I’m tired. And hungry. And my eyes are burning. And I’m grumpy. And I don’t wanna go to Wal-Mart after work. But I have to. Gross. I’m behind on replying to your comments, but I will. Promise. Just been a hell of a day at sea.
Let us enjoy some tunes, shall we?
Day 21: A Song You Like with a Person’s Name in the Title
My first pick (the first that popped into my mind) was “Jolene”. And no, I don’t mean the “Jolene”. I mean this one, by Ray LaMontagne. (And no, JMF, this doesn’t mean you know my musical inclinations of late. Fine. Hmph.) I love this song. And Ray LaMontagne.
This one is perhaps an obvious selection. Or so it seems to me, but who doesn’t love Leonard Cohen? (If you don’t, stay silent or begone!)
This is definitely a favorite. Good ole Bob Dylan, with his “Visions of Johanna”.
How about “A Letter to Elise” by The Cure? Yes, don’t mind if I do.
Would this be a list of songs about women without “Billie Jean”? Thanks, Michael Jackson.
Surely you knew the Peppers would be back. I love “The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie” and so should you. There are plenty of folks who find them overrated and derivative (of themselves) and stale has beens. But they’re one of the bands I credit with music that “saved my life”. More than once. So I love them and unashamedly so. I’ve seen them in concert twice and hope to again someday.
Ahhhhh Jimi Hendrix. Here’s another good one: “The Wind Cries Mary”.
I cannot explain how much, or quite why, I love this song. I mean, really love this song. Here’s “Vera” by Pink Floyd.
I think that’ll do nicely. Hard to stop on this one, but that’ll do, pig.
What are some of your favorite songs with the name of a woman in the title?
Today’s theme is drugs or alcohol. The first thing that pops to mind for me is Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”. Seems an obvious choice, at least in my musical lexicon. Pink Floyd can be difficult for me to listen to, because they can remind me of my father. A terrible specimen of a person, he was. But I’ve been trying to “reclaim” them, as it were, because I love Floyd. Their music can speak to a lot of different things a person can (and does) go through. Besides, that person I referenced above was mostly into albums of theirs that aren’t my favorites (i.e. Ummagumma and Animals). Are they not favorites because of how I know them? Or because of my own personal tastes? I suppose I’ll never know the answer to that. But I do claim this song as my own personal choice for today’s theme.
What song(s) make you want (or not want) to partake in illicit substances?
On a completely unrelated note (although, I wish I were comfortably numb just about now), I am undergoing a colonoscopy and endoscopy tomorrow. That makes today the delightful prep day and tomorrow procedure day. I’ve written about my experiences with this in the past and do still encourage you all to tend to your health needs. The point of bringing this up now is there is a chance I’ll not be able to post tomorrow because of it. But that won’t signify my vanishing from the blogosphere. At least not yet.
Now, send tunes, because tomorrow I will be under anesthesia. Which is drugs. So give me drugs music. Today’s theme demands it.
Moving across the country on a low budget is a royal pain in the ass. And the logistics of such are putting a mild damper on my excitement. It’s more epic frustration than woe is me bullshit.
I’m about as frustrated as a crackwhore without any crack or whorish shenanigans.
I’m about as frustrated as a woman in the throes of heightened sexual tension without a partner to take it out on.
I’m about as frustrated as a politician without a Lewinsky.
I’m about as frustrated as the CIA without a brothel.
I’m about as frustrated as. As. Uhm. As someone who is frustrated.
(I just reread this and realized most of the the frustration examples are sexual in nature. Don’t read into that, please. Or do. Either way, I’m gonna stop talking now. (Except I’m not. But it won’t be about sex anymore. Why would I talk about sex? This is a motherfucking clean blog, damnit. (Fuckin’ hell, I have sex on the brain. I’m human after all. Sexbrain is NOT HELPING, SO MOTHERFUCKING STOP IT, BRAIN. (I really should delete this ridiculous parenthetical that’s only making things worse. But I’m not going to. Because this is me. Hi. My name is Stephanie, and I have sexbrain. Hi Stephanie. Welcome, Stephanie. Keep coming back – it works if you work it!))))
This Poor Little Fucker. That’s me. Seriously, that’s exactly what I look like. I had my portrait done. For seriouses.
It’s all a buncha bullshit. And there’s a whole lotta bullshit that has to be figured out and sorted.
Buncha Bullshit that has to be Figured Out and Sorted
Emotional Bullshit – Let’s get this bullshit outta the way first. My family sucks. Seriously, they can all go eat a giant bag of dicks. I don’t know where my mother is. She may or may not be in town. I’ve seen both her and my sort of grandfather at local grocery stores before. They both ignored me. Pretended I wasn’t even there. It’s no wonder grocery stores are currently my strongest triggers for acute anxiety. But the mother…is unreliable and an untreated bipolar. And she’s probably not even in the state anymore. Who knows. My siblings and my aunt (who was always my second-favorite family member – at least on that side of the family) won’t speak to me anymore, because I won’t “get over” the physical, emotional, psychological, sexual abuse and go to my so-called father’s side now as he lays dying.
So yeah. Fuck them. I’m not even gonna tell them I’m leaving. For all they know, I’ve been dead for years. Fuck. Them. Fuck. Them. Fuck. Them. And for all the Fuck Thems I type, there are a hundred more tears. Motherfuckers. Fuck Them for making me feel this way. Fuck them for throwing me out with yesterday’s garbage. Fuck Them. I don’t even love them anymore. Do I? Fuckin’ hell, I’ve gotten scary good at compartmentalization. Don’t get me wrong. I know I can’t run away from the damage they’ve done to me over the course of my life. (This is not about running away. This is about moving on to a place I’ve always wanted to be but allowed people to tell me no.) And though I can’t get them outta my head, I can get outta this town of pain and tangible memories.
Whew. There. That’s dealt with. Let’s move on to financial bullshit.
Financial Bullshit – I know I haven’t spoken about my (failed) marriage, and I don’t intend to go into details now. At this point, it’s not something I wish to speak of here. I bring it up now just to make a single point: I was unemployed when we separated. But I was the one left saddled with the entire mortgage and anything else that goes into the typical running of a household. Since he took half of the savings account, it didn’t take long for me to go through every cent as I looked for a job in a shitty economy and shitty area for good employment opportunities. By the time I landed something decent, aside from little temp jobs, I had about 200 bucks to my name. And I seriously thought I was going to go default on the mortgage. I didn’t. In fact, I’ve never missed a single payment. But what that means for me now? I don’t have savings. I have some cash stashed in a box where all of my tutoring cash goes. But it’s “nothing to write home about,” as the saying goes. I’m fine. I pay all of my bills (except the student loan one which I simply can’t pay at this point). And they’re paid on time. I don’t do without food, water, shelter, books, etc. So I work full-time for an enormous corporation, and I’m broke. But only when it comes to anything outside of the basics.
Let’s see what the news is today. Oh yes, still broke as fuck. Off to work I go, like a good little mindless citizen!
However, this does throw a big wrench into the logistics of moving across country. Do y’all know how much it would cost to hire a moving company to move one set of bedroom furniture, about twenty boxes of books, some dishes and a couple of chests? The lowest quote I’ve gotten thus far was about $3,500. Their competitors said $4,500. U-Haul would be about $1,700, but then there is mileage and fuel costs to consider on top of that. So. What it looks like I’ll have to do is drive myself up there with my cats and whatever I can fit in the car. Leave the rest in storage. And sleep on an air mattress in the tiniest, cheapest apartment I can find to start out in.
This also means that I can’t afford to let people at work know about this until the very last minute. Because I can’t afford to quit my job while I tidy up the house for the market and dig in deep on a job search in Seattle. It also means I can’t just move up there and find a job that way, because I’d have greater odds of landing something good if I were actually there. But I can’t do that.
Then there’s the question of where I’ll live in the interim.
Housing Bullshit – As the regular Peopleaneous know, I’m in the (lengthy) process of preparing my house to put on the market. This involves the ex, as his name is still on the deed. And the house is filled with a lot of his stuff. (Including the guns that I couldn’t get rid of, because they weren’t mine…and I did not want to deal with the explosion that would ensue if I’d gotten rid of them.) So. He’s been over a lot on weekends and evenings. Going through his stuff. Culling stuff. Fixing stuff (very very slowly) and occasionally sabotaging my efforts by doing shit like parking in the middle of the yard after days of heavy rain and rutting the fucker up. That will do wonders for the curb appeal. Fucking wonderful. Anyway. ANYFUCKINGWAY. This isn’t about him. And I said I didn’t wanna talk about him. And I don’t. So. The point is, this is lengthy.
And I have an issue that I don’t know how to resolve.
Issue the First: Selling the house is going to be difficult. First, the market it is in has done nothing but go down down down since I/we bought the place. Second, he never maintained things. And I wasn’t allowed to, in the sense that… No. No. I’m just gonna leave that there. I’m not going to make this about him. He used to be great, and then he lost his way. And then we both changed. I’m gonna leave it at that. Point is, the house wasn’t kept up. Things are broken. Things are damaged. Things have been neglected. Then the other day, the fucking city tore down a tree. Fucking ass sucking dickwhistles. And in the few years I’ve been there by myself, I was mostly so mired down in a bottomless pit of the darkest depression I’ve known. Too far down to even think it was worth getting out of bed to take care of the house. I was in total fuck you, fuck me, fuck the world, fuck the universe, fuck the house, fuck the job, fuck it all mode.
Issue the Second: What if the house sells before I land a job in Seattle? Does that mean I have to sign a 6-month contract on some apartment in town? That would make me lose a lot of money if I found a job just after moving. Plus, who the fuck wants to move twice?
Issue the Third: What if I land a job before the house sells? How do I finagle that? I can’t afford to rent property in Seattle while simultaneously paying a mortgage. Seriously, it’s not like I’m CEO material. I won’t be making that kinda money. So how does that work?
Which leads me to jobby bullshit.
Jobby Bullshit – Should I even be looking for jobs at this point? Is it premature? It’s premature, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be foolish not to? Maybe someone out there thinks I’m worth waiting for. It’s possible, right? Or maybe I could land a job and let them know that when the house sells, I’ll need to fly back down for paperwork and shit. But that brings me back to the issue of rent plus mortgage. No can do, buckaroo. The good news is that I’ve secured three solid references. Two of you read this blog on occasion. Be good to me, fellas! Pretty please.
Oh, yes. More Jobby Bullshit. Another issue I’m having is that I’d like to pursue something that I may actually enjoy. Something with writing or editing would be fucking epic. I can even write without using “fuck” all the time. Promise. The problem is, my degrees are not in English or Journalism or any of those other “required” degrees for writing jobs. The problem is none of my work experience is writing related, aside from some freelance gigs on the side. The problem is, I don’t have writing samples to submit. And I sure as fuck don’t want any potential employers finding this spot: a. because of all the fucking that goes on around here and 2. because then I’d never be able to rant or vent about work!
But I don’t want to do the kind of thing I’m doing right now. And I also don’t want to do the whole Executive Assistant/Administrative thing. I’ve done it. I’m damn fucking good at it. But it’s no fun. It’s draining. It’s meaningless to me. And it makes me feel the time, my life, tick tick ticking away.
~
So I don’t know what to do. More specifically, I don’t know how to approach all of this. I’m sure there are other issues that I had in mind before I began this post. But I’ve been interrupted countless times because work. And also because my mind is in a dirty, dirty place right now. So it’s hard to focus. Anyway, this fucker is nearly 2,000 words already. Probably about 1,900 more than it really needs to be! But my name is not Concisephanie for a reason!
I would like to ask something of my dear Peopleaneous.
If there are any of you out there who have done this before and have a clearer vision on the logistics of something like this, please hit me up. I’d love some advice.
If there are any of you out there who have made major career switches without the official qualifications to do so, I’d love some tips there as well.
And if any of you are in Seattle and hiring, pick me! MEMEMEMEMEME!
In the meantime, I’m going to keep trudging forward. This is my year. I’m taking charge of my life. And I’m still holding on to Rollins’ words.
GO!
(Please forgive any egregious errors. I don’t feel like re-reading this right now. Ha! Some copy-editor!)
grees are not in English or Journalism or any of those other “required” degrees for writing jobs. The problem is none of my work experience is writing related, aside from some freelance gigs on the side. The problem is, I don’t have writing samples to submit. And I sure as fuck don’t want any potential employers finding this spot: a. because of all the fucking that goes on around here and 2. because then I’d never be able to rant or vent about work!
stephellaneous.wordpress.com 