An Exercise in Not Being A Hag.

Today I went to pick up my second and final check from my former employer. After being laid off on Tuesday with no warning, I’ve had the past two days to let my negative feelings fester and grow into a vengeful beast of horrifying size. I had fantasies of extorting money or sabotaging the business somehow, and I carefully planned out what I was going to say to the boss when he handed me my check: that he had handled laying me off incredibly poorly and unprofessionally, that I was glad to no longer be associated with such a sketchy business, that I was going to tell everyone I knew about his company had treated me.

But when the time came, all I did was take my check, say thank you and walk out the door. Sometimes I wish I had the cajones to say all of the things that I want to say to people who have wronged me, but most of the time I’m grateful that I have enough self-control to be discerning in situations like that. There was really little good that could have come from me letting my angry words spew like venom onto the man that deprived me of my livelihood (meager as it may have been) that spent three months trying to get. Would he have been scared by my threats to bad-mouth his business? Probably not. Would he have handled things differently the next time he had to lay someone off? It’s unlikely. And saying all of that wouldn’t have made me feel any better about not having a job either. I feel satisfied for having taken the moral high ground.

As Romeo Montague would say, I am fortune’s fool. I did everything I was told to do at that job, and I worked hard to learn quickly and do well. The boss realized, after he had already hired me, that he wanted someone with more sales experience, so what else could I have done? I can’t go back in time and change my job history. It’s unfortunate that this was the job I fell into, and subsequently was pushed out of, but I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. It wasn’t a job that I adored or could see myself doing for more than a year, but it was money. Now, I’m back to square one, trying to stay optimistic and laughing to keep from crying. I almost feel like I’m running on pure animal survival instinct now, wild-eyed, hoarding my food because I don’t know when I’ll eat again. Okay, it’s not that desperate of a situation, but it feels like it sometimes.

So now I’m back to scouring Craigslist every day for jobs, checking my inbox to see if any potential employers have responded to my emails, and feeling like a worthless human for not working and contributing to society like everyone else. As the Beatles would say, “HELP!”

I Am Bad With Knives, But I Still Have My Thumb.

My brother Judson and I were making homemade pizza for dinner tonight; he was putting sauce on the dough and I was chopping an orange bell pepper. I accidentally cut my left thumb and immediately ran to the sink, thinking that it was a small cut when in actuality it was deep and half the circumference of my thumb and gushing blood all over the dirty dishes. Judson put some ice in a washcloth so that I could numb it and put pressure on it at the same time, and he drove me to the urgent care in Battle Ground, which is about twenty minutes away from the house. I was trying to stay in good spirits and tell jokes to make Judson laugh and be grateful that I didn’t cut my thumb completely off or even part-way off. It reminded me of a time when I was in high school when my mom cut her thumb with a pair of garden shears that cut all the way through her thumbnail, and when I came home from school, she was just lying at the top of the stairs with her feet up against the wall and a towel pressed against her hand. She had been that way for at least an hour, and had just been waiting patiently for me to get home so that I could drive her to the hospital. It made me think how glad and lucky I was that Judson was at the house with me, and not out with one of his friends or something. I told Judson this, to which he replied “Yay favorable circumstances!”

We got to the urgent care and it was a pretty quick fix. The doctor told me they could either glue it or stitch it up, because apparently the army invented a type of glue to seal people’s wounds that didn’t irritate the skin or cause any kind of bodily harm, so that they could get right back out on the battlefield. It was a horrifying thing to listen to, but I had no battlefield to go back to and no desire to have needles stuck in me if I could avoid it, so I opted for the glue. What a crazy concept! They patched up the wound and put a splint over it and wrapped it thick with green tape. I now look like a gardening enthusiast with my green thumb.

And this whole episode happened after showing up to a job interview to find that it was actually a group interview, which I despise and probably wouldn’t have gone to if I had known in advance; finding out that I didn’t get the job at Language Fusion because the other candidate they had narrowed it down to had more experience than me; and the son of the people whose house I’m staying at showing up unexpectedly to get something out of the garage and raid the refrigerator for Coca-Cola, and mistaking Judson for my boyfriend. And yet, despite all of this, I somehow feel like life is still okay and that good things will find me sooner or later. I have to laugh sometimes to keep from crying, and laughing really does help me keep my chin up instead of just seeing my circumstances as a massive failure that can’t be remedied. That said, I’m going to make a hilarious tale out of this knife mishap that will make people laugh heartily at my jackassery every time I tell it. Which will make the whole thing, this whole day, not seem so terrible.

My Hair as a Marker of Milestones.

Change, in my life, has not come easily or lightly. I’m one of those people who doesn’t like change and who have a dramatic reaction when change inevitably comes. I remember when I was in high school, my parents got a new refrigerator that opened from the opposite side than the previous one had, and it took my months to get over it. As I get older, I have an easier time dealing with change: no fits, less crying, just some inner turmoil that can be disguised. But in the changes that I’ve experienced in the past four years of college, I’ve realized that there’s one thing that I can easily and unemotionally change: my hair.

I’ve changed my hair a lot in the past couple of years, and it has always been at a time of transformation or transition. I guess I like the symbolism of meeting a metaphysical or emotional change with a physically-manifested change. It makes me feel less afraid of what may come.

In the beginning, I had very long hair.

May 2008
This is what my hair looked like two years ago. It had survived multiple bleachings and an ill-fated attempt at dreadlocks, and though it was damaged like hell, I loved it because it was long. I was very attached, and I never wanted to cut it.

June 2008
I cut my hair at the end of my sophomore year. It marked the halfway point of my college career, my first real break-up, and my first time leaving my family and the continent on my trip to South Africa. On a practical level, I wanted a lower-maintenance haircut for when I went abroad; but this haircut encompasses my taking the plunge, letting go of the familiar and the comfortable in favor of something new and strange. After I cut my hair, my life followed suit.

December 2008
I cut my hair again on my 21st birthday. It marked my coming-of-age as an adult, getting over my break-up, overcoming an existential crisis and letting go of my fear of change. I had always wanted short short hair, but was too afraid that it wouldn’t look good or that it would never grow out. I made a conscious decision to cut my hair because I didn’t want to regret not doing it later, or wonder about what could have been for the rest of my life. So I did it, and it was the first haircut I got that didn’t make me cry; I even liked it.

March, 2010
I’ve let my hair grow out, but I changed my hair color to mark my college graduation. I loved my platinum hair, but it was time to move on; I have to enter the working world now, and I want to be taken seriously, which I don’t think my platinum hair would allow. It was really hard to let go of my super-blonde hair because it’s been that way for so long that it feels inextricably linked to my identity. But at the same time, I don’t feel like I need to have an extreme hair color anymore to make me unique. There’s more to me than my hair, and those are the things that make me stand out.

assumptions.

i have an entire bookshelf dedicated to books that i own but haven’t read yet. i was browsing this shelf today and pulled out eat, pray, love by elizabeth gilbert. i’ve read several articles on her new book, committed, which i really want to purchase so that i can add it to this shelf; for some reason i’m always intrigued by cynics’ views on marriage. the romantic run-of-the-mill opinions fail to attract my interest, and cynics (particularly on this topic) always seem more like realists to me.

so i picked up eat, pray, love and read the description on the back cover (feeling like i needed to read the book that was the precursor to the book i was actually interested in reading). yes, it sounded interesting. i bought this book from a thrift store during the summer, despite the admonition from my male friend who was with me that the book wasn’t good. he had merely heard that it wasn’t good, and couldn’t give a reason why it wasn’t good or even remember who had told him it wasn’t good. with such a lack of empirical evidence, i decided to take a chance.

i flipped through the pages, taking note of all the underlining that the previous owner had done, when i came across a receipt on page 13. it was from the nfl sports bar in the san diego airport and was dated march 1 2009 (a good six months before i purchased the book). apparently the waitress’s name was winnie, and the purchaser paid with a twenty. the purchased item on the receipt is listed as “1 dft20 sam lager,” which i can only assume is a samuel adams lager.

i had a moment of visceral excitement, thinking that a man, a beer-drinking cash-carrying man, could be open-minded and tender-hearted enough to be interested in, and purchase, a non-fiction book about a divorced woman traveling the world to find inner happiness, a book that is most commonly (and condescendingly) classified as “chick lit.” but my excitement subsided quickly when i realized that there was no reason to assume that just because the receipt i found was for beer, that it belonged to a man. why did i automatically assume that beer = man? because i’ve been conditioned to think that beer is a masculine drink, and that women only like fruity cocktails? such an assumption only reinforces the prescriptive gender norms and stereotypes that our patriarchal society has set in place, norms that don’t really have any rhyme or reason. everyone should be able to be themselves and act in a way that’s in harmony with who they are, even if it could be perceived as strange or a deviation of the norm. why couldn’t a woman go to a sports bar and drink a beer whilst maintaining her femininity? why couldn’t a man read chick lit in an airport, a public place, and still feel secure in his masculinity? the reasons are arbitrary. and sometimes it’s difficult to recognize these things, let alone recognize that the reasons are arbitrary.

it’s dangerous to assume anything. because when we assume, it makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’

black friday = hell.

last night, i made a terrible mistake: i convinced josh that we should accompany his mom to a doorbuster sale at toys ‘r’ us at midnight, to find a christmas present for his little sister. i just thought it would be a nice thing to do so that his mom didn’t have to endure the madness on her own. my good intentions were repaid with extreme physical discomfort and a good deal of rage. we got there at 12:15am. we got home at 3am.

it took us about a half hour to find the three items we were looking for, solely because the mass amounts of people there made it impossible to maneuver. once we had everything, we entered the line, the end of which began right before the checkout lines and wrapped around the entire perimeter of the store and came back to the checkout lines. we had barely gone fifty feet when we saw that the end of the line had been pushed back even further, so that the people in line next to us who were moving the opposite direction were looping around and up to where we had started. a lady with a cart full of toys tried to go under the rope that separated our line from the checkout because her “friend” was already in line, blocking both lanes in the process. a toys ‘r’ us employee stopped her, and she just stepped in line behind us instead of looping around like she was supposed to; about ten people behind her followed suit until they closed the gap between the two lines, and everything went on as it had before.

we stood in line for two hours. the first hour wasn’t that bad because we were still in decent spirits; we made jokes about the people around us and the dumb slogans on the front of board games, and we pushed buttons to make toys light up and to activate their automated voices. it was when my heels and back and shoulders started cramping up and sleep started making my lids heavy that my good attitude dissipated.

once we had made it into the home stretch and were about one hundred feet from the check out lines, we realized that there was a line of about thirty people that was perpendicular to us, and a toys ‘r’ us employee was letting in one person from that line into our line for every three people in our line. people that were still looking around for toys while we were in line on the other side of the store were let into our line in front of us. that’s when i lost my shit. someone behind us in line yelled at the employee that they had been in line for an hour and gone all the way around the store, and the employee said that he was just trying to do his job and get rid of the line that was perpendicular to us. i, and a group of people around me, jumped in and said that was asinine because our line wasn’t even that long anymore and that it would be that long for them to wait if they went to the end of our line. and when i started to ask the employee how his system was fair or even logical, josh started pulling me back and saying “it’s not worth it, it’s not worth it.” i was so livid. and to make it even worse, we got up to the checkout lanes and realized that our line was only being split between two checkout lanes, and a completely separate third line was being funneled straight into the third lane. it had all gone to hell.

standing in line wasn’t upsetting to me, because we were doing it to get josh’s sister a present that she would love, and that made it worth it. what was so infuriating was how machiavellian the entire scenario was, how the people who did the right thing and followed the rules got screwed by the people who deviated from the system and happily took on mild social chastisement in exchange for their own personal benefit, and really did not care that they were screwing anyone else over. while we were in line, josh and i were talking about how black friday sales would be the perfect setting for sociological observation, and what a disturbing documentary it would make. black friday is aptly named, i think, because it shows the blackest, basest, most vile characteristics of humanity in a neat, ostensibly moral consumerist package. i hate it.

money is a gas.

i am poor. this is not news.

i get nervous about money sometimes/a lot of the time. i went to buy groceries today after class, spent $47 and felt physically ill afterward. little pieces of green paper shouldn’t have such a violent bodily effect on me, right?

a proclamation of love.

i love bette davis.

i love her because she was gorgeous and sassy in her youth, and because she was scary and creepy in her older years. i watched whatever happened to baby jane? last night and was torn between feeling utterly awed and utterly frightened by bette davis’ psychotic character, baby jane.

sometimes the scariest types of people are the ones who don’t know how to transition from childhood to adulthood. which creates a strategic segue-way for this thought:

capstone was incredibly intense tonight because this professor, who has always seemed to me very serious and stoic, completely poured out his heart to us. apparently he had a really awful relationship with his father, and that affected his faith because, as he said, people tend to superimpose the image of their biological father over what they imagine (or expect) their heavenly father to be like. which is something i’ve found to be tragically true. it seems that it would be almost impossible for people who have dysfunctional relationships with their fathers to embark on a functional relationship with god, or to even be attracted to such a thing; and it is, i suppose, a sad fact of psychology that someone looking to find solace or peace in a spiritual being can be thwarted by their past, arrested by it even, to where they can’t grow, but remain stuck in a conditioned state of sadness or self-deprecation because that’s all they’ve known, and all they think they deserve. i guess my thought is: is this an unfair (albeit completely arbitrary) advantage?

back 2 skool.

senior year. who would have thought i would ever make it? it’s strange to know that i’m one of the elders on campus, and even more strange are the lightyears of difference i perceive between myself and the incoming freshies. you can always tell who the freshmen are (and this is especially true of freshmen girls) by their social uneasiness, like every interaction with every person could alter the cumulative value of their college careers depending on the words, tone, mannerisms etc., that they use. very strange.

and, as strange as this may sound, i feel like i’ve outgrown college. like i’m too old to be there, and am thus glaringly out of place. maybe that feeling stems from the fact that i didn’t spend the summer at home and that i worked full time and had to play the part of the adult (for the most part) in my own life, or maybe because i’m two quarters away from being done, but the feeling has been overwhelmingly present all day and it’s kind of throwing me for a loop. regimented schooling has ruled my life for as long as i can remember, and now that the summer has shown me what else is out there and given me time to grow accustomed to it, i’m left in a weird place.

i had three classes, one of which i dropped. it was a printmaking class, and i decided that i would rather have free time to be creative at my own pace (among other things) than be on deadlines to produce forced and rushed art. it will be much better that way, and i’ll have more time to focus on getting an a in shakespeare. best story ever: my capstone professor, who was also the professor of my very first college class and who i’ve remained close with throughout my years at spu, told a story in class tonight about a career project he had to do when he was in 8th grade. the assignment was to decide what you wanted to be when you grew up, and then find someone who had made a career of what you wanted to do and to ask them what an average day of work looked like for them. dr. thorpe wanted to be a writer, and since he was a big fan of john steinbeck’s, he wrote to steinbeck and asked him if he could write him back and tell him what a day in the life of a writer was like. and steinback sent him back a postcard that said something to the effect of ‘thank you for your letter. if i replied to every letter like yours, i wouldn’t have enough to time to write the books that you enjoy so much, but you should show this postcard to your teacher anyway.” he got a postcard from john steinbeck, great american writer and nobel prize winner! incredible. and i believe it, because from what i know of steinbeck, that sounds like something he would write to a fan. but what an amazing thing to possess!

for-eva, for-eva-eva, for-EVA-EVA.

i think it has been at least two weeks since i’ve been on the ole blog. i can’t help it; my boyfriend is back, and i’ve been out living life and loving life with him.

nutshell updates: josh and i went to my cousin’s wedding in longview, where everyone on my mom’s side of the family told josh how cute he was and what great teeth he had, and asked me whether josh and i would be the next ones getting married. they don’t beat around the bush, those mcphersons. we also went to yakima to visit josh’s family, and spent a lot of time with his grandma and her boyfriend (highlights include getting cherry limeades at sonic and taking $300 worth of coins to the coin counter at the bank). josh’s bestie, drew, is back from alaska, and the three of us have been going on lots of dates together. and what’s sad is that i often feel like their third wheel.

we went to the mercer island thrift store today, and i got four books for under $10.

so pleased.

one thing that does not please me, however, and in fact distresses me to no end, is how unprofessional professionals often are. i emailed the hiring manager of pasta & co., where my roommate works, and sent my resume and a cover letter and asked her to let me know either way. several weeks later i still hadn’t heard anything, and when i mentioned it to my roommate, she told me they weren’t hiring anymore. i think it seriously would have taken the hiring manager a minute or less to just write me an email to say they weren’t hiring, instead of letting put all of my eggs in one basket and not pursue other jobs because i was waiting to hear back from her. another much more depressing story: the family that i nanny for was on vacation all last week, and i had told them before they left that the week after they got back would be my last week. so i called the mom on sunday night to ask if she needed me on monday (because i had forgotten it was labor day) and she told me she thought it would be a smoother transition for the kids if i just didn’t come back, instead of working for one week and being done. and that makes sense to me, but what doesn’t make sense is why she wouldn’t call me and tell me that in advance, instead of waiting until the night i was supposed to come back to work. and was she even planning on telling me beforehand, or was she going to wait until i showed up at their house at 6:30am on monday morning to tell me? seriously. i was counting on the $100 i would make this week nannying, and now i have nothing, and i didn’t even get to say goodbye the girls. oh well. at least i have the chance at a real job now.

audio science.

i read on kori gardner’s blog that it has been scientifically proven that repeatedly listening to a song that you like and that is meaningful to you increases cranial activity and blood flow, which is really good for the brain. i feel like that makes sense, because the brain and body can have such an unconsciously visceral reaction to particular music (or anything really, i guess). i know that, for me, every time i hear the kinks’ “a well-respected man” i laugh because i can’t help but imagine michael cera as paulie bleeker in juno, coming out of his front door in yellow short-shorts, his legs adorably scrawny and white.

which is what kind of made me start thinking about this: i was listening to music at work today as i usually do, to break up the monotony of my work, and as i was shuffling through my ipod trying to find something good to listen to, i came across the juno soundtrack and thought ‘i haven’t listened to this in a really long time.’ and once i started listening to it, i remembered why i hadn’t listened to it in a while: just about every song on that soundtrack reminds me of my life a year and a half ago. namely, of who i was dating a year and a half ago. we went and saw juno the day before my 20th birthday, and we both cried and laughed and loved it. after we had downloaded the soundtrack, it was something that we listened to together all the time. and it’s humorous, actually, because as i was listening to each of the songs, i could see him making comments about the value of each song (namely, him saying that he didn’t like “i’m sticking with you” because the singing was so annoying). and i thought of how, for a while, our designated car song was “all the young dudes.” i can’t remember the last time that i’ve had such an overtly physical reaction to particular music like i did today.

and here’s the thing: i don’t have any bad memories surrounding any of these songs; in fact, the situations that i most strongly associate with them are ones that i look back on fondly. but when i listened to them today and revisited those memories, i felt kind of anxious and uncomfortable. so what i’m wondering is, are these songs that, in their essence, will increase my cranial blood flow and be good for me, or should i stop listening to them? or is it just disruptive to my current life because it conjures memories of things that are no longer part of my current life, and has no bearing on the healthiness of my brain activity?