catching up, after three years

And the worst part is, I am right back where I started, it seems.
I had some easier times in there, with a steady - but soul-killing - job, so I wasn't freaking out all the time about health insurance.
The money was lousy, I was ten years over qualified for the job, and eventually I couldn't take it anymore.
So I quit. I got on J's insurance, and I went back to freelancing. Which was going just fine, until it was not. So now I am living on J's income, completely, looking for work (there is none), watching so much Law & Order that I might as well sign up for the Bar Exam, and generally freaking out about money most of the time.

I'm doing other stuff, I'm doing a good bit of writing, which makes me feel better. Surprisingly, to me, and every one else, I'm writing screenplays. J is helping, obviously. But I had a good idea for a feature, and he says the idea is the hardest part, he knows how to do all the rest, and he's teaching me.

I've also been teaching myself how to use the video editing programs we have on our computer, which is entertaining, but unless we can get Final Cut, not going to garner any money.

I was having some TERRIBLE migraines over the last three years, but I found the best doctor in the world, and now I am down to one every 6 weeks or so (knock wood), and we consider that under control. He does. I would consider "none" under control, but we compromise.
I had one last week, and now I have this thing called a "rebound headache", which is almost as annoying. Not as painful, but god. Such a drag.

I lost my dad in Dec 2005, which may have been when I stopped posting. I didn't feel like I had much to say for a long time. My dad's dead. And... I was so not ready for him to go, they had told us at Johns Hopkins he was fine. FINE. And then eight months later he went to the ER in some pain and died three days later. Longest three days in history, but at least he wasn't in any pain by then. He had no idea where he was. It was horrible.

I probably still think about him every day, but baseball season is the hardest time for me. I'm still not used to the fact that I can't call my dad up to talk about baseball in general, or a specific game, or spectacular play.

I'm a right ray of sunshine. I don't know that anyone would read this who doesn't already know it all. But it's 5:30am and I can't sleep and I damn sure can't be clever, so this is what we got, for now.

Peace.

I had lunch today one table over from Jimmy Fallon. I still think his movies kind of suck (I have only seen one, and that was kind of by accident, but it definitely sucked) and I don't like him much, but now I know why he is famous.
It is because he is almost frighteningly good looking in person. Seriously. It does not translate to the screen in any way. I could not stop staring at him.
Also, Jason went to high school with him, but sadly wasn't with me at lunch, so I didn't get introduced, which is probably just as well, as I might have tried to lick his face or something.

For some reason, and maybe you already know this, but for some reason I love Wisconsin. I have been there a few times, mostly for work, but also a couple times to visit Krista, and I just love it there, beyond all reason. If I had to live in the midwest, I would live in Madison (which is really just like Woodstock in almost every way, only I think Madison has more head shops per capita, and decidedly fewer trees and zero mountains, so in fact it's almost nothing like Woodstock).
What has to be a disproportionate number of my friends are people who are originally from Wisconsin or still actually live there. I fucking love Wisconsin. I even love the word.
So back on point, sort of, I was just telling my friend Michael (famous original Michael, the only one of at least ten Michaels that doesn't get a modifier in front of his name) how much I love Wisconsin, which is where he is from, and he told me that was really very sad.
And then he read me his daughter's sixth-grade earth science homework, and when she stepped away, told me that she's a total moron. I love him so much.

BUT, the whole point I was ACTUALLY getting ready to make is that I have had the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in my head for several days, and it's not going away.
I have this theory I've come up with, that everyone over the age of 36 knows all the words, and anyone under that age has simply never heard the song at all. And it has, as I said, been running through my head for several days for reasons that I probably won't go into, because, intensely boring.
But also because Wisconsin is mentioned in the song, twice if you know that "Whitefish Bay" is actually in Wisconsin (although: update: the W. Bay mentioned in the song is apparently in Michigan, but lalalala I can't hear you), which I do, because Famous Original Michael is actually from there.
It's a very 70s tune, dude, by Gordon Lightfoot, and if you DO know it, I apologize because now it is stuck in your head too.
It's about a shipwreck that I (fairly) recently discovered was not some sort of historical event, but actually took place like three months before the song came out. I think I have known that for several years, but I definitely grew up thinking otherwise.

So anyway, my theory is as above, and I am getting ALL KINDS of evidence that seems to indicate that this is correct, via email from my confused friends. I feel like a total scientist right now. I think I will probably get a grant, or a Fullbright (unless those are the same thing) or at least a decent powerpoint presentation out of this. Or maybe only a nice fan letter to Gordon Lightfoot, unless he is dead. In which case, nothing.

Well, the satisfaction of a job well done.

Cross your fingers and toes, please

I had an interview, before I got the job I have now, for a really terrific job.
It's at a real publisher, a real PRESTIGIOUS publisher, working on the coolest stuff in the world.
The stuff I'd be working on, which is what we in the industry call "books plus" is pretty similar to what I'm doing now, but better. It's like they are having the ideas that my company is stealing.
Right before the weekend of the fourth, I heard from a friend that this job, which was a possibly freelance situation when I first heard about it, is now a real full-time position, and that the director over there had asked him to ask me to call her, if I was still interested.
He told me the salary range, which goes up to a number that's $15K more than I'm making now. That's how much I *should* be making. It's what I'm worth, with the experience I have.
The job I have now was vacant for almost six months, because they need someone with my experience, but they are not willing to pay for it. I'd say they are paying me a salary that someone with 7 or 8 years in the business might expect. I have fifteen.
So I called. And sent an email. I heard back from the hiring director, who asked me to send her a copy of my resume. I did that, and then, silence. Until this week - the HR director called me on Wednesday. We chatted a bit, I dazzled her with my knowledge of all things books plus, and when she asked me how much money I was looking for, I named the top of the range I'd been told, that beautiful number that's $15,000 more than I'm making. She didn't blink (well, I couldn't hear her blink over the phone, if she did), and she asked me to come in the next day.
I went in yesterday, met the HR person and sat down again with the woman doing the hiring. I was there an hour and a half, total. I left with a very good feeling. I think I might get this job.
I would love it. The things I don't like about my current job (the crappy pay, and the whole pretending to be a publishing company but in reality so not) would be better. I'd have total autonomy. I'd be traveling again, and maybe fulfill my lifelong dream of needing to get extra pages for my passport. I'd be bringing home an extra grand a month, and since I'm about to be paying $350 in rent, I could get out of debt so fast. It's a huge media conglomerate, so the benefits kick ass. I might even get free cable (that's a hint).
I suppose I'd have a few minutes of feeling kind of guilty for leaving the job I have now after three months, but to be honest, I've pretty much already completed the process of rationalizing that away.
If you have any positive energy, send some my way. I could stand for something good to happen in my life.

My new landlady is a huge racist.

I totally forgot about this, but Jason's landlady? Mrs. R? Hates Jews. She told me that one day, in exquisite detail. And I just stood there listening to her.
I didn't agree with her or anything, but I didn't say a word.
She had seen my name, I think, on a piece of mail (she's not all that into the whole privacy-of-mail issue, and sometimes she just takes his/our mail into her house and keeps it for a few days before passing it on), and seeing that I have an Italian last name, she asked me one day if I was Italian. (She is from Italy, although actually she's Sicilian, to her that's a big distinction.)
This was back when I wasn't working all that much, so I was there quite often during the day, living with / off of Jason, and she'd ring the bell every few days to tell me not to leave without turning the heat down, or to complain about the bill for whatever she uses to heat the house, or to ask me to pour bleach down the drain of the shower (I have no idea why). Mostly I think she was just being nosy and seeing if I was there.
So she asked me if I was Italian, I get that sometimes (when I worked at Rizzoli, I think I got a promotion at least in part due to my boss thinking I was Italian), because I have such a distinctly Italian last name but I don't LOOK Italian, and I told her, no, I'm mostly Irish. Which turned out to be the right answer, because she had some Jewish tenants once who I guess had some candles burning and almost burned her house to the ground, to hear her tell it. And as a result, she hates Jews and WILL NOT ALLOW THEM TO LIVE IN HER HOUSE.
I just stood there listening to all this. I don't really self-identify as Jewish any more, but I was raised Jewish, my dad's side of the family are Jewish, and I should not allow people to say things like that to me.
Of course I was standing there thinking that if I said anything, she'd throw me and possibly also Jason out onto the street. And she probably would have. But god, I HATE when that shit happens and I don't say anything. I feel like one of those French women after WWII who had their heads shaved because they'd had relations with Nazis. I feel like a collaborator.
Of course, I really can't stand her now. I wasn't all that crazy about her anyway, because she invades J's privacy all the time.
He seems not to mind that she sometimes lets herself in when he's not there, and he reminds me that she hasn't raised the rent in four years. Which, great, but I don't know that she can raise the rent, because I'm pretty sure this is not a legal apartment. I promise you that she is not reporting the rent as income, and the plumbing was apparently put in by one of her idiot sons, because it sucks.
It's a basement apartment, you see, and there have been floods. Floods of really gross-smelling water. I think the floods happen because the pipes that take the water out of the house are not big enough. So disgusting.

None of this is even the point. The point is, now she likes me a whole bunch, because J has lived for four years like he's in a flophouse or something. I mean, I threw away bills and scraps of paper the other day that were dated as far back as 2003, and she loves that I'm cleaning the place up and making it as nice an apartment as it can possibly be. And I *want* her to like me, so that she doesn't complain that I'm living there.
And she is a person who goes around having conversations about how she hates Jews. I don't know what to do about this. It's very disturbing, and I'm afraid to say anything to her, even to tell her that I have lots of Jewish friends and I like them fine and I don't want to talk about how awful Jews are.
It's upsetting. I feel like this makes me a very bad person, or at least a very weak person. Like I would have tried to pass as a non-Jew when they were rounding my people up and shipping them off to the camps. This is worse, because it's not to save my life, it's just to keep the peace. I'm disgusted with myself for wanting her to like me. I'm disgusted that I don't have enough courage even to ask her not to be a horrible anti-semite when she's talking to me,
I wish I'd had the nerve to tell her to shut it when she went off on that rant. I hope that if she ever tries to bond with me again over how much the Jews all suck, I'll have the balls to tell her to stop.
But I know I won't.

I just hate Sicilians because they are such lousy plumbers.

I'm going where now?

I was just reading over my last (endlesly long and boring) post, correcting the odd spelling and subject/verb agreement problem, and I noticed that I'd just tossed off a little comment about having to spend the last weekend in July in Tennessee, at J's family reunion.
Can we talk for a minute about the amount that I do not want to be going to this thing?
First, it's in Tennessee. Why would anyone voluntarily go to Tennessee? I think it's going to be ungodly hot there. I am quite sure there's nothing to do there, although - it's not like we're going to be there for any longer than the reunion itself. We won't have lots of down time to spend soaking up the local culture. You know, if there were any.
I know that's very snobbish of me, but tough shit. I am not one of these people who can't enjoy myself anywhere but New York. I can function outside of cities. I love, for instance, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and would gladly spend a week or more there at any time of the year, including the really cold parts.
I am dying to go to Austin, Texas. I can be persuaded to go to Richmond, which is also in the South. Once I went to a wedding in Alabama, but I kind of felt the same about that trip as I do about this Tennessee one. At least this time I don't have to wear a hideous tafetta dress.
I don't have any desire to go to Knoxville.
I'm kind of terrified to meet Jason's family, too. I think they will hate me. I think they are going to think I'm some sort of sex criminal because of how much older I am, I think they're going think I'm some big-city snob, or some pretentious intellectual, and if they find out I'm Jewish, I am pretty sure they will set me on fire. I think they will find the fact that I have a tattoo on my ankle that's in Elvish to be utterly baffling. To be fair, many, many people find this baffling. Explaining it can be exhausting, Perhaps I can think of a lie ("It doesn't mean anything, it's just a pretty design") or maybe I can wear socks the whole time.
I know I'm being a terrific snob about the family. It's a defense mechanism, you know. Jason's mom loves me. She loves me so much that she almost cried when he told her that because we're both pretty broke, he was thinking of coming alone. She actually DID cry when I told her that I was coming. She offered to help pay for my ticket, and believe me, she can't afford to do that. She's a lovely, loving woman, and she's the only reason I'm going at all. Well, I guess Jason wants me to be there and meet his family, that's the another reason.
I said something to my shrink like, "I guess this really isn't the behavior of a man who's desperately looking for a way out of a relationship." Which, you know, I was joking, but not entirely. Part of me still can't figure out why someone like Jason wants to be with me. I don't think I'm good enough for him.
I think this is leftover lack of self-esteem from Rob, so thanks, buddy.

The reunion could not be more poorly timed. It's a whole other weekend that we could have used to move. But we'll work that out. It will be okay. It has to be okay, as we've bought our tickets already.
So I'm going to stop worrying about his family hating me, stop wishing I could drop ten pounds in the next two weeks, and go.
One thing I can't stop doing, though, is feeling terribly guilty about the fact that I haven't been down to see my dad in like two months. It will be at least the middle of August before I can get down there, and I'm not telling my parents that I'm going to this reunion, because they're pissed off already that I'm not flying down to Richmond every weekend. Okay, that's not fair, but I should have gone down there before now, and now that I have to move and go to this thing, it's too late.
There's nothing I can do about any of this, except make the best of it all, make the place in Brooklyn into a home for both of us, start paying off my bills, and get down to see my parents as soon as I can. Well, I can whine about it here.

I think my old blog was MUCH more interesting and entertaining than this one, I hope something amusing or interesting or GOOD happens to me soon, so I can write something that won't be torture to read.
I'll try to take notes on the reunion, surely something funny will happen there.

Oh, another thing? I asked Jason if his family are drinkers, and he said not really. Shit. A few cocktails makes every family gathering easier to take. I don't want to be the drunk girlfriend, either, so I guess I'm going to have to try and be charming without. Shit. Maybe a flask is the way to go on this one.
Say what you like about my family, at least when we get together we're all pleasantly buzzed most of the time.

I am lazy, but at least I don't live in Jersey

Look, I am lazy. So I am just going to copy and paste a really long email I sent to Krista earlier in the day. It explains in painful, excrutiating detail why I am now getting ready to move back into Jason's apartment in Brooklyn, and out of fucking Jersey. I was going to change the names to protect the tragically stupid, but fuck that too.
Here it is, in its entirety:

NB: The term "super" refers in this tale to the JOB TITLE of the man in question. He is in no way super. He is not a super hero, he is not a super guy. He is NOT super, thanks for asking. He is kind of sucky, in fact. He's un-super.
You know what was super? We went to Shakespeare in the Park last week, and we had to wait on line for like six hours, and we had no reading material, and so we sang Sondheim songs to each other the whole time. It was great (unless you were standing near us). We sang all of "Into the Woods". We sang the duet "Barcelona" from "Company", which is a beautiful, beautiful song, but better if the girl singing is a soprano, which I am not. Jason sang some scary shit from "Sweeney Todd" and a song called "Buddy's Blues" from "Follies" that makes me laugh every time he sings it, even if he sings it six times in one day. That, my friends and neighbors, is love and fun and New York, because we didn't get even one odd look from anybody.
Now here is the letter:

Okay, kiddo. Here we go. Some of this you will have heard before, but I'm going to try to put it in chronological order, it might make the most sense this way. And there are things that I didn't know then that I know now, if you catch what I mean.

In March, Stephanie decided to go to Florida for a "couple of months" and stay with her folks and see what was what. I could stay at her place, paying her the rent of $610, plus internet and cable, which came to $722 per month, which I did. I also took care of any problems (leaks, etc).

So as far as the landlord was concerned, she was still sending in the rent payments. She had told me that she told the super (who lives in the building and has his stupid nose in everyone's business) that she was going away for a few months and I'd be staying there. This was not true. But I behaved as if it was, as if he knew I'd be there and I had his approval.

She came back on Memorial Day weekend, when I was out of town, and packed up a bunch of her stuff (still leaving behind all her furniture, many of her clothes, etc), and the super saw her and told her she had to call the office and talk to them.

So she called the office, then she called me and all she said was "don't tell them you're living there." Apparently she didn't even tell the office (landlord = office) that she was gone and had been for several months.
I call the landlord, the first thing he says is "my super tells me you're already living there." So I, the worst liar in the world, try
to come up with something that makes sense, which I really don't think I did very well. He's grilling me, asking where is Stephanie, like, she didn't even tell him she wasn't living there anymore! I'm all, I don't know, she might be in Florida, she might be with her parents, she might be in Weehawken... trying to make it sound like I hadn't been sleeping there every night.
At that time he also told me that the super had reported me and my boyfriend were BOTH living there, and that we'd had a screaming fight with each other, which we aren't "allowed" to do in that building. I told him that never happened, but of course he had no reason to believe me, as his super said it did, and I've already clearly been lying.
And also I'm a friend of Stephanie the Liar's.
Oh, when she called him? She said a "good friend" of hers wanted the place and then, when he asked who, she couldn't remember my last name. Moron!
[Information not in original email: we figured out that the "fight" he heard must have been us screaming at the little baseball players inside the TV. I guess, "FUCK YOU KEVIN BROWN" and "JASON GIAMBI, YOU ARE A USELESS FUCKING JUICE-HEAD UNFIT TO WEAR THAT UNIFORM" might be misconstrued as a fight by some nosy, ignorant asshole with his EAR pressed up against the DOOR.]

So on the phone he asked me for her phone number, which I wouldn't give him. I gave him her email address, and he asked me to have her call him. Which she did, and she told him she'd be moving out at the end of July. He called me back, told me that she'd given notice and that I needed to talk to the super, who'd give me an application (if I passed his, like, senate subcommittee hearings), and then assuming everything "worked out", I would be first in line to get the apartment. The rent, which was $610 a month, could not go up at ALL. (Sucks to be a landlord in Weehawken.)

I sort of dragged my feet on the application, for many reasons you may already know (not really keen on living in NJ, not in love with the fascist regime they have going there, not looking forward to getting shit every time my boyfriend sleeps over like I'm in a dorm, non-super super way too nosy), but I felt like I HAD to live there, because of the rent.

Last week I finally got the application, lost it, got another one, gave it to the super, and got a call Thursday from the landlord that I needed to come to his office TWICE - once for the "interview" (a better word would have been "interrogation") and then again to sign the lease, if it came to that. He *generously* offered to do it all in one step, because the office is on 189th St. That's by the Cloisters. My office is on 18th St. It's a wee bit of a hike.

So I go up there Friday, in the rain. I sit down and talk to this dickhead, who demanded to see my social security card, license, passport, tax returns from the last two years, three most recent pay stubs, and a whole bunch of shit I'm sure I'm forgetting about. I had most of it with me, all I could put my hands on in one day.

He does the "interview", grilling me about everything - my life, my job, my relationship, pets, salary, just all in a very confrontational nasty tone. Then he takes $30 from me for the credit check, and tells me that if I don't pass the credit check, I'll get it back. He says it will take about a half hour. OH! He also tells me that he is going to need, on Monday, certified checks for a) $610 (one month's rent), b) $915 (1-1/2 month's rent for security deposit) and c) $500 to PAINT THE APARTMENT WHITE. I don't want the apartment painted white. It is very unusual for the INCOMING tenant to have to pay to paint the apartment. Remember that I'm also going to have to buy a fridge, because the one there is broken. It's also going to be a huge pain, because I'm not moving the furniture out, and there will need to be coats of primer and multiple coats of paint, and he gives me a sob story about how it will cost more than $500, but he will pay $500 too and the rest will come out of Stephanie's security deposit, and he can't raise the rent and wah.

I go outside and walk around, and I talk myself into paying the $500, on the grounds that if I had to find a place on my own there would be a broker's fee, and it would be much more than 500 clams, and again, the rent is SO CHEAP. But I have a bad taste in my mouth about the whole place. I'm in no way psyched at this point to live there.

I get back, he walks up and says, we have a big problem. Apparently my credit was fine, but once, in 1998 (yes, seven years ago), I paid the rent late in Riverdale and they filed some sort of court document. It wasn't an eviction proceeding, just some legal document reporting non-payment of rent. I have no memory of this at all, but now that I've had some time to think about it, I think what happened was this - I would often send them rent checks that they'd hold for 3+ weeks before cashing. So I had no way of knowing they didn't receive my rent until I got this notice. I called them, they said they didn't have the check, I said, it must have got lost in the mail, and I mailed them another one.
End of story. I lived there for another seven years.

But this jackass says that ANYTHING of this nature is an automatic denial in any of his apartments. So that's it. I can't have the apartment. He won't even buzz me into the office - I'm standing in the tiny vestibule, like he's afraid I'm going to get violent. He also won't give me back the copies he made of my SSN, pay stubs, ID, tax returns, any of it. He has everything he needs to steal my identity, and he wouldn't give it to me. I have no idea if this is legal or not.
I also think it was utter bullshit. He had made a few comments about what was really bothering him was the deception, and although I told him that Stephanie had lied to me, too, he honestly has no reason to believe that.
I think he was looking for any reason not to let me have the place, and he found one.

I left, and I was really upset for about five minutes, then angry, and now I'm getting kind of excited about the progress we're making on Jason's apartment.

We have to go to his family reunion in Tennessee the last week in July (30th - 31st), and we thought we had this past weekend, one more weekend, and then we'd be gone. As it turns out, there is an extra weekend in there that we forgot about. Thinking we had no time, though, we got a TON of stuff done this weekend - threw away bags and bags of crap, cleaned out the closets and repacked them in ways that make sense. I drew floorplans and measured the furniture we have, and the furniture we're taking from Stephanie. I think we're going to be able to make this into a decent place to live, comfortable at least.
With the money we save on the extra commute to NJ ($4 a day, about $160+ a month for the two of us) we will more than pay for the cable internet and digital cable we'll be getting.
And our rent will now be $350 each, plus we'll be splitting phone, electric, etc.
We should both be out of debt in a few months, and then we can start saving, and when we're ready we can either get a nicer apartment together or I can get my own place.

So that's it. It's a long story, but it has a happy ending, I think we're going to be able to make Jason's place look really nice and feel like home. Which he claims he has been waiting for "some woman" to do since the day he moved in there four years ago. [Ew! Sexist!]
It will be good. We'll get rugs and hang pictures on the walls.

That was the easiest post I ever posted, because I wrote it earlier today.
But that's what going on in my life, kids.
Now I must go watch "Hellboy", can someone please stage an intervention with this thing? It's past midnight and time for bed.

ALL over the place

I haven't posted a thing in... well, I know it's been at least six weeks, because it was six weeks ago today that I got the right hand of doom cast on my thumb, and typing has been something of a trial.
I should warn you (and, okay, I know there is no "you") that I am in a shit mood here.
I'm in this apartment that I don't really want to be living in, but I feel as if I have no choice, because of the cheapness. I made a little spreadsheet? About the pros and cons? And one of the MOST damning things I had under "cons" was, I swear to god, "is in Jersey".
I know that makes me a snob, but I'm sorry, I don't want to live in Jersey. Do I need to live in fucking Gramercy Park or the Upper West Side? No, I don't, and I can't even if I want to, but one of the five boroughs. Well, not Staten Island. Or Queens. But I put Jersey behind me a long time ago when I left Hoboken and I never once looked back.
I have to want to stay here, because of the shitty salary the BIGGEST COMPANY IN THE WORLD is paying me and the fact that I am so far in debt and yet my salary is so low that I basically pay the rent and utilities and, like, eat, and then I'm out of money the day before I get paid again.
Part of this is the two near-$400 cell phone bills from the two months before I started working, there went all my money those months. Which, those are paid, and I won't have them anymore, but now there are other things, right?
Jason promised his mom we'd go to his family reunion the last week in July, that's going to be $400 airfare for the two of us, he can't afford to fly me there. If I don't soon go see my dad, he's going to get REALLY upset.
I'm never going to get caught up and pay off my credit cards, my credit is probably totally and completely fucked FOREVER now, I'm almost forty years old, I am never, ever going to get over this.
I could move back in with Jason for a few months, and splitting his rent it would be like $350, I think I could get ahead pretty fast that way. I don't want to do that, either. We did it for five months, somehow, although I wasn't working, so the fact that I practically never slept in that tiny bed wasn't such a big deal, I can start getting sleeping pills again on July 2, when my insurance kicks back in.
Speaking of insurance? I think I'm going to put Rob on my health insurance for now. He's a goddamn mess. I think - no, I know - this is probably a bad idea, but it seems like the sort of thing a human being would do for another human being. I can get him off in January if it's too much of a financial drain, or he says he'll send me checks for the difference. I'll write some more about that later.
My dad is still alive. He sounded pretty good today, because he can eat now. He's still having radiation every day, but he didn't have chemo this week, that has to be making him feel better.
This Chinese kid the Yankees have pitching is amazing. He got hit on the elbow in the second inning, and he's slowing down a little, but he's still throwing 97mph fast balls in the seventh. Their middle relief is outstanding. And Rivera. Is a superhero. We just need some young, left handed starting pitching.
I could not be more out of the habit of blogging, dude, I am just fucking rambling. This is no different from talking to me.
Also, I took a shot of NyQuil (which reminds me that if I'm up in a half hour I want to watch "Rescue Me" - it's a Denis Leary thing) and a xanax, which is probably not a recommended combination. Almost certainly not. Screen blurry. Goodnight.

Demerol is not as fun as it sounds

I have had a very interesting week. First, I really think I am about to get this job for which they are going to pay me about $15,000 less than I'm worth. But, ok, there are benefits, good ones, and probably room for advancement, etc.
Plus a place to go every day. So if you have fingers, cross them, please.

I spent the most beautiful weekend in the world curled up in a ball with a migraine. Finally on Sunday I went to the hospital. Where they shot a half gallon of demerol into my ass.

I mean, there's a whole story where I tried to get my stupid asshole neurologist on the phone half a dozen times and took a near-toxic dose of Imitrex, and then I called my friend who is a paramedic in Hoboken (where the nearest hospital is) and he was like, I'd meet you there but I'm out of town so he called the ER and they pretty much took me in ahead of people with axes sticking out of their necks, and they tried something else first, and then while I was waiting for the first drug to work an ACTUAL crazy person came in, all tied to a bed with four cops about to taser him and shit, and then finally they gave me so much demerol that I got really happy for about 20 minutes and then fell into a five-hour k-hole.

So, yeah, that's basically the whole story.

I remember having a brief flicker of "oooh, demerol, that should be fun" through the worst headache of my fucking life, but it wasn't. It wasn't fun. I felt like I was paralyzed, or that talking or moving was too much effort. I have no idea if this what demerol is supposed to do, but it can't be, can it? Maybe they gave me the syringe meant for the crazy man. Maybe I weigh MUCH less than I think I do. I don't know. It was an awful day, though, and one I hope not to repeat.

So if I get this job, thus benefits, I will find another neurologist and get scans and things and then try whatever is next in line after Imitrex. Which my brother was rather surprised I was taking anyway, apparently it's old news and there is much better stuff out there.
They say migraines are supposed to get better as you get older. I am finding this to be a load of crap.

CRAP

You know, I don't post here when I am feeling good. The past two days I was a basket of fucking kittens and rainbows. The weather was beautiful, I worked out, I felt like a hundred bucks.
Today I am bored and lonely and I'm right back here.
I had an interview for a real, full-time job yesterday, with benefits. It's not as much money as I'm worth, but I'm not really in a position to turn down a real job that could end up being something. It's a good company.
I've already been called back for a meeting with HR on Monday, which, if I let myself think about it, sort of seems like a formality after an hour and a half with the person who is doing the hiring, but I can't let myself think like that, because probably I will meet with HR and then be faced with DEAD FUCKING SILENCE FOR SIX WEEKS. Or something.
I'm sure the woman watched me leave thinking "I am going to hire her", but for all I know she could be an escaped mental patient, or just the very most excited person in the world, all the time, and she gets that jazzed about everyone she meets and then immediately forgets them right after.

Next weekend there is a party, in my hometown, for my grandparents. My mom and her brother seem to be having an odd outbreak of sibling rivalry which manifests as duelling parties, because my mom had a party for them (or maybe it was just for my grandmother, it was unclear) at her house last summer.
But this is a joint party, for their 80th birthdays, which happened last year, held by my uncle at the god knows what, the American Legion or something. Someplace godawful.
And I don't want to go, it's criminally irresponsible for me to go in fact, as I will have to get to Newark, rent a car, and stay in a hotel. It's a 3-1/2 hour trip, no way we can avoid the hotel. I don't want to go. Jason doesn't want to go.
But my cousin, who I love so much, she's driving all the way down from upstate, and she hasn't met J, and I want them to meet, and GOD, my grandparents loved him so much, and of course I want to see them before one day I'm out of chances.
I'm going to have to put the car and hotel on a credit card and then hope to hell I can find a way to pay for it later.
Some way to live. I just feel like I have to go.
I suppose I can go make car and hotel reservations. CRAAAAPPPPP

I have nothing to say for myself

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/06/review.charmed/index.html

I can't believe it. I feel as if I have just stumbled upon AA or something for the first time. This is on CNN, people. I feel so...vindicated. No, that's not the word. At least I am not alone. Noone is alooooone....
mmmmm......Sondheim.

I'm not trying to be all about the links, but I've been wanting to say this, too, except when I try to say it, I just start weeping uncontrollably and sputtering about the Hall of Fame and asterisks and how nothing means anything and it's the end of the world and cats lying down with dogs and blah. But here is someone who has some ordered coherent thoughts, that I plan to steal and pass off as my own.

http://www.tomatonation.com/juice.shtml