Mommie Dearest

My mother told me she was going to Thailand to teach tiny Thai children about four months ago. She had been talking about finding a teaching position abroad for a long time but I'd just assumed it was a passing flight of fancy and that she and her partner would end up in NYC, living like hippy activist educators in a tiny Brooklyn apartment.

Thailand is a lot further away than New York.

I'm very close with my mother. She is one of the most entertaining people I've ever encountered. When we get together, especially if my brother Huston is there, we become the most obnoxious table at any restaurant, one upping each others stories and jokes, smiling so hard our cheeks hurt.

She has this laugh that is so specific and so loud that as a child I would listen for it in the grocery store if I had wandered off. Her laughter always led me back to her.

She is a small woman, barely 5'3'', with big brown eyes, choppy brown(ish grey) hair, and skin that is always at least 4 shades darker than mine. I know we're Italian but I did not get the olive skin genes like she and my sister.

My Mom and Me 

She's been gone for three months. We talk on Skype a few times a week which is very nice. I can't imagine how much I'd miss her without it, but it's not the same.

She is literally living in the future, my today is her tomorrow. When we talk one of us is always sleepy—its either first thing in the morning for me and the evening for her or it's early for her and late for me. I miss being able to call her on my way to work in the morning or when I'm walking Lucy.

I especially miss being able to call her in the middle of the night when I'm panicking about my life, future, money, job, relationship, or whatever else makes makes my stomach churn and sleep an impossibility. She's the only person who listens to me until I'm completely done talking.

Its bad, too, because now I send her crazed e-mails, thousands of words, virtually no punctuation, just a stream of conscious, panicked rant. I know those e-mails make her worry, which isn't my intention. It's just that sometimes I have to let my crazy brain do its thing and since I don't have the verbal outlet anymore, I write it all down.

She knows me pretty well, being my mom and all, so I don't think it gives her undue anxiety. I guess the only difference between my verbal and written rants is that when we talk she can calm me down. Sometimes I just need to hear that everything is going to be OK. It's better, too, hearing it from someone who has made it through an eventful life with a positive attitude and wound up in an unexpected but happy place.

I miss my mom, but its reassuring to know that adventure and excitement are always possible if you're brave and willing to take chances.

Disclaimer: I am not actually crazy, but my life constantly in chaos so I have to work really hard to be sane and sometimes I take a mental break.

Things that happened: 8.19.12 - 8.25.12

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, total dreamboat, is apparently awesome in his new movie Premium Rush. 

The Hunger Games officially outsold Harry Potter. This creates conflicting emotions within me seeing as I love Harry Potter AND Katniss Everdeen so I'm going to just be happy that people are reading.

This NYT article traces the crazy claim that women who are "legitimately" raped cannot get pregnant. Thanks, Representative Todd Akin, for your uninformed, ignorant, input. Now please go crawl under a rock.

Advice columnist Dan Savage invited the President of the National Organization for Marriage over for dinner and an impressively civil debate on gay marriage and religious freedom.

Fish are Weird Pets

When I'm not working my crummy job, I occupy my time with my obscenely adorable dog, Lucy, and my boyfriend who is the strangest normal guy I've ever known.

I'll be honest, I have weird taste in men. I have dated musicians, artists, writers, anarchists, hippies, nerds, straight edge kids, any pretty much any other type of guy that fits into the generally odd, bohemian subculture. But boyfriend, henceforth known as Noah (because he bears a slight resemblance to the ER star, Noah Wyle), appears completely normal.

What a handsome devil.

He's quite tall, lanky, and more tan than the average person of Irish descent. He has huge hands, blue eyes, and a wide mouth. When he looks at me with intensity I still get butterflies. We started dating when I was 18 and he was 17.

Yes, I'm a cradle robber. Whatever, get over it.

Anyway, we dated through my freshman and sophomore years of college, broke up for three years, and reunited at my little brother's high school graduation party three years ago.

We live together now, in a small house with vaulted ceilings and ugly brown carpet. He has a real person job actually using his degree as an engineer. But man, he is so weird sometimes.

He really likes keeping fish as pets. But, he doesn't really see them as pets, they're more like moving art. He's been carting around a massive, empty fiberglass (or something else thats kind of like plastic but its clear), tank. It has been used as a table to complete the 1000 piece puzzles he was obsessed with six months ago. It currently sits in our TV room, empty except for some kitty litter in the bottom, adorned with huge jade plants that my old roommate left in my custody. It makes me a little crazy.

Ugly brown carpet AND empty fish tank.

About six weeks ago, he started looking around on craigslist for another fish tank. He would enthusiastically tell me of his plans to make a breeding tank, and then of course we'd need one for the bedroom, and eventually we'd get to work on the big fish tank.

Fish aren't really my thing, although I do like to name them. Right now we have a bright yellow one that I call Pollyanna and two silver spotted ones of the same breed that I call Jack and Diane. I have no idea of their gender.

One evening, after work, he asked me if I'd go with him to look at a fish tank from a guy on craigslist. We drove to the address in question and met the gentleman selling what appeared to be all his worldly possessions. They negotiated, the seller a hispanic man in his early 30s with long, oiled, curly hair and no accent to speak of trying to convince Noah to buy random tools that were laid out in the half empty garage. I stood behind Noah, listening to the guy list the DVDs he had left to sell. We left with a new fish tank.

Noah picked out a desk from the restore a few days later to put the fish tank on in our bedroom. After a few weeks, he filled the tank. He decided that the water was too cloudy, probably because the sand he put inside it was ”dirty,” and emptied the tank using our hose. He filled it up again and emptied it again. And again. And again.

I guess it was worth all the effort because we have pretty fish that swim around in a tank filled with ceramic flower pots.

Its weird, just like Noah. Secretly weird.

He is kind of obsessed with normalcy though. One of his most used phrases is “that's strange.”

When I put my desk catty corner in the study? “That's strange.”

When I want to eat dinner outside on the patio furniture? “That's strange.”

When I put groceries away in the pantry differently than his parents do, “That's strange.”

I think he is so concerned with strangeness, fitting in, wearing the right thing, saying the right thing, because he knows he's a secret weirdo.

And I think its the secret weirdo part of him that I fell in love with. Though, as charming as his weirdness can be, I do kind of wish he'd develop some improved social skills. But then he'd be the perfect man and I'd get bored and run off to date some bass player with a credit score of 12. This is probably all for the best.

EDIT: Noah would have it be know that the kitty litter like substance on the bottom of the fish tank is actually crushed coral. Which is fancier and far less strange.

Things that happened: 8.12.12 - 8.18.12

I read about Paul Ryan in The New yorker. It was an interesting, balanced piece.

My favorite absurd comedy, Hot Rod, finally achieved credit for being a cult classic.

The Wonder Year's Winnie Cooper is a super hot math nerd!

Ron Swanson's 'stach is for sale for charity.

I feel less crazy after reading about these psychos.

Combating Crap Job Malaise

I work for a large At&t retailer at a store in a strip mall. The walls are abrasively orange which can be a problem when coming to work hungover. My main responsibility is to pounce on every customer in the store and twist their arm into purchasing the latest and greatest devices while grinning manically and providing an "extraordinary customer experience."

My selling style is a direct result of the eight years I spent waiting tables through high-school and college. I don't attack customers, I try to charm them and sweet talk them in to opening their wallets. I'm lucky that my boss is pretty relaxed and lets me do my thing. And I meet the goals set by the company so everyone, for the most part, leaves me alone.

I hate my job. I've been there for over two years now and have been steadily losing all hope of finding a real person job. In college, I studied political science and journalism. I imagined a future where I found a job writing for a newspaper, reporting on local stories before "getting noticed" because of my interview skillz and crazed work ethic, churning out more stories a day than most people did in a week! I would have my pick of papers in five years time.

Just over two years ago, I marched in to the Charlotte Observer office, resume and clips in hand, only to be stopped by a security guard. They wouldn't even let me in the building. I left the folder with a sympathetic looking female guard and walked back to the car, feeling ridiculious in my high heels and blazer.

Needless to say I've not heard from them.

Since then I had a freelance job at a small, county paper. It was about an hour out of town and as much as I wanted to write, I couldn't afford the gas or the time on top of my full time job. I've tried every paper thats closer to me. I couldn't even get on their list of freelancers.

So for now, I stick it out at At&t.

When we're slow, and we have done all the housekeeping required, we amuse ourselves in various ways. I'm energetically bored, pacing the floor, building forts in the back out of our expired decorations. I play endless rounds of Tetris on my phone, in between checking Facebook every ten minutes and reading inflammatory Jezebel articles to relay to my coworkers.

My boss, we'll call her Nina, is prim and calm when it's slow. She perches on a stool behind the counter, toes touching the lowest rung, knees together, texting her admirers.  Her uniform of choice is a powder blue cardigan with the logo on the left shoulder paired with a curve hugging v-neck tee-shirt and a pencil skirt.

The new guy, also known as my best friend in this town, shall be called: James. James reads Reddit all day and chuckles to himself. He's taken to this job, developing a pitch that customers really seem to respond to. I like working with him, but its been kind of weird for our friendship. There isn't much thats fresh to discuss at the bar after work when you've worked together all day.

Apart from my lovely coworkers, my job is tolerable at best. I know I can't be the only one who graduated college and feel into a deep depression since the dream job didn't happen. I can't be the only person coerced by debt (and a whole bunch of other stuff) in to giving up my hopes and dreams, or at least postponing them indefinitely. But what do you do when you did everything "right" and nothing worked out as you planned?