And Then Boredom Struck

I've worked out on my excercise bike now twice.

OH MY WORD IT IS BORING.

I love walking in the country for a variety of reasons: I'm out in the open air, there are things to see, my mind can wander.

While I'm cycling in my living room while watching CMT, there isn't much to do.

I must, must, must keep this up as not walking for three weeks has packed on a whopping seven pounds and I just gave away all my fat pants.

But the boredom. Oh, the boredom.

On the job front, I am very excited. However, there is paperwork that needs to be completed before I can begin to apply to jobs. Essentially, I've been accepted to work for this company, and once my paperwork is through, I will be doing casual/part time work. This means that I will be working on top of my current job for a number of months.

Insane, yes. However, I have a host of newfound debts that need to be paid: Alfonso, who I'm typing on right now; my next school course, which is officially in the mail and on its way; my horse debts over the summer; and of course, my trusty JEEP.

(And I have to go on an aside right now and say that since April, I have paid off over HALF of Da JEEP! My goal was to have it paid off in a year and this means that I am bang on, so this is pretty exciting for me.)

So, I'll be doing more than double work for a few months. This casual job means that I will be able to apply for full time jobs within the company once I've got my employee number. Once I have full time work (Which I am well aware could take up to six months) I will continue with my current company part time.

WHY would I do this to myself?

Many reasons. Mostly, I'd like to own a house of my own at some point and be able to live luxuriously should I so choose. In order to do this, I need some fundage.

So those are the two most pertinent updates in my life right now. The Moose Hunter saga continues, and I have no idea what is going on, although I assure you that my copy of He's Just Not That Into You is at my bedside because I have grave fears that this may be the case. This makes me sad because not only does he own six or eight or however many pairs of cowboy boots and drive a spectacular car, he has TWENTY TWO INCH TIRES on that car.

I aspire to that sort of status, let me tell you.

Adventures in Private Excercise

I haven't been walking these last few weeks.

And my body knows it.

Damn this body of mine, always knowing what I'm up to.

Today I bit the bullet and did not buy a gym membership. Instead, I went on the shopping trip of a lifetime and ended up purchasing an excercise bike.

I would really prefer a treadmill, but the space they take up is too much for the house here at The Ranch.

So, a bicycle it is.

It is small, it is dainty, it is uncomplicated, and with a little help from the motivation I don't typically have, hopefully it will make me svelt once more.

And it is MINE

The job called me today.

IT IS MINE.

A few more minor details to work out, and things are starting to look up.

The moose hunter and I had another date on Friday. Turns out, he did call me upon his return but I missed the call.

I feel like I should be using a lot more capital letters and superfluous punctuation in this post, considering how much I wanted both of these things.

I just got off yet another overnight and I am planning on completing my course work today so that I can celebrate in true style later in the week.

Once that is done, prepare yourself for the onslaught on PUNCTUATION AND CAPS, Baby.

So, So Tired...

I just finished a twenty five hour shift.

Working the way I work is kind of insane, I get that, and I am the one who chooses to keep going back there. I get that, too.

But right now this is the job that is paying for my trusty JEEP; my new computer (the one that has a functioning K key, even); My horse's many, many needs; my newfound addiction to Booster Juice; and of course, that whole thirty thousand dollars worth of education thing. Right. That.

And really, I just need to whine. I came home with every intention of working on my final for this class. I really did. But I just wanted to sit and reconnect with the fact that a world exists outside of twenty five hour shifts. So shoot me. I sat at my computer for an hour. And then my mother came home from an outing she was on, so I chatted for a little while with her. I took a call from the Berry Queen and then BAM.

The exhaustion hit me. I always do this, I think that I can just stay awake until the next normal sleeping hour but the fact is that I rarely, if ever, can. And then I'll be sitting somewhere, having a can of pop and functioning relatively normally and suddenly I feel as though I've been drinking. I start to mutter my words, my eyes just won't stay open and it is generally not safe for me to operate heavy equipment.

So I collapsed into my bed with Dixie for two and a half hours, thinking that this would suffice to get me through the rest of the day and when Dixie and I woke up I still was not able to function.

Working this long honestly makes me feel as though I have a hangover. I'm kind of shaky from the caffeine I drink to get me through the shifts. I generally have a mild headache, mild stomach upset and sometimes a very irritable outlook on life.

I now want nothing more than to write up fifty pages of final sociological information on consumerism and globalism and neo-liberalism but I am JUST SO TIRED. I really feel like I am not going to get this course done and that the next nine courses are an insurmountable task.

Today is a good day, so I think I'm going to stay positive. On a bad day, I might weep uncontrollably and curl up in the fetal position. I think I'll go right now, hydrate myself with some flavored water, drink down another pot of coffee, curl up with my nephew to watch Survivor and swear to myself that I will do some form of productive work after the water and coffee set in.

Gretchen, I'd like You To Meet Alfonso

Gretchen. Oh, Gretchen.

Gretchen and I have had some wonderful times over the years.

I don't know if my readers know this, but I have a terrible habit of naming things in my life. My vehicles have had terrible names (First there was The Wagon, then there was The Little Chevy, and now there is Da JEEP) but some of the other things in my life have had interesting names. (Like Big Al, my TV from university, Snuffalupagus, the houseplant my roommate had when I lived in the City, and of course, the thing that was stuck in the drain when I moved into my second apartment. It was the size of a small rodent and it had a very interesting name but it escapes me now.)

Gretchen is my laptop.

Gretchen succumbed to an illness the other day and it was a hideous ordeal that left me in tears and on the search for a new partner in blogging, essay writing, photo taking, and technological debauchery.

The story is so long and arduous that I can not begin to expand upon it now. I was told that my laptop would cost hundreds to fix and since a new laptop would be comparable in price, I decided to get a new one.

After eight hours and weeping quietly in front of two of about ten computer guys I dealt with, I went to Mal's house to chill while waiting for my laptop to be loaded up with software and set up.

Grand total, nine hundred and twenty seven dollars.

I had just sat down on the couch with a beer and a cigarette when my phone rang. It was my computer guy who had miraculously fixed Gretchen and returned her to her normal state of function for less than two hundred dollars.

I was stunned and just thanked him before texting Mal and saying -- and I must apologize to our more sensitive readers for relaying this message on a family-friendly website -- FUCK MY LIFE.

I immediately decided to return the laptop on a day when I would be more suited to going into a computer store. I didn't even take it out of the box once I got it.

I called the store today and it turns out that returning the laptop would get me back five hundred of the dollars (plus taxes!) back.

The rest of the money (Plus taxes!) would remain on my Visa because it was for software that had been opened and uploaded and could not be returned.

Again, excuse me for a minute, but I feel the need to scream FUCK MY LIFE really, really loudly right now.

I've decided to keep the new laptop because I can't fathom spending three hundred dollars on nothing when I'm going to need the new laptop a short time from now anyways. (Gretchen is going on six years old now and my computer guy tends to think she is on her way to the graveyard regardless.)

So now I guess I need to suck up the fact that I have paid for something that I didn't necessarily need to pay for at this point in time.

The task remains to get all the good stuff off Gretchen and into Alfonso. I need some tunes, some pictures, and all my school work moved over so that I have something to groove to and look at while I should be doing more productive things with my life.

I just have no idea how to do this. I was thinking of introducing them late at night, by candlelight in the kitchen. Perhaps I could just come back in the morning and the stuff would all be transferred? Could I plug them in to the same outlet and hope that via their power cords they would swap vitals? Could I find a device with which to plug one into the other and then hit the "Send info to Alfonso" button?

It escapes me.

Regardless, I have a new purchase that I'm sure I will be excited about once I accept the fact that I will be paying for this decision for a long, long time.

One Morning After Work...

I just dropped off my computer at the computer guy's house. It appears that it will cost the same to replace my computer as it will to fix the old one.

I have a fifty page final to write (And no, that's not a misprint. My take home final for this ridiculous course I'm taking is FIFTY PAGES LONG.)

Oh, and I have no computer.

I just got off of an overnight shift which usually puts me in a terrible mood to begin with.

The job I interviewed for has not called me. A coworker tried to console me last night, saying that it's the company's loss to not get me as a worker. I thought it was very nice of her to say but I couldn't help but point out that it is really my loss because I still have to work for my current company.

The moose hunter has not called nor do I believe he is going to.

And I just checked and yep! My computer is still broken.

Oh, and fifty pages of work to write remain on my to do list.

I haven't felt this defeated, rejected and deflated in a very, very long time.

Panic Mode

And here we are, in that mode I so often find myself in during the fall.

Upon re-reading my essay, it needs work. Lots of work. Plenty of work.

I have yet to do any of that work.

I have also not yet heard from my dream job. I'm now in that awkward state, that one I'm usually in after a date when I don't know if I've screwed something up in a huge, huge way. I have all the qualifications, I have the experience, I have everything they asked for in the job posting. I really still feel that I did a great job in the interview...

Honestly, sometimes it's like my entire life is one big chapter in He's just Not That Into You. I just keep on getting rejected from various things and think, this is ok! Sometimes things just aren't meant to be, and that's not a reflection on me!

And then it happens continuously and I start to feel really, really deflated.

I've got all my paperwork in order to go out for duck season but I have yet to get my sorry self up in the morning and actually go and shoot a duck. I'd love to bring one home, to say that I've done something successfully but the thought of getting up before sunrise and sitting in the damp when I've been working all week is sort of... Well, I do enjoy bonding with my bed. That's all.

I also recieved an invite to go deer hunting with a friend's husband this year, which is pretty exciting. I have no idea if I will go with that invite or with my family but having open options is always nice.

So I guess life is not all negative but the more pertinent things in life are definitely conflicting with my desire to watch YouTube music videos and sleep twenty hours a day.

The Life of a Student While Living with One's Parents

I just finished my essay, that beastly creature that has been tormenting me for months now while I was busy staving it off to the back of my mind. My summer was full of interesting things and I promised myself that the first week of September, I would complete it.

Two weeks into October, I am almost there. I have yet to complete the exam portion of the course, but I figure that will be another sleepless night or two and then?

Freedom!

Until my next course arrives.

My last university experience was spent living either on my own or with the only roommate I ever had, and so my parents were not exposed to me in all my studious glory. They heard about it, I'm sure, and possibly wondered from time to time if the stories were true, but I doubt my study habits weighed on their minds very much at all.

They have now officially been exposed to the horror, to the frantic running around and shuffling of papers; to the wandering and muttering; to the coffee making and coffee drinking out of containers that qualify as soup bowls in most cultures. The not going to bed -- Oh, the sleepless glory! -- the lights being on all night and the exasperated heaving of sighs.

I did not expose them (this time) to the hideous and disgusting gumball habit I have. I figured I'd save them something to be horrified at during my next course.

My goal is to complete one more course before Christmas, two after, and another during the summer. I will repeat this process again in the fall of 2010 and then be applying to my Master's program of choice.

I love that I am actually working towards something of value right now. Although I longed for freedom from school during the five years I spent getting my degree and diploma, once I was free I felt really listless and without goals.

So now here I am, working towards my goals and feeling really, really good about it.

Unfortunately I am over caffeinated and sleep deprived so the joy is sort of overshadowed by that. I imagine in the morning I will be a little more chipper.

A Plan...

I have a plan of sorts.

And really, I'm aggitated that I have to even make a plan for this sort of thing. Like, really? I'm twenty five years old. That's right. I'm TWENTY FIVE YEARS OLD. And I still have to plan this sort of thing.

Four days ago, I wrote this post.

I was feeling deflated and confused and then elated that I had done something so productive as to have clicked my mouse and make my desktop pretty.

(This is, in fact, the sort of thing my life has come down to. Sigh)

I wrote that post after another date with The Cowboy.

(Only instead of riding up on a wonderful steed and riding double into the sunset, he drives up in a North American car. If only he'd shown up in a golf shirt and flip flops with a Mitsubishi Lancer, I don't think I would have nearly as much trouble with this. But he does things with his spare time like hunting moose and he doesn't look at me in horror when I talk about things like mud and guns and blaze orange. And I have to say, I'm a sucker for someone who digs blaze orange.)

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS GUY.

Does he dig me like I dig a twelve guage shotgun? Does he think that opening day of deer season is the best day for a date all year? Does he want to sit by the river decked out in camo with pockets full of bird shot, talking in whispers until dark? How would he feel if I took his car out and spun the tires on the gravel? How would he feel if I took out my JEEP and spun up some mud?

I have all these pertinent questions to ask and now he's off chasing Bullwinkle eighty thousand miles away.

And I know he's in his blaze orange.

At any rate, I have a plan. It took me days to come up with this plan, lots of thinking and calculating and practicing while I drive down the road in my oh-so-sexy JEEP.

I'm going to call him.

That's right. Twenty five years later, I am grown up enough to come up with a plan that involves calling a person on the phone.

Only I have to wait until he returns from his chasing of Bullwinkle.

And while that happens, I am going to write this essay that has been weighing on my mind and also? Also?

I'm going to stop being a crazy person.

Don't say I have no goals, dammit.

Please?

Please, Dear World and whatever else is out there that is willing to listen:

Please, please, please could I have a job? Could I have one that allows some semblance of social life, whereby I work when the rest of the world works and play when the rest of the world plays?

Could I have an evening to sit and watch TV with my family? Could I be guaranteed vacation time? Could I have a vacation?

Could I go out to a bar on a weekend with my friends and not have to get up and rush to work the next day?

Could I have two days off in a row?

Could I try to have a social gathering on some night other than a Monday night because my night off is a night other than a Monday night?

PLEASE CAN I HAVE THIS JOB?

I have to say that I really feel like I rocked the interview. I was dressed appropriately, I wore lucky underwear, my shoes were shiny and I was free of lint. My eye makeup was just right, I didn't have food stuck in my teeth, I shook people's hands with just the right amount of force and I was punctual and pleasant.

The woman recognized the name of one of my references and I hope she didn't think that I was trying to name drop or get a favor, but my reference tells me I'm as good as in.

All I have to do is wait for my call.

It is times like these that I wish I was a more patient person.

An Opportunity Has Knocked..

I got a call today that I have been waiting for for a very, very long time.

I got a call to work at a job that, at this point in my life, qualifies as my dream job. I have an interview tomorrow.

My clothing is ironed, my hairstyle is planned, the directions are printed and in my purse.

Now all I have to do is not cackle like a hyena when I get nervous and maybe, just maybe the job will be mine.

A job that does not entail nights, weekends, insidious overnights, and the multitude of other things that I don't like about my current situation.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up while simultaneously wanting to climb to the tops of tall buildings and scream that SOMETHING MAY FINALLY BE GOING RIGHT.

Updates to follow.

If Nothing Else...

I had a day today that I should be proud of, and now at half past two a.m., I'm sitting here feeling deflated.

I had just closed my browser to go to bed for the night when I saw my desktop, and realized that earlier today I had tidied it up.

And then I felt happy that I had been so productive as to clean my desktop while I was procrastinating on writing an essay.

And now I'm going to bed happy because I was, in fact, productive today.

My desktop is tidy!

Sometimes we need to take pride in the small things in life and apparently, I am no exception.

Biting The Bullet

I continue to worry about my size. I know that I am not a large person, but the size of me weighs on my mind. (No pun intended. Really.)

Last year I dated a person through the winter and this person joyed in taking me to breakfast, where I joyed in eating an awful lot of Eggs Benedict. Oh My Word, how I love Eggs Benedict. I also enjoy beer, and Cheetos, and potato chips (Barbeque) and coffee with lots and lots of cream and sugar. I've recently acquired an addiction to Booster Juice, Pita Pit, and Starbucks. But I only love Starbucks for their frappuccinos. Potatoes with gravy (And quite frankly, anything in the world doused in a healthy serving of gravy) makes my heart smile.

I dieted this spring and managed to knock of the poundage I had gained but I've come to a realization:

I have no desire to quit eating large quantities of foods that are very, very bad for me.

As I've previously mentioned, I've been walking. To the chagrin of all my neighbors, I've been walking.

It is now cold here in the depths of Ontario and I did walk today, in three quarter length pants, a long sleeved shirt, gloves, and a coat. It was a splendid walk with my trusty deer hound and I'm glad I got up the energy to go as I missed walking yesterday.

But I know that it will only get colder as days go by and I don't know how long I can continue to get excercise outdoors under these conditions.

And so I'm contemplating a gym membership.

Such a city thing to do, I know.

I need to keep moving and I've given away all my fat pants (Which is quite the selling point in pants, let me tell you.) and I simply can't go back to my old larger size.

I'm working at getting a discount at a gym from my cousin who works at one. Then I have to factor in the time and gas money to get there every day, and then once I get there I have to work at not stopping at Starbucks to get a Venti Caramel Frappuccino on my way back every day.

I've not made up my mind completely, but it is whirling around and I think it might be the only option to prevent the largeness that occurred early in 2009.

I think I may be on my way to being a city person living in the country. Next thing you know, I'll be driving a Mazda and eating tofu on a regular basis.