Job Hoarder

I got a new job. Again. When I said I was a job hoarder, I was serious. When I drive around town, I keep my eyes peeled for job openings. I learned that mall stores have "now hiring" stickers they post in the lower corner of their windows so I am now on the look out for those as well.

And the last time I was at the mall, I saw one.

And I walked in, asked for an application, and was hired on the spot. So I now have three jobs.

Granted, I was on the look-out for a new job because my main job is going to be shut down for two or so weeks for Christmas break. But still, that's yet another job I've acquired.

I may as well get used to the fact that I lack self control in the job department and really need to find an off switch for my problem.

First Thanksgiving as an Adult

Happy Thanksgiving!

From my bed. As I sit here in pajamas under a blanket imbibing ginger ale and wondering just how much it would suck being at work for eight hours versus calling in sick on my second day (yes I got a new job) (and yes, I'm considering that; I have phone anxiety).

In the meantime, the family out there is cooking up a storm and the real horde of people hasn't arrived yet. I hear they do a hymn sing every Thanksgiving as a tradition, it should be interesting to see what that's like. While they do that and socialize and have fun, I'll be hiding in my room watching movies and missing my family, 250 miles to the east.

But hey. I have snow and they do not. I win.

May your Turkey Day be filled with much food and even more family, no matter how annoying.

My house has issues

So tonight the washing machine in my basement decided to get funky and instead of washing clothes like it normally does and is supposed to do, it spewed water all over the basement, soaking anything that was set on the floor within a 10 foot radius of it. That may not sound like a lot, but to the fortunate few who have survived an expedition into the basement, that is an extraordinary amount of stuff.

This is how my basement is laid out: You go down the stairs into the basement. You visually locate the area you are trying to reach. You then proceed to navigate your way through the maze of things on the floor in order to get there. My basement holds enough things to furnish a second house. If you go down there you will find books, records (of the vinyl variety), furniture (including nightstands, cedar chests, a dresser, an ottoman, a book shelf, a jewelry case, several tables, including one for ping-pong, and a chair or two), cloth, clothing, a sewing machine, a mattress and box springs, a guitar, a trampoline, arts and crafts of several varieties, Christmas decorations, mirrors, clocks, toys, an ironing board, jewelry, rugs, pieces of carpet, a cardboard box cut into a castle fort, movies, and those are just the things that I can name while sitting up here in the safety of my living room at two in the morning without going down to catalog the entire contents of that room.

Boxes are piled on top of each other, things are leaned this way and that, and the floor is only uncovered so to leave paths between all the piles. Going down there is similar to playing Pac Man. Go through the maze, move things out of your way as necessary, avoid the ghosts, and reach your goal.

So when I went down to check on my laundry, I discovered (by stepping on them) that the rugs on the floor were wet. Further inspection of the floor led to the knowledge that the cardboard boxes surrounding the washing machine had been attacked by an unanticipated flow of water. And, of course, these soaked boxes hold books that had now also become wet. I promptly began to empty the boxes, only to find another and another and yet another box affected by the flood. I then began to find more rugs affected as well. The rugs were easy. I put them in the offending washing machine on the spin cycle and then laid them out on an unaffected portion of the floor by the heater to dry. I then did my best to squeegee any standing water into the drain in the floor (yes there's a drain in the floor, more on that later), but when you don't have a squeegee, that's an incredible yet impossible feat to accomplish. Instead I used an old mop conveniently located right next to the machine that has a fine toothed brush on it for reasons unknown to me.

Now, this is how my washing machine works.

The water comes from a magical land connected to the washer via a portal in the wall. It washes the clothes. The machine then goes into spin mode, which sends the water flying through a pipe and not out of the building as you would expect, but into a really old utility sink next to the washer instead. The really old utility sink then drains with the speed of molasses in January through a really long pipe that snakes behind the washer and dryer, around the dehumidifier, and into a randomly located drain in the floor. Why the house is set up like that, I will never know. All I know is I'm forever glad the machine isn't located on the ground floor because if it had pulled the prank it decided to pull tonight, it would be out on the curb looking for a new home and new job and I would be pulling up carpet and floorboards trying to undo a water damage.

As it is, the machine is simply too heavy to lug up all those stairs and through the garage (which is also set up like the basement) and onto the curb so it gets to keep its job through sheer luck.

Now, about the ghosts I mentioned in the Pac Man example.

This house is old. So old that the architecture of it reminds me of my great-grandmother's house, and she lived there for most of her adult life. She died at 92. This house was built by the old lady who used to live here. She and her husband lived here, raised at least two children, the children moved out, and the husband got sick and died (not in the house, but a few miles down the road at the Veterans' Hospital). The old lady is now in the nursing home.

So though there have been no deaths in the house that I'm aware of, I'm pretty sure this place is haunted. At first, I joked that there was a poltergeist about when I lost a few things. I mean, having your hairbrush disappear isn't that big a deal when you tend to leave stuff lying everywhere like I do.

But then a balloon migrated from my room to a room I never enter.

Doors I closed were open the next time I walked by.

Lights I turned off came back on again. They also flicker.

And then, one night, I was sitting in the living room and saw a whitish figure of a person come out of the hallway in my peripheral vision. When I looked up, it was gone.

So now I have my washing machine acting up for no particular reason.

And my house is extraordinarily cold. I don't know if I should blame the heating unit or cold spots due to paranormal activity.

I think my house is haunted. I think the ghost temporarily possessed my washing machine. I think, as long as I behave myself, I won't have a vengeful spirit on my hands.

I also think I've been watching too much Supernatural.

Help Wanted

Hello, my name is AC and I'm a job hoarder. "What in heaven's name is that?" you ask, as you sit there at your computer, staring at the screen and wondering why you're here instead of checking your stocks or emailing your business representatives or whatever it is that successful adults do. Well, a job hoarder is someone who doesn't recognize that jobs take time and so searches for many jobs, and, even when a job has been attained, the search continues.

"Nonsense!" you say, enraged over the thought that one could work too much. "One cannot have too much money or too little free time", you advise wisely, as you organize your portfolio, add a finishing touch to your resume, and set up a meeting with your associates for no reason at all, because you're a successful adult and that's what you do.

Well now, that's the issue isn't it?  You are successful and I am not. I am recently graduated, with a degree I am not using, and thousands of dollars of debt that I need to pay back. I'm used to part time jobs and slacking off of my primary job (being a student) with no ill effects to my purse. I have not yet adjusted to spending 8 consecutive hours away from my bed, my computer, my place of residence and I do not like it.

But that is beyond my point. I began looking for employment approximately five months before graduation, first for professional occupations that utilized my degree, and, the closer and closer I came to graduation, the less I wanted to have a job in Environmental Studies. So I looked for blue collar jobs that would hold me until I managed to go to graduate school.

Very few returned promising results. I ended up with my job in the college cafeteria, and a month after graduation, I landed a catering job which yielded a few extra dollars on the weekend, and which evolved into a job as a prep cook. I kept going from there, though. I still applied to jobs, talked to a friend about becoming his assistant, kept an eye on the Craigslist ads, and kept my eyes out for opportunities. It seems that my work ethic is this: "Sleep, food, and free time are overrated. Work always and work hard until you drop dead from exhaustion."

Extreme, but true. A sub shop just opened across the street from me last week, and though I am already working 35-40 hours a week and earning enough money to support myself, I entertained the thought of applying because I could always use another paycheck and another demand on my time. Somehow I forgot the all-important fact that I am never home because of work and when I am, I am usually sleeping or staring into my refrigerator, trying to figure out when the last time was that I went grocery shopping because I have no food.

My schedule is so complex that sometimes I have to think it out and plan it down to the minute. I sound like a military operative that you see in the spy movies, that majored in logistics and legalistically sticks by a plan set out for a strict and rigid timeline.

There's just something about a help wanted ad that attracts my need to be useful and needed. I want to be the next person on their team. I want to be their help. I want to be so important to them that they beg me to stay and work for them forever. I see a giant poster that says "now hiring" and suddenly I lose all previous thoughts in my head. My exhaustion dissipates, my fake extroversion flares up, my resume rearranges itself into promising formations of letters and experience. Suddenly I'm ready to fill out a ridiculously long application with all of my personal information, just for an interview in which I blow the manager away. Not only do I need that job, I want that job. That job was designed just for me, I'm the only one who can do it well, and if only they could meet me, they'd hire me on the spot.

I have a serious problem.

I can't say no to a job. I can't even say no to the idea of a job. I am a job hoarder. Help.

This is why I don't want to grow up

I think that being an adult makes you tired. It's not even all the stuff you have to do, just the mere fact that you are no longer of the age where irresponsibility is tolerated drains the energy right out of you.

I don't even do all that much. I wake up, I eat, I clean a few things, I go to work, I come back, I stay up, surf the internet, and clean a few more things until I'm ready to go to sleep, and then I sleep.

I'm exhausted and I don't know why. It must be the onset of this sudden burden of maturity that has been forced upon me. There is no other explanation.

My reasoning:
1. My job is the same as it was last year. I'm working the same amount of hours, yet I was not so tired then.
2. I worked multiple jobs in school along with taking a full load of classes and was never so tired.
3. Adults are always tired, no matter what their job is.

Ergo, it isn't the work that is tiring, it is the extra level of responsibility.

I have now figured out the secret to why adults are no fun. They don't have the energy to be fun. It gets sucked out of them by Life and they're left as hollow shells of grown-up people.

When I was a kid, I had these grandiose ideas of how wonderful it would be to grow up because I would be able do whatever I wanted and take care of myself, and that's all true. I have my own car, I set my own schedule (granted, it's built around my work schedule), and I can have a milkshake for dinner and no one can tell me no. The perks are great.

But then there's the stigma that adults have about Maturity. There's a scene in the Little House on the Prairie books when Laura is in awe of a table holding a roasted pig with an apple in its mouth. She is allowed to show wonder and surprise because she's a child, and though Ma and Pa have an initial reaction, they quickly quell it because they're adults and they're not supposed to show feelings like that.

I always thought that meant grownups didn't have feelings like that and now I realize that it's a combination of two things:
1. Grownups quell their reactions
2. They lose their childlike sense of wonder.

With very few exceptions, the grownups that I know are disillusioned with life. My theory explaining that would be this:
It is not acceptable for grownups to whine or cry about their lots in life. They therefore adopt a stiff upper lip and inadvertently apply that to every aspect of their life. Prolonged exposure to a stiff upper lip drives them (in the name of maintaining their facade) eliminate anything that makes this mindset difficult. Anything childlike is purged.

It gets to the point that a grownup might even be embarrassed or shamed by a display of anything remotely childlike. They have to know all the answers, expect everything, always be prepared. To not know would be to admit weakness, a failure of this business of being an adult. Essentially, we have built up an impossible expectation for grownups to have everything figured out, which is exhausting. Why can't we just come out and say that most of the time we're making things up as we go along because we have no idea what we're doing? That's why adults are tired. That's why they're no fun.

They have to keep up a pretense of knowing what they're doing, and that purges everything else from their personalities (both automatically and via effort on their part).

That's why I don't want to be a grown up. I'll be an adult because I have to, but I won't ever be a grown up. Because I want to remember how to be a child and how to have fun.

I have really bad luck

 So two weeks ago I got sick. Normally, I'm blessed with a beast of an immune system that won't even let me get a cold or a stomach virus because it's just that incredibly tough. Nothing beats my lymphatic system because it's backed with mithril.

But something managed to get through weekend before last and I spent Sunday night feeling horrible because of a sore throat that hurt even to turn my head and chills that made me feel like I was freezing in 78^oF. I spooned honey and gargled salt water and sprayed my throat and used Scope like there was no tomorrow, took a hot shower, bundled myself in blankets, dosed myself with a toddy (a remedy my grandfather swears by), and tried to sleep it out.

It didn't work. A few days later I was feeling miserable with the worst cold in human history and so I went to the doctor to get diagnosed with a sinus infection. He gave me a prescription for drugs which made me feel so much better after just the first dose that my brain did a little dance to celebrate and I may have ended up being on a feel-good high. It was an interesting few days before I got used to feeling better. 

The thing about adults, though, is that they don't just let you walk in for a doctor's appointment. They make you fill out lots of forms about your medical history and family history and insurance and how many pets you have and what you had for dinner two nights ago. I wrote down many many things and may have even made some things up, and then turned my paperwork in. They then informed me that they couldn't take my insurance. So I paid for my visit and then waited for the doctor to see me.

Once I got my prescription, I went to the pharmacy to get my pills. They too couldn't take my insurance, so I ended up paying for that as well. 

My wallet took a hit, but all else was well.

Fast forward a week. I'm at work (my second job, in which I am a prep cook at a fancy hotel) and I'm cutting up sweet potatoes. I'm doing splendidly, making chunks of orange tuber, and almost done, when my knife slips and cleaves the tip of my thumb in twain. I begin bleeding profusely and when I go to rinse it off, I notice that I've lost the entire tip of my right thumb. The shock and the sudden blood loss make me almost pass out, my boss piles on paper towels, rushes me out of the kitchen, shoves an orange juice at me to keep me awake (which is the most effective method I have ever encountered in the many times I have fallen unconscious) (I have a very extensive history of fainting), and my other boss drives me to the doctor, conveniently located across the street. 

He and I fill out a multitude of forms (a common theme among adults, it seems), I sign even more forms, and then he leaves to go back to work while I wait to get bandaged up. They take me back, have a look, lay me down on the exam table because I'm going to pass out again, put a massive bandage on, and give me vague and confusing instructions on how to take care of it. 

Then, the best part, they take me to the bathroom and have me pee in a cup. Because apparently since it happened at work, there's a chance that I'm high and my work needs to know if that's the case. Can't be having any stoned employees getting pot fumes in the food. 

Fortunately, (or unfortunately, as the case may be) I was not stoned at the time of injury (possibly because I've never tried anything stronger than tobacco), so I got to go home from work early and didn't have to work the next day either. I still had work at my first job, which, due to unfortunate scheduling, I could not escape. So I got put on the cash register and was given tasks that did not involve wearing gloves or getting my massive bandage wet.

The best part of the incident is that since it was a work-related injury, my work paid for it, so I didn't have to dig into my already empty wallet. So here's my hint for life: If you get hurt, make sure you do it at work.

So now, four days after the incident, I still have a massive bandage on my thumb that has to get changed every day (no endeavor for the weak of heart, I assure you. Especially if you only have one hand with which to do it), a right hand that is relatively useless (I've gotten really good at doing things one-handed), and the fun of telling people what happened. Their faces are the best part. Eventually I may start changing it up by saying it was a lemur attack or aliens took a sample for research, but for the moment I'm just sticking to the basics.

The doctor told me to keep it elevated, so I've developed a habit of holding my hand to my chest in some sort of half-formed Roman salute.

Additionally, the way I hold it makes it look like I'm giving the world a thumbs up, which is not the case. I disapprove of the world in general. So I pretend it's an ironic thumbs up, which is actually more appropriate since I'm approving with a damaged digit.

How to camp

So you want to go camping. Beware, for this is a daring endeavor only undertaken by those not faint of heart.

Now that the disclaimer is taken care of, here's how to go camping:

First, you have to decide that you want to go on an adventure. After you surf the web and discover that an amusement park or another country is way out of your budget, you settle on camping because there's nothing like paying to sleep on the ground for fun. You then settle on a general location where you deem the ground worthy of your presence, and then postpone your plans because life and work sidelines you.

Fast-forward two months. You realize time is quickly running out for your excursion, so you make hasty plans, book a campsite, call up a friend or two and invite them, rearrange your plans because the grandiose ones you had before are simply too expensive, and then stop planning again because life.

Wait until the day of the trip to pack. Since you plan to be gone only two nights in a familiar area, you don't need to worry about bringing that many clothes. Never mind that the weather is highly unpredictable or that you'll be outside and very likely to get dirty; packing will be a breeze and there will be nothing to worry over.

While you're at it, you may as well postpone all of your planning until the day of the trip. Meals, clothes, cooking utensils, etc. Basically anything that you might take with you can wait until the day of. Of course, this doesn't mean that you can't gather all of your gear and make sure that you have it, but deciding what is important and necessary only takes a few hours and shouldn't be bothered over until the absolute last minute.

Once you get to the loading point of your trip, you don't really need to bother to discriminate between what you need to take and what is unnecessary, because let's face it: you'll be camping in the woods and the trunk of your sedan is infinite. It's perfectly feasible to cram the the entire house in there, let alone enough gear for four girls.

After the car is packed, go grocery shopping. Of course, you don't need a list, so just buy things from memory. This may or may not lead to buying things that are completely unnecessary, but don't sweat it because you have an infinite trunk.

While you're loading the car with your groceries, realize that you really can't fit everything into the car and maybe you do need less stuff or a bigger vehicle.

Opt for the vehicle and drive back to your house to swap out for a minivan.

Drive off again and show up at your campsite. Set up in the rain. Decide that you're hungry, so you work on setting up a campfire to roast hotdogs. Because everything is wet from the rain, the fire won't start. But that's the food that you have, so of course the fire's going to get lit. Enlist help from an eagle scout you find down the road. His fire goes out. Drive into town and wander around until you find a grocery store to buy charcoal and lighter fluid. Drive back. By the time you get there, the fire should already be lit.

Eat dinner, hang around, clean up, explore the campground and take a quick dip in the nearby river, and then go to bed.

Get up heinously late after not sleeping at all, eat breakfast (also cooked over the fire, which takes forever), clean up, drive into town for no reason other than to get juice, then drive back and go for an hour to get to a swimming hole. Eat lunch while you're there. Swim. Wash your hair. Drive back.

Cook dinner. Again, it takes heinously long, firstly because it involves having a fire lit and your friend is overly possessive of the fire, and two, because meat and potatoes take a long time to cook. The food will finally be cooked just as it begins to rain. You tough it out. The rain stops enough to clean up and your friend decides it would be a grand plan to try cooking something else. You do your best to dissuade her but she is a stubborn thing and persists on.

So you explore and talk to people until another camping buddy comes to get you for the monkey bread that is not done. So you sit in the tent and wait and it is still not done. Your cooking friend thinks it will be fine to eat raw. It is not. So it gets thrown away and you play cards until you're all too tired to care about doing anything else so you sleep.

And then you wake up in the morning, pack up, and drive back. Clean the dishes that you used, unpack your bags, let the tent dry out, and sleep because you really didn't get much sleep while you were gone. The ground isn't really comfortable.

And that is how to have a camping trip.

In which I promise I'm not an idiot

I should probably start this off by insisting that I'm usually very responsible. I double-check everything, don't do anything without thinking it through first, and generally don't go off on impulses or do stupid things.

But lately I've been having a giant run of stupid that I can't seem to get out of, generally involving very important things. Like my keys. As most people would agree, keys are important. They are, in fact, vital to getting in and out and around places. And I used to have a spare key to my car at least, but unfortunately, the magnetic box that I had it in fell off of the underside of my car and I never bothered to get a replacement. That was a poor move on my part, but I do have my moments of being young and stupid.

And for some reason, those moments of being stupid seem to be coming more and more often.

Exhibit A:
About three weeks ago I was headed to an interview. I got ready on time, had directions handy, was decent and fed and not nervous one bit. I step out of my house and shut the door behind me, completely ready for this adventure, and dig in my purse for my keys. Only to find that there are no keys in my purse. And then I remember that instead of tossing them back into my purse when coming home last night, I instead left them on my dresser. So I call my interview and inform her that I will be late, and then call my land lady to come and let me in.

Exhibit B: Two weeks ago, I went to the car dealership to get my oil changed. Their procedure involves pulling the car up to the dock, getting out, checking in, signing a thing or two, getting the car mileage, and then waiting. So I pull up, leave my keys in the car because they're going to be needing them soon anyway, and go to check in. But unfortunately, because of habit, I lock the doors before I get out. The very nice car check-in person goes to get a wedge and a long metal stick to unlock the door. I am saved the cost of a locksmith.

Exhibit C: Last week, I stopped after work to get gas. I work late. That means I get off at around 11:30 or so. Nothing is open except this one gas station. I pull up and there's a gas truck there with a burly gas-trucker pumping out gas. I ignore him while keeping an eye on him at the same time and get out to pump my gas. All of that is uneventful. I put in $20 worth of gas, put away the pump, close my gas lid, and turn to get back into my car and drive off. The car door is locked. The keys are in the ignition. I have locked myself out yet again. And, of course, my phone is also in the car, so I can't call anyone. I look around and of course, there is a McDonalds and a Taco Bell that are open, but they are across very dark and menacing parking lots. My best option, at this point, is the trucker.
So I go over to the trucker and ask to use his phone, which is fortunately a smart phone. I can look up locksmiths (which are all closed), a towing agency (which doesn't do locks), and the police station (which is closed). I'm about to call my mom to facebook a friend to text a friend to come get me, when the police answering machine gives me the number for the dispatch. I call the dispatch and they send an officer to come and unlock my car, and until then, John the Trucker offers to stay with me to make sure I'm alright.

Exhibit D: Today, I'm going on a camping trip with three other girls. So I go to run some errands and then when I get back, I decide it would be a good idea to clean out my car. I move to the back seat and pull out things that shouldn't be there, lock my car, and then go to the front door to unlock it. Lo and behold, my keys aren't in my purse. They are, in fact, still in the ignition. Fortunately, just yesterday I went to the hardware store and had copies made of both my house key and my car key. My spare car key is under the car in a magnetic box that hopefully won't fall off.

Moral of the story: Keep spare keys. Truckers named John are friendly. Keep your keys on a zip chain attached to you at all times. Don't invest in things that require locks.

Tech support

When I went to college, my parents bought me a computer. It was (to me) a very nice laptop: big screen, a keypad, a trackpad that worked, fancy scrolling that didn't involve clicking, heavy but durable and highly functional. To somebody who knows nothing about computers, it was very nice. And compared to the dinosaur I had been using (inherited from my dad, which he had inherited from a friend, who supposedly had it new but that's not for sure, and probably manufactured when Nixon was president), it was a dream to work with.

It was sturdy. It survived my roommate spilling hot wax all over it, my carrying it to classes, getting dropped a few times, the battery falling out and cracking, and of course getting toted to and from home over breaks in my not-so-cushiony, worn-out, hand-me-down backpack that I was just too stubborn and lazy and cheap to replace.

That computer lasted me three years. The power cord shorted out on me over a school break two years in, but I bought a new one off of Amazon and kept trucking on. A little while later, my darling laptop decided that it was old and tired, so it began to overheat easily. I found ways to cope and moved on. That worked for a little while before new issues began to arise. The screen flickered. It would randomly shut itself off for no good reason. The battery lasted all of five seconds, so I had to keep it plugged in constantly, and I couldn't move it at all because if I did the battery was sure to fall out and/or the plug would lose connection because it was so loose. I could see that the end was nigh. Fortunately, it had the grace to wait until summer break to fully develop all of these horrible symptoms, so I had time to look for a new laptop without worrying that it would die and leave me stranded among piles of homework and no way to get it all done.

I eventually found one that I liked, hesitated about spending so much on a computer, read the reviews and talked to friends who all reassured me that it was a good choice, hesitated again, then bit the bullet and bought the thing, even spending extra on an extended warranty.

My old laptop went to my sister to use for schoolwork. She used it a few months before it gave up the ghost and died.

Turns out I needed that warranty. As magical and beautiful as my laptop is, it has decided to have issues. First the case broke. I got that fixed. Then the trackpad thought it would be fun to be difficult. I discovered that turning the machine off and then back on (hitting restart doesn't work; it has to be completely off) temporarily fixed the problem. And then yesterday my old enemy of technology problems decided to manifest itself in the form of a faulty power cord. I discovered, via a game of Twister with said power cord, that if I tuck it underneath my laptop just right, I can still get a charge.

But the last time that my cord went the way of the Twinkie, it did so within a matter of days and I do not intend to stick around to see if this cord can outmatch that. I called tech support.

The upside of owning a product of a large corporation is that you know right off the bat just how trustworthy they are, and whether or not the integrity of your product will live up to expectations and marketing.

The downside is that they are so large that they don't employ enough people to answer the phone.

They instead make use of automated responses that chatter messages at you like "your call may be monitored for quality purposes" which I think is a subtle way of saying "if you act like a complete jerk during this call, the entire internet will know about it thirty seconds from now", and "please hold, one of our representatives will be with you shortly"  by which of course they mean "we want to see just how desperate you are", alternately "we're trying to break the record for longest hold", and "for technical support, dial 1. For warranty services dial two. For your grandmother, press three. For none of these options, please stay on the line". By the end of  time that it took me to navigate the maze of  dial options, reach a person, find out that I was in the wrong department, get transferred, wait on hold again, listen to staticky elevator music interspersed with ads that I didn't want to hear because they didn't relate to me, and talk to the right person, I decided that I would have been better off pressing option five "for the shaman to pray over your machine and chase the demons from it, dial in a Latin chant and slaughter the firstborn lamb of your flock".

But then the nice person on the other side of the phone (who, as far as I can tell, was not a shaman), arranged for me to have my computer sent in so I can get the trackpad fixed (hopefully via non-spiritual methods, but I'm not being picky at this point), and get a replacement cord for my laptop. And all without satanic rituals or getting my phone call posted on the internet. That's something to be excited about.

My boss is psychic

According to one of my professors, graduates go into a mild depression a little after quitting school. This is due to the sudden drop in activity levels of the brain. Neurons (nerve cells) are constantly forging new connections in the brain if learning is taking place. Latin name of a plant? Oh look, you get a new dendrites (nerve tentacles. If you think of a nerve cell like a power plant, the body of the cell is the plant, and all the tentacle dendrite thingies are power lines) going out to different cells.

So now that you have learned this fascinating tidbit of information, you have gained new dendrites in your brain. Multiply that by four hour-long class periods every day for four years. Your brain is going nuts, building connections, growing dendrites like a boss. And then suddenly no more dendrites. Your brain has been super busy for years and then has to close up shop with no warning. Oh, did I mention that all that activity makes your brain happy? Its whole entire purpose is to store information and make sure it's readily accessible so that your life is easier, so of course it's happy to do it. Take away that job and it is less happy.

In brief conclusion, the brain is like a kid in a candy shop when college is going on, and graduation is like telling the kid that just kidding, it's time to go home and chow down on asparagus and brussels sprouts. Both kid and brain are not happy.

So what does brain do? It takes a few months to rest and then realizes that it's not as busy as it was a few months ago and decides to throw a fit in the form of mild depression.

It took me awhile to realize that I was depressed. First I thought that I was just tired and worn out from my job. It helped that my job involves doing the same physically-demanding things every day. And then I became increasingly dissatisfied with my job, which progressed to not wanting to go to work, which progressed to not wanting to do anything, which progressed to not wanting to get out of bed. It was at that point that I concluded I was most likely depressed.

But my brain didn't stop at being depressed. Instead, because it wanted to communicate JUST how vexed with me it was, it decided that depression would lead to social anxiety, which I've struggled with in the past but it hasn't been a problem since I was in my early teens. Apparently a large influx of new hormones made my brain tell itself that not only was it time to be extremely self-conscious about everything, but social interactions were something to be feared and stressed about and life is better lived as a hermit. And that's why I hate puberty.

Anyway, having social anxiety means that not only did I lack motivation to do anything except breathe, but I got nervous at the very thought of interacting with someone. When social anxiety happens, phone calls can't happen, going out shopping is a horrible idea, and purposefully going out and seeing someone puts my stomach in horrible knots that end in nausea because there's an unexplained and constant fear of, well, being social. I don't go so far as having panic attacks, but my chest gets tight and the more I try to convince myself that I'm being silly and talking to another person won't kill me, the more convinced I am that it will, in fact, kill me.

Unfortunately, right before all of this, I started looking for new jobs. Mine wasn't paying enough and though it's a decent job, it's horribly repetitive and I truly do not like repetitive. I wanted something challenging. Then depression hit and I really wanted a new job but had no motivation and then anxiety hit, which is about the same time I received a phone call to come in for an interview.

The preparation for that interview is something that shall not be repeated here for the purpose of shortness, but suffice it to say that it was nerve-wracking and stressful and I hated everything about my life that day.

I did not, however, take the job. The interview itself was stressful enough; the job described involved ten times more stress, which I did not desire in any form or capacity. So I kept my job and kept looking.

Then something happened. First, my work schedule changed. This whole summer, I have been working at the cafeteria, normally early mornings to afternoons with a few early evenings thrown in. The past week though, I've been moved from the cafeteria to the campus grill which means I work nights. To a night owl like me, this is a precious precious thing. I'm at my best at night. I do my best work, my best thinking, my maximum concentration ability is all at night.

Secondly, because my location and schedule changed, my job description changed. At the cafeteria I do one of three jobs and I do that all day. I have been doing that for two years and I know it all so well that it seldom requires thought. It gets very old very quickly. Working at the grill involves scooping ice cream, flipping burgers, making fries, working the cash register, and making drinks, sometimes within minutes of each other. I do something different every day, and I've been learning how to do new things. Unlike the job up at the cafeteria, the grill requires concentration; something I have been desperately missing. Being able to zombie through your job really eats up your morale when you're used to having to think through everything and you like thinking through everything.

Life got significantly better. And then I looked at my paycheck and realized I had gotten a raise. Life got even better.

The best part of all this is that I told my boss nothing about needing a challenge or more money. And now my title makes sense.

How I would revolutionize the job search

So there is this thing called a resume. I've been told it's necessary in order to get a job. My sources tell me that it is a summary of your skills and past jobs that tell your potential employer how awesome you are and how much you deserve to get a certain job. I've used it to acquire one such job, so I suppose that my sources know what they are talking about.

So, like a dutiful member of the twenty-first century society, I make a resume and tailor it to each job I apply for. This is not what I want to to. 

What I would like to do would be to simply list myself as an independent contractor, which is technically true and sounds MUCH better than "Server at Blah Blah Cafeteria". 

Unfortunately I'm not applying for business positions because I'm not a business major and I'm pretty sure everybody else would think it's weird. It's too much out of the normal system to be considered as anything other than strange and unconventional. I don't want to be labeled as strange and unconventional. Otherwise I'd totally do it. 

This is why: 

1. It tells the employer that I'm creative and think outside the box. Most people would say that they were a server at the cafeteria. But no, not me. I contracted myself out to the cafeteria for monetary compensation. I look at things differently and that is valuable.

2. It initiates a conversation with the interviewer, which makes me more memorable. They see that on my resume and want to know about it, so they ask. And then when they review the applications, they see mine and think "Oh, there's that innovative person, I remember her. She was cool. Let's put her in the call-back pile."

3. It catches attention. See above.

4. The potential employer sees that I value a job and treat it seriously. As an independent contractor, I'm not an "employee", I'm someone who sells my services. The employer becomes the customer and my client. I want to deliver the best product to my client, and I acknowledge that they will take their business elsewhere if I do not bring forth a satisfactory product. Boom. An understanding of the business model and instant work ethic explained in just a few words.

5. It makes me unique. And honestly, don't we all want to be unique and special just like our mommies told us we were?

6. "Server" doesn't sound important. It sounds boring and run-of-the-mill. "Independent contractor", however, sounds like something special. It sounds cool at parties. 

Demonstration: 

"So what do you do?"

"Oh, I'm a server."

"...Oh. Okay. ...Um, I'm going to go check the snack bar. See ya."

Versus:

"So what do you do?"

"I'm an independent contractor."

"Really? Sounds interesting. What does that mean?"

"I contract with Blah Blah Cafeteria to provide any services needed. Whatever they need, I can provide."

"Fascinating. Say, how about we go check out the snack bar?"

Independent contractor: Instant success. 

How to be a successful adult

Alternately titled "How to not become a fugitive or hobo"

1. Acknowledge that you are poor and will remain so because you're working jobs with base pay and no marketable skills. Your rent is due, so is your insurance and loans and those thirty dollars you owe that one person.

2. Cry.

3. Try to find ways to not be poor.

4. Acknowledge that there is no way for you to not be poor unless you feel like getting into illegal activities like selling drugs or harvesting organs.

5. Cry. Some tantrum-throwing, flailing, and punching things is acceptable here. Just keep it in moderation.

6. Pick yourself up off the floor, rub some dirt in those tears and remember that you're a tough old bird who grew up in the middle of the woods with only a stick to play with. Remember that your great grandparents were dirt poor farmers who had a gazillion children to feed. Remember that your grandparents were immigrants and factory workers who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and worked their way through to retirement and doing whatever they want. You're gonna be goshdurned tough like them and work your way to financial security like every other person starting at square one, only you're going to do it better.

7. Free time is overrated. Look for jobs. All the jobs. Lots of jobs. Apply to many many jobs. Remember that any job is a good job to have if it means you don't have to move home or ask your parents for money.

8. Work the jobs.

9. Save the moneys.

10. Pay the bills. Buy the food. Keep saving the money.

11.  Eventually you will become successful and no longer (as) worried about financial stability because you make a decent wage, wear a tie, and have lots of money in the bank.

I don't like mornings

Don't hire night owls to work the morning shift.

Your employee will try to go to sleep at a normal hour so that she can be up early enough to get to work.

If she goes to sleep at a normal hour, her brain, convinced that something is wrong and that a good deal of excitement is being missed, will wake your employee up at three in the morning and not let her go back to sleep.

If your employee does not go back to sleep, she will be awake for her shift, but groggy because eight hours were not obtained.

Because eight hours were not obtained and she is groggy, she will be cranky. Lack of sleep does that to people.

Crankiness makes your employee give fake smiles to customers, and she is more likely to snap at people who do things wrong like grab food with their hands instead of the conveniently provided tongs or bring a dirty plate to the buffet line.

If she snaps at a customer (who happens to be the 8th person doing something wrong) she may end up damaging their psyche (especially if that person is a child) by the frightening power of pure rage contained within her (and telling them that they're violating the health code doesn't help).

If that person is a child and his psyche is damaged, he will probably grow up being afraid of girls and Kermit the Frog hats. This fear of Kermit the Frog hats will progress to a fear of Kermit, so that when he is older and influential, he will destroy all memory of Kermit and the Muppets to rid the world of his fear.

This will destroy childhoods everywhere.

This will not be enough, however.

That fear of Kermit will be transferred to real and proper frogs, which will lead him on a campaign to destroy all frogs, and if he's rich and powerful enough, he'll do it.

Feeling satisfied and now perfectly safe, he'll go back to his home to rest in peace until the insect invasion takes over the world. Normally an insect invasion wouldn't take over the world, but since there are no frogs to keep the insect population in check, their numbers will skyrocket and they will take over the world. The entire earth will be consumed by insects and the world will end.

Don't let the world end by insect invasion. Hire morning people to work the morning shift.

My Neverending Story

Something I have been seeing on tumblr lately is a cover photo for The NeverEnding Story with the caption "what it is when you're a kid" and then below is a picture of an overflowing laundry basket with the caption "as an adult". I find this to be incredibly and soul-crushingly accurate.

I do laundry approximately twice a week. Not because I have that many clothes and change my outfit three times daily, but because I run out of clean uniforms. I wash incredibly tiny loads simply because there are not enough navy blue shirts or khaki pants in my dresser and it's sad. I have a recurring nightmare of getting up at 4:30 so I can be at work by 6 and either my alarm doesn't go off at all, which is terrifying enough, or that I wake up and find that I have no more uniforms and can't get to work because I have nothing to wear.

This is what my life has been reduced to. I wear my uniform so often that it's a treat when I get to wear "real people" clothes. Yesterday I had the whole day off and I thought it was the greatest thing to dress up in a skirt and go out. It really is the simple things in life that count.

Add to that the neverending story of buying groceries, cleaning (the dirt just never gets the hint that I don't want it on my kitchen floor), taking out the trash, washing and putting away dishes (because nobody else does it), going to work, or waking up with something being sore because I pulled it at work the day before and didn't realize it.

That's adult life, kids. It's a cycle of drudgery and pain that doesn't end but it's a lot better than no independence.

The moral of the story is to A. move to Neverland, B. live at home, C. get really rich and hire a maid to do everything, D. stay in school forever so even if you have to do all of that, it's on a smaller scale because of student housing and you don't have to pay loans.

I personally am opting for choice A and have already sent a message to Peter Pan asking if he needs another mother. I've included my resume which details my ability to tell stories, first aid knowledge, and babysitting experience. My cover letter insists that I will never demand he and the Lost Boys take medicine or have bedtimes and details why I am not an adult and despite my physical appearance, I am still a child at heart. I expect a reply back within the week, assuming I make it past the Tinker Bell screening.

If I don't post ever again, it's because I got accepted and I don't believe that internet reaches as far as the second star to the right.

ANTS

Dear Ants Who Live In My House,

May I first start out by acknowledging that you are magnificent creatures. Yes, you're tiny and your existence is fraught with hazards as you traverse my countertops, but I've got to give respect to an animal who manages to live with insides that aren't much more than goop. You cart your own skeleton around on your back, and that's cool. Your muscles are inside of your skeleton and somehow fit into your tiny legs to give you the ability to walk, and walk fast. I get it. You're cool.

I also acknowledge that you have been living here longer than I. You take priority, and you were invited here by the family's lack of cleaning skills. By leaving crumbs out on the counter, they laid out for you a giant Welcome banner that you gladly accepted and so moved in and set up house. I respect your initiative.

However, I am the one who pays rent. I am the one who was given a key. I am the one who gets queasy when I see one of you walking over a cutting board or my clean dishes. I am the one who was given verbal permission to move in, and I don't see me being squished by the house owners. That would be you and your fragile chitinous exoskeletons. I am safe and you are not.

As a science major, I feel that I am somewhat obligated to like you, and I do. I like whatever job it is that you do in the outdoor ecosystem, because that's what you're supposed to do and you do it well. But you're not supposed to do it in my house. That I will not stand for. Especially since I have found you not only in my kitchen, but in my living room, my bathroom, and even crawling on my bed. I'm sure you're not aware how disturbing it is to find an insect in your bed, but let me assure you, it is discomfiting to say the least.

It is finding that you've been lulled into a false sense of security that nothing could get into your bed unless you gave it permission, only to have that ripped from you. I would prefer monsters in my closet to seeing you in my bed. It is finding your sleep may be interrupted by things crawling on you, and honestly, if that's not the most uncomfortable feeling, then I don't know what is.

My discomfort at finding you in the same area where I keep my food has driven me to ask you to leave. Apparently killing you at every opportunity and cleaning everything with chemicals that the internet assured me would prove distasteful to you was not sufficient. The poison traps have not deterred you, you still scurry about the counters, looking for food that may have been left behind. While I admire your tenacity, I still must ask that you leave.

I don't want you here, as the deaths dealt to your kinsmen must indicate. Please leave before I visit genocide upon your race. That is not what I want for our relationship. I would prefer a peaceful parting of the ways. You find a new home, I keep mine, and I do not rain fire upon your residence and make a pyre of mutilated heads as a warning to the survivors.

Thank you for your time, I hope that you will consider and accept my generous offer to allow the rest of your clan to live.

Tales of a vigilante cleaner

I have a strange living situation.

It started out when I couldn't find a place to live near my school campus. I refused to move back home and wanted to stay in my area. But I happen to live in a very popular location, meaning prices are impossibly high and completely unfeasible for someone who makes minimum wage working 20 hours a week in a cafeteria.

I was just about desperate when my friend Rebecca let me know that her parents were trying to figure out what to do with her grandmother's house, and they were thinking about renting it out. I asked her to let them know I was interested and they came back with a ridiculously cheap price that I was more than willing to pay. I moved in the night after graduation.

The house is old and creaks at night. There's probably a poltergeist or two: things go missing and then turn up again in random places. The dishwasher doesn't do a very good job, but I don't generate that many dirty dishes anyway.

It's three bedroom, two bath, with a decent sized kitchen, already furnished, has a piano, a fabulous back yard, back porch, and a huuuuge basement.

The neighborhood is quiet, there's a grocery store two blocks from my house, and I live no more than fifteen minutes away from anything except for my job, which is 35 to 40 minutes away, depending on traffic.

The catch is that the family I rent from uses my kitchen daily because they don't have one. I've heard the long story of how theirs is being renovated but the contractor stopped working or they ran out of money or the stove is possessed and the fridge eats souls but I've forgotten. All I know is that they use mine.

Every afternoon, Rebecca's mother comes to my house, fixes herself lunch, putters around the house doing I don't even know what, and then occasionally fixes dinner. Her husband comes, and so does Rebecca, so I have this gathering of people in my house just about every night. It's like having my own family around, except I'm the child who doesn't like anybody and hides in the bedroom and hisses at people.

On Sundays, they invite family over for a Sunday dinner and sit around talking all afternoon. They usually all head out around 7 or so after spending all day monopolizing the kitchen and food source. They've offered to feed me, but I usually hide in my room because there's only so much socializing I can take, and being social with older Southern country people is extremely taxing. They talk about family, about who's got what disease, and what medication they're taking, and who's died, and who's had kids and how this new recipe is really good except it needs more salt and I just can't handle it. I'd rather hide in my room and starve.

Last week, Rebecca moved in with me, so though I'm technically the resident, I have my friend in here with me, and I can't say much because she's the daughter of the people I'm renting from. This is her grandmother's house so all I can do is smile politely when she gushes about how excited she is that we get to live together and how fun this summer is going to be.

All of this I don't mind. My friend is quiet and leaves me alone for the most part, and on the days I work, I just leave, come back, hide in my room and then crash.

What I can't stand is that this family is a horde of pack-rats that never learned how to clean. They cook and wash dishes but somehow they fail to realize that in the process the counters, stovetop, and floor get dirty. It's like they ascribe to some Neanderthal philosophy that dirt is healthy and absence of dirt brings on the plague. Sometimes I imagine that they're genetically blind to dirt and fail to notice these things because they're handicapped in some way. That makes me feel a little bit better because it causes me to pity them because they can't help their shortcomings.

They also can't throw anything away. This I understand. The grandmother, who used to own this house, grew up during the Depression, so naturally she would keep everything and teach her daughter the same thing. But there are some things that I simply cannot comprehend why it would make sense to keep for any reason.

Food in the refrigerator, for example. In the house that I grew up in, we cleaned out the fridge once a week, and the shelves were kept meticulously clean.

In this house, food is kept in the fridge until it fossilizes and archaeologists dig it up two hundred years from now and wonder at the horrible living conditions their ancestors had. Their conversation would go something like this:
"It seems that this bowl of pudding was kept and venerated even after it molded over and fermented."
"Bit strange...Perhaps it was a special dish?"
"Maybe so, maybe so. The conclusion I've drawn is that they were blind and unable to smell and so did not notice when it went bad."
"What? That's ridiculous! Any fool can tell when pudding goes bad. I tell you, they kept it on purpose. Maybe as a delicacy, or an offering to their gods."
"What, those mechanical devices they call 'phones' and 'computers'?"
"Yes, exactly!"
"Oh maybe you're right. I may write my next dissertation on this."

In a desperate effort to make room for my food in the fridge and rid myself of all the outdated Tupperware, I took it upon myself to clean out the fridge one day while Rebecca's mother was around and she kept hovering and informing me that "that's still good yet" when it was clearly out of date and shriveled and slimy and half covered in mold. I waited until she was out of the room and then threw it away anyhow.

So after that I learned my lesson. Don't clean while the lady is around. Instead, since I'm a night owl anyway and don't have to be at work until 5, I wait until everybody has left and Rebecca is asleep to creep out of my room and clean things.

I throw things out and then take out the trash to hide the evidence. Last night I decided to mop the floor, which hasn't been cleaned since I was in elementary school, so I pulled out a bucket and mopping detergent (which I bought because there wasn't such a thing in the house) and went in search of a mop. The cabinet of cleaning things hasn't been updated since the 70's at least and the logic of its contents escapes me. There is a mop about as old as my mother (one of those mop types that's gray and stringy and has to be wrung out by hand), and five dust mops that have probably never been used. There are various other cleaning things like gloves and sponges and things I don't recognize, so I leave them alone.

The water coming off of the mop when I rinsed it reminded me of a mud puddle, so today I'm going to buy a new mop and mop again tonight. I may also buy a mask for myself. Perhaps even a cape. I'm doing good work as a cleaner in the night and I deserve some recognition as The Cleaning Lady. Lock up your doors, people of the world. Otherwise Cleaning Lady will sneak into your kitchens, wipe off your counters, and scrub your floors.

And if you're incredibly unobservant, you may not even know that I was there.

Adventures at the DMV

Three years ago, my parents bought a car. It was officially my dad's car, but because his job takes him out of the country for extended periods of time, it became technically my car.

For reasons unknown to me, I was deemed responsible enough to take the car with me to college (a four hour drive from my parents' house) and keep it for my sophomore, junior and senior years at school. Even further not understandable, they signed it over to my name, so I now officially own a car.

All that I had to do was take the title to the government car-registering place (commonly known as the DMV), sign a few papers, and tell them it was mine.

I went to the bank because I swear the government charges you for everything, even breathing. You can't even set foot in one of their offices without someone tapping you on the shoulder and saying "Excuse me, but you got dirt on the entry rug, which is the property of the government. That will be one hundred dollars and your firstborn child please."

Once you're in the DMV office, (in my town at least) you go to the desk which is at the end of a long waiting-line area, tell the person at the desk who responds in robot-tones what it is that you hope to accomplish in this building of dream-crushing, and he takes your license, prints off a number, gives you back your license and the number, and tells you to go sit down and wait.

So you go sit down in the rows and rows of chairs with the other obedient government mind-slaves who have been conditioned to bow to the need to wait in line without blinking an eye.

First order of business was to get my new address on my license. That was relatively easy. I gave it to the grandfatherly old man who typed it out, had me sign five separate documents, three of which I'm pretty sure I signed the last time I had to venture to this place, forked over ten dollars, and then smiled for the always-awful drivers license photo. It must be a law that all photos taken for identification must make you look like a sleep-deprived soul-sucker. One of these days I'll remember to put on makeup for those pictures and then I'll look like a pretty sleep-deprived soul-sucker.

After I got the easy part sorted out, I had to go to another office that I didn't even know existed until the robot at the desk told me to go to one of two locations that were nowhere near where I was. By consulting the ever-useful Google maps, I found that one was easy to get to and I knew the street, while the other was down some back country road and looked like an abandoned and dilapidated general store/moonshine distillery. I wasn't about to risk getting caught in the backwoods, so I chose the one that turned out to be very well-hidden in a shopping center.

To get there, you turn at the sign for what has been optimistically termed a "mall" and is instead a collection of chain stores and shops (including a biological testing lab, which is not at all disturbing to see next to an Office Depot). Then you drive all around the parking lot, looking for anything that resembles an official looking doorway, but such a thing does not exist. Instead, you have to consult the map to find that the office is hidden through an unobtrusive and unlabeled doorway, up an escalator, and down a hallway.

This is the mall. It is an eerily abandoned building that is creepy at day and would be terrifying at night. Out of the twenty areas that there are for stores, about five are occupied. A tax agency that wasn't open, a cosmetology school, the DMV tag office, and two others that I had never heard of and didn't feel brave enough to venture in and identify. Nobody is there except for DMV line and three people working in the school. All it needed was flickering lights and scratchy plinky music playing over the PA system, for me to write it off as the scene of ghost infestations and murders and then taken my chances with the moonshine distillery.

I got in line behind a group of depressed soul-sucked people and an almost-creepy friendly person who randomly started talking to people, was dressed in really dirty painter's clothes, and said his name was "Boogie". He answered his phone with "This is Boog" and bounced everywhere while he talked like a cross between a kangaroo and a bobble-head.

After Boogie got his business taken care of in front of me, it was my turn to be told that I was in the wrong line and that I had to go stand behind the line of old men who all told me that they would have their next birthday here. I laughed politely and hoped for a nice DMV person to help me because I had no idea what I was doing. There was also someone behind the desk who looked like a Vogon and I desperately did not want have her. Vogons should not work at the DMV.

Fortunately I did not get the Vogon lady, and instead found myself handing my paperwork to a sour-looking female who frowned even deeper and informed me that my forms were filled out wrong. At first, it sounded like my parents had signed their forms wrong, which sent me into a near-crying panic because I live four hours from home and my dad had left the week before to fly halfway around the world and when he does that, you never know when he'll be back. There's no way you can get a man to sign something when he's more than five time zones ahead of you. I made that lady explain it to me three times before I understood that all she needed was my signature and then I was sent away.

I was told that I needed to go back, sign a few more things, put the mileage of my car on forms that I hadn't seen yet, and then I could try again. That being done, I went to stand back in line in the ghosty murder mall, went back to the same sour-faced lady, who took my money and made me sign so many forms that may or may not have related to getting a vehicle put in my name.

She then pulled a license plate out of nowhere, handed me a few more pieces of paper and told me that I owned a car.

I took that car to buy groceries as a celebration.

Sleepover

Not too long after I moved in, one of my friends got married. In the tradition of girlfriends and weddings, she, a few of her bridesmaids, and our friends all slept over the night before the wedding at my house because despite its age and awkwardness of the family I rent from being here all the time, it's huge and furnished.

All in all, there were eight girls beside me, only five of which I had been expecting. One of them I had never met before and was the happiest, bubbliest, most talkative flakey smart person I have ever met. I didn't realize it was possible to be a flake and smart, but apparently it is.

She chattered the whole time with my chattery friend, and because they were both loud, no other conversations could go on, though I don't know how they were communicating. The only three topics they had in common were bridesmaid dresses, jewelry, and nail polish. They went through those in about five minutes, and then talked about their own personal topics with no overlap. Rebecca gabbed about Lord of the Rings and Star Trek, while Galen kept going "Oh just bring up something about Biology, because that's what I'm majoring in and I'll love you forever."

Apparently the two of them are becoming fast friends.

Another girl I had met before, but don't really like was also there. This girl, Anna, is perfectly nice, and by that, I mean that she's just that. Nice. She is sweet, polite, and well-mannered. She talks a lot. She's also very very homeschooled, which means that even two years after graduating college, she's still pretty conservative, slightly socially awkward, and sheltered.

My friend Rebecca brought a game called Cards Against Humanity, which is essentially a dirty version of Apples to Apples. The point of the game is to be as dirty and offensive as possible. It is no fun if you do otherwise.

We didn't get very far.

Galen and Rebecca chattered the whole time, Anna looked incredibly uncomfortable, and my married friend and almost-married friend snuck in talk about sex with their significant others, which made the rest of us uncomfortable.

Most of them went to bed early because most of them were part of the wedding and had to be up at a decent hour to get ready for the wedding, especially the bride, so it was a good deal quieter in my house than I was expecting a good deal sooner than I thought. I stayed up late because my mind and body both rebel if I think I should sleep any time before midnight.

When I got to bed, there was a pile of clothes that weren't mine because everybody had been using my room as a changing room, and a girl already in there. Without hesitation, I tossed everything I didn't need in my bed onto the floor, and climbed in next to my friend.

This friend of mine is tiny. She is five foot even, probably only weighs a hundred pounds, and routinely gets mistaken for a middle schooler.

Somehow she managed to take up the whole bed. The whole double bed.

Now, in the past, I've shared beds with stuffed animals (the most convenient of bedfellows), pets, siblings, and various friends. The pets are easy to push out of the way, and are pleasantly warm. The siblings and friends cannot be pushed out of the way, but they generally stay on their side of the bed and don't put out much heat.

This person, however, despite her tiny size, is her own space heater. Within minutes, I was kicking off all the covers but the sheet, because she moved over next to me the instant I got into bed. An hour later, I was grasping for covers again because she had pulled them all off of me when she rolled over to the other side of the bed. A little after that, I had to kick the covers off once more because she had rolled back over to my side.

Eventually my sleep-dazed and deprived brain figured out that just using my own blanket would keep her from taking my sheet again. I then successfully managed to sleep through the night.

And that is how I had a sleepover at my house.

Still don't know what I'm doing

Graduation is a strange thing. You spend four years at a school just so you can walk across a stage in a billowy black robe that makes you look like a ghost or a whale or an escapee from Hogwarts, and a ridiculous flat board of a hat with a tassel that's held on with bobby pins and magic. You get a folder that is supposed to hold your degree but doesn't, and then you're sent out into the world with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, optimistic and high-reaching dreams, and no real marketable skills. That's how they set you up to begin your adult life.

So after graduation, my family took me out to dinner, helped me move like three boxes into my house, and then left me all alone. The family I'm renting the house from was there so I couldn't have a total meltdown of tears and wailing, so I hid in my room, filled one drawer of the dresser with socks and snuck in a few tears while they ate their Chinese food and watched Monsters Inc (It's a long story of why they're using my house to eat food and watch movies. Hopefully they'll get a kitchen soon and won't invade as much).

Unable to stand the loneliness (and also totally wimping out of my first night in a giant house all by myself), I called my school friend whose family had rented a house and drove over there to stay with them. I have spent two days with them, leaving only long enough to go back to my house, finish filling the dresser with my clothes, and do a few marginally adult things like change my address and go to the bank. Then I accidentally (not really) found my way back to the internet and decided that was enough adulting for the day.

I'm done now. Is there a button I press when I've fulfilled my adultly duties? An adult quota maybe? Wherever it is, I've reached it. Maybe because my high-reaching dreams and debt allow me to wish only for a place to live, a working car, and decent food to eat.

I don't know how to do this!

May is an incredible month. The flowers start blooming, the days get warm (unless you live in the mountains and then the weather decides to be cold and contrary just to screw with you), and graduating seniors litter the country.

That will be me in just four days.

I will emerge from the safety and security of the cocoon of student status and become an adult who has to pay bills and work a full time job and be responsible.

WHAT.

I don't know how insurance works, I cannot comprehend taxes, I don't even know what I want to do with my life unless I can make a career out of professional sleeping. Why are people letting me make my own decisions? I'm barely even old enough to buy alcohol and now I'm allowed to live on my own without authority figures looking over my shoulder?

Whoever made that rule should be removed from office. I'm not old enough to be responsible for my own welfare. That is a preposterous notion. I'm a college student. That means I sleep whenever possible, ignore my homework until the very last possible second, keep irregular hours, watch movies until three in the morning, and act like an overgrown sugar-crazed five year-old. Five year-olds aren't allowed outside the house without supervision and yet I'm going to be in charge of the house.

Help.