

ahhhh....

amazing what a good night's sleep can do for me. i helped the process along with a sleeping pill because i didn't want to be jittery and sleepy at work today, and i must have slept for eight hours last night. eight whole hours! it was great. i feel much more reasonable and pleasant today.

it's also payday. i saw my check though, and damn it's tiny. the four day week thing is fun, but i'm going to have to watch my spending. this job is great for traveling, though, so i'm keeping it a bit longer. they don't care where i go next month or for how long, which is one of the perks of having a throw-away job. they don't really need me, so taking a few days off won't upset them too much. i feel like the whole point of february this year is to make it to march.

i'm reading the biography of kurt cobain, heavier than heaven, and i can truthfully say it makes me like him less and less. growing up in the pacific northwest and being in high school when "grunge" hit it big has always made me feel sort of close to kurt. when he died my little sister was bereft, and we were both big fans of nirvana (although to be honest, i haven't listened to any nirvana since early college). reading the book, kurt reminds me of a lot of the dipshit boys i went to high school with. he may have been a great artist, but he strikes me as being a very immature, self-centered jackass the rest of the time. regardless, i can't put the book down. i'm going to have to read it to the end, so i can get to this book about another musical artists who was also a jerk in his real life.

boring post ahead

i got very little done today, although i did get my yogurt and cereal bought. the car did not get washed, because the unholy colorado wind arrived and i did not feel like soaking myself while washing the car. plus, it's going to snow and then i'm going to have to wash off all the magnesium chloride anyway. may as well wait a bit.

i got a very nice package from my parents for valentine's day; they sent me a movie and a magazine and a cute little card, along with a cd of photos of maggie. i promptly burst into tears. it's almost worse when they're nice to me, it makes me feel even more homesick. i am not complaining, though. i may as well be crying because i miss them and aren't they nice, rather than crying because i have a dumbass job and the dry air here is giving me split ends.

i'm serious. i haven't had split ends in years. suddenly they are everywhere and i blame the lack of humidity as well as the shitty haircut i got where the woman didn't even get my hair wet first; she just hacked at it like a moron. i should have just gotten up and left when she did that, instead of paying her and thanking her like an idiot.

i'm totally over-emotional today because i couldn't go back to sleep last night and aside from a small nap (twenty minutes) this afternoon i've been up since 3:30 this morning. i'm sort of tired and fussy.

things i have to do today

1. go to the bank. if i don't put some money in there, the rest of my day will be screwed.
   
2. wash my car and vacuum out the inside. colorado is dirty. with no rain, cars get dusty and stay dusty until you do something about it. i also lost a button in my car yesterday, and really want to find it becuase it's new and has a gnome on it. while hunting around for it i had to put my hand under the seat and that was a horrifying experience. once i find the button, i've got to give it a good vacuuming. there's all this hair in there. even though it's mine, and it's clean, it's not on my head and that freaks me out.
   
3. take a shower. maybe that should be on top of my list.
4. go to the grocery store. i need sandwich supplies, yogurt, and grape nuts. well, not grape nuts, the grocery store brand equivalent. i actually sort of hate grape nuts and their imitators, but it's the one breakfast i can scarf down that's reasonably healthy for me, inexpensive, and filling.
   
5. i should go for a really long walk to tire myself out; my sleeping pattern last night got all sorts of messed up and now i'm tired but totally unable to sleep. sometimes i can tire myself out like a little kid and that makes me feel better.
   
6. pay bills. see note #1.
   

i woke up at 3:30 this morning

it's now 6. stupid weird sleeping patterns. i might try to go back to bed now.

why i love vincent d'onofrio

1. he's built exactly the way i like a man to be built: not chubby, exactly, but pleasantly thick. i don't know, i can't date a thin man. i like something to hold on to.
   
2. he's a brunette. maybe because i am one, i like those.
   
3. he's not conventially handsome. which isn't to say he isn't handsome, he is, but he's got his own thing going on. nice face, good build, but he hasn't tried to straighten his teeth or get a tan to make himself more marketable.
   
4. he's smart. i like smart.
   
5. he's a little bit of a smart-ass. if there's one thing i always fall for it's the smart-ass boy. a funny man will win me over faster than any other man.
   
6. he's in happy accidents, which i loved the first time i saw, and even more now. found it at the library today, and was a very happy girl.
   

i really do hate gwen stefani

i mean, she might be fine to go out with and have drinks and gossip about our friends and boys with, but her music is just so awful. i mention this because she is on an episode of SNL that happens to be on this afternoon.

wednesday is my saturday, and this one i've sort of pissed away. i did make it to the library and post office, but that's all. now i'm having cocktails in the afternoon and watching television. rock! i did find some stuff at the library that made me pretty happy, including another stevie wonder album. this one i'm going to send a copy of to tiernan, because he's in love with the harmonica and who plays the harmonica better than stevie? it is also my opinion that you cannot expose kids early enough to motown. it should be one of those things that women play to kids in the womb, the way they take prenatal vitamins.

i want to knit today, but i am also really enjoying the cocktail and tv watching.

i really want to go to sxsw this year, especially since i going would mean getting to see my friends, but i'm waiting to see what happens with my sister and maggie. if my brother in law goes to dive school, maggie and my sister are going to my parent's house for a few weeks, and if that happens, mom and pop want to buy me a ticket to come home as well. i feel awful taking a ticket from them, but then again, it would mean getting to go home for a bit, meeting my new niece and seeing some of my favorite people. either way, i'm going somewhere in march.

i have also decided that if i were a man, this would be the part of my life where i would grow a beard and think serious thoughts about society, my place in it, and whether i should be the man i'm expected to be, or the man i am. damn i wish i could grow a beard.

now i bitch about temp agencies

it seems like in order to get a job in this town, one must go through a temp agency. in the months i've been here, i have not been on one interview that wasn't set up by some third party grifters. in a way, using a temp agency is sort of cool; you sign up and they look for jobs for you, hopefully matching you with places you'll fit in at. it doesn't always work that way though, just look at my current job. the recruiter for it talked it up in a way that made it seem reasonable to me, and oh holy fuck it's really not that great a pairing.* we are an odd couple on a good day.

i was supposed to get a check the friday before last for my last week at the office job i had at the beginning of the year. i had to work that day, so i didn't go in to pick it up. i figured they would just mail it to me, since it came in an envelope with my address on it every other time i'd gotten one. a week went past with no check. today i sent over a little email along the lines of "when do you send out paychecks?" the response was an "oh? you want us to mail it?" well, duh, jackass.

i also got another call from the temp agency that annoys me, and i'm not sure what to do. i might just tell them i have a job right now and if i need them in the future i'll let them know. this agency gets better jobs coming through, but they are really hard to get a hold of, and don't make much of an effort to get back to you if you call them. i know i'm just supposed to be so grateful that they're representing me, but i can't just sit by the phone all day waiting for them to call either. i'm doing my part, keeping in touch, trying to set things up, and i hate that they are so wishy-washy.

i'm not sure if i could find a job right now that i liked, to be perfectly frank. it could be that my job issues are just other issues in new clothes. money is freaking me out, but i'm not that broke (yet). i'm still going through the whole "do i want a career or just a job?" conundrum, trying to figure out what it is exactly that i'm looking for. i know what i don't like, that part is easy, but figuring out what i do like, what i want, and what i'm willing to settle for is another story. i'm glad to be working at all, and maybe i should stop freaking out it and just do it. the job i have right now isn't the greatest, and it does make me feel weird that i'm 28 years old with a college degree making lists at a cell phone store and telling people when their cell phone rep is ready, but fuck it. it's paying the bills and giving me a moment to breathe and it never asks more than two days in a row from me.

i think i've been hard on myself lately. i just moved and am getting settled and it's perfectly normal for me to be homesick and lonely and a little stressed out. it would be weird if i wasn't. jesus! i need to calm down and just let myself muddle through for a while. this might make for boring, neurotic posts, but if that's the case and you get annoyed, then go read something else.

*i will admit, though, that i'm getting to like my co-workers. they're funny. they remind me what it is i like about retail work, mainly the camaraderie. i also got my official uniform shirts today, and that softened me up a bit for some strange reason. with my insomnia acting up the way it has been lately as well, i'm sort of glad for the later start time at the place. i don't know. maybe this is what happens in an arranged marriage when you get over being freaked out and start to resign yourself. maybe we will fall in love.

wasn't even there

i rented the man who wasn't there from the library this weekend. it's lovely. i can't believe how beautifully shot it is; making a movie in black and white is a hard thing to do and the coen brothers do it well. it's dark and well-written, tense and surprising. i'd always wanted to see it, but never got around to it.

i love netflix, but the things i choose on there i do so in advance, with a theme in mind. never two freaky movies side by side, never too many musicals at once, etc. i put stuff on there all the time that i've always meant to see, but often i put the things i really want to see at the top of the list before the other ones come around. the beauty of the library movie system is that i run into things at random, and either have to watch or leave it there. you never know what you'll find.

(also, how can you not love boys who can make dark, gorgeous noir and the big lebowski? genius.)

i summon you here

dude! spoon on veronica mars! singing an elvis costello song! i love you veronica mars. i admit i have not been watching much, and last week when i caught the show i was so far behind i was actually confused and had to go to television without pity to catch up. now that i'm back in the loop i can't remember why i stopped watching. i think that month i spent moving threw me off. that, and all the law & order reruns. i'm just glad i rediscovered the show.

went and saw capote today rather than watch too much football (and my home team lose). i thought the theater would be a lot more quiet, seeing as it was the sooperbowl, but i think there were a lot of people here who didn't care. after all, the kids in colorado love the broncos, and since they weren't playing there wasn't much incentive to watch. the film was really good. depressing, but great. not as bad as the weatherman (which makes you want to seek out sharp things for poking into the soft fleshy parts of yourself), but sad nonetheless. i love capote's writing, so it was fun to see philip seymour hoffman play him. he got the voice just right, and even though he's a big guy (much bigger than capote, although i'm also bigger than he is), he never looked excessively big. well, his hands are a bit like sausages (hey! mine too!), but what could you do about that? i also loved catherine keener. she was amazing as harper lee. if you like capote's writing, then you'll like the film. also, i used too many parentheses. sorry about that.

dammit!

it's my day off (my wednesday is a day off for me, and sunday is wednesday as far as i'm concerned), and i woke up at 7:30 this morning. that's so ridiculous. i'm so annoyed. i should be asleep!

superbowl today. i might go to the movies. i should clean my room.

say hello to my little corner of hell!

hello, cell phones.

maybe i should have said something earlier, because as soon as i told you how much i hated my job, how anxious it makes me, and how "gee, moving can be hard for months," i started feeling better.

don't take this to mean i'm going to make a career out of this crappy job, but i don't know. i just feel like maybe this is indeed something i can muddle through without resorting to burning anything down or telling someone to shove their cell phone up their ass.

here is a list i made yesterday at work, which is sort of funny and sort of pathetic. oh wait, pathos can totally be funny, so make that a funny list!

things i saw today 2/3/06:

1. a girl with bleach blonde hair--dark like mine originally, now fried to the consistency of stale cotton candy. piled high in a puff on the top of her head.
   
2. weird as fuck music today: jason mraz to hall & oates, then rod stewart and then roxette. am i having a stroke and this is all a dream?
3. an older lady with a pink leather biker jacket on. i don't know if that makes me cheerful or annoyed.
   
4. dear white women over the age of 40, fringed leather jackets are not for you. neither are puffy boots.
   
5. a gaggle of young men smoking cigars and trying to look cool. they looked like chumps.
   
6. jeans tucked into boots, even on a hot 16 year old girl, in never a good look.
   
7. meth-heads love me. one lady told me about her MRI, which they gave her drugs for but she gave them to her boyfriend (!) and so freaked out in the tube. then she told me he was cheating on her, and how she was forty and had only hade five partners in her life and suddenly she was veryclose to me and i knew way too much. she had the look of a woman who'd used a lot of meth; pocked skin, sunken cheeks, stringy hair and the teeth. you know meth teeth when you see them. it was very sad. i gave her a soda.
   
8. they could play the eurythmics every day and i would be okay with that. it's the only song on the stupid store cd that i can hear over and over again that doesn't make me sick.
   

i still woke up early this morning, after having some seriously fucked-up dreams (i believe these dreams are called "nightmares"), but not as panicked. which is something.

when i like it here, i really like it here, but when i'm unhappy i tend to be just ridiculously miserable. the strange thing is how i can go back and forth a few times in a week; i sort of thought i'd move, be too busy for homesickness and all that that, get a job, settle in, become sad for a while when i realized what i'd done, then snap out of it and be a-okay. of course, it's not like that at all. it can change on a daily basis. it's a fairly big adjustment, when you get right down to it.

the truth is, seattle and i weren't exactly best friends when i left. i felt stymied and trapped there, and really needed a change. i knew if i stayed i'd never leave, i'd stay stuck in the same rut, doing the same things, complaining about the same shit and wondering what would have been if i'd ever actually moved. everyone does this at some point, i just did it later than most kids. i don't think i'll stay out here forever, but i'm not going home for a while. it's hard to explain why i think i need to do this, but i know i have to. i know it's going to suck for a while, then hopefully get better.

the work situation is troubling, but yesterday i thought at least i'm working. yes, this job sucks major ass (oh my, it is like the king of suck), but i never have to go in more than two days in a row, and i can sneak in a game of sudoku and make snarky lists at my little podium.

i didn't get the other job. the temp place i'm using right now sort of annoys me because i can't call and talk to anyone, and i think the guy who's placing me was irritated i didn't call him right back yesterday, but he called at the start of my shift and i had to wait until lunch. i can't just sit around waiting for him to decide he can call me back or talking to some snippy receptionist who won't let me just leave a fucking voice mail.

maybe by the time he finds me a new job i'll be sufficiently broken in spirit to love anything he send me! cross your fingers. (and thanks for the comments yesterday, they made me feel a little less crazy.)

every morning before i go to this shitty job i have a panic attack. i wake up before the alarm goes off, heart pounding like i just got done running a race, wide eyed and confused and freaked out. i spend the rest of the morning up and trying to talk myself out of feeling so shitty. this job sucks, there's no doubt about that; i was basically hired to be a punching bag for customers. they hired a "greeter" so that customers can yell at me and then the salesguys can butter them up and sell them shit they don't need and get their commission. i stand there for hours with people irritated that i can't (and am not allowed) to tell them anything about the phones or plans, or get made fun of by assclowns for just having to stand there. "all you do is stand here and say hello? that's so stupid." yes, jackass, i know.

i fucking hate cell phones. i hate that they're everywhere you go, that kids have them, and that people feel like they can't be alone for more than thirty seconds so they have them surgically attached to their hands. i am the most foolish girl on earth to think that this job was in any way reasonable. i should have never listened to that goddamn recruiter.

yes, it's bad, but it's not so bad that i should panic like this before going in. especially considering i've been there a few times and know that it won't kill me. it doesn't seem to matter that i know all this in my head, my body still revolts against the idea. i'm not sleeping, and when i do it's only for hour-long spurts at best; not sleeping makes me feel sort of over-emotional, which i'm sure is a side effect you would have never seen coming; the days i had off i did nothing but wait and hope for the phone to ring with an offer from the company i interviewed with last week. the call never came and that makes me want to burst into tears.

at the same time, i was the one that accepted this job. the job itself isn't the root of all evil, i think it's what it represents to me. my foolishness, the fact that i'm a million miles from home and just realized this is a bit harder than i thought it would be. i feel like such an idiot, i'm embarrassed to tell you any of this. this was all my idea, so what does that say about me?

eh...

i'm not entirely happy with this bunny. for one, the ears are wonky. the head, also wonky. i think that's because of the lousy instructions around the neck area. that's disappointing to me because 1) i paid for this pattern and 2) i've seen other people knit this bunny and it turned out fine. what the hell?

i'm also not thrilled with the arms. too stumpy.

i followed the instructions! honest! and i followed them to the T. my bunny looks all misshapen and funky. i can't send it to maggie this way, it's too weird looking, and not weird on-purpose, which would make it okay.

i'm just about done with another, smaller one, when it's stuffed i'll see if it looks better.

and one more thing; over the past few days i've used this site a lot to figure out various knitting things. the little videos are ridiculously helpful, especially to someone like me who has a real hard time reading diagrams and pictures of knitting. it's so handy, especially since unlike asking someone to show me in real life, i can rewind and play the clips over and over again. i used it to look up mattress stitch tonight, and realized i've been doing it wrong for, oh, every since i started knitting. i mean, i had the basic idea of it right, only i was doing it in the wrong place. i wish i'd watched that clip before i did bunny's ears.

p.s. okay, i emailed the author of the pattern, and evidently you bind off the tops of the arms, and that's why my neck looks all wonky. which is funny, because that was one of the solutions someone came up with last night. i just didn't think it would work, but i'd had two beers and no dinner at that point, so i bet not much would have made sense. now, sober and having made two of the damn bunnies, i can see how binding off would work.

i love knitting, and lord knows i've been doing more of it than usual, but sometimes it's very math-y to me. in the immortal words of barbie, "math is hard."

you know, i think that made me sound like an ass.

it's true i've been quiet and sort of introverted the past few days. it's true i'm troubled by work and money and doing that whole "i'm not a grown-up but i'm not a kid anymore, what the fuck?" pensive bullshit, but i don't want you to think that i'm also just sitting around writing in my black journal and looking for sharp object to jab into my aorta. no! i just don't want to whine too much, and sometimes if you don't have anything nice to say, then you really should just keep your piehole in the seated, upright position, tray closed.

here is a list of things that don't suck, more for my sake than yours:

1. maggie. my sister and brother in law finally got it together and got a flickr account, so now i can see new photos of her almost daily. i love that.
   
2. if you loved me, you'd send me one of these valentines.
3. curb your enthusiasm. i had no idea how much i'd love it. but i do! larry david would tell someone to suck it, so it's like we're twins seperated at birth.
   
4. i am making a million of these bunnies, and even though part of the pattern is funked (i thought it was just me until i made people who actually know how to knit look at it and they all went, "yeah, that's not cool," so it's totally not just me), i've figured out how to fix it and they are just so ridiculously cute. when they are done and stuffed i will show you the ones i made.
   
5. dr. pepper. sometimes a girl just needs a soda to perk herself up.
   

also, this is my absolute favorite photo of maggie so far. but there are new ones all the time, so i probably shouldn't say that. i just love her big cheeks and her adorable little mouth. she has the same rosebud that her grandmother and mom have.

i'm not ignoring you

i've just felt really whiny and out of sorts, so i'm keeping it to myself. honestly, you don't want to know. i'll be back when i stop being such a goddamn baby.