Everybody's (Well, I am,) Weeking for the Work-end

Today marked another lovely morning of waking up to the mellifluous sounds of my dad yelling (his version of talking) about money matters. It has really become more of a hobby than anything. Listening to him talking on the phone, you'd think he was attempting to communicate with a partially-deaf person who was standing ten feet from the phone and had earmuffs on.

I tried calling about a position at a Livonia McDonald's that I applied for a few weeks ago on their national Hiring Day (where I think I saw a video online of someone running someone over with their car? I suppose that's one way to lessen the competition...)and the guy was extremely confused as to why I was calling. "Yeah, what you're gonna want to do is wait until someone calls you," he informed me. Thanks, but I tried that route already. Whatever happened to calling and showing interest and that being a good thing? I suppose that maybe since the world may end tomorrow and all, they are hesitant to hire someone on too soon.

In a few hours I am going to be going to work for the Steinkopfs-- They are nice enough to give me some work to do since I am largely without it these days. It'll be nice to get outside and work with flowers and plants since I am essentially a vampire, even in summer months (right now it's a half hour 'til noon and my blinds are still closed and my light is off.)

Saturday is my first midnight shift at the event company. Working at night just makes sense to me. Waking up early is not only not something I do not like to do, but at this point it is something that is quite impossible for me to do. Save those jobs for the people who can't wipe the pearly white smiles off their face in the morning, I say. You know, the people that ask how your morning is and buy everyone bagels or doughnuts and talk about how great life is. They need the morning shift, it's practically in their DNA.




Loverboy- "Working for the Weekend"
Yeah, in the 80s everyone was workin' for the weekend!

A Texan Flies Home

Well, in just a few minutes-- Most likely while I am trying to write this post-- My sister from the same mister (or in my family, I suppose the important distinction to make would be "from the same mother," but we won't go there...) will be arriving from Texas.

(This was as much as I was able to write this morning before I was so rudely interrupted by my sister who I haven't seen since Christmas barging into this house like she lives here or something! Since then, we have been doing what our family does best: Eating. It started off somewhat healthy, with veggies and veggie dip, then it moved to pizza and breadsticks (it's not a family gathering without a surplus of carbs,) and we finished the evening with carrot cake and coffee. Naturally, I have been curled up in fetal position on the couch in a food coma the past few hours and now I must try to make up for my lack of blogging this morning and rely on these brief notes I jotted down earlier to make a blog post out of:)

"Jovical"-- mom using words that are not words.
A boss who shall go unnamed grabbed dad's butt?
"As long as he doesn't try nothin' with me, I don't have a problem with gays"-Dad

...On second thought, maybe it's best I don't.

I go Boozin', He goes Febreezin'

Well, for the last half hour or so my dad has been going on and on about how much my room reeks of alcohol as he goes around dramatically opening all of the windows in the house and spraying my room down with Febreeze. It all got to be too much when I heard him gagging in the other room. Moi? Smelly? C'est impossible. Okay, not impossible, because I thought it smelled a little bad too, but not THAT bad! You see, my dad has (for the million and tenth time in his life,) decided he has quit smoking. This lasts a few weeks, tops, and during these short but sweet weeks when our house doesn't smell like $h*t (although it apparently still does thanks to yours truly,) his sense of smell is heightened to levels that he just can't fathom when he's on the 3 pack/day regimen.

I did get a frighteningly large jar of booze last night in Ann Arbor. I couldn't help myself, I went to the bar to order something normal, and as I looked across the way I saw that this guy and girl were sharing (sharing is the key word here,) a drink out of the most ginormous jar of booze I have ever laid eyes on. I've seen people drink booze out of mason jars, nothing special there, but this was a pickle jar. I didn't give any thought to how much the drink fit for NBA players might cost me, or how toasted I would be upon its completion, I just needed that pickle jar, and by god I got one full of Long Island Iced Tea.

It was karaoke night, and I proceeded to sing "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks, after which the table of girls whose table was adjoined to ours (and who were also sharing (sharing) a drink out of a jar,) gave me slurred "good job"s and said they were singing along. I recall saying something about sounding like a man, but I think that assessment was only verbalized to my friends. As far as the drink-sharing girls were concerned, I was a confident young lady who may not share her pickle jar ( despite the fact that it came with two straws,) but was indeed the only female to stray from singing Disney songs with a BFF.

Cherry Cheese Coffee Cake and the girl at Kerby's

Most children get scolded for eating too many sweets, but in my house, it has long been the expectation that if sugar-laden, over-processed foods have been purchased--they must be eaten at once.

In my fridge sits a plastic container of six chocolate cupcakes topped with a light, whipped frosting (not the gross, quick-to-harden kind,) that I have zero intentions of eating. The old Ashley would go for one without so much as a second thought, but adultolescent Ashley cannot afford to fall into these traps. It's time to grow up!(....and get excess calories from things like coffee drinks with sugary creamers and excess alcohol consumption instead.)

There was one purchase that I couldn't let go to waste, because well...it'd just be a damn shame (and it goes really well with coffee): Cherry Cheese Coffee Cake. I have no intentions of looking at the nutrition facts because I'm pretty sure there is no nutritional value. Even in the Cherry filling. So I eat a little piece with my morning coffee, and pretend it didn't happen. That's one thing I'm good at: Complete denial.

As I had my small piece this morning, my dad decided he would inform me about the key to a healthy life. "As long as you exercise, and eat fruits and vegetables, you are healthy." I of course shook my head in obvious disagreement since we had just seen a news story about an otherwise healthy boy who died of sudden cardiac arrest, but before I could get a word in, he went on and on about some girl at Kerby's Coney Island (a place he would undoubtedly be the "mayor" of on FourSquare, but the man can't operate a television, let alone an iphone app.) "She eats a banana and an apple per day and she has never been sick once!" he said, matter-of-factly. "I'm sure she's been sick at some point in her life," I said. "Nope!" he fired back immediately. Sometimes you just have to let these things go.

I'm off to go do something active now.

Fights and Pinecones

Ah, another morning in the joyful land of adultolescence.

Not as nice of a morning as yesterday, that is for certain. My brain isn't really functioning too well even after coffee, but I told myself I would be as committed to this blog as I apparently am to reliving my adolescence.

My parents were fighting like children this morning, sending me into yelling mode and then shortly after, into mediator mode. I notice I am far better equipped to handle these outrageous fights as an adultolescent. Whereas years before I would break down and cry and wonder "why me" and feel all damaged for having had to listen to fights, now I just find myself in awe that these two people ever thought living together was a good idea, and do my part to make sure the nonsense stops as soon as possible. A (largely) unemployed adultolescent needs her zzzzzzzzzzs, afterall!

So naturally, when my dad leaves, my mom gives me the same breakdown she always does of why the fight occurred, a run down of their history (that I either already know or have lived through much of first hand,) and then eventually she strays from the topic altogether and delves into the most unrelated, unimportant topic she can think of. Today, it was pinecones.

"Aren't these pinecones just the greatest?" she said as she emerged from the living room, showing me a mesh bag of scented pinecones from Christmas time that are still sitting in random corners of the house. "I wonder if they still sell these," she ponders aloud, and just as she does so I notice the mesh bag says "holiday pinecones" on it. But at this point, it's too late, and she's already on the phone with the manager of the store she first got them from. I can tell he is letting her down by informing her that all they have is potpourri.

Moving Fackward.

Here I sit on a dreary Sunday morning contemplating everything. This blog, for one, (I usually end up making my blogs private out of a fear of embarrassment,) but mostly just contemplating my choice to move back home upon graduation. I tend to go back and forth between feeling like it was the "smart" choice to feeling like a pansy who refuses to grow up and has an unhealthy level of comfortability with dysfunctional family dynamics.

My first night home, Thursday, I began to have feelings of sheer panic. I stared up at my ceiling fan as it went around, wondering if I'd find myself living in this same room in my 30s. I began reflecting on my final year of college and how in a strange way it felt like a dream, like it didn't really happen. I guess that happens, though, when your reason for finishing school has more to do with others expectations of you and less to do with your own vested interest in higher education. I wanted it to be as dream-like as possible, in many ways. I was kind of on autopilot this last year, going through the motions but not really feeling like I had the pride for my school that many of those around me seemed to have. I didn't go to football games, bought as few books for classes as possible, studied sporadically, and networked infrequently. Now that I lay it out like that, I suppose it wasn't all that different from the rest of my undergraduate career, but it still felt distinctly weirder than previous years.

I think my beef with college is that it's such a pseudo reality, you know? Like, you're around thousands of other people your age (which is supposed to be really exciting or something,) but to me it just points out how odd it is that our society dictates at what ages it's appropriate to do certain things. Of course, on every college campus there's the occasional older person that has made it their goal to finish their bachelor's degree at any cost, but for the most part it's a bunch of people in their late teens and early twenties with a lot of insecurities and at least a twinge of cluelessness about what exactly they are doing there.

In any case, it's good to be finished, but not always good to be an adultolescent who has moved in with her parents--- a move that many I have spoken to have told me they would be sure to never make, no matter how in debt or how dire the situation.