Dad's Back.

Oh holiday weekends. When 3-day weekends approach and everyone is preparing for their 3 consecutive days off, I'm usually preparing for the impending disaster. I do not get 3-day weekends. At least not under normal circumstances. If we're required (like we were this week) to take a Monday or a Friday off, you can bet your bungalow that I'll be coming in over the weekend to make up for the lost time.

I could always not come in and take my vacation like everyone else. I could push all my worries to the side and not think at all about the disaster awaiting me when I return. But then that day will come when I'll have to go back to work and all hell will break loose. I will have four times as much work to do, everyone will be angry, and impatient, and paging me on the over head to remind me of it. I'll end up working my butt off while getting yelled at for things beyond my control and then I'll go home and cry myself to sleep. No thank you. So instead I come in. I work my butt off, and pray that everything will be okay after the holiday.

So Sunday I worked, and worked, and worked some more. Then I went to my Dad's for family fun time.

Dad and TOC spent the past couple of weeks motoring around Italy. They're home now, safe and sound so Sunday (after a long day of work) we all went over to their place for dinner, birthday cake, and TONS of pictures.

It was super cute, and Dad was happy and excited.

He was less excited about my trip, mostly because he's convinced I'm driving out into the wilderness, you know, where there are no trails or roads or maps and it's hotter than the surface of the sun and everything can kill you. No matter how many times I tried to explain that I was NOT going off-road or into anything that could be misconstrued as wilderness, alone or otherwise, he didn't seem to get it. He did feel a little better after I promised to take (and use) his GPS thingy, but the down side of that compromise is that I have to meet him on my lunch break Thursday so we can drive around and Dad can be sure I know how to use it.

I also got the 'bring water' speech several dozen times. "Like, gallons. Not bottles." also popped up a surprising number of times, along with "you don't realize how much water you need to drink just to stay alive..." You know, like I haven't been living in the desert my whole life. And like I'm not regularly out hiking in the summer sun.

Besides, you and I both know, one small water bottle is totally enough for 9 days in the desert, right? ;)

I love my Dad, he's my favorite, and I really do appreciate all the annoying little reminders he's constantly giving me. I love that he cares, and I love that he worries. I really do. I just love it a little less when it's happening.

Song of the day for Sunday is Cherry Coloured Funk.

I'd never have to see the day again. . .

I'm not really even sure where Saturday went exactly. It was here, and then it wasn't. The hours just slipped through my fingers like sand, I guess. I feel like we might have done a stupid amount of laundry, but I can't really verify that. All I know is that at some point some laundry got done, and at some other point it was Saturday. The two may or may not have overlapped.

I'm mercilessly bored these days. I'm counting down the days until the big fossil trip, and as a result everything between here and there is just an endless shade of boring. I can't go anywhere, or do anything as we are saving all of our pennies. So mostly I'm just sitting on the couch watching the hour hand chase the minute hand around the clock face. It's lame. Uber lame, if you will. And it makes me miss you and all of the ridiculous things we could be discussing while rolling around on the floor in fits of laughter.

Instead, Goose and I are mostly listening to Velvet Underground, waiting for the time to pass, and lamenting the state of things.

Song of the Day for Saturday is After Hours:




1, 2, 3
If you close the door, the night could last forever
Leave the sun shine out and say, "Hello to never"
All the people are dancing and they're havin' such fun
I wish it could happen to me
But if you close the door, I'd never have to see the day again
If you close the door, the night could last forever
Leave the wineglass out and drink a toast to never

Oh, someday I know someone will look into my eyes
And say, "Hello, you're my very special one"
But if you close the door, I'd never have to see the day again
Dark cloudy bars, shiny Cadillac cars
And the people on subways and trains
Looking grey in the rain as they stand disarrayed
Oh the people will dwell in the dark

And if you close the door, the night could last forever
Leave the sun shine out and say, "Hello to never"
All the people are dancing and they're having such fun
I wish it could happen to me
'Cause if you close the door, I'd never have to see the day again
I'd never have to see the day again
Once more
I'd never have to see the day again

This is not how summer should be...

Well the hospital's full. Or hovering dangerously near the bursting-at-the-seams point.

Summer is not supposed to be like this. Census (before the prisoners came, anyway) was dependent entirely on ASU and snowbirds. This meant that while winters were predictably chaotic my summers were lazy and peaceful.

Now, not so much.

(And I want my lazy summers back!) Don't get me wrong. I don't miss the short hours or the constantly getting sent home early and the very very small paychecks, but I do miss having a couple of sweet, sweet weeks a year when I didn't want to just come home and die.

Oh well.

As a result, I've been very busy. And as I'm sure you could have predicted, also very grumpy. Not unreasonably so, but as grumpy as the number of hours I've been forced to work can justify.

I'm planning my trip out and I'm going to need your address again so that I can send you postcards and fossils.

Song of the day for Friday is by The Softies:






If I beg you will you smother me
Just to put me out of my constant misery
This is too much for me to bear
You'd know this too if you ever had been there

I hope you have sweet dreams
And I hope You never leave me

I wander thorugh these empty halls
As the moon casts shadows of just me upon the walls
My time wasted in endless regret
While you sleep away your troubles and forget

I hope you have sweet dreams
And I hope you never leave me

Rock Lobster!

Happy Thursday!

Song of the Day! Wednesday!

And this for Today!

I love you you know, to a ridiculous degree. And I seem to be a little high on that today. Between the cheerleader kicking herself in the face giggle fits and the joyful stomping through my crazy days (through the majesty of song) I'm a little delirious. I NEED you to come home. Just for a few hours okay? We'll roll around on the floor and make fun of ourselves until we can't take it anymore or Goose is forced to kill us. Either way. Love and stuff. From us to you.

And this for Monday:

Oh Nostalgia.

Damn you for invoking the spirit of days past! Now I'm force to pull out the fuzzy notebook and relive the glory days! In that spirit, here's this for Sunday:

Fishy fishy days

Today we had grand plans that went predictably awry. We went to Goodwill to look for a fish tank (as if I need anymore!) and to find some pants for Goose as her existing ones are now way too big. We found pants, but no suitable tanks. We fed Lucy and went home. We were going to go hit up the swap meet but that didn't happen. The tiger barbs were fighting because the school is too small (you've got to have a big school to keep down the aggression) and one of them jumped out of the tank. So we decided to head out to the store to pick up some more.

We went to an Aquarium Arts because frankly, they have a better selection for enthusiasts. It was a good call. While they didn't have a lot that we were interested in, they did have gold nugget plecos, which was REALLY exciting. They're not particularly easy to come across here, and unlike common plecos they stay pretty small. (6 inches instead of 24 inches). So we picked one up. He's super cute, and living it up in the discus tank. Did I mention we got discus? Well, we did. They were languishing away at Aquarium Arts for I don't know, months, and finally we just couldn't bear it anymore and bought them. They're fantastic little fish and they swim up against your hands until you pet them. It's ridiculous.

We didn't find barbs there, well, we did, but they were too small and the JD would have eaten them so we went to another store. We picked up a spiny peacock eel (he's ridiculously cute) and some more barbs. It was super fun and Goose is really really happy about the eel.

That's about all I know. Miss you tons.

Song of the Day is Bring on the Wonder:

I Shouldn't Have Survived...

It's official. I've got a problem. I am completely fascinated with said show and spent the majority of Friday reliving horrible things people have lived through. It indulges some dark side of me that likes to hear about terrible things as well as the part of me that loves to hear about stubborn people overcoming said dark things. It also just feeds my own steely determination to die only on my own terms and as a result, I've now convinced myself I can live through anything. (Unless of course I, for some reason, don't want to.)

Bring it on universe.

Speaking of living through anything, did I mention that I survived Mother's Day without one bitter nervous breakdown? It was kind of glorious. My mother is sort of a raw nerve (as if that isn't obvious) and I'm currently completely paranoid that she will find out when I'm graduating and show up in some sort of bizarre attempt to derail my life. (As if that were even possible.) I also have this recurring dream where someone calls to tell my my mother has died and I find myself over-joyed, burdens lifted fromst my back and feeling generally euphoric. I then go to her funeral to make sure she's really dead (because, you know, that kind of evil is eternal) and of course she's not she's not. Instead she's standing there laughing. Then she stabs me in the neck and cackles over my crumpled body as I bleed to death. It's really unpleasant. (Though, I'm pretty sure that thanks to all those episodes of I Survived and I Shouldn't Be Alive that I'd totally find a way to live through it. But that's another point altogether.) ANYWAY, the day went off without a hitch. We went up into the mountains, had a picnic, and pretended the world was new and all was well. It was lovely.

Song of the day for Friday: Raw Sugar

Do Re Mi

Well Dear Friend, today is going to be a good day. Both because it can't possibly be any worse than yesterday, and because I really just deserve it. I feel better at any rate. Mostly because, at least in terms of work, anything the universe throws at me will pale in comparison to yesterdays apocalypse.

I stayed up too late last night watching 'I Shouldn't Be Alive' (Which I just had to watch after I saw South Park's I Should Never Have Gone Ziplining episode.) As a result I am yet again exhausted, but in pretty good spirits.

I've been rocking out to Woodie Guthrie, so sing along with me will you?



Lots of folks back East, they say, is leavin' home every day,
Beatin' the hot old dusty way to the California line.
'Cross the desert sands they roll, gettin' out of that old dust bowl,
They think they're goin' to a sugar bowl, but here's what they find
Now, the police at the port of entry say,
"You're number fourteen thousand for today."

Oh, if you ain't got the do re mi, folks, you ain't got the do re mi,
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi.

You want to buy you a home or a farm, that can't deal nobody harm,
Or take your vacation by the mountains or sea.
Don't swap your old cow for a car, you better stay right where you are,
Better take this little tip from me.
'Cause I look through the want ads every day
But the headlines on the papers always say:

If you ain't got the do re mi, boys, you ain't got the do re mi,
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi.

Some days.

You know Dear Friend, yesterday was bad. I spent the overwhelming majority of my shift dealing with issues that were neither my fault or my responsibility because there is simply no one else to handle them. I stayed an hour and a half over late and still got only a very small portion of my work done. Then I went home both exhausted and frustrated.

I came in this morning looking forward to a day that couldn't possibly be any worse, and then somehow it was.

So
Much
Worse

In ways I had both neither anticipated or prepared for.

In fact by noon I was so far away from okay that it would take the light from okay 40,000 years to reach the desolate place I was trapped in.

I spent the first seven hours of my shift dealing with the biggest mess I could have imagined. Worst case scenario kind of mess. It took all day. And whats more, it took all day because I am neither equipped or qualified to make any of the decisions needed to resolve it. It was soul crushing and terrible and I spent much of the day weeping out of stress and frustration at my desk while trying to untangle the disaster. I made approximately seven million phone calls. I did the very best I could, which was by no means good enough, and for the second day in a row I did only a very very very small amount of the actual work I am paid for.

I'm broken and a little jaded. I spent a long time today chastising myself for working so hard at everything. For needing to do everything well. For caring so damn much about all of the menial things that I need to get done every day. I sat around for a while feeling sorry for my self. Knowing that I put myself into these situations. Knowing that I inevitably work too hard and get taken advantage of, then sit bewildered at how it has managed to happen again.

My dad always told me to work hard, to do my best and that I would be rewarded for it. That's not really true though. If I were smart I would work exactly as hard as everyone else and not any harder. I would walk away from things that don't fall neatly into my job description. And more than that, I would learn to not worry about any of it.

I don't work that way though. I'm an all or nothing kind of girl. And on days like today that drives me nuts.

I survived though.
I did what I could.
I came home.
And the world kept spinning.

At least tomorrow can't be any worse.

And if it is, then you know...it's probably a sign from the universe that I need to quit my job.


I hope your day was better than mine. It couldn't have been much worse (I hope). I miss you terribly and I hope you come home again soon. Lots of love.

Sleeping the Summer Away

Saturday I slept well into the afternoon. I kept waking up all sticky and gross from the heat and each time evaluated whether or not getting up was worth the effort. It never was. At least not until my back started hurting. Then I stumbled my way into the living room and spent the rest of the day updating my computer and my iTunes Library.

I was hoping that if I uploaded all those (cleverly unlabeled) CD's I burned years ago I would find my ThouShaltNot in there somewhere. I however, had no such luck. We checked Zia, but they didn't have anything by them either so I'm just going to have to purchase it online. *le sigh* (But I want it NOW, she whines)

Song Of The Day is Turn! Turn! Turn!

Miralces!

That being said, Friday seemed to last forever. Most days really seem to last forever right now. It's hot. And it's sticky. Even indoors. And it just makes everyone irritable and sluggish.

Friday night we were laying about, our bodies having fused with the sofa at this point, listening to the sweat drip of our brains. All of our shows have now ended and we've resorted to watching old episodes of Ghost Hunters out of desperation.

Anywho, somewhere in the middle of the train wreck that is season 3, I thought to myself, 'hey, I wonder if my old computer will work now'. So I dug it out from its grave under the couch and surprise of surprises it charged up, turned on, and is working great.

Victory.
Is.
Mine.

I thought it just might need some time to dry out. Apparently we had different ideas of just exactly how long 'some time' was, but that's okay. It works now and I am so so so so so happy to have my music back I could just weep!

Song of the day is You Can Sleep While I Drive

Song of the Day

From Old Blue Eyes himself:

Song of the Day For Thursday

Semester done!

Well Dear Friend, it's finished. Over. Complete.

Thank the Gods.

The final-final was taken, completed in exactly the amount of time allotted, and I only have one class left to graduate. How on earth I'm finally finished with this thing I'll never know. What I'm going to do when it's over, well, I'm trying my hardest not to think about it.

Song for today : Men in Love (with each other!)




P.S. I miss you even more terribly then ever. You come home now. Okay. Great. *kisses*

Song of the day!

Song of the day!

Song of the day!

Song of the day!

Well, at least I was prepared.

Well Dear Friend. Today should have been my final-final. Should have been. That is, if things always went the way I wanted them to. Instead of...you know...the way they are.

As you may or may not recall I missed class on Tuesday due to unforeseen conflicts with yet another final. As a result I was slightly unsure of when exactly this final-final was. I checked my notes and found that I had very diligently written "final exam May 5, 2012, do not forget" in several places.

May 5 is a Saturday.

Damnit.

How that happened I'll never know. So I took a gamble and showed up for class two hours early at the approximate time when I assumed the exam should begin. It however, was not today. So instead I sat. For. Hours. I've lost my phone (yet again!), and I didn't bring anything other than a pencil so it was a really boring couple of hours. I sat on a bench and after some time noticed there were quite a few larvae/inch wormy things inching their way all over me. I even found one on my neck. It was not my finest hour.

After that I couldn't get the crawling feeling off of my skin so I abandoned my bench and wandered about the campus. I try to avoid going anywhere where I might be forced to share personal space with people (because someone might try to talk to me and then my world would END, lol) so that eliminated anywhere air conditioned or with computers or coffee pretty quickly. The sun was starting to set and the weather was nice so instead I weaved about the buildings for an hour or so. The Palo Verde Trees are all blooming and everything is covered in yellow pollen. It's very, very pretty, but also very itchy. Mostly in the face region. I sneezed my way through class and went home.

I still have one final left.

I find this to be cruel and unusual punishment.

Cruel and unusual punishment indeed.

I'm busting out Whitney Huston for today. Deal with it. (Also I love you. Lots)

Finals Week Blows

But it's mostly over. I'm still not sleeping or really eating much and I'm exhausted and cranky, sometimes borderline paranoid, but getting through it nonetheless.

Yesterday was terrible and long. I wore my old pair of sketchers shape-ups to work yesterday. I got them when my foot was broken because they were the only shoes I could find that were the same height as my cast, and I'd forgotten why it is I stopped wearing them.

Somewhere around 10:30 (am) when both my knees had swollen up and my spine felt like crushed glass I remembered. Right. So by the time I got home I was a whimpering, pouty mess. Goose made me ceviche, but it didn't make me feel better. Instead I ate too much and made myself sick. I tried to take my last final online but the trackpad on my laptop decided to spaz out on me. I ended up taking it anyway through a lot of swearing and some frustrated crying. I got an A so I guess it all worked out. It just made me crazy. It also caused me to miss my math class, and since it was the last class before the final, I'm unsure of when or where, exactly, that is. My teacher doesn't have email (WHO DOES THAT?!) so I'm going to have to figure it out on my own. I'm sure it will be fine.

Anyway, that's all I know.





Oh yeah, and I found this sign in Jerome, doesn't it just make you happy inside? Love you.