Last Residency

Fuckin' sweet, you can see my huge calf tattoo.  "I Read Past My Bedtime."

     This blog is going to be super long.  After all, I have my entire last residency to talk about.
    Amanda’s flight got in at about 5 on Wednesday, and I surprised her at the airport.  She’s always forwarded the email from travelocity to me, so it was easy to find out what gate she’d be at.  It was fun to ride the T with her, aside from the creepy guy on the silver line who kept trying to join our conversation.  My mom made seafood for dinner, since it’s easy to get really fresh seafood out here, and Amanda promptly told me the theme for graduation (keys) and we scouted Dollar Tree for supplies.
    Thursday, we sadly underestimated how long it would take to do what we had to do.  We had to finish packing, get more stuff for graduation from both Michael’s and a different Dollar Tree, and drop off a birthday present.  And eat lunch.  We were supposed to meet two classmates at the airport, but we didn’t even get to campus until about 5 minutes after one of them landed.  Luckily, the classmates were real adults, who managed to find each other and had enough money for a cab from the airport.  While the were in transit, Amanda and I unpacked and moved our furniture, which included pushing the beds together so we could put my box fan on a desk and get air on both of us at night.  We then went with some people to the Shake Shack for dinner, which is kind of expensive but tasty.
    I’ll just give you the highlights instead of slogging through every individual day.
    We had one of my former mentors for our first half workshop leader, which was cool because she’s into speculative stuff, which most of us are, too.  She was able to deal with our collective perviness pretty well, and I commend her for that.  We can be raunchy.  Also, apparently I can’t help but write funny stories, which is frustrating sometimes, but people I talked to about it more (mainly Amanda and *Eddie*) said it’s a good thing, so I’ll just try to roll with it I guess.
    My class was on Monday (14th) went well, though I don’t have a clear memory of most of it.  I had about fifteen people including my evaluator, so that was nice.  It was a small enough group that the discussion didn’t get out of hand, but big enough that it wasn’t just me talking to my evaluator for an hour.  I also wore a dress that gave me the best cleavage, and someone even took pictures. ^_^  *Eddie* told me he couldn't see it, since I was behind the computer the whole time, but I was actually to the side of the computer, and he was making considerable eye contact with my boobs.
    Tuesday was the reading for all the students who weren’t graduating, and then we had a free night.  I ended up going to a hibachi place with Joe-ə (points if you figure out what that says).  Turns out he also thinks hibachi is the balls.  Shirley Temples and a tall man with a creepily deep voice are all that one needs to have a good night.  We also got ice cream at the place near my house and sat at the pond in my town.  And I forget exactly how, but we decided that my first born child is going to be named Zilphaya Canaganoogin.  Jones, of course.  With a mouthful like that, she’ll need a common last name.
    Wednesday (16th) was my graduate reading, and that went well, too.  Well, according to Amanda’s mentor I was unintelligible because I don’t open my mouth when I talk, but *Eddie* said that’s an East Coast thing and he was sitting right next to her and could understand me fine.  My high school English teacher came, which was nice.  I had asked her to come because the other teacher I had in high school (I went to a small Catholic school, so I only had two English teachers all four years) had kind of killed reading for me, which in turn killed the budding love of writing, but this teacher revived it, and I even used a short story I wrote in her class in my application for Solstice.  She gave me this book, which I look forward to reading.  I’d say I’m going to read it right away, but I’m so overwhelmed with the freedom I have now...I have some books that I borrowed that I should read first, but then I have that book, and books I just bought, and books I already have...good lord.
    Anyway.  She had to leave right after the reading, I think to do wedding stuff, because she got married on Friday (18th).  Instead of crappy food in the cafeteria, we had crappy food in the Moncrief room (upstairs room in the fancy building).  Of the few things they offered, I could eat about half, and the black bean burger was fucking disgusting, so for dinner I had a crappy cookie and a crappy brownie.  And then decided I was in high school, and let the older boy I liked pump me full of alcohol.  I had a total of 3 1/3 beers (I stole sips from one of his), where I normally have 0, and sometimes even 1 makes me tipsy.  I found out I like Corona, and *Eddie* and I had an intensely personal conversation alone in the downstairs room where all the readings happen, including mine earlier that afternoon.  I discovered I like Coronas, and was highly amused by pretty much everything, and he was amused by me, and the entire time I looked like an anime character.  Which was cool, but completely unintentional.  And afterward, I drove Amanda and someone else to the grocery store, which went fine but in hindsight may not have been the best idea.  I probably should have made one of them drive, and *Eddie* scolded me when I told him the next morning.
    Friday, Amanda and I fled campus.  We had real food, which consisted of Dunkin Donuts for lunch and Papa Gino’s for dinner.  Our pizza was the balls.  BBQ sauce, bacon, ½ onion, other ½ mushroom.  Try it sometime.  Mainly the BBQ sauce and bacon, other toppings aren’t as important.  Anyway.  We also got the last few decorations for graduation, which included blowing up balloons.  And we got our nails done.  I got a cool blue color, and on my ring fingers I got white, and the nail tech made a black key on each one, to match the graduation theme that I totally didn’t know about.  Amanda got a sick lavender color, and she decided we need to go back there in the winter and have a spa day.  Don’t have to tell me twice!
    I helped the 4th semesters set up for graduation, because I feel bad about the weird blocks of time they have to do it.  They can either do it after the last reading and pray everyone leaves early (which doesn’t always happen), do it really early in the morning before workshop, or skip the publishing panel and do it right after lunch.  Sadly, the one with the most amount of time is the night one, and that’s what they did.  I feel like it’s a little crappy that they don’t get much help in the timing department.  Like maybe ask everyone to leave as quickly as possible afterward, so the 4th semesters aren’t there until 11:00 at night?  We were there almost that late in the winter, and it sucked. I drove *Eddie* home after, because I felt bad that it takes him upwards of an hour to get home on the T, when I could drive him and it would take like 20 minutes.
    Saturday was the big day!  Whatever.  I had a cute little talk with Amanda’s mentor, because she was our second half workshop leader, and she talked to everyone one-on-one.  She said I was “doing good work” in reference to my full-time job, she said she thought there was a market for my novel (maybe her illness last residency put her sourpuss attitude about speculative fiction in perspective?), and she told me *Eddie* is interesting.  Boy does that not even begin to cover it.  I changed into my grad dress, which I’m wearing in the picture above, and had awesome cream colored heels with a peacock feather on them.  And I got my hair done.  There’s a blow-dry bar down the street from school, as it turns out, and I had them curl my hair and stick my cute flower clip in it.
    I didn’t really get nervous until people started taking pictures of me.  I don’t even know why I was nervous, because I barely had to do anything.
    A lot of people went to this restaurant called The Cottage afterward, but I don’t really like crowds, so I ended up with just *Eddie*.  We went to Kowloon, a Chinese restaurant that I went to a lot in high school and I love because the food is good and the restaurant itself it kitschy and cute.  We got a bunch of dishes and shared, cuz we’re cool like that.  I had a few Coronas, and he had a zombie and then let me pick the other drinks he had.  I picked Suffering Bastard, and then Planter’s Punch.  He asked if that was peanuts in vodka, which by that point was pretty fucking funny.
    Then, when the check came, he wouldn’t let me give him any money.  We almost fought about it, because I can’t let someone just pay for my food.  My ex boyfriends didn’t even really do that.  And now that I think about it more, he was even trying not to let me see how much it cost.  But I did see, when he went to sign it and add the tip.  It was a $95 bill before the tip.  I kept trying to give him money, but he wouldn’t take it, and insisted it was my graduation present.  Fine, two can play that game.  I’m getting him a freaking great graduation present.  Which I will talk about later.
    There were still a lot of people in the common room when I got back, so I stayed in there for a good two hours and bonded.  I actually did a lot more bonding that is normal for me, and I’m proud of myself.  My favorite new person is someone I will refer to as *the Bird*, and she’s awesome.  She hard core had an hour long conversation with me about poop and periods.  What more can one ask for in a friend?  She told me her ultimate plan is to teach college-level poetry, and maybe teach at Bennington, a school in Vermont.  I am all for this, since it would put her at a 3-hour drive from me instead of the 27-hour car drive and 4-hour non-stop flight it is now.
    The whole thing wasn’t as sad as I thought it would be.  Even being at the wrap-up on Sunday morning wasn’t that sad.  Amanda and I drove *Eddie* home, since it’s kind of on the way to my house anyway.  I can’t believe I just dropped him off at the T last time, what a douche.
    Then, Amanda was at my house till Wednesday morning.  Sunday, I unpacked while she slept, and then my parents took us (and my brother) to this place in Rockport called the Lobster Pool.  They have really yummy fried food which isn’t super fried so it doesn’t make you sick later.  My mom made Amanda wear a lobster bib, which was funny.  We got lobster, onion rings, and fried calamari (which I did not eat) as well as fried shrimp, scallops, and haddock bites (which I did eat).  Of course, my brother got hot dogs.  Then we went to the Richardson’s Ice Cream HQ in Middleton and got ice cream.  YUM!  That night, Amanda and I went to Barnes & Noble, which just started this 3-week long pop culture thing, so there was free stuff to be had.  We gathered it all up, got some books, and then sat in the café and had drinks.
    Monday, we went to the 99 for lunch with my brother, and Friendly’s for dinner.  My poor brother did not give a fuck about the writing stuff Amanda and I talked about.  She and I also decided that we’re going to AWP 2016, which is in LA.  I’ve always wanted to go to LA, and the dates for that one are right around my birthday.  There’s also an anime convention the next weekend.  Woo hoo!  When we got home, my parents were there, and they gave me my grad cake, which was a mama and baby unicorn, and Amanda and I split the baby unicorn.
    Tuesday, we were busy bees.  We went to Friendly’s for lunch again, because yum, and then we went to Plaster Fun Time.  I painted a neon-rainbow stegosaurus and a magnet of a triceratops hatching from an egg, and Amanda painted three cats with neon fish and a magnet of a sugar skull Darth Vader.  Then we went to the Used Book Superstore in the next town over from mine, and we fucking went to town.  We inspected that place from top to bottom, and bought all the things for almost none of the money.  I seriously bought 12 books and a game and it cost $45.  Amanda bought 7 books and a journal and spent $20.  Then we had our awesome pizza again, and just went home because she had to finish packing.
    Dropping her off in the morning was sad.  I even texted *Eddie* about it, and when he woke up he told me about a ridiculous tribute band to Judas Priest called Nudist Priest.  I shall have to look into them.  And damn him, for still having a girlfriend but doing all the nice things, like buying me dinner and giving really strong hugs and telling me silly things to make me feel better about one of my best friends going home, which, since I did it earlier, is a 41-hour drive and at least a 7-hour flight.
    I’ve been doing pretty much diddly squat the rest of the week, and sleeping oddly late for me (read: 8:30/9:00 AM).  I start my new job in earnest on Monday, and my shifts next week are all 8-5.  Friday is also 8-5, but it’s different because it’s my company’s annual conference, called the CHILD Conference (as of right now, I’m not sure what it stands for).  We’re going to the Cross Point Hotel in Lowell for the day, and doing all kinds of fun things.  The woman at orientation compared it to a pep rally, which is so not my thing, but I’m actually excited for this.
    There are things that make me feel better about this whole grad school thing being over.  My job, for one.  It’ll be fun, which I know because I’ve already had several shifts there.  I also accidentally found a really solid company, that treats their employees really well.  For another, I’ll be back in the winter.  I’m going to take off at least some time, and maybe the whole time (though I probably won’t have enough vacation earned to get paid the whole time), and I’ll stay at the hotel with Amanda and Hannah.  We’ll do a fun spa afternoon and hardly ever eat in the crappy dining hall and on days when Hannah and I aren’t auditing any classes (provided I can take all the time off), we’ll do stuff like go to the Aquarium and the Museum of Science.  And I’ll contribute to the Flash Fiction Anthology they’re making.  I’m also trying really hard to convince Amanda and Hannah to move out here.  That would make it a lot easier, especially if *the Bird* eventually moves up here, then that would leave just one person who I’m really close to who isn’t out here, since three of the people I like already live in MA.
    Whew, now I’m off to heal the carpal tunnel I got from typing this monster, and to mentally prepare myself to plunge into the working world.

More Big Kid Stuff. And Books

Pretty books and book things.

    I completely forgot to talk about this awesome thing in my last post.  I joined this book club-y thing called Quarterly in April.  I heard about them on Facebook.  Every three months, they send you a box with books and cool book-related stuff in it.  It costs $50 a box, but you can cancel it whenever you want.  I also bought one of the surplus boxes they had from the March release, so that was cool.  That one had a cheat sheet for pretending you’ve read some books that are popular right now, and it had a book about people who read different types of books, and two others that I kind of forget.  It also had metal book “darts” (tiny bookmarks), a usb with short stories on it, a magnet that said “yay books,” a poster that said “Read Everywhere,” and a coffee mug covered in banned book titles.
    The one that came a few weeks back was just as awesome.  It had a romance book, which isn’t my thing but that’s fine, a sci-fi/fantasy book (I’m pretty sure it is indeed both), and a YA book - a book assigned in one of my residency classes, in fact.  That one came with a chart inside it written by the author herself, which I’m going to make a copy of and see if the teacher wants it.  It also had a literary deck of cards, a poster with reasons to read romance novels, a small pin that says “I read YA” ^_^ and a pouch that looks like a library book slip, and a free two-month subscription to an online book thingy.
    I’m glad I heard about this thing, because it’s fun to get packages in the mail, and most of the stuff is cool/useful.
    I’m getting pretty excited about residency.  For now, I’m overlooking the “graduating” part and just focusing on other stuff.  Like getting my hair done and going to dinner with Amanda and some other people from school on Residency Eve (the night before it officially starts).
    I had my Welcome Session at my new job today.  I’m going to refrain from mentioning the company, just to make sure I don’t violate the social media policy, but I’m sure everything I’ll have to say about them is good.  So far it is.  But for you sleuths out there, I’m going to have it in my Facebook info.  I had to watch some trainings I already watched for my last job, which was a little boring, but it is what it is.  There were 5 other people at my session, and they all seem cool.  The session was in Lawrence, at their HQ, and we all got lunch across the parking lot at this little coffee place called the Coffee Cann Café.  I learned a little more about the company, and I got a sick binder to take to the rest of my trainings.  Turns out their annual conference is August 1, which is the first Friday I’ll officially be working there (first official day is July 28).  I’m normally not at all into that type of thing, but I’m kind of excited about this.  It sounds corny, but maybe it’s because I’m actually into this job, and all the people working there are, too.  No one’s there just for a paycheck, so it’s a whole different vibe than every other job I’ve had.  I like it.  We also got a packet with info about all the insurances they offer, which I’ll have to have my dad look at with me, because half the stuff doesn’t make sense to me.  And we filled out a sheet for Short-Term Disability (which covers things like maternity leave, broken arm, etc.) because the only time you can accept it is when your 90 day probationary period is up.  After that, you’re screwed.  So now it’ll just get put through then and I’ll be good.
    This company seems really supportive of their staff, which is good.  After either a year or 1,000 hours, you can open a 401k, and whatever you put in, they match it.  You also get one week of vaca the first year, but then you get two, and after five years you get three, and after ten years you get four.  FOUR WEEKS OF PAID VACATION.  A YEAR.  Fucking amazing.
    Tomorrow, I go back to Lawrence to do an observation in their infant room from 9-noon.  Because there’s a child care site right next to HQ.  So cute.  Then I have stuff on Friday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  Maybe.  The dates are a bit confusing, so I might be wrong about that.  But I have more training this week and next week.
    I feel all shiny and new and amniotic-fluid-y.  Adult Eileen is born. :)

Put my fifth and final packet in the mail today

    I put my final grad school packet in the mail today.  I officially have no more cover letters to write, books to annotate, and things to attach to an email or stick in an envelope.
    It was nice to finish and it felt like I’d won some sort of race when I walked out of the post office.  On the other hand, I’m that much closer to losing something huge, and it breaks my heart that I can’t get it back no matter what I do.  I really wanted to finish that packet so that I’d be under a little less pressure, but I also really did not want to finish this packet.  I love this bubble I’ve been living in for the past two-ish years, and I don’t like tangible evidence that it’s ending.  I know people come and go every semester, but I have this little circle of people in my semester and the semester below me, and I’ve really been enjoying the fluffy blanket feeling they give me (and the lady boner feeling they give me...sorry inappropriate tangent).
    I wish that change didn’t make me feel insecure about everything, not just whatever it’s related to.  Not small change, like school got let out early because it’s snowing so bad so now we have a long workday, but bigger change like this.  It’s setting off all sorts of inferiority alarms because obviously if I could do anything, I’d be able to figure out how to make this last forever, and since I haven’t done that, well I’m just useless.  I know how silly it sounds, but it’s still happening.  I’ll be perfectly fine and going about my day, and then I’ll be completely crippled with anxiety about what I’m going to do with my life, how I’m going to find time to see the school people who live far away, why boys don’t like me (what?  clearly they do, they’re just too chicken to say anything so instead they ask to read your workshop pieces early and want your advice on a title for one of theirs), why I don’t like anything enough to do it full time, why I can’t just “get over” my tendency toward migraines, silly things like this.  This awful spiral of self-doubt, all because something that logically must end is ending.
    But I gave it a good do.  Maybe not my all, but I’m always very critical in retrospect.  If I didn’t give it my all, I sure gave it my most.  My thesis is solid, and my annotated bibliography was seventeen pages long.  My class will be good, and my reading will be, too (I’m going to make the aforementioned boy power-read my entire 131 page thesis and pick out the material for my reading, since I don’t want to and if you’re not going to do both nice and naughty things to my, I will make you my bitch, and you will wish that nice and naughty things were all I wanted from you).  But graduation will be sad.  And the morning of the 23rd, when I put Amanda on the bus to the airport, will be really sad.  I really want residency/Amanda to be here, but I also don’t, because then it will be that much closer to being over.  I wish I could just be in a permanent state of limbo maybe the weekend before residency starts?  That way I’d be at the peak of pre-res excitement, and it wouldn’t end.  I want to be frozen in the Solstice version of Christmas Eve.
    And yet, I can’t.  Now that I have the biggest part done, I need to start looking for things I can stand to do full time, and start putting my resume out there.  Hopefully I’ll find something I can start when Amanda leaves, but if it takes a little longer, that’s ok.  If it does work out like that, though, I wouldn’t have to go to this stupid summer camp training in June that starts at 7:30 in the morning at a place an hour from my house, so the bus taking us will probably leave at 6:15, which means I’ll have to get up so early that I’ll probably communicate like a wolverine all day.  And I’ve apparently been on West Coast time my whole life (ie not a morning person), so it’s going to feel three hours earlier to me than it does to everyone else.
    In summation, I have very mixed feelings about sending off my final packet, but if nothing else, I am proud of all the work I’ve put in over the past two years.

Grad School Grumblings

Me, as a cute "dark" girl...or Ruby Gloom, one of the two

      My fourth packet was due on Monday (and was mailed on Friday).  I only have one packet of my MFA life left.  Why has every other semester dragged and this one flew by?  It doesn’t seem fair.  I’m hoping I don’t have too much to change this time around, since I my mother sacrificed around fifteen hours of her life listening to me read the entire thing out loud, helping me nitpick pretty much every single word.
    Though I suppose I can’t feel too bad, since she was stretched out on my bed in a leisurely fashion while I was at my small, cramped desk made even more cramped by the fact that I had my notebook for this novel in front of me with notes I wanted to ask her about each chapter.
    I’ve worked really hard on this novel, for a really long time, and fuuuck it’s still not done.  I have twelve chapters in my thesis, and six that aren’t, though only two and a half of those are written (but all roughly plotted out).  I know that the two chapters I had when I came to the program are way better now than they were then, and I can feel that my writing in general has improved.
    But I’m a little nervous.  I’m nervous about the class I have to teach based on my critical thesis.  I hate to have everyone in the room looking at me, and the introduction I did for my former mentor last residency was pretty nerve-wracking.  I’m worried that I’ll get up there and suddenly everything I was going to say will sound stupid, or that someone will ask a question I don’t know the answer to.  But I’m also nervous because one of the teachers is teaching a class that’s almost the same as mine.
    I’m also nervous about the reading, for mostly just the people-looking-at-me-and-no-one-else reason.  I also feel like, even though it’s ridiculous, my mentor is just being really nice when he says he likes my thesis and that it’s strong.  It’s so ridiculous, but this is how ingrained my low self-esteem is.  I also might invite my high school teacher, who kind of revived my love of reading and writing.  I had her junior and senior year, and I actually took two English classes my senior year.  She was so nice, doing stuff like letting me know in advance that I got accepted into the AP English class, so I could plan my schedule accordingly, and writing college recommendations and the like.  She even had these like Academy-Award type things at the end of the year our senior year, so everybody got superlatives.  It was so cute, in Honors English I got the Cover Girl award, because I always made a point to find what I considered awesome cover pictures for my papers, and in AP English my friend and I got the Statler and Waldorf award, because we always talked shit about our pretentious classmates...oops. >_< We’re Facebook friends now (which obviously means we’re bffs irl), and she’s a world-class nerd which is fabulous, and nothing less than what I expected.  So I’m thinking it would be cool to invite her, but it’ll also add some pressure.
    Aside from the nerves, I’m also just sad.  I’ll be able to see my friends in the semester below me in the winter, and the ones below them next summer, but this residency will be the last one where I see my same-semester friends together, probably ever.  I had a totally high school moment where I realized that we’re all going to go off and live our lives in the separate corners of the country where we live, and our little bubble is going to pop, and it’s really bumming me out.  I like my little grad school community the way it is, and I kind of wish it was a three, or even four year program.  Of course, that would mean a lot of people couldn’t do it, myself most likely included.  But it just feels so safe and scholarly and special on this quaint campus with its rustic dorm buildings and Dracula main hall, and I don’t want to go into the big, scary world without everyone I’ve met here.  Of course I already do, and it makes me happy but also mad that Eddie lives near me.  Eddie, who told me he circled the two appearances my name makes on the schedule.  To drive home my resentment about it, supposedly.  More like he’s bursting at the man-seam thinking about being able to baldly ogle me, but what do I know.
    Thus I continue to read the last few books of the semester, and already begin to think about the books I need for residency.  I’m only taking five classes, and they are:
COMEDY AND TRAGEDY: THE THIN LINE SEPARATING LAUGHTER AND PAIN
GROUNDING THE READER: BEGINNINGS IN YA NOVELS
APPLICABILITY: WHAT MAKES SCIENCE FICTION HUMAN
GROWN-UPS RUIN EVERYTHING…DON'T THEY?
ACT YOUR AGE
     I very well may audit more if I feel up to it, though.  I’m also being super traditionally-feminine and getting my hair done right before residency, as well as waxing my legs for the first time >_< We’ll see how that goes.  Then, on one of the days I don’t have class scheduled, I’m gonna go get my nails done and this cool-sounding massage that’s supposed to drain all your excess water. O.o We’ll see how that goes, too.  I also have dresses for all my public appearances, which is rare for me.  I wear a dress to graduation and nothing resembling a dress for pretty much the entire rest of my life, unless it’s a cosplay situation.  But I’m going to be the cutest little “dark” girl (Eddie’s adjective, one that apparently applies to both of us...here's how I feel about that) anyone’s ever seen. :)
    I can do this, I know it.  All of it.  I’ve started a new thing lately, when there’s something I don’t want to do coming up (namely these things, but a few closer things that have passed), and I just think “Eventually *insert event* will be over, and I’ll still be alive.  Eventually, there will be no need for me to be anxious, because it will have happened and been fine.”  It usually works, but it’s late, and I get emotional when it’s late.

Rough Week

    So the *Eddie* situation continues to be both weird and delightful, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about today.  Ok, I might mention it once or twice, but it’s not the focus.
    I’ve said before that I work at an after school program, and I think I’ve said that the three sites of the program located in my town all combine into one site for vacation weeks.  This past week was a vacation week, so we were all at that one school.  I was put with either kindergartners or first-graders, so I was happy.  I like little kids a lot better than big kids.
    On Wednesday, it rained.  I also had a doctor’s appointment in the morning, and so didn’t have work until one.  I was asked at the last minute to bring my laptop so the kids could watch a movie, which in retrospect I should have said no to.  Nothing happened, but it could have, and then I’d have to pay for it all myself.
    We have a nonverbal kid at our site, and he comes to vacation times.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but during February vacation he bit the director of another site, and he’s continued to bite since.  Off the top of my head, he’s bitten my director twice, me twice, and another student once.
    On Wednesday, I caught him trying to wrap the curtain drawstrings around his neck while the movie was on.  There is no way to make that not sound creepy.  So I went over, unwrapped it, and led him back to his iPad.  He did it again almost as soon as I sat down, so I did the same thing, only this time I stood about a foot behind him for a few minutes.  After about ten minutes of me sitting down, he does it again.  So I go over, unwrap him, lead him back to his iPad, and stand a foot behind him again.  He turns around and tries to head butt me.  I see it coming, since he does get violent when he’s told he can’t do something, and I catch his head before it makes contact.  He thrusts out of my grip and right into my chest...where he bites my boob.  It felt like a fucking hole puncher.  It hurt.  I told my director, while I’m still in the throes of trying to restrain him, that he bit me, and she comes over with a staff from another site and they take over.  She tells me to go see if there’s a mark, and there is.  A dark purple mark.  By the time I show her, it’s slightly less dark, but the skin is broken.
    The other director working at the time called his mother to come get him, which is standard procedure, and which my director only does half the time.  The mother comes and he goes home.  I’m given a Band-Aid and that’s it.  When I got home, understandably, my parents were pissed.  And it made me feel better that I wasn’t the only one.  I would’ve said no, but it pissed me off that no one asked me if I wanted to go home.  Or if I wanted a break, which I would have taken.  I wrote a letter to the Program Administrator saying that after all these incidents, the program knew or should have known that this child was a physical threat to both staff and students, and I can’t work with him any longer.  I had a doctor’s appointment for the bite at eleven in the morning on Thursday, and they gave me antibiotics.  The other two directors asked about me, but when I saw my director after coming back from the doctor to make double sure they didn’t need me to continue working, she didn’t really say anything to me.  I gave her a copy of the letter I wrote to the administrator, and later on she texted me that she’s sorry I feel that way about her program, and she wishes she could do something, but all our programs have to be inclusive.
    Well that’s nice, and I understand that, but when a kid starts to be violent, it’s different.  Come to find out, the administrator didn’t know it was the third time this child bit me, which either means she’s behind in checking the paperwork or my director didn’t fill out the incident reports she told me she was.  I didn’t answer my boss at all because I don’t want to get into an argument about with her, I just don’t want to be bitten again.  I wasn’t told it might happen when I was hired (because it wasn’t happening yet), but since it’s not stopping, something needs to be done about it, and she doesn’t seem to feel like doing anything aside from suggesting (not even insisting) that he not come to the program the day after an incident happens.  It floored me when he wasn’t removed from the program after he bit another child.  I can sort of see why staff might be expected to take injuries in stride, but a kid?  Parents leave their children with us expecting us to keep them safe, and if he’s dangerous, which he is, we’re not keeping them safe.  Every day he’s there and no one gets hurt, all we are is lucky.  He bit the child because he doesn’t like loud noises (though he makes plenty of them himself), and she is an Autistic child whose soothing noises and general speech are at a raised level, and she was being too loud.  The other times he’s bitten are when he is generally freaking out, which happens because he was told not to do something, like go into the kitchen area of the cafeteria where my program is set up.  Or not hang himself from the curtain drawstrings.  We are sadists, I tell you, wanting children not to do things that could be harmful for them!
    I’m getting transferred to another one of the sites in my town, and I start there on Monday (I had yesterday off anyway).  The director of this site was actually the one most concerned about my general well-being, which was nice, and cast my director in a very bad light in comparison.  My one mention of *Eddie* in this post will be that when I told him what happened, he said, “Jeez, that kid should be put down.”  And he doesn’t have feelings for me. >_< Riiiiight.  I know he was joking, but it’s kind of like, I can’t fucking believe he’s still in the program.  Inclusion at the expense of others’ physical well-being isn’t helping anyone.  I guess when his mother came she was all, “We don’t bite people...you don’t even understand what I’m saying, do you?”  If she legitimately thinks that, she shouldn’t be leaving him with a group of people who are not certified teachers, and only one of whom has specific special needs training and experience.  There’s also an after school program at his school, which is about forty minutes away from my town, but you gotta do what you gotta do.  The administrator also told me before that his family makes too much money to qualify for a one-on-one paid for by us, which means she had this conversation with them and they just decided he didn’t need a one-on-one.  Even before the biting, he definitely did.  I can’t fathom that level of not giving a fuck.  My brother is nowhere near that severe, and my parents declined to put him in after school because they didn’t think it was fair to make a bunch of “young kids” (their words, not mine) take care of him.  So my mom stayed home and my dad worked a shit ton.  This kid’s mom is a teacher, so maybe she just needs to go get him when her bell rings instead of doing whatever she does afterward, or maybe she needs to make the forty minute trek to his school.
    The administrator said she’s meeting with his parents next week, and my dad said not to be surprised if I get a call at the end of the week saying he’s out of the program and asking me if I’ll go back to my old site.  I’ll say yes, unless this week goes swimmingly, because I already miss my kids.  I’m kind of glad I didn’t know exactly how it was all going to go down the last time I saw them, because it would have been so hard to say good-bye, especially to my favorites.  Which means it’s going to be so hard when I have to get a full-time job.  Ugh.  But I also think I might not get any such call, and nothing at all might change.  My director is kind of a wimp when it comes to asserting herself with parents, so if she’s at the meeting I feel like no real changes will be made.  I do feel bad, because aside from the kids I genuinely love, I like my co-workers, and we had a rhythm going, but I can’t continue to put myself at risk, and it’s not what I signed up for.
    I hope that, no matter what happens, things settle soon.  I still have to see my director (now my former director) every Tuesday when I do data entry for the administrator, and I hope to God she’s not weird about everything.  This whole thing drove my anxiety through the roof, not only because he bit me but because my skin broke, and I have thing about people touching me especially in private spots, and what if it had been a kid on the receiving end of that?  What if one of my sweeties had gone up to him, as they sometimes do, and he freaked out and did this to one of them?  That’s why I don’t think he should be allowed to come anymore, because inclusion works, but only up to a point.  I don’t think having him in the program is worth the risk to the other kids, and yes, to the staff.

Weird Mood

My awesome, fuzzy Iron Man cake

    I’m 26 years old.  Ten years ago I got my license.  Eight years ago I graduated from high school.  Eight years ago I moved out of my parents’ house, and seven years ago I moved back in.  I’ve come a long way since then, but as cliche as it sounds, who I became in high school is still a large part of who I am.
    I’m no longer full of unfounded angst against my parents (now I know exactly where it comes from).  I think most of my problem then was that I was angry.  I’m still not thrilled with everything, but I’ve learned to channel it in a more positive way.
    I actually own clothes, and sometimes buy clothes I have no need for.  This definitely stems from wearing a uniform for four years.  Who I am is very much reflected in what I wear, which now consists mostly of t-shirts, but when I first bought clothes consisted almost exclusively of corset-y type things.  I looked good, maybe I should invest in some more.  You know, the fake but still hot ones Hot Topic has.  Nothing that will crack my ribs, don’t worry.
    I’m still a metal head, and I still love to read and write.  I’m still very loyal to my friends, and I’m still tough to deal with when I feel betrayed.  I tamped that feeling down for a long time, but I’ve been embracing it lately.
    I’ve had a weird week.  My birthday (on Monday) was good and low-key, just the way I like it.  But my ex-boyfriend (yeah, the horrible one) emailed me to say Happy Birthday.  I don’t like it, but he’s emailed me several times, and has been nothing but nice, but I’m still on edge when it happens.  And you know what?  It’s petty and lame, but *Eddie* didn’t say Happy Birthday.  I sent him a picture of my awesome cake (pictured above), and he said it was cool.  That was Sunday.  Not a fucking peep since then.  I don’t know why I didn’t expect this, because if a situation can be upside down, my life will make it so.
    For some reason it reminded me of my high school boyfriend, who I stayed friends with after we broke up.  He hasn’t really talked to me since he got a new girlfriend, which is a bummer because the one in between me and the new one was totally cool with us being friends, and in fact was kind of friends with me herself.  I really don’t wish this new girl any ill will, and I’m in no way trying to steal her boyfriend from her, but if he’s been honest with her, and I hope he has, she might think I’m bad news.  We definitely hooked up after we broke up and when I had a new boyfriend.  And a second new boyfriend.  We broke up when I was nineteen and we didn’t stop occasionally hooking up until I was almost twenty-one.  Oops.
    Anyway.  Things deteriorated, obviously, and ended kind of badly, but he genuinely loved me.  We started out as very different people, but for some reason that didn’t matter.  If I met a guy now who told me my music was crap and he’d show me real music, I’d give him the finger and that would be that.  But he said it, and I decided to listen to him, and it’s a good thing, too, because that “real” music was metal, which as I’ve said is a big part of who I am now.
    In the second (and last) summer we lived together, he and his parents had switched rooms, and now our rooms were connected by french doors (which stayed closed before).  Things were obviously dicey, but he still tried to be nice to me.  He could tell I was miserable, and really unhappy with the way things were.  I went back to school that September, but all that summer I was working two jobs, and had hardly any free time.  When he wasn’t being nice to me, he was doing stuff he had to make up for later, like being up late drinking with his friends when I had work in the morning.  This wouldn’t be so bad, except that they were in the next room with all the lights on, and they would come into my room and bug me.
    There was this one song, from The Les Claypool Frog Brigade’s album Purple Onion (both that band and Primus are good shit) called “David Makalaster.”  For some reason that song was really soothing to me, and it helped me fall asleep.  On nights when he wasn’t trying to keep me up, and even some of those nights, he would play it for me to help me fall asleep.  I remember every once in a while he’d sit next to me and stroke my hair while I fell asleep.  That song makes me feel really nostalgic when I hear it, and it’s kind of a bummer that no one since has lived up to that really simple act of lulling me to sleep.
    Which brings me back to why I’m annoyed with *Eddie*.  He damn well knew it was my birthday, and one time a book Les Claypool wrote (South of the Pumphouse) came up, and I said it was written by him.
    “What?” he said.  I asked if he knew who that was, and when he said yes I smiled.  I haven’t read the book, though I want to, and him knowing who that was made me see a little bit of that one way my old boyfriend could show me he loved me. *Eddie* has also been to Bonnaroo before, and so has my old boyfriend.  He’s also kind of squishy like my old boyfriend, whereas two of the three since have been sickly thin, and one had an oddly hard beer belly.  The squishiness makes me feel comfortable.
    So why is this random memory bubbling up, and why is *Eddie* making me feel this weird mish-mash of PG feelings and X-rated feelings, but he can’t fucking say Happy Birthday and my asshole of an ex can?

My Saturday

This will be us someday.

    Not a whole lot’s been happening lately.  I kept wanting to post, but nothing interesting was happening...which I guess is a good thing, really.  I’ve just been doing my thing, working on my thesis, reading some books, keeping some kids alive till their parents come pick them up.
    Then Saturday happened.
    I suppose it was technically Thursday night.  I was texting *Eddie*, and he lent me the first two volumes of a graphic novel, which I finished, so I asked when we were gonna hang out so I could give them back and get more.  He immediately said he was off on Saturday, and we should hang out and get food.
    Hell yes.
    Cue anxiety.
    Friday afternoon I asked him where he wanted to go, and he never answered, so my mind immediately went to the worst place.  I always do that.  I need to work on that.  Not everyone hates me and no longer wants to speak to me if it takes them a while to answer a text.  Sometimes I can be ridiculous.
    I’m in the middle of dying my hair Saturday morning, assuming that if we do hang out it’ll be for dinner, when he texts me.  We decide to meet in Harvard Square around 2 and do our thing.  Freaking 2??  But then I realize he’s probably spending Saturday night with his girlfriend, because every single fucking thing he does implies that he’s the nicest, most stand-up, gentlemanly guy ever, which of course only makes me want him more.
    I finish my hair and have Amanda help me pick out a shirt. :) I wear the one she suggests, a black tank with adorable pyramid studs all over the top part, with jeans (because he joked with me that yoga pants meant I “gave up” - I argue the exact opposite, that yoga pants turn humble bums into billboards, but whatever), and I wear my awesome lightweight jacket onto which I’ve affixed large pyramid studs and sewn the graphics from several awesome shirts that for one reason or another could no longer be worn (but the graphics were still in good shape).  I put part of my hair up, and think it’s funny that it’s a fucking beacon of ginger-ness because it’s brand new.  It’s ridiculously bright.  And I wore a necklace, which I never do, because not only did it match my earrings but it drew the eye to my cleavage.  The eye didn’t really need help, but I decided to help anyway.
    I gave myself ample time, but I was late anyway.  Once I got on the train, I texted him to apologize and tell him I was about ten minutes out.  He didn’t seem bothered.  I had trouble with my purse on the train, because it had his books in it and a book of mine to lend to him. >_<
    When I get there, he gives me another long, strong hug which causes him to grunt.  I love those hugs, but I don’t get them.  My own parents don’t hug me that hard.  Which is fine, I’m not usually big on touching.  Anyway.
    He knows a place he wants to take me.  It turns out to be busy, so we go somewhere else, which is, “like the place we were going to go, except more pretentious.”  I’m relieved that the place we didn’t go occupies a lower level of pretension, but the food is good.  He orders a beer and I just stick with water because I don’t know a lot about alcohol and I don’t want to look silly.  Also, the reason I don’t know a lot about alcohol is because I don’t drink it much, so it’s not like I felt I was missing anything.
    We each pay for our own food, and then walk around for a bit.  It starts to rain, and we duck into a Mexican restaurant for drinks.  I can do this.  There’s only one seat at the bar, and he lets me take it.  Then someone gets up and he can sit, too.  I tell him I don’t know what to get, and he says just get what I get.  Why the fuck did I admit weakness?  But he doesn’t care.  He seems prepared for what I’ll do, which written down now seems creepy, but I promise I felt all warm and fuzzy and enveloped in cute - and this was before the drinks.  The bartender comes and he orders two margaritas.  Oh, okay, I guess I can avoid looking silly altogether.  It’s hot, so I take off my coat, even though what I’m wearing shows the still horrific bruises on my arm from getting my blood drawn a week ago (I have impossible veins.  I suspect they are merely decorative).  He knew I had them, I sent him a picture of them when they were at their most gruesome.  He makes a face when I show him my arm, and says he’s sorry it happened.  Aside from the pain, I actually like bruises.  They’re like snowflakes, and when they’re purple they’re oddly pretty.  I’m not insane, I swear.
    The margaritas come, and I tell him I’ve never had one before.  I actually haven’t.  I’m a sorry excuse for a middle-class white girl, I know.  He says, “Well, drink up!”  And takes a huge slurp of his.  He’s so fucking silly.  I take a sip of mine and say, “Holy alcohol Batman!”  He gives me a disapproving shake of his head.  We keep drinking and get chips and salsa.  I do not eat salsa.  I’m allergic to it.
    We talk about a ton of different things, and at one point he gives me his phone to find something I insisted he had.  He had it, kind of.  He also tells me about how he got so drunk at a recent work party that he got sick.  I remember him telling me about this work party hours before it happened.  Apparently, he threw up copiously upon arriving home.  He also decides to share with me that his girlfriend tried to break up with him via text because he went home with someone else.  I must have involuntarily tensed or made a face or something, because he quickly says, “No, no, I got a ride home from someone else.”  Oh, ok.  I mean, it’s bad enough that I know you must have sex with her, I really didn’t want the image of you vomitly thrusting on top of someone else.  I guess what really happened was she was too drunk to drive, so someone else drove her car and brought her home.  She also puked profusely.  He asked her what she thought would happen.  Did she want him to stand above her and try to puke around her into the toilet?  No, she said.  I say text-break-ups are lame, and whisper “and kind of immature.”  He most definitely checks on my cleavage and then agrees with me.
    I want to ask why he told me this story.  I’ve been in a situation before where I was fairly certain someone I was friends with liked me (turned out I was right), and I had plenty of bad stories to share about my shitty boyfriend at the time.  I didn’t share a single one with him.  I thought it would lead him on, make him think he maybe had a chance since I was confiding to him the faults of my relationship.  I also had a good many friends who weren’t interested in me that I also didn’t tell those stories to.  Eventually I did, but at the time it didn’t seem necessary.  So why was it necessary to him?  I suspect it means more than just the casual, “look what silly things happen when me and people I know drink” story. *Eddie* knows I like him.  If he didn’t before, he absolutely knows now.  It seems important that I got told this story.  That I basically called his girlfriend immature and he agreed.
    After two margaritas each, we decide it’s not raining anymore and we’re going to go back outside.  I decide we better not be done hanging out, because I’m a bit tipsy.  I keep this to myself, figuring I’ll just hang out at the station and get something from Dunkin Donuts if I have to.  He puts his card down and I ask how much money he wants.  He makes a face (if I may pass judgement, a tipsy face) and says, “Psh, stop.”  I say no, how much money does he want?  He exclaims, “You’re poor!  Don’t worry about it.”  I say yes, I am, but I didn’t ask him to hang out with the intent of making him pay for my stuff.
    “Listen,” he says, “I work sixty hours a week.  I have money to burn, but not a lot of time to burn it.  Please let me do this.”  I whisper okay and thank you.  We leave and I feel cute and nice but also bad because my ex never did anything like that for me, at any stage of our relationship.  Fucker.
    We walk around some more and end up at an indie comic shop.  I’m still tipsy and so I’m really silly, and hopefully not annoying to him, though he’s laughing at every silly thing I say and do.  We look and look and talk about comics and cosplay and stuff and he picks a graphic novel out of a box and says, “You need to read this.  I’m buying it for you.”  I try playfully to tell him not to, because at this point I feel downright guilty for what to me feels like stealing his money.  He doesn’t get my hints or doesn’t care, and buys me the comic.  We walk around a bit more, and he decides he should go home and do a little work before he goes to bed.  He has work at 6 in the morning and so is going to bed early.  I assumed he was hanging out with his girlfriend, and that’s why we had lunch and not dinner.  I knew he had work early, but it didn’t click with me.  He only saw me that day.  We trade books and he gives me another signature *Eddie* hug.
    While I wait for the train I tell him I had a lot of fun, thank you.  He says no problem, hanging out is what friends do.  While hanging out, we decided we would indeed (at some as yet undetermined time) watch both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.  I tell him I will make him watch Rocky Horror also, since he’s never seen the whole thing.  (What?  It really doesn’t get better than Tim Curry in a corset, Meat Loaf on a motorcycle and then the dinner table, and the Time Warp.)  He says ok, we’ll do the double feature, and Rocky Horror will be on deck.
    When I go on an errand with my mom later that night, I tell her that this encounter in no way made me less confused.  Everything he does suggests that he likes me, and he’s doing everything he can without crossing the line.  This all makes me like him even more.  It also makes me wonder about his girlfriend.  If I found out my boyfriend (I’m imagining past ones) bought drinks and a comic book for some girl I’d never met, and was swapping books with her to boot, I’d be rip shit.  I’m so baffled by this situation.  My mom thinks he’s trying to figure out how to dump his girlfriend, and while he definitely did not say he liked me, he also didn’t say he didn’t.
    I’m definitely not going to say anything, because it would only push him away.  Waiting is killing me, and when this finally does happen I’m going to explode.  Until then, I’m just going to have to savor these little open-to-interpretation moments.

The Last Two Weeks

Super cute text boxes on my new phone

    I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about, because I have a few things.  I think I’ll just write about all of them.
    First, I got a new phone (I’m going chronologically here).  I got it about two weeks ago.  It’s a Galaxy S4, and so far I like it.  Everything is relatively easy to figure out, and the screen is nice.  The graphics are nice.  Taking pictures is nice.
    I got it because I went to the mall with my dad to look at phones for him, my mom, and my brother.  And I ended up with a phone.  Anyway.  My Dad wanted to look at the Windows phone AT&T has.  He did, it’s nice.  So far only AT&T has it, and my mom hates AT&T.  So he asked the guy questions when we were buying my phone (because it’s never as quick as you think it’s going to be).  I’m now officially on the JUMP “plan” T Mobile has, which means that (with some restrictions, of course), I can get a new phone every 6 months without having to pay for the rest of my phone (ie, $240 phone = $10/month for 24 months.  Cancel after 6 months, do not need to pay $180).  That’s nice, because being stuck with a phone for 2 years usually ends up sucking.  You don’t do it, and you suck it up and pay a bunch of money (or, like me, have phones that break through no fault of your own and thus do not cost money to have replaced).  Now, when a phone starts to shit the bed, if I still like it I can get it replaced, I suppose, but I could go find something I potentially like better.  It’s pretty nice.
    So nice, in fact, that last weekend, my whole family went to the T Mobile store and got new phones.  That’s right, I finally won them over after all these years of telling them Verizon sucks.  I mean, every carrier has problems, but my ex boyfriend was always complaining about Verizon, and I honestly haven’t heard really anyone complain about T Mobile.  I have service gaps where it appears almost everyone else has service gaps, and as a whole they just seem like a less ghastly company.  And apparently JUMP insurance covers phone theft.  So after a few hours of my Saturday, my mom and brother also have Galaxy S4s (my mom and I have white, my brother has black), and my dad has a black Galaxy Note 3.
    This is kind of a nightmare.  Up till now, they all only had flip phones.  Now, they can text, and they need to program things and use a touch screen.  And who knows how to do all this already?  Me.  I’m so sick of toggling with Galaxy settings.  Good thing mine was all set first, or I’d be suffering through life with a phone not set the way I like it.  Which leads me to: the text message settings are super cute.  As you can see from the picture.  But it’s also a nightmare because now my mom is texting me.  It hasn’t actually been too bad yet, but I have a gut feeling it’ll get scary at some point.
    In other news, I worked over vacation, which meant all three of the programs in my town were at the same school.  I had that kid that freaked out last time, and he freaked out again.  Every. Single.  Day.  Well, maybe not, because we were closed on Monday and I was sick on Tuesday.  But all three days I was there he did.  The nonverbal kid from my program also bit the director of another program, which is unheard of from him.  This week, one of the most well-behaved kids in our whole program freaked out and had to go home on Wednesday.  Then yesterday, the nonverbal kid freaked out really bad, and my director and I spent a good forty five minutes restraining him, during which time he bit both of us.  Not hard, but still scary.  He was asked not to come to the program today.  My director is meeting with his mom to talk about things and set up an arrival routine that more closely mirrors his arrival routine at school, to see if that helps.  I still like my job, but this is making me afraid to have children.  What if one of them is nonverbal and starts biting people out of the blue?  What if one of them is a ticking time bomb?
    On a positive note, I ordered these hawt pumps from Amazon and they came yesterday.  They’re ivory with turqouise heels and they have a peacock feather design on them.  I don’t know when yet, but I know I’m wearing them to a school thing this summer.  If the mountain won’t come to Mohammad, Mohammad is going to give the mountain blue balls and make it rue the day it turned him down.

hawt

Happy Singles Awareness Day!

    I’ve only started thinking about Valentine’s Day that way recently.  I’m actually a bit sad because I haven’t really been single since I was fourteen years old.  That’s eleven years ago.  Yeesh.
    I’m not that upset, but I am a little bummed.  Valentine’s Day has never been super important to me, so I’m not sure why I feel like it is now.  I honestly don’t remember what I did with some of my boyfriends for Valentine’s Day, but a memorable one was the year I was sixteen, my boyfriend got Chinese food and a blanket and we had a sick picnic inside and watched The Notebook.  I know, right?  A boy suggested we watch a romantic comedy, and followed through with it.  It’s nice when boys do things you know they don’t want to do because they know you want to do it.
    Which brings me to The Boy.  I suppose he’s technically a man, because he’s thirty, but it feels weird to say that.  I’m interested in a man?  I’m usually a bit of a cougar.  Out of the five serious boyfriends I’ve had, three of them were younger than me, and the other two were less than seven months older than me.
    So there’s the boy.  I don’t want to say his name, so I’ll call him...Eddie.  That sounds good.  Everyone can see me dating someone named Eddie, right?  Eddie and Eileen.  Here we go.
    So I’ve known Eddie a little over a year.  He’s had a girlfriend for three?  four?  years.  I’m not completely sure.  But the whole time I’ve known him, she’s been there.  I’ve never met her, despite the numerous times she could have been at things we were both at, school events and otherwise.  He hardly ever mentions her, and it was like pulling teeth to get him to tell me her name.  So I know her name, her age, her job, and that she likes to read.  And she doesn’t do anything with him in public, apparently.  I’m pretty sure he knows more about my ex than I know about her.
    Every so often, he’ll text me, usually about school stuff.  Nothing he says is ever crossing any sort of line, and maybe I’m just jealous and untrusting, but if I found out my boyfriend was texting someone this much (it equals out to about one half hourish conversation a week), I’d be annoyed.  I’d think something was up.
    He hates things/people in general the same amount I do.  Almost every damn thing we hate at the same level.  And he likes to read, and he writes.
    He mentioned over the summer that he likes to “have someone on the horizon” before he breaks up with his current girlfriend, and I had given him a note, because I’m super mature, saying he could have someone on the horizon if he wanted to.  He said nothing about it, but continued on like nothing happened, which is better than not talking to me ever again.
    I’m usually not good at this type of thing, but I really don’t think I’m misreading signals here, and everyone I’ve talked to (which is probably the entire audience of this blog), thinks there’s nothing mixed about his signals.
    He read four chapters of my novel to help me figure out what to submit for workshop this past residency.  And this was a workshop he wasn’t in, so it’s not even like he was getting some reading done ahead of time or anything.  He also did it about .5 seconds after I emailed them to him.
    He doesn’t like to touch people, but he willingly hugs me.
    When we have to get up in front of people and do things, it’s understood that we will high five each other when we finish.
    He recommended a book to me on Good Reads.
    When I asked him for his number, he said no you give me yours, and texted me about a minute after I emailed him.
    At a thing we both went to, he only went to presentations I went to, with the exception of the first one, where he was waiting for me when I got out.  He also went on a bad weather day because I went.
    He eats lunch/dinner in the gross school cafeteria because I ask him to.
    When I was nervous about a public thing I had to do, he sat with me because he didn’t want me to be alone.
    He has hung out with me alone a total of four times.  As in, so alone that absolutely no one but the two of us can verify what did or didn’t happen.  And nothing did, of course, but I wouldn’t believe that if I was his girlfriend.
    He’s made concerted efforts to connect to my favorite person at school, even though their volume is a bit high for him.
    He bought me a beer.  Haha this one probably means nothing, but after four years of everything split down the middle exactly and when it wasn’t split down the middle, it benefitted him and not me, not having to pay someone back for a beer is really nice.
    He told me he’ll get me a good deal if I decide to get a new laptop.  Which he’s offered to do for other people, but I’m counting this anyway.  I sent him a picture of this cool one I want, saying I wanted it, and he checked to see if his work had it in stock.  I was honestly just fangirling about it because the screen flips.
    He has offered to eat iffy food for me if we’re at food places together, and he actually did it in one instance.  When I tried to half-hug him (you know, when you put your arm around someone and put your head on their shoulder?) he held his hands up and backed up.  “No, this is seriously too raw for you.”  And later that night he offered to eat the tomato off my burger.  It ended up not having one, but still.
    That same night he let me have a sip of my drink.  He was also going to share a mushroom with me, until we realized there were enough for us not to have to split them.  Which reminds me, he also let me eat a mushroom off his plate at a different time.
    If I text him/tell him in person that I hurt myself, he’s like, “Are you ok???” and only after I say yes does he make a joke about my clumsiness.  Which is a real thing, and an embarrassing yet admittedly humorous thing.
    There have been a number of times when we’ve been sitting together, and our legs or our arms touch, and he doesn’t move.  He just sits there, large portions of our bodies touching.
    And yet when I told him recently how I feel, just to make sure that I was as obvious as I could be, he rejected me.  He said, “You want me to break up with my girlfriend?”  And in a decidedly skeevy move I said, “Not necessarily?”  This is not what I really meant, and certainly not what I want.  But he insisted that it was what I meant, and he said he would not break up with her.  Interesting wording.  He never actually said that he didn’t like me.  At first I was sad about it, but then I decided that all my friends were right, and he did like me, he was just stuck.  So, since I’m sadistic, I decided to make life difficult for him.  I think I did. :)
    My favorite moment with him is one that I already mentioned, sort of.  It’s the hugging thing.  When I went to drop him off (one of the alone times), I hugged him before he got out of the car.  I started to let go of the hug when I thought it was over, but he tightened his grip.  It was a pretty tight grip before that.  Also, another time, when we both got out of the car to hug, he hugged me so hard he made a noise.  I love those long, strong, grunty hugs you get when you’re merely trying to drop someone off at the T.
    So what’s my point with all this?  I’m bummed that I’m single for Valentine’s Day, even though it’s kind of a lame holiday.  I’m also upset that he’s still with his girlfriend.  And I’m upset that these things upset me.  Every time I think I’ve managed to curb my feelings for him, he’ll text me, and my entire body will feel like your foot does when it falls really asleep.  A tingling that is muffled but at the same time very painful.  I want this to be a thing, and I’m a bit aggravated that I seem incapable of having a normal relationship.  Why can’t I like someone who is in a position to act on their feelings for me?  Ugh, whatever.

Fuck today

    And the horse it rode in on.  Fuck today and fuck you, internet.  PayPal in particular.
    Tuesday morning, I was minding my own business, watching some Bad Ink on my DVR, when I notice I have two emails.  One is from PayPal, thanking me for my J. Crew order made through them.  Um, what?  The next email is from J. Crew, thanking me for my order...I made no such order.  I go to the real computer, where I prefer to do my in-depth emailing, and I see that a fucking $500 e-gift card was purchased at J. Crew on my PayPal account.  What the fucking fuck?  (Side note, my parents say that someday this will be the quote I am remembered by.)  At this point, my face is burning, and my heart is pounding in my ears.  There’s no music, but I wouldn’t be able to hear it anyway.  I go to PayPal, and see that there is an easy way to file a claim to dispute a charge.  I do this.  They say it will take 10 days, and I calm down a little, knowing I’ve done what I can.  I also email my bank, asking them to please not let the charge go through, as it is fraudulent.  I think maybe this will be the end of it.  After all, in no universe have I had $500 in my account ever.  Only in my savings account after taxes, and only for about half an hour in late December/early January when I gave my dad money I owed him.  I figure the charge will bounce due to insufficient funds, PayPal will fix it, end of story.
    I discover an email from PayPal alerting me to suspicious activity on my account.  It prompts me to change my password and security questions if this is indeed activity to be suspicious of.  I do so.  I check my account several times Tuesday, and once last night.  (Yesterday was a snow day in my town, so I spent a lot of the morning reading and waiting to be called in to work, then the afternoon working.  My job is normally a 2-6 gig, but on snow days it’s 7:30-6.  I was lucky enough to just get the regular 2-6, but you never know.)  All is well.  My account is not negative.
    I check my account this morning.  The fucking charge went through, and not only did it go through, but the customer service person who responded to my message said that unfortunately, they can only stop charges where the account holder has given three days prior warning, and it appears I have only given two.  I notified you about five minutes after I knew myself, you fucker.  I call customer service, and they tell me I can fill out an affidavit, but it takes as long as PayPal takes, and it’ll be quicker if I go to a branch and do it rather than do it over the phone.
    Fuck.  I now have no choice but to call in reinforcements, aka real adults who will know what to do.  I go to the living room and get my mom.  I explain it all to her, and she tells me to print out everything I can, make a list of what happened and what I did, and she’ll go to the bank to fill out the affidavit with me.  I’m freaking out.  The guy on the phone told me there’s no way to stop the overage charges.  I only asked because I don’t get paid for another week.  Even then, I don’t think I would get the $431 my account is now negative, and that’s before any overdraft fees.  I’m envisioning an ever growing gulf between the money needed to be in the black and the money I get in my paycheck.
    The lady at the bank was fabulous.  She had me fill out the paperwork and emailed the person in charge of reversing unauthorized charges.  She gave me her card, and told me to call after 11 tomorrow (when she gets in), and she’ll do what she can to reverse the two fees I’ll get, and she says even if she can’t do it tomorrow, they’ll be reversed eventually.  I go home, and feel funny until I go to work, but I now have around $5 in my account, and I should have even more tomorrow.
    I know I’m relatively lucky, but when I told my mom, I felt so bad.  I felt like I had done something wrong (which I guess I sort of had, linking PayPal to my debit card instead of credit card), but I mean I felt like I was confessing to something horrible.  I also felt like I’d never have money again, due to the constant overdraft fees, or else that I’d have to borrow what felt to me like an atrocious amount of money from my parents until this whole thing got cleared up.  My body got so worked up that it thought it was supposed to be doing lady things that it is not supposed to do yet, so that just added to the joy of the day.  I considered calling out of work, because I legit felt awful, both mentally and physically, but I decided that all I’d do here was sit and wallow and not even get any schoolwork done, so I might as well do something I’m getting paid to do.
    The moral of the story is: hackers/identity thieves suck.  I’m going to be ok, and once the paperwork all goes through and everything is sorted out, I’m going to link PayPal to my credit card, and hopefully everything will be swell from here on out.  But fuck the people who ruin people’s days, and sometimes people’s weeks or months, all because they’d rather be sneaky than get their money from a legit channel.  I now understand a fraction of what actual identity theft victims feel, and it’s horrible.

First packet: off!

My mentor, looking studious during workshop

    I put my last first packet in the mail yesterday.  It’s sad that I won’t be doing this anymore.  My last-last packet will go in the mail at the end of May, and that will be it.  Well, I do want to do a post-grad semester, but I need to establish myself in the full-time work world after this, so I want to wait until I have that under control before I go the post-grad semester.
    My mentor this semester is David Yoo, and he has his students mail their packets to him, most mentors, my past ones included, prefer email.  It’s a little different, but by no means difficult, and thanks to Flat Rate shipping, not expensive at all.  Putting it in the actual mail felt a little mor final than emailing it, but strangely I haven’t experienced sender’s remorse.  I think that if I haven’t by now, thirty-two hours later, I probably won’t.  This is a nice surprise on the self-confidence front, and hopefully it makes my little novel feel good.
    I had to send forty thoroughly revised pages of my novel, along with my Artist’s Statement (my last Artist’s Statement!...for now).  The page quota for semesters one and two is 20-25 pages (third semester has no creative writing quote, since most students only have the time and mental capacity to work on the critical thesis), and since I follow rules very well, I usually sent around 20.  Or 19.9.  But now there is no range.  The handbook had an example of a fourth semester Plan, and I pretty much copied that.  Forty this time, fifty next time, the entire 120-150 the third time (this includes the previous 90, with the mentor’s comments taken into account, and most likely acted upon).  I was nervous at first, because I still have two (out of six) characters to write, and they were the only two I had to do capital “R” Research for.  I’m almost done researching one, who is a soldier.  I still have to write him, and research and write the other one, but I just...don’t feel worried.  Right now, anyway.
    I decided to rearrange my chapters a little bit.  Right now, I have my novel divided into three parts, which I tried to be too cool for school and call “Book” 1-3, but that seems to be confusing people, so I might give up the ghost and call them “Part” 1-3.  So each character has a chapter in each part.  I had them all in “perfect” order (my OCD is showing, I know), but at the last minute I decided to switch it up, and I like the new order.
    I feel bad for my last two characters, because I’m still not really looking forward to writing them.  That sound so bad.  It sounds like a parent having favorite children, or a teacher having favorite students...which I also do.  The teacher one, I don’t have kids.
    I do feel really good about my choice in mentor.  David is funny, and people keep saying there is humor in my novel, and I should bring it out more.  I know he’ll help me do that, and it was also really easy to write my cover letter (which all packets have).  It’s not that my other mentors weren’t funny, it’s just that David is always funny, and my weird little self-deprecating humor (well, I hope it comes across as humor) just flowed from my fingers as I typed.  I’m off to a great start, and it’s making me a little less sad that this is the winding-down part of my grad school career.
    I will, of course, be as present as possible for the Winter Residency, when some of my favorite people (in the program and in life) will be graduating.  I’ll be there for graduation for sure, and if I can take the days off, I’ll be there every day, taking classes and eating the haute cuisine from the cafeteria.
    In addition to writing my other two characters, I need to think about the class I’m going to teach.  I don’t want to do this.  I hate being the center of attention, by which I mean I hate everyone in the room hanging on my every word.  I’m super with one on one (in which I kind of am the center of the other person’s attention), or groups that don’t encompass everyone in the room, but stick me at a podium or something and it’s over.  I want my friends to be there (and I know that unless there’s an awesome class at the same time, they will be), but I also kind of don’t.  I kind of don’t want anyone but my evaluating professor to show up.  I feel like I’ll be overwhelmed if too many people show up, and scrambling to fill the time if not enough people do.  If my class is a dud, I can just have a nice conversation with the professor about my thesis.  But I have a cute little bit semi-planned with Amanda, so there’s that.  I’m sure it will be fine, and I’m worrying for nothing.  I need to come up with a description by March 31, which sounds like a long way away, but we’re supposed to run it by our mentor first, so that means the description is going in the second packet, due March 3.  Did I mention that my third packet is due March 31 also?  And that’s also my birthday?  Sweet Jesus.  My packet will be in the mail before that, obviously, and I’m going to try to get my description emailed to Meg early, too.  That way nothing is really due that day.
    There’s so much I have to do this semester.  I’m afraid it’s going to make it fly by, and I want to savor it, cherish it, before it’s gone.  I have to decide what I’m going to read for my graduate student reading, and spend time not looking forward to doing it.  I also need to find gifts for Meg and Tanya, to thank them for the wonderful program.  That’s what fourth semesters do, who are then graduating students at Residency.  The incoming fourth semesters get to decorate for graduation, which worked out fine for us, but could easily have turned into a shit show.  Luckily, we all worked together and got our shit decided in plenty of time for school.
    This ended up being totally different than I thought it would be when I sat down, but suffice it to say, my semester is going well, but I know I’m going to cry a few times along the way.  I’ve cried other semesters, too, around the time when a packet is coming due, because I overwhelmed myself and felt like I couldn’t do it.  I didn’t cry this time, and I feel like I can do it, but I don’t want it to be over.

Happy 24th Birthday Fuckhead

I thought I had gotten rid of all the pictures of him, but to my complete and utter horror, I have quite a few saved on my computer.  This is him, the boy who terrorized me for four years.

     Yesterday was his birthday.  No, not the as-yet-unnamed-and-also-largely-undescribed boy (he says the word “boy” is creepy, but I’m not ready for the word “man”).  My ex, Mike.  That’s whose birthday was yesterday.  He is now a whopping twenty-four years old and has probably accomplished nothing since the last time I spoke to him.
    Well, perhaps that’s not fair.  He did emerge from the ether for a quick second after I got rid of him to pay me back what he owed me ($60 and a broken PS3 = $100 and a Blu-ray player; no really, I consider this equal).  And he emerged again to respond to my thank-you email three months after I sent it.
    I told Amanda this, and now I’m going to tell all of you.  I was honestly a little disappointed that he was still alive.  I had held out hope that somehow he had overdosed on insulin (he’s a Type 1 diabetic), but alas it seems not.
    Why do I harbor such resentment toward this boy?  I’ll tell you.  He was abusive.  Mostly emotionally/psychologically, but a little bit physically, too.  Most of the physical part was the first Winter/Spring we were together, but every so often we would have brutal fights where we would both get physical.  I am in no way trying to get attention by revealing this.  I am merely trying to take away his power, because one of the worst things he did was make me promise not tell anyone about what he did, especially my next boyfriend, and any boyfriends after that.  He was so vain that he didn’t want anyone else who dated me to think badly of him.  Yet he hated my high school boyfriend for calling me the c-word once.
    Funny, because I lost track of how many times he called me that.  That and a slut.  He also called me retarded if I couldn’t remember something he said (tell me, can you remember every single thing one specific person ever said to you?  Didn’t think so), and for a little bit there he could call me Autistic when I did the same.  This would be awful enough on its own, but he did it because my brother is Autistic and I shared with Mike my concern that I might be, too.  What a vile human being.  If no one else was in earshot, he would yell.  About the most unimportant things.  And then he would be so hurt if I flinched when he turned to me.  For fuck’s sake, there’s a 50/50 chance you’re going to try to blow out my eardrum!
    The physical stuff can be summed up pretty neatly, and again I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad for me, I’m trying to take away the power he made me promise to give him forever.  The first Winter we were together, we were hanging out after work (which then meant after 2 AM), and out of nowhere we began to argue.  Nothing new.  Before I know it, he is on top of me, his hands around my throat, squeezing hard.  Frozen in the shock of what is happening, I do nothing but stare at him.  I legitimately think for a second that I might die.  He stops as suddenly as he started and we lie on his bed for a minute.  I touch my neck, get up, say I have to go, and get the hell out of there without even tying my shoes.
    That Spring, we were either going to Newbury Comics or his house, he kept changing his mind.  We were nearing to on-ramp to the highway, so I shout that he needs to make a decision after ten times of changing, and he shouts go to his house!  I get on the highway and mutter that this situation is stupid.  He starts yelling because I allegedly called him stupid, saying a situation he created is stupid is the same thing as calling him stupid, blah, blah, blah.  He throws his phone at my windshield, which creates a lovely spiderweb crack across the whole windshield.  While I’m driving.  I begin to scream, and he screams back that it isn’t his fault, I made him do it.  Before he can do anything else, I bring my fist down as hard as I can as high up on his thigh as I can, to demonstrate that even though I am driving, I know damn well where the family jewels are, and next time I will hit them.  He then decides it would be cool to ram his hand into my right ear.  At the time, I had three piercings in my ear, all of which had jewelry in them.  Two in the earlobe and a conch.  The posts of the lobe earrings went into the soft spot behind my ear so forcefully that the bled.  My ear hurt so bad I had to take the lobe earrings out.  My entire ear was purple for about two weeks, and the fucker made me wear my hair in front of my ear until it was “safe.”  He would even go so far as to check on me and make sure I hadn’t exposed his “mistake.”
    The other physical stuff was various pushing or hair pulling, none of it in the cute and playful way or the sexy way.  I did my fair share of pushing and hair pulling, including a memorable time when he emerged from the shower in only a towel, and he looked so helpless falling to the ground naked.  I win. :)
    Why didn’t I leave?  Why was I with him for over four years?  The first fight we had was a bad one, and it was after only two months.  Why didn’t I leave then?  The answer is both simple and complicated.  I had low self-esteem, and still do.  When it was good it was really good.  At the beginning, when he wasn’t Satan himself, he did make me feel beautiful and smart and loved and valued and all the gooey stuff.  Later on, I didn’t want to throw away all the time I had already invested in the relationship.  It was also a lot harder to leave than I ever thought it would be.  I was thinking about it at residency, and I told someone (I think it was Amanda, but it may have been someone else) that being in an abusive relationship is like being at the bottom of a one hundred foot hole, and the person looking down at you from the top doesn’t want you to get out.  Mike wasn’t very smart academically, but he was manipulative as fuck.  He knew all my weak points, as if I keep them a secret, and he knew exactly what to do and say to have me crawling back to him every damn time.
    He broke up with me officially a little over a year after we started going out.  We then proceeded to date in secret, which really meant we weren’t fooling anyone.  His logic was that everyone would think he was a jerk for dumping me and then going back out with me, but what really happened is that the longer the “secret” went on, the more our co-workers thought he was a jerk for (what?) jerking me around.  Fancy that.  So we do this secret-dating thing for another year, and then out of the blue he tells me that I should move on.  A cute boy at the theater asks for my number (nevermind that I’m twenty-three and he is about to turn nineteen...seriously, nevermind that), so I give it to him.  I say nothing to Mike.  I go on a date with this boy, and we go back to his house and make out and get to some base that is not home but bases confuse me.  We go out again on his birthday, and I tell Mike that morning that I am going on a date with him.  He is sad and mopey and shit but I’m happy.  This boy appears to be nice.  Mike then proceeds to text me the whole time, and tells me he loves me and wants me back.  Bye bye young boy, hello Mike.  Oh, but we still have to date in secret.
    After another year and a half of this secret bullshit, he tells me he wants me to be his girlfriend again.  In a surprising show of backbone, I say no.  He has to put effort in and court me if he wants that.  He agrees.  He then gets me nothing for my birthday and is surprised when he continues to buy pot and cigarettes in excess and still gets nothing for me (he had also point-blank said he was going to get me something).  He eventually harangues me into hanging out with him in mid-May, where he buys me two books and a bag of my favorite flavor of Lindt chocolates.  Whoop de fucking do.
    What was the straw that broke the camel’s back?  Well, a few break-up songs were well-timed.  The most influential being Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Pink’s “Last Kiss,” though Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger” and Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” were in there, too.  I played the Pink (oh, excuse me, P!nk) song for Amanda, because it just has so much that I relate to, and now I’m going to bother you with it (well, the relevant parts).

I've been crying, I've been crying, I've been dying over you
I truly had.  There would be times I would sit alone in my house and bawl because I knew this wasn’t what it was supposed to be like, but I didn’t know what to do
Tie a knot in the rope, tryin' to hold, tryin' to hold, But there's nothing to grasp so I let go
That line did it for me.  If there was nothing between us, which there wasn’t, I should just let go.
I think I've finally had enough, I think I maybe think too much
I certainly do think too much.
I think this might be it for us
That was still really sad for me for a bit there.  I had put so much time into this, and now I was just going to have nothing to show for all my hard work?  But then I realized that it wasn’t that another girl would benefit from the work I put into him, it was that another girl would be subjected to the horror he was and maybe be harsher than I was
I won't miss all of the fighting that we always did,
Nope!  Still don’t
I will do what I please, anything that I want
That was really freeing.  I would be who I was, who I had been all along, who he had stamped down.  People would like me, and best of all, I would like me.  And so far, so good :)
You will pay for your sins, you'll be sorry my dear
Oh I fucking hope so.  I hope he’s in for a hot time when he dies.

    So once I knew what I had to do, I ceased being friends with benefits with him.  My plan was to just not talk to him much and never hang out with him until he gave up.  Lame-o plan, but whatever.  Shush.  That plan kind of fell apart when his dad got arrested, and then a few days later he was trying to ask me something.  It devolved into him calling me stupid, which I’m not, and even if I am, I wasn’t in the situation.  I was being sarcastic about his dad’s arrest, and so was he, and he said I didn’t understand his sarcasm.  I said I did, I just didn’t really know how to handle this situation because no one else I know has a family that’s such a shit show, so I’ve never had to deal with this.  I told him that I didn’t want his new phone number when he got it, and I just didn’t want to deal with him anymore.  I blocked him and went about my night.  He probably expected me to unblock him and try to contact him.  I didn’t.  I win.  And now I really win, because I do not hide at all the fact that I was in an abusive relationship.  Every time I actively hide it, he wins.  And I do not want him to win ever again.  Hopefully I’ll stop remembering his birthday, and hopefully soon.  I’ve been lucky enough not to have run into him since, and hopefully that keeps (not) happening.


* Note: to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation in my area (Massachusetts) this website appears to have helpful information.  I don’t want anyone to be stuck in the destructive cycle I was stuck in.*