I sat across the table from her, a friend that I don't talk to very much. One of those. I wondered why she had invited me to dinner- I'm not that much fun when I eat, really. I'm an intense eater: I focus on my food, chew everything until it's mush, and take forever to finish. It took me about an hour to finish eating a salad and a small plate of something Chartwell's, the food provider at the school's cafeteria, dreamed up that resembled nothing edible I had seen before. It looked like vegetable confetti sprinkled with chicken. Tasted like confetti, too. And I paid seven dollars for that.
We talked about shallow things, which usually makes me uncomfortable. It's not that I am so deep and brooding that the pressing issues of the world just can't go undiscussed, but I like to let conversation flow freely with as little censorship as possible. But I didn't know two of the girls there tonight very well. So I kept it simple and stuck to making stupid comments about even sillier things. For example, everyone laughed to my reaction to a friend saying, "I just swallowed a bean whole." Riveting.
Things got deepest and most personal when my friend asked me where I was living now. Of course I would have loved to say, "In this cozy little one-bedroom tucked back in the woods with a fabulous kitchen and great big windows that let all the sunshine in," but as a compulsive purveyor of the truth, good or bad, I said, "With my mother."
Even from across that great, round table, I could see the cringe in her face. "Ooh."
She didn't have to say more, but what I didn't have to say was, "At least I'm allowed to drink in my 'housing' and my bathroom is all my own."
And I'm glad I didn't. Is there really anything better about either living on campus or with your parents? It seems to me that the two are just about equal-- you have to follow rules (or at least some guidelines).
But the more I think the more I don't mind living back at home, at least not for now. I'm not throwing money I don't have away to live in a shitty apartment. I get to throw my scarce money away on nights out and plane tickets And I'm definitely not giving any more of it to Chartwell's for a seven-dollar salad I put together myself.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Autumn Limbo
Hearing the hum and puff of the furnace in my mom's house for the first time in about a year has finally made it solidly clear to me that I am home. My mother said to me as she showed my her new back-up kerosene heater, "It's a hard life we live."
I am no longer on the run in the tropics nor any other part of the world than western Pennsylvania; I am a captive now of the rain and the chill that has sunk into the little bones of my feet and hands and into the cartilage of my nose and ears.
A trip I've planned to Wisconsin in two weeks isn't going to help too much in that department, I don't think. It will be most excellent to get away for a long weekend, especially for my birthday and especially into the warm, solid arms of the man I love who unfortunately lives out there.
In the meantime, I've got about ten days of peace here in my mother's home while my sister and her boyfriend are vacationing for a wedding in North Carolina. My sister sent me a picture message of a sand dune they drove past, and I was instantly envious of the blue sky that was shamelessly illuminated by a bright sun that seems to have forsaken us Pennsylvanians, at least for now. About eight months ago, I was the one sending pictures of sunshine and sand and my minimally clothed, tanned body home to my family while they were staying up all night to keep a fire going in the wood burning stove that my dad had gotten for the house the winter before Y2K.
In case you have forgotten, or have pushed that particular winter out of your mind, our society which takes pride in being sophisticated and logical and scientific went all but crazy thinking that some grand computer-driven catastrophe would hit us and knock the world back into the 1890s. Yes, my father was among those that simply wanted to be "prepared." He got the wood burning stove in a similar manner to how he got almost anything he brought into the house: "A buddy of mine hooked me up."
It was an army-issue stove, complete with serial numbers whose meaning I had no knowledge of, rust, harsh angles and a creaking little door on the bottom half that we used to stuff paper and cardboard in and play with the flames when Dad wasn't looking.
When he moved out only a year or two later, the stove remained. No longer on the lovely cinder blocks in the middle of our otherwise cozy living room, it sat in the basement where my mother kept its fires fed to keep the heating bills as low as she possibly could. While I was away, probably on a beach somewhere in Costa Rica or Nicaragua, my family ran out of oil to run the furnace. It's expensive, and my mom got caught up in paying the rest of her bills when she had bought the oil for the entire winter and spent as little as possible while oil was well over $100/ barrel.
I called home to see how everything was, or to tell them how I was, and I led off with, "I am so burnt it hurts to just lay in the hammock on my balcony between classes."
My sister told me, "It's under 10 degrees here and the furnace isn't working."
What an asshole. What was I supposed to say then? "Nevermind, it sucks here?"
This winter I am going to spend between Pennsylvania and its even more frigid counterpart, Wisconsin. And I am going to look at my photos from last winter and dream of escaping to Costa Rica with the man I met there.
But I will be sleeping in the bed next to my mother's room, trying to make a little money tutoring and to get my ass out of college so that I can get a job. A real one that will heat my home and make that furnace hum.
I am no longer on the run in the tropics nor any other part of the world than western Pennsylvania; I am a captive now of the rain and the chill that has sunk into the little bones of my feet and hands and into the cartilage of my nose and ears.
A trip I've planned to Wisconsin in two weeks isn't going to help too much in that department, I don't think. It will be most excellent to get away for a long weekend, especially for my birthday and especially into the warm, solid arms of the man I love who unfortunately lives out there.
In the meantime, I've got about ten days of peace here in my mother's home while my sister and her boyfriend are vacationing for a wedding in North Carolina. My sister sent me a picture message of a sand dune they drove past, and I was instantly envious of the blue sky that was shamelessly illuminated by a bright sun that seems to have forsaken us Pennsylvanians, at least for now. About eight months ago, I was the one sending pictures of sunshine and sand and my minimally clothed, tanned body home to my family while they were staying up all night to keep a fire going in the wood burning stove that my dad had gotten for the house the winter before Y2K.
In case you have forgotten, or have pushed that particular winter out of your mind, our society which takes pride in being sophisticated and logical and scientific went all but crazy thinking that some grand computer-driven catastrophe would hit us and knock the world back into the 1890s. Yes, my father was among those that simply wanted to be "prepared." He got the wood burning stove in a similar manner to how he got almost anything he brought into the house: "A buddy of mine hooked me up."
It was an army-issue stove, complete with serial numbers whose meaning I had no knowledge of, rust, harsh angles and a creaking little door on the bottom half that we used to stuff paper and cardboard in and play with the flames when Dad wasn't looking.
When he moved out only a year or two later, the stove remained. No longer on the lovely cinder blocks in the middle of our otherwise cozy living room, it sat in the basement where my mother kept its fires fed to keep the heating bills as low as she possibly could. While I was away, probably on a beach somewhere in Costa Rica or Nicaragua, my family ran out of oil to run the furnace. It's expensive, and my mom got caught up in paying the rest of her bills when she had bought the oil for the entire winter and spent as little as possible while oil was well over $100/ barrel.
I called home to see how everything was, or to tell them how I was, and I led off with, "I am so burnt it hurts to just lay in the hammock on my balcony between classes."
My sister told me, "It's under 10 degrees here and the furnace isn't working."
What an asshole. What was I supposed to say then? "Nevermind, it sucks here?"
This winter I am going to spend between Pennsylvania and its even more frigid counterpart, Wisconsin. And I am going to look at my photos from last winter and dream of escaping to Costa Rica with the man I met there.
But I will be sleeping in the bed next to my mother's room, trying to make a little money tutoring and to get my ass out of college so that I can get a job. A real one that will heat my home and make that furnace hum.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Listen... Do You Want to Know a Secret?
..."Let me whisper in your ear... Closer... "
This will be the first of secrets I choose to divulge or not via the interweb. This is not my first foray into the world of blogging. I was 16, I believe, and blissfully wrapped up in the tangles of my high school life before ever being employed. My friend Buck, who eventually became my boyfriend and then my fiance and now my ex-fiance, had a little experience with blogs and was very much into anything having to do with computers or the internet. He was rarely not in front of a computer screen or a TV, although from his skinny frame you could never tell.
He knew I liked to write, and he respected me, maybe even liked me and wanted to know me better (I'd guess). So he approached me in Latin class in 10th grade and asked if I wanted to be a 'contributor' on his new web page. I was flattered, and saw it as a chance to get 'in' with a few of the artistic kids that I knew from afar. I thought this was it. I was going to be a writer and everyone would love me.
Do you think that's what happened?
Me neither. I felt overshadowed by the weighty presence of kids that were writing about their experiences with drugs and sex and booze and jobs and I had zero experience in any of those areas. All I had was a crush. And maybe a few cigarettes snuck in the woods near my house. So I wrote probably four or five blogs total, all about this crush of mine; and in the style of a 16-year-old girl, never ventured outside of that theme. The website quickly folded and now, thank god, no longer exists.
So I took my bow from blogs and believed I would never start one again. Until I became the broke-ass writing major that you're getting to know here. But don't worry, this time I've got drugs and sex and booze and jobs... well, maybe not that last one.
This will be the first of secrets I choose to divulge or not via the interweb. This is not my first foray into the world of blogging. I was 16, I believe, and blissfully wrapped up in the tangles of my high school life before ever being employed. My friend Buck, who eventually became my boyfriend and then my fiance and now my ex-fiance, had a little experience with blogs and was very much into anything having to do with computers or the internet. He was rarely not in front of a computer screen or a TV, although from his skinny frame you could never tell.
He knew I liked to write, and he respected me, maybe even liked me and wanted to know me better (I'd guess). So he approached me in Latin class in 10th grade and asked if I wanted to be a 'contributor' on his new web page. I was flattered, and saw it as a chance to get 'in' with a few of the artistic kids that I knew from afar. I thought this was it. I was going to be a writer and everyone would love me.
Do you think that's what happened?
Me neither. I felt overshadowed by the weighty presence of kids that were writing about their experiences with drugs and sex and booze and jobs and I had zero experience in any of those areas. All I had was a crush. And maybe a few cigarettes snuck in the woods near my house. So I wrote probably four or five blogs total, all about this crush of mine; and in the style of a 16-year-old girl, never ventured outside of that theme. The website quickly folded and now, thank god, no longer exists.
So I took my bow from blogs and believed I would never start one again. Until I became the broke-ass writing major that you're getting to know here. But don't worry, this time I've got drugs and sex and booze and jobs... well, maybe not that last one.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Sharing
One thing that's fun about living with three other people is germs. Maybe they got into the house by way of the Westmoreland County Community College. Or maybe UPS. But Josh, my sister's boyfriend, was the carrier for what I've now got.
He had the runniest nose I've heard since elementary school; sniffles, sneezes and hawks filled the air in this four-bedroom ex-duplex day and night. He used the family's computer, his hand all over the mouse, throughout the kitchen, on the remote that I use...
I thought I was safe because I'm not the one in the house that kisses him. In fact, I haven't hugged him since I came home from Wisconsin at the end of July, which was awkward enough to begin with. I had a feeling that he wasn't too excited to see me back after five weeks away, and I was sitting at said family computer when he came into the room and asked me how I was doing, how my trip was. I began to answer, safely seated in the wheely chair, and he spread his arms out for a hug. So I stood up and gave him a short, loose hug and sat back down. Surely these germs weren't lying dormant in his system then.
But it occured to me a couple nights ago when I heard my sister sniffling that this thing was going to get around. Hell, we share furniture, appliances, cups, silverware, the telephone... surely we would be sharing our viruses soon too.
So here I sit, hoping to squeeze in a nap somewhere between classes and praying that my family has enough Sudafed to share among the three of us, stocked up to get me through the rest of this week. My mom, naturally the oldest among us, is the only one who never gets sick. Maybe it's because she eats microwaved dinners from sterilized plastic trays and never uses this damn computer...
He had the runniest nose I've heard since elementary school; sniffles, sneezes and hawks filled the air in this four-bedroom ex-duplex day and night. He used the family's computer, his hand all over the mouse, throughout the kitchen, on the remote that I use...
I thought I was safe because I'm not the one in the house that kisses him. In fact, I haven't hugged him since I came home from Wisconsin at the end of July, which was awkward enough to begin with. I had a feeling that he wasn't too excited to see me back after five weeks away, and I was sitting at said family computer when he came into the room and asked me how I was doing, how my trip was. I began to answer, safely seated in the wheely chair, and he spread his arms out for a hug. So I stood up and gave him a short, loose hug and sat back down. Surely these germs weren't lying dormant in his system then.
But it occured to me a couple nights ago when I heard my sister sniffling that this thing was going to get around. Hell, we share furniture, appliances, cups, silverware, the telephone... surely we would be sharing our viruses soon too.
So here I sit, hoping to squeeze in a nap somewhere between classes and praying that my family has enough Sudafed to share among the three of us, stocked up to get me through the rest of this week. My mom, naturally the oldest among us, is the only one who never gets sick. Maybe it's because she eats microwaved dinners from sterilized plastic trays and never uses this damn computer...
Monday, September 14, 2009
I've Got It
The most far-reaching and all-applicable theme of my life at the moment has been chosen as the subject of this blog, and I can only believe that it was fated. After all, "Gainful Funemployment," my title, as you can well see, was only the first phrase that popped into my mind when Google politely prompted me to create a title for the beast.
I had been using the phrase all week to make people giggle or even just smile at the fact that I hadn't worked all summer. Giggles and smiles are definitely better than envy and judgment about being so lucky.
But I wouldn't call it luck. I wanted to get a job, trust me I did, but it just didn't happen for me after I came home from three months abroad in Costa Rica. In addition to readjusting to life in the US of A I had to readjust to living back home with Mom. And my sister. And her thirty-year-old boyfriend. It took me just a few days to move the bulk of my belongings from my ex-fiance's house to my mother's, but I had to change the bedroom I hadn't slept in since I was eighteen and I just kept forgetting little things that I had left at my old house.
So I moved, I was in and I was settled, but I was not readjusted. Getting daily reminders of things I had to take care of was ok when Mom lived fifteen miles away, but when she's in the bedroom next to mine it's different.
And I had to wait until my new love came to visit me from Wisconsin to really seriously look for a job. So I did, and suddenly I had been home for almost two months with no income. My checking account was getting frighteningly low and Mom's pockets have always been shallow, so I searched and I looked and I applied. All over Greensburg. And nothing. So then I bought a plane ticket to Wisconsin and I was gone again.
How does any of this make sense? I'm still working on that. Until then, maybe I should change the title to "Gainful Employment" but I don't think being a tutor for gas money can really be described as 'gainful.'
I had been using the phrase all week to make people giggle or even just smile at the fact that I hadn't worked all summer. Giggles and smiles are definitely better than envy and judgment about being so lucky.
But I wouldn't call it luck. I wanted to get a job, trust me I did, but it just didn't happen for me after I came home from three months abroad in Costa Rica. In addition to readjusting to life in the US of A I had to readjust to living back home with Mom. And my sister. And her thirty-year-old boyfriend. It took me just a few days to move the bulk of my belongings from my ex-fiance's house to my mother's, but I had to change the bedroom I hadn't slept in since I was eighteen and I just kept forgetting little things that I had left at my old house.
So I moved, I was in and I was settled, but I was not readjusted. Getting daily reminders of things I had to take care of was ok when Mom lived fifteen miles away, but when she's in the bedroom next to mine it's different.
And I had to wait until my new love came to visit me from Wisconsin to really seriously look for a job. So I did, and suddenly I had been home for almost two months with no income. My checking account was getting frighteningly low and Mom's pockets have always been shallow, so I searched and I looked and I applied. All over Greensburg. And nothing. So then I bought a plane ticket to Wisconsin and I was gone again.
How does any of this make sense? I'm still working on that. Until then, maybe I should change the title to "Gainful Employment" but I don't think being a tutor for gas money can really be described as 'gainful.'
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
And Now For Some New Ideas
I may not want to blog about scarves, in fact I'm pretty sure I don't want to.
Here are five other things I could blog about:
1. My dog
2. Cooking/Food
3. Tamburitzans/ Folk Music
4. Yoga
5. Living with Family During the Recession/Economic Hardship
Here are five other things I could blog about:
1. My dog
2. Cooking/Food
3. Tamburitzans/ Folk Music
4. Yoga
5. Living with Family During the Recession/Economic Hardship
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
What the Hell Do I Love?
I love scarves. I have a collection that is entirely too large housed in a free-standing closet that is entirely too small. I couldn't say I ever really discovered this love so much as it was imprinted upon me by a scarf from Northern Ireland that hung in my childhood bedroom. I decided when I was about to make my first trip outside the U.S. that I wanted to start an international scarf collection, but only got as far as Iceland. I forgot, during 16 days in Croatia, to buy a scarf. I was in Iceland for probably an hour or two and I purchased a very nice, thick wool scarf that I have never worn since. It hangs next to the scarf from Northern Ireland.
I have not bought scarves anywhere except the U.S. since. I have instead moved on to making my own. I don't know how to crochet, even though it is easier and faster than knitting, and I don't truly know how to follow a knitting pattern so all I can make are lovely rectangles that turn into either scarves and blankets, depending on how commited I am to the project.
Everyone in my family has recieved at least one scarf from me for Christmas and none of them wear them. I like to think of them as experimental, and a hobby that keeps me from scratching my eczematic skin and biting my nails. My ex-fiance has a scarf (or may have since I broke up with him; it's entirely possible that the scarf made its way through the Westmoreland County Waste Management system long ago) that was striped, beautiful black and gray together to make it as manly as a scarf can be, and in wonderful condition due to never being worn.
Right now I'm in the process of knitting a scarf for which I have to follow a pattern. It's my first time following instructions and it took me in excess of five times to actually get the thing started. And it's taking me longer than I ever imagined to make. It was going to be a scarf for myself, since I do love them so much and I do wear all of the ones that were purchased within the continental United States, but my boyfriend from Wisconsin likes it and I figure he may need it more than I will this winter. Although self-evaluated as 'not a scarf man' I can see him rocking it. Just over his black zip-up sweater and below his handsome jawline will rest a beautiful piece of hand-made wool art. There's just definitely no room for the damn thing in my closet.
I have not bought scarves anywhere except the U.S. since. I have instead moved on to making my own. I don't know how to crochet, even though it is easier and faster than knitting, and I don't truly know how to follow a knitting pattern so all I can make are lovely rectangles that turn into either scarves and blankets, depending on how commited I am to the project.
Everyone in my family has recieved at least one scarf from me for Christmas and none of them wear them. I like to think of them as experimental, and a hobby that keeps me from scratching my eczematic skin and biting my nails. My ex-fiance has a scarf (or may have since I broke up with him; it's entirely possible that the scarf made its way through the Westmoreland County Waste Management system long ago) that was striped, beautiful black and gray together to make it as manly as a scarf can be, and in wonderful condition due to never being worn.
Right now I'm in the process of knitting a scarf for which I have to follow a pattern. It's my first time following instructions and it took me in excess of five times to actually get the thing started. And it's taking me longer than I ever imagined to make. It was going to be a scarf for myself, since I do love them so much and I do wear all of the ones that were purchased within the continental United States, but my boyfriend from Wisconsin likes it and I figure he may need it more than I will this winter. Although self-evaluated as 'not a scarf man' I can see him rocking it. Just over his black zip-up sweater and below his handsome jawline will rest a beautiful piece of hand-made wool art. There's just definitely no room for the damn thing in my closet.
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