Overly Verbal

I seem to have forgotten that I have a blog, but that’s because nothing really worth writing about is happening to me.* I wasted all of yesterday (unless you count cleaning and reading as things that aren’t wasteful), and I would consider today a waste except that it was a perfectly lovely day.

First, I had one of those lunches with a friend that makes you remember why you bother to have friends in the first place. It is simply restorative to eat lunch with a charming and handsome person who also happens to be an excellent conversationalist and has nothing but good news to catch you up on. An hour seemed like four, my cheeseburger was delicious, and all was right with the world.

Then I went to the library. Then I went to a different library.

Then, when I thought my day couldn’t get any more pleasant, I bought the cutest purse in the history of purses, for only $20, from one of those makeshift shops outside of a subway station, which is a silly thing to do because I’m sure it either “fell off a truck” or was made by child slave labor under the worst of conditions, but damn it, it’s cute. Then, since I missed my bus because I was shopping for purses, I went to the mall to kill time, and tried on a dress, and it fit me, and it was only $20 too! (And then I concluded that I may have an actual shopping problem, because I need another purse and another dress about as much as I need another hole in my head. But if I’m going to die alone in a doublewide trailer with my 47 cats, at least I’ll look good doing it.)

But as was to be expected, my day took a turn for the worse. You see, I slept on my couch last night, without even unfolding it, because my upstairs neighbors and their TV are really starting to get to me. And while it is not quite as dark in my living room as it is in my bedroom, since I can’t afford super-fancy light-blocking curtains for the whole damned house (particularly now that I’m jobless and all), it is much quieter in there. I slept a lot, but my shoulder was sore this morning, so I put on my list of things to do today “purchase a sound machine”. And so when I eventually returned home I researched sound machines. I’m sure that the people who design these machines have fancy degrees in “sleep science” or some such rot, so I can only assume I’m just not in the target market. For example, I found a machine with six available sounds: ocean, summer night, rain, rainforest, thunder, and waterfall. Okay, so rain and thunder might help me sleep, but you cannot tell me that the ocean, a rainforest, and a waterfall would not make me have to get up to pee. And as for this “summer night”, reviews indicate that it sounds like crickets, which would send both Mouse and I around the bend. Why don’t they put in sounds that would actually make me sleep, like, say, city traffic, howling wind, or a cat purring? Do I have to do everything?

Seriously, though, has anyone ever purchased one of these sound machines? Do tell.

Oh, and guess what? It’s Halloween. A group of the little monsters that live in my neighborhood somehow gained entry to my building earlier. I’m guessing they didn’t have any adult supervision, because after they knocked twice and I didn’t answer, one of them tried my doorknob. I thought about going out and asking them where their parents were, so I could speak with the adults about why you have to supervise your children, or at least teach them that they shouldn’t be randomly attempting to open people’s doors, but I don’t know the Spanish for “Please start obeying basic laws of common sense and decency.” (And then I thought about the fact that the most menacing tool in my home is a shovel, and then I wondered how much an axe costs.) (You know, like as a prop.)

So I guess that’s all. Friday I have to deliver myself to a second staffing agency, but first I was allowed the opportunity to take an online test proving that I know how to use Excel. And I missed three of the questions! One of them was about the function that returns the smallest number in a dataset. Why I would need to know what that function is called off the top of my head when I’m going to be a temp is simply beyond me, and the other two questions were obscure enough that I think actually knowing how to answer them would elevate me to a level of geekiness I’m not yet willing to accept (you know, like one that would force me to teach people how to use Excel for a living), but I still feel a little stupid. Thirty-five questions and I only got 32 right. Geez. That’s only 91.42857%. This whole finding a job thing is hard.

I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I’m not going to worry about that now, because I have to wake up early to get to the grocery store tomorrow before all the Marshmallow Peeps are gone!
_____
* She says, and then proceeds to write some 800 more words.

First off, you know how they say it’s a full-time job to find a new job? I’m afraid I think that’s true. I woke up reasonably early, stayed reasonably focused on the task at hand all day long, and while I accomplished approximately nothing (applying for only three jobs, and registering with only one additional staffing agency), at the end of what would have been my workday I was exhausted and not inclined to do anything more than eat.

But here’s the thing. If you don’t leave your house all day, and eat three square meals (okay, two square meals and PopTarts for breakfast), there are a lot of dishes at the end of the day. I’m so exhausted I don’t even feel like doing the dishes.

In other news, someone asked me earlier what I was doing Wednesday night, Wednesday being Halloween, so I said, “Oh, I don’t do Halloween. Plus, there’s going to be a taxicab strike, and I don’t want to get stuck in the city.” A conversation ensued during which I agreed that if someone was driving, and that person wasn’t going to drink a lot (what with it being Wednesday), AND if I didn’t have to wear a costume, I could be lured out, since I likely won’t actually have a job by Thursday. But I thought about it some more, and there are at least a couple of things I could be for Halloween without too terribly much effort:

• Olive Oyl
• Pippi Longstocking
• Lily Allen, if I wore a wig, my favorite vintage dress, and my cute, cute, cute cross-trainers*
• a boy
• me, wearing any old regular outfit, and when people sarcastically asked, “So, what are you supposed to be?” I could say, “Your mom”**
• a giraffe
• Twiggy, if only I was blonde

Otherwise, I got nothing, and I need to get to the grocery store early on Thursday to buy Marshmallow Peeps at half-price, so I think I’m just not going out on Halloween. Are you?

_____
* “Um, Jen, I thought I knew you. You actually own a pair of cross-trainers?” “Well, yes, yes, I do. They’re cute as all get out, brown and pink, and I have worn them exactly once.” (Inside the shoe store, when I tried them on.)

** Because there is not a single thing funnier than answering a question “Your mom.” (Unless the question begins “Where?” and then it is sometimes in fact funnier to say “up your butt and around the corner”, but not always.)

I love staying home. There are a number of interesting and amusing things to do in my home, and it’s free to stay home (which is a good thing, because I have no job and all), and there are English muffins here, and if there’s something better to eat than peanut butter and jelly on a toasted English muffin, I don’t know what it is. (Unless it’s peanut butter and honey on a toasted English muffin.)

And get this - say you’re practicing the piano, and you start bemoaning the fact that all of your sheet music is in storage in California. There is a ton of sheet music on the Internet, and some of it’s free! (Granted, I don’t actually want to learn to play “Dancing Queen” or “Achy Breaky Heart” on the piano, but if I did, I could just print out the music and do it.) So what this means is that I can stay home, have an idea, sit down at my computer, and something like $4 later have three sheets of paper that I can’t actually read right now, but that I will be able to read soon if I just spend more time staying home. Basically, although I do have to go outside tomorrow (to the bank and the grocery store, because I have not yet figured out how to deposit a check from inside my home, or make Pepsi), it seems I almost never have to leave my house again. Even if I want some sheet music that isn’t available for download on the Web, I can just look it up on the Internet and have it mailed to me.

In other news, I think I’ve found my calling: Metro Transit Police Officer. The requirements are simple. I went to high school, am at least 21 years old, and believe myself to be fit enough to perform the duties. (If not, I happen to like donuts, so the training won’t be all that unpleasant.) And the benefits are amazing: a $5,000 signing bonus, a clothing allowance, and free bus and rail transportation. Yup, that’s right. Free bus and rail transportation. Hot damn!

Plus, when I caught someone urinating, or eating a smelly sandwich, I could throw the book at them, instead of just wanting to throw something at them. I’d have to, because it would be my job. And, you know, I’m already always telling people that the left side of the escalators are for walking, or that you can’t use the center door of the car to enter a train if you’ve got your bike (because that’s the only one that will open if we have to evacuate the train in an emergency), but it hadn’t occurred to me until recently that it’s possible to get paid to do that. And, it fits with my general idea that one should do good instead of just doing work. (Plus, what if I had an awesome mentor/sidekick who was a veteran Metro cop and told stories about the good old days and always said libary instead of library and had new pictures of his grandkids all the time? That would be awesome.)

But maybe I wouldn’t make a very good cop. I wouldn’t be able to wear cute shoes to work, it might be dangerous, and I would complain that the hours might not suit my social life except that everyone I like keeps moving away and I seriously doubt they allow the skinny white girl cops to work nights.

I’m tempted to just apply and see what happens, but I’m also tempted to have someone talk me out of doing so. That’s where you come in. HC and I had a conversation about this topic a while back, and whether or not I might be better suited to operating a train than to patrolling one, but I think it couldn’t hurt to get a little more input. So? Whadda ya think?

Okay, so you know how sometimes a guy tells you you’re a good dancer, then asks for your phone number, and you say, “No, I’m not giving you my phone number,” because he seems really young and besides that you secretly hate everyone, and then a month later you bump into him again, only this time you’d had several shots of whiskey,* and whiskey makes you less misanthropic, so you cleverly turn the conversation to precisely how old everyone is, thinking that this will bring the proceedings to a grinding halt, and once you say out loud, “I just turned 36” this young man will silently wander off, and then you actually demand to see his ID when he claims to be 22, because no honest-to-god 22-year-old is actually going to be repeatedly hitting on a woman 14 years older than he is, even if she is good at the dancing, and he really is 22, and then you give him your phone number anyway, because . . .

Okay, so I don’t actually know why I gave him my phone number,** but it seems I may be having dinner on Tuesday with him. I’m halfway hoping that he simply won’t remember that we’ve set this date, but also kind of thinking that one should really just indulge one’s self sometimes, and going on dates with 22-year-old boys is nothing if not indulgent. (And I’m thinking that if he does remember, I just might not answer my phone.) (And if I do go, and he turns out to be my one true love, I’m going to have to delete this entry later, aren’t I?)

And yes, I have had “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” stuck in my head for a large part of today. (If you wanna see something inexplicably creepy, watch this video.)

So there’s that. But there’s nothing else, unless my fussing about what to do with my retirement account since I’ve just terminated my employment, how delicious my lunch was today, or the fact that I am actually staying in on a Saturday night (intending to knit, watch a movie, and do the laundry) are topics of interest to you, in which case you should drop me a note.

I hope I start actually being a temp soon, so I have something to write about on my blog.

_____
* It’s ever so rude to refuse a shot of whiskey, isn’t it?

** That, and the fact that so many men are inclined to provide me with shots of whiskey, might forever remain a mystery.

Dear Old Job,

Before, when you were mine, I was often unhappy. Now that I never have to return to you again, I’m feeling so happy that I don’t even know a word to describe how happy I am, so I’m going to write a whole sentence: I’m as happy as if I was dancing around to what I thought was the happiest song ever, wearing the cutest skirt in the universe, while eating mint chocolate chip ice cream and playing with a kitten, but then all of a sudden the extended dance mix of what is actually the happiest song ever came on, and my ice cream turned into marshmallows and I had an orgasm (and then two more for good measure), and then my favorite person in the whole wide world brought me a Big Mac, and the Monopoly piece on the Big Mac box was good for free medium French fries.

That’s how happy I am that you are no longer my job.

But please be nice to the new person, if that person ever arrives, because it really is nicer if a good person completes the tasks required by you.

Thanks,

Jennifer

*****

Dear Interpol and other relevant law enforcement agencies,

I’m not really going to hijack my neighbor’s router. That would be wrong. Plus, I wouldn’t know how even if I wanted to.

What’s that? Oh, I see. You searched on my blog for the word “router” and came up with this entry? I was just kidding about that - I made it up so Sara would think I was cool.

Thanks,

Jennifer

*****

Dear Weather,

You know how you’re all cool and rainy, and I can wear a scarf outside, and boots? I love you.

Thanks,

Jennifer

*****

And tomorrow, when I sleep until I feel like waking up, and then don’t have to have anything to do with my former co-workers? I will have renewed vigor for things like finding a job and writing blog entries that aren’t quite so weird.

See you then.

Dear Upstairs Neighbors,
I don’t actually know how many people live in your home, but I’m pretty sure that even if that number was in the double digits, there is no good reason to have your television on at top volume every single moment during which I am trying to sleep.

When I first moved in here (you surely remember that horrible time when I was waiting for Verizon to provide me with telephone, television, and Internet services?), I sometimes borrowed your Internet connection for a while, because you were not so clever then as to have put security on your router. And I’m pretty sure you have the same Internet service provider I do, so I know a thing or two - about your router model, the fact that your television services are fed through it, etc.

(Okay, maybe that wasn’t you, maybe it was the people on the third floor. Doesn’t really mattter.)

It seems that you have since put a password on your router, but tomorrow is my last day at work, which means I likely have nothing better to do on Friday than figure out how to hijack your router and turn it off while I am trying to sleep. There are only so many possible passwords, and it shouldn’t take me long to figure out yours. And sure, that’s like illegal or something (passive theft?), but I just don’t give a good goddamn, because it’s not like knocking on your door and explaining that your television is bothering is me is going to get me anywhere. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say.

People think I’m only as smart as I look, but I am in fact much, much smarter than that, and I will take you (or at least your router) down.

Yours in living in the ghetto yet somehow being able to afford over $150 a month for telecommunications,

Jennifer

Before I get started, can I just say I’m a little surprised? Come on, really, no one I know has a didgeridoo? (Maybe a recorder would do the same trick?)

Okay, so Goethe stopped by earlier, and I immediately thought that he should weigh himself both with and without my cat, so the mystery could be laid to rest.

So he did, even though Mouse didn’t really want to be held long enough to be weighed, and we came up with two numbers. One was larger than the other by about 10 pounds, which is how much we believed Mouse to weigh.

But both numbers were about 18 pounds larger than Goethe thought they should be, based on his scale at home.

And so after Goethe left I made Mouse get onto the scale all by himself,* because that’s just the kind of fun thing I do in the evening when I’m supposed to be, oh, finding a job or something.

Mouse weighs 10 pounds all by himself on my scale at home (plus or minus six cat treats), which is truly excellent, because when we went to the vet in December he weighed only 8 and a half pounds.

So there are two conclusions that can be reached:

• Goethe’s scale at home is accurate, I actually weigh 92 pounds,** and Mouse actually weighs negative 8 pounds
• Goethe’s scale at home is broken, and my scale is completely accurate, and he has just built so much muscle mass lately that his weight is much greater than he thought it was

So Goethe’s going to independently verify his weight tomorrow at the gym (which is a thing I would do if I ever went to a gym, but I don’t), and maybe then we can lay this matter to rest once and for all. (But no matter what happens, it seems I’m shrinking, and perhaps dramatically. I think it’s all the dancing I’ve been doing lately.)

(And yes, I just wrote nearly three hundred words about how much my cat weighs. And the other day I responded to a comment CG left here in the voice of my cat. Next thing you know, Mouse’ll have his own Facebook page. (And I’ll be institutionalized.))

In other news, I had a very emotionally trying day at work. I spent much of it writing about how to do my job, believing that what I had written was perfectly clear and concise, and then stepping back and reading my words from the point of view of any one of my co-workers. Then I had to rewrite everything so that a person completely devoid of common sense or intuition could read it and gather knowledge from it. That hurt my brain.

Then, I spent some time deleting messages from my enormous archive of e-mail, messages that would either prove irrelevant or incriminating when someone other than me gains access to my e-mail archive, and it made me both happy and sad, because a lot of those messages were funny - I actually laughed out loud several times. People should have co-workers who make them laugh, and who can talk about things that matter in an intelligent fashion, and while I’m happy that I once did, I’m a little sad that I now don’t.

But I’m holding out great hope that my next job will be fantastic, because a) I’m totally delusional, and b) I’m thinking I’m going to somehow figure out how to subsist on $12.50 an hour and either be a dog-walker (because there seems to be a complete dearth of mid-day dog-walkers in the greater metropolitan DC area and that would be fun), or be one of those people standing on the sidewalk wearing a sign promoting a local business. (It’s a perfect job for “energetic go-getters”, and really, how else could you describe me?) It seems they’re called “sign walkers”, and I think it would be fun to have people ask me what I do and be able to tell them, “Oh, I walk. With a sign.” (But seriously? $12.50 an hour? I sometimes feel sorry for those people, thinking they must be pretty unhappy. They’re pulling down a cool $150 for a weekend’s work! You only make $8.50 an hour as a “shampoo assistant”! Does wandering around with a sign or a dog require greater skill than shampooing? Geez. )

Anyway, I have made a little progress on the job front - I visited my favorite employment agency the other day, and I’m well on my way to being a temp, and thereby drawing yet another parallel between this October and last. (And since I hadn’t stepped foot in the agency in ten months, they wanted to introduce me to some of their new staff, so everyone could put a name to a face. And all of these new staff were armed with copies of my resume and profile when they arrived. I had never had so many consecutive conversations beginning, “So, you went to Columbia?” before, and I hope never to have to again.)

Is there other news? Oh, how I wish there was other news. Maybe tomorrow?

_____
* By putting some cat treats on the scale and then setting him atop it so he could eat them, which is a perfectly logical way to weigh your cat, and, no, I don’t know why you didn’t think of that. (Oh, yeah, it’s because I always have to do everything.)

** I don’t want to put any pictures in your head, and I don’t really think anyone’s going to do the math, but today I weighed 115 pounds, in jeans, a sweater, and shoes. The other day I weighed 110 pounds, with, um, less clothing on.

So I’m reading stuff on the Internet, as people do, and get this: a number of very important and reputable sites have apparently suggested that playing a didgeridoo helps people who have sleep apnea.

And I guess if you’re British, maybe Canadian, it’s actually sleep apnoea.

I don’t think I have sleep apnea. But I kind of do wish I had sleep apnoea, because that is a lovely word. (Remarkable, really. How many words end in oea?**)

However, in my (incredibly long) life, it has become abundantly clear that I snore when I’m sleeping. (Also, everyone who’s ever been exposed to my snoring thinks it’s really cute.) (I know, because they tell me so.***) My mother had her septum corrected when I was little, because it was deviated. I have never asked a doctor to determine whether or not I have a deviated septum, because a) I don’t really like people looking up my nose, and b) if I did turn out to have a deviated septum, someone would have to surgically alter my nose, and that would just not be okay.

So until I build up the courage to visit a doctor to see whether there isn’t some way to make me a person who just goes to sleep, and then stays asleep, does anyone have a didgeridoo I can borrow? (Some of all y’all are vegetarians, right? Isn’t there some sort of law that says vegetarians have to own didgeridoos?)

Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

_____
* And, yes, I am a poet, and I am completely aware of that fact.

** Goethe?

*** Of course, people also keep saying “You’re funny”, when what they really mean is “I am amused because you are so many standard deviations away from normal that I have to laugh or I would cry, and they have not yet actually distilled enough whiskey to make my crying right now okay.”

The short list:

Why I have the Metallica song “One” stuck in my head.

How it got to be 1:30 on Sunday afternoon already, even though I haven’t accomplished one single productive thing all weekend.

Why I can’t just leave well enough alone.

How I’m going to get rid of my old TV when I a) don’t have a car and b) am just different enough from my neighbors that I am not going to leave it under the tree in the courtyard.

Why my capacity to spend time, say, researching vintage watches on the Internet does not translate into a capacity to spend time looking for a job on the Internet.

Where my goddamned passport is.

Why everyone knows that Wint-O-Green LifeSavers will make sparks in the dark but no one can actually do it when I want them to.

Whether I’m actually shrinking and Mouse is actually growing, or whether my scale is just broken. (When last Goethe was here he said he thought Mouse was heavier, which is good, because he’s too skinny, but when I weighed myself just now with Mouse we weighed 120 pounds, and when I weighed myself alone I was 110. That doesn’t seem right.)

When I am ever going to stop being pathologically distractible . . .

So sometimes I forget things.

Like maybe a great song from 1986. (I totally don’t condone the video, but where else was I gonna find a free version of the song to link to?)

Or maybe a boy I used to know and then didn’t know anymore, but am happy to re-introduce myself to now, because he remembers things about me when I was young (like what, 19?) that I really kind of like being reminded of. There’s no link for that, because I am totally not going to mix my MySpace life up with my real life. But it’s weird, re-introducing yourself. I mean, telling your story to someone new, who doesn’t remember you, but is just pleased to meet you? That’s one thing. Trying to explain to someone who did once know you how you ended up where you are now? Totally different story. It’s kind of hard, actually.

Or maybe where my passport is, which is a thing I sort of need to know if I’m going to get a new job. (I just had it, when I went to the DMV, and now I have no fucking idea where I put it.)

But there are lots of things I remember too.

Like that life is short, and if you’re on your deathbed, you don’t want to think, “Gosh, if I’d only gone out dancing more.”

Like that wine has anti-oxidants, and oxidants are bad for you, and therefore anti-oxidants are good for you. (I think. I don’t know what an oxidant is. They make rust or something? Rust is sometimes very, very pretty, but it’s still no good.)

Like that if you’re in a situation that you’re unhappy in, you should just leave that situation, even if you don’t actually have a plan for what to do next, because being unhappy is bad. (And, yes, I’m thinking of my job, but really, any situation that’s bad is better left.) And you don’t actually have to slam the door on your way out, but if slamming the door makes you feel better, go for it - I made quite the point today of telling everyone, “See you next week. Oh, and, um, that’s the last time I’m going to ever say that to you! Let’s take a moment and revel in that.” (And then I did a little happy dance, as appropriate, said happy dance causing one of my co-workers to say, “Jennifer, are you doing your little happy dance again? You’re so weird.”)

Life is good. Really, really good, in fact. And I hope you’re entering your weekend with the same acknowledgement of that fact that I am. Now I have to go figure out what I’m going to wear dancing tonight. Because life is short. (And I hope you dance.)