UGGHH! Trying to find a job really sucks right now!!!!! Yes, the effort involved deserves 5 exclamation marks. I live in a small town, so there are not alot of opportunities to begin with. No kidding, I applied for a job with our bookstore, and the interviewer told me she had 300+ applications. Needless to say, I didn't get that one.
All the surrounding towns are small rural areas, with no businesses in them, they all come here. To take a decent job out of town, the closest being an hour away, would actually cost me by the time I payed the gas all week to and from. I would be better off going to a fast food joint and making minimum, but they're probably not hiring either.
Oh well, maybe something will turn up.
I am really wallowing in indecision right now. I have no idea what I want to do with myself, actually I have too many ideas about what to do with myself that I can't even decide what to do. I want to be a writer, and have a few stories in progress, but nothing is finished. I would love to open a restaurant, but the money needed for that kind of venture is completely out of reach. I would love to own a bookstore, a pub, something. What to do, what to do?
When you are younger, a job and some cash are all that seem to matter. Now, as I have overtaken 30, I find myself wanting to do something I want to do. But I did not prepare myself earlier for this little moment of indecision, and my options are limited. Hindsight is 20/20, why does it have to be like that? It's kind of like retirement, doesn't seem important until you're ready to retire. "Yeah, I'll have $13 a month to live on for the next 4 years! Way to save!"
My OCD is shorting out, I clean and rearrange the house in short bursts, then let it all pile up throughout the week, so that it becomes overwhelming.
I love a challenge, what can I say?
I think I just need a swift kick in the ass.
- Location:home
- Mood:
discontent
It started out like any other Monday, no warning that this day would not be like other days. Waking her husband and children, as was habit, blackbetty should have sensed the impending disaster there on the horizon. She chose to ignore the warning signs, the complaining of her children, the reluctance of her hubby to rise.
1st child-I'm awake, I just want to lay here a little while. (This from the child that usually bounces out of bed on the first call, excited to go to school.)
2nd child-Ok, I'm up, you don't have to keep saying it. Geeeeezzzz! (This from the child who always wakes up like this, so really just typical behavior.)
3rd child-No response, pretending to still be asleep. (C'mon, I saw you peeking.)
So with much foot-dragging and belly-aching, our heroine manages to get the 4 villians up and moving. Whereby, making her way upstairs, she discovers the bathroom door is locked. Her husband is taking his ritual morning alone time, his colon is on a very strict schedule really, and no one else can get into the bathroom to brush their teeth or comb their hair. Still not sensing the impending disaster to come, she decides to get the kids' clothes on them, the clothes she has so thoughtfully thrown into the dryer to warm them up, as there is a chill in the air.
After they are dressed, it is time to round up backpacks, which should have been in their designated spot, but of course never are. 2 of the 3 are found immediately, while one continues to elude the searcher, whose idea of looking for something is to stand in the center of a room, turn his head side to side, and say "I've looked everywhere and I can't find it!"
Sending him to search, she works on the little one, wrapped up in cartoons. He is not cooperating at all, and getting him dressed takes forever. It is like trying to dress a person in a coma, no response or assistance of any kind being offered. The second one has found his backpack at last, and the oldest is already outside, waiting for the bus.
The man of the house is still locked in the bathroom, but she can hear sounds of movement, giving her the hope that he shall soon emerge. As she is still wrestling with the smallest child, the oldest burst back through the door, runs through the kitchen and into the living room. "I stepped in dog poop!" he tells her, after making the long journey through the house, with the offending shoe still on his foot.
So now there is one child half dressed, and a doggy-doo path halfway through the house. At this point, she starts to lose her calm. Yanking the rest of the comatose child's clothes on, she grabs wet paper towels and cleans up the poop, muttering vile curses on all four-legged creatures who roam God's earth. Yelling for the stomper-of-shit to get out of the house and go scrub his shoe in the grass, preferably not in the same spot said shit resides. She threatens them all with bodily harm if they are not ready to go in the next five minutes, as the bus will be arriving in that time frame.
Enter absent husband, conveniently nowhere to be found in the middle of all that is happening. "Do you have any cash, I didn't get any out of the bank?"
She grabs her debit card and flings it at him like a chinese throwing star, and out the door she herds her little flock of miscreants.
At the bus stop, one is crying, because they are going to have pork, YES PORK, for lunch. One wants to stay home, because he didn't get to finish his movie, which he has watched hundreds of times, and one is trying to avoid her fevered gaze and reeking of poo.
Finally, sweet relief, here comes the bus. All three children are aboard, and she wonders back into the house, looking like the sole survivor of a war.
Oh Monday, you silly you!
- Mood:
bitchy
Ok, so I posted the 1st part of a little story I have been working on to one of the sites I belong to. Scary, to put something out there like that, and ask people to criticize it. I felt unsure of it anyway, so now I am doubly nervous. To top it all, I have to wait for a mod to ok it, so I don't even know when it will show up. I will probably be checking like every 10 minutes.
Self-esteem is such a tricky thing. It's easy to believe you are totally awesome when you are by yourself. Bring another person's opinion into it and it can get rough. Not that I would stop writing if someone didn't like it, but it would still suck much if everyone got on there and totally trashed me.
So I will wait and see. Fingers crossed.
- Location:wallowing in doubt
- Mood:
nervous
Why do people assume a southern accent is an indication of intelligence? All my life, I have tried to get rid of this thing that comes out of my mouth, and instantly lowers my I.Q. with my listeners.
My mother is from Arkansas, my father from Louisiana, so as you can imagine, my accent was extreme.
We moved to Missouri when I was ten, and the kids in school were fascinated with us, the way we talked. Some of them even made fun of us, to the point that I started trying to rid myself of this curse. I would talk slowly, thinking about each word before I said it, about how it should sound before it crossed my lips. Trying to fit in, to sound like everyone else.
At 16, I got the standard fast-food after-school job, and the fun continued. Customers requesting a cup of ice weren't sure what a cup of ahhce was, but they took it, and only a few actually questioned or laughed at me. But nearly all of them would comment on the accent.
My brother, truly one of the smartest people I know, has also noticed this. He lives in D.C., and he said when people there hear him talk, they treat him like a pet. "Him's a good little hillbilly, yes him is, yes him is!" Doesn't matter that he is an engineer, a genuis, and could probably outhink, outmath, and outsmart the lot of them. When he opens his mouth, he's automatically an idiot.
So the next time you meet someone with a southern accent and start a conversation, use big boy words. Heck y'all, some of us can read good, too!
- Location:home
- Mood:
amused
As a new member of a writing group, someone posted a partial story and asked for criticism. I gave said criticism, and that person replied with, basically, "I hate you". Owweee.
Now before you say to yourself, wow, you must be some kind of heinous bitch, let me explain. I did not personally attack the writer, and tried to make my suggestions helpful and give examples of the parts that I thought needed fixing. Everything we write is for the reader, how they will see our characters and relate to them.
Being an amatuer writer myself, I know how crushing it can be to have someone rip apart something you thought was really great. I try to be helpful and gentle, without discouraging them from redoing it and making it better.
Maybe it takes some getting used to, this having peple attack you with their harsh, typed words. I don't know, I'm really not even that sensitive of a person, but I still felt bad that she took it so hard
On the plus side, I have seen some of the arguments that go on when people in that group get mad. She won't even mind what I said when they are through.
So I will slink off and feel bad for a few minutes, then get over it. Hope she didn't put her fist through her computer screen.
- Mood: embarrassed
It's like driving really fast, passing a billboard, and having to turn around in your seat, trying to catch that quick glimpse before it's gone, but all you really get is a blur and a vague idea of what it was all about. I need to focus myself, and commit to finishing one thing before I start another. I have come to the conclusion that this is the reason I always feel overwhelmed. The rare moments I have free time to myself, I sit paralyzed trying to decide what to do with them, until I have wasted them all in indecision, and accomplished nothing.
So I have promised myself to be more focused, more productive, and to get off my ass and get all my projects finished before starting anything else! We'll see how that goes, at least it will keep me busy for sometime.
- Location:all alone
- Mood:
accomplished
Today, class, we will be discussing true love. If you will open your textbooks to page 308......
Ok, so when we were younger, we all imagined that we would fall in love like Cinderella, Snow White, any of the Disney characters will work. Later, the more mature romantic comedies taught us that we might have to go through some agony, major comic drama, but in the end there would be that shattering moment of truth. Though all seemed lost, our knight in shining armor would come through in the end.
Then we really grow up, fall in love, and get married. Everything is perfect, for awhile, then it gets boring. Bills, housework, jobs, they all suck the life out of romance. I went through a little phase here while back, where I longed for that feeling, that sickening, churning, desperate need to possess someone else, to be with them, just to see them. I wondered if my life, as far as romantic excitement goes, was basically over.
But then one day, something one of my husband's friends said made me rethink my romantic life. My husband works on the road frequently with his job, and sometimes I only see him 2-3 days a month. The only way for us to keep in touch at those times is to talk on the phone or write letters. They make fun of my husband for rushing back to his motel at the end of the day to call me, after he's called me on his lunch break, just to talk to me. The rest of the guys are busy going out, running around looking for a good time, even the married ones. Not mine.
And then I thought, wait a minute. Who ever said that life had to be like a movie? Why does every moment have to be full of drama and movie romance? Love is in the everyday, in the little tiny things our loved one does. We tend to forget that these are the things that matter. Sure Prince Charming would bring you roses and recite poetry, but would he take out the trash, hold your hand when you walked through the mud so you wouldn't fall? Would he stop and buy you a king sized candy bar on his way home, because he knew it was that time of the month and you would really want it? Sit beside you after your child had suffered a heart attack, rubbing your back and hand, just being there? These are the true tests of love, not in the things you can see, the things he buys you that you brag to your friends about.
Suddenly I realized, I am in the middle of my own romantic comedy, and the story is stupendous.
- Mood: chipper
I have an artificial leg. Due to cancer when I was 10, I lost my lower right leg. Prosthetics are very expensive, so the one I have does not allow me to run. I tell you this, not for sympathy, but because I have a strange side effect of this condition.
I have dreams of running. They don't happen all the time, just every now and then. There is no reason I can see for them to come, nothing that brings them on. I fall asleep, and suddenly I am running, flying through changing backgrounds. I am fast, I am strong, and I never get tired in my dreams. I wake up feeling so relaxed and happy, so peaceful.
I found it odd when the dreams started, but now I look forward to them. It is as if my mind is trying to give me something that my body is missing, to make up for the fact that I need that exertion. Our brains are amazing things, and sometimes we forget the simple pleasures. Until we are reminded.
- Location:home
- Mood: cheerful
- Music:enya
Don't we all deep down inside feel this way? We wait our whole lives for something miraculous and wonderful to happen to 'ME'. We dream our quiet dreams, have our secret fantasies, and wish in the back of our minds for them to come true.
When I was a child, even up to the age of fourteen, I believed in fairies. I would build little cities for them out of acorns, mud, moss, sticks, really anything I could find. I guess I thought if they could see how much I wanted them to come to me they would. I was special, because I believed, because I cared. No fairies ever walked my city streets, drank from my acorn cups, or slept in the beds of moss I had so lovingly made for them.
In high school, being the quiet bookworm, I fantasized that there was a boy just for me, handsome, smart, romantic. He would see me reading a book, a real book, and suddenly know I was more than those around me, not shallow like most of the girls. He would want me, and we would sit around discussing books, and have deep, meaningful conversation. The only conversation I had in high school that was deep and profound was either with other females, or in my mind.
Imagining ourselves winning the lottery because we deserve it, we need it more, want it more. Finding a soul mate who will be exactly like the heros in our books(Mr. Darcy-WHERE ARE YOU?) Being granted magical powers, becoming famous, holding a position of power. These are all things we all want, and feel we deserve, and sometimes wait our whole lives to happen. Because we are special, we are different.
But what if you are not special? What if nothing grand ever happens to you? Sometimes I feel as if I waste so much time waiting for that special thing to come to me that I miss so many little things that are so much more important. We live expecting, then turn bitter and disillusioned, and die unfulfilled and mystified. Where was my big moment, my shot at being important?
Through all this waiting, we have missed all the ways we could have been special. Raising a child to be intelligent and loving, spending time helping them to understand the world and marvel in it. Making our mate feel cherished and loved, even through all his/her obnoxious habits and imperfections. Having friends around us, whom we can talk and laugh with, who think we're stupid sometimes, and are glad, because they're stupid sometimes too. Hugging your mother, even when you are 30, because we none of us never stop needing to be loved. Calling your sister when she sends you an email saying she's having a horrible fight with her husband, and letting her rant and cry without offering advice, just an ear.
When you lie dying, you will look back at your life and see far too many opportunities when you could have been special, and you were not because you were too busy waiting for something amazing to come to you. There is nothing wrong with dreaming big, and wanting more. Just make sure your head isn't so high in the clouds that your feet can't feel the earth.
- Location:home
- Mood:
mellow - Music:in my head
Breakdown-
My husband's family, for the most part, does not read. It's not that they can't, they just do not read for pleasure. My family is constantly reading. Coming from a family of nine, we traded books, borrowed books, stole books, and fought over who got to read the new book first. My dad would buy a book, then have to hunt down the child who had taken it, trying to read it before it was discovered missing. No kidding, Five years after I graduated, my mom was talking to one of the high school librarians, and she told my mom she had never seen anyone who loved to read as much as I did, how I was one of the few kids she remembered coming into the library because I wanted to. That's how we are with books.
Here's the issue-People who are not 'booksmart' seem to think that people who are have no common sense. One member of my husband's family cannot stand to hear me talk about a book I just read, or about college, or basically anything to do with learning. Her standard comment is' Well I may not be booksmart, but at least I have common sense.'
(Let me state for the record that I do not brag about my reading or act obnoxiously , I don't correct people when the do not speak english correctly or misspell a word. I do not claim to be perfect.)
Isn't common sense an understanding of how to function? Maybe my definition is a little off, but to me common sense would be checking both ways before crossing the street, not touching a stove burner that you turned on, not running with scissors, etc. Amazingly, I can do these things, even with all that knowledge taking up my brain space.
So my thought on the matter is the same as my response to the comment 'I may not be booksmart, but at least I have common sense."
Well, I guess I got lucky, because I happen to have both!
- Location:home
- Mood: aggravated
A friend of mine claims she can see auras around people, or that she gets 'feelings' about people, sometimes unhappy, sometimes dangerous. I do not claim to see or feel anything supernatural, but I think it must be sort of the same thing. When I worked in a gas station years ago, there was this guy who would come in just about every day. Now, he was 45-50 yrs old, married, and as nice as he could be. He was friendly, and he always wanted to talk, ask me how my day was, just chitchat. I dreaded seeing him everytime, and had no reason to. Deep down in my mind, gut, or whatever, I knew I would never want to be alone in a dark alley with him though. Yet let a 7ft tall Hell's Angel with tatoos everywhere, piercings, leather, and chains walk through the door, and if he doesn't give me the perv vibe I'd chat all day. Does this ever happen to anyone else? Maybe I'm a freeee-eeeak.
Total change of topic-bad luck. It seems to me that some people have it, some people don't. If you don't-GET OUT!!!! No, but really, something bad is always happening to me, not catastrophic, just little stuff that is annoying. Everytime I get a little extra money, my vehicle breaks down, an unexpected expense comes out of nowhere, I lose stuff constantly, and can't remember-well you know the saying. I don't know if it's just that I have such a carefree attitude, or I am so used to this kind of thing that it really doesn't get me down. My husband gets really stressed out, but I'm just kind of like 'so what' and keep plodding along oblivious. There are those people, though, that always seem to have it together, everything just falls into place for them. 'Oh my gosh, I just found a briefcase full of money laying in my front yard' kind of people. Maybe it's careful planning on their parts that their lives run so smoothly, but I prefer to believe that it's just plain old good luck. Keeps me from admitting responsibility for my unorganized existence.
Well I think I am burning my muffins, so see ya!
- Mood: amused
Ok, even though I have wondered sooo far from my teenage years that I am now permenantly lost, I just finished reading the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I really liked it, and am sad to see the story end. Does anyone else ever do that? You get so wrapped up in a series of books, waiting for each new book to come out, and then with the last one you feel a sadness that it's all over. I do, and now I must wait to find a new line of books that will only cause me pain and agony in the end. ha ha I really loved her book The Host, and I have read that she is considering sequels for that one. I hope so. I am sure that I am not the only one who read it and ended up liking the alien species better than the human girl she inhabited.
Uggh! It is so hot where I am that every time I step outside I can feel my brain turning to soup inside my skull, just sloshing around up there. Brain chowder anyone? I am not a big fan of hot weather, and I am not so patiently waiting for fall. It's kind of funny because alot of my heritage is American Indian, but my dad is a redhead. Combining the two, I ended up with dark hair, dark eyes, and pale white skin that burns repeatedly, then freckles. Every time I go in the pool I come out looking like a psycho dot-to-dot!
Well I am very busy and important, so I must tarry no longer here. My children are ready for breakfast, and they will be gnawing on one another if I don't get to the kitchen. Adios my little journal, Ishall see you soon.
Well here I am, an official LJ user and poster now. I have edited my profile and am contemplating a pic that will give extensive insight into my soul in one glance. Am I the only one who panics when they have to give a short description of their hobbies, talents, interests, etc., that will let the whole world know who they are and what they are about? No kidding, I typed and deleted for like 10 minutes over my profile.
I am not very good with technology. I usually learn by pushing a bunch of buttons, crossing my fingers, and squinching my eyes shut tight when I confirm the action that I am not sure I want to take. You know the saying 'God watches out for idiots and children', well let me tell you it's true! Big, fat thanks to the inventor of the 'BACK' button while we're at it, you can erase a mistake with one little click. Life should be so easy! Ex-boyfriends BACK, loaning someone money you will never see again BACK, all the bad haircuts/dyejobs you've ever had BACK-BACK!
Seriously, I would like to be a little more pc savvy when it comes to blogging, chatting, or whatever it is exactly that I am doing right now. I have read that for writers it is a good thing to have an online journal or website, and as I check out my fav authors on their sites, it must be true.
Also, I have a lot of random babbling to do. Most of the people I know do not share the same ideas I do, and I am not a big gossip person. I do not care about Brangalina in any way, shape, or form. I could care less how many times Lindsay Lohan has been to rehab or why. I don't care who broke up with, slept with, cheated on, stole from, is secretly gay, has a baby with who. Don't care. That being the bulk of conversation in a small town, this is my personal spot to talk about the things I want to say, and feel like the great-ever-listening-gods of technology are tuning in with keen anticipation for my every word. This is not meant to imply that anything I say is going to be important or life shattering. Just some thoughts I have.
So this is probably much longer than it should be, but hey, it's my LJ and I'll ramble if I want to, ramble if I want to (to the tune of 'It's my party) but I really should get off of here and go do something constructive with my life, like eat all the cookies I bought last night. As you can see I am a very goal-oriented person.
Until next time
- Location:home
- Mood: indescribable
- Music:none
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blackbetty7- blackbetty7
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