My life as an Intern

This is my blog about my internship right after college graduation, summer of 2007. It was the worst job I've ever had...and I've had some really bad ones. More on the others soon!

I’m an intern. It’s true. At least, I was an intern. Currently, the state of my employment is questionable at best.

I went to college for four years, got two degrees, and the best job I could get was an internship at an engineering firm doing CRM work. For those of you out there who aren’t archaeologists, and I’m guessing that’s probably the majority, that stands for Cultural Resource Management. I know it sounds exciting. “What could be better?” you say. Of course, what you’re really wondering is, “What the hell does that mean?”

Don’t feel silly. You’re not alone. I’ll give you the nutshell version of Cultural Resources. The company where I am questionably employed gets contracts from various companies or government agencies to do all sorts of things from widening roads to building buildings. Before the work can be done, however, we have to make sure that the ground we’re about to tear apart doesn’t contain any archaeologically significant artifacts. Basically, we go out and survey (look around and dig little holes called “shovel tests”) and/or dig (actually excavate in much larger square holes) to see if at any time in the not-so-recent past there could have been a Native American occupation in this ground. Usually we don’t find anything. No one wants us to find anything anyway.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way (and you’ve had a nap from the sheer boredom of it all), I’ll tell you all about a typical day in my life as an intern. Try not to piss your pants from excitement.

First of all, I want to explain that I was forced to dress up…to go to my job as an archaeologist (we dig in the dirt, people, c'mon). Yeah, so that sucked. Except that I really like to wear my dress-up shoes, though I don’t like what they do to my feet. But I digress. So I had to get up in the morning and get all dressed up and pretty to go to work.

Most of my work was done in the lab. For my first three or four weeks, this consisted of data entry. I didn’t know it at the time, but I should have cherished this activity. My typical day usually consisted of labeling folders and making copies and putting dirty pieces of paper in plastic sheet protectors. And this would be for all eight hours, everyday. I know what you’re thinking. Quit my bitching, right? At least it’s a job. It’s a valid point. But let me go into a little more detail.

One day, the third in a row of folder labeling, I began to wonder how much I was actually writing. If I were to go by the constant shooting pain from my hand all the way up to my elbow, I would have to admit it was a lot. So I counted the number of words I had to write on each folder - nine. And I had to label over 2000 folders. In about ten days. Yeah, that’s a lot of words. This was in addition to all the pages that had to be numbered. Page 1 of 537, Page 2 of 537, etc. You get the idea. And all of this had to be done by hand with a pencil on special acid-free folders.

Then all the pages had to be copied. No big deal, right? It wouldn’t have been a big deal at all, if I could have just loaded the pages into the top of the copy machine and pressed the button. But no. The Lab Manager (otherwise referred to as “Plain and Dry”) decided that the pages all had to be sheet-protectored first. It’s a verb, trust me. So I had to stand at the copy machine for 16 hours and make four copies of each page one at a time. All so I didn’t get the copy machine dirty. Afterwards, I would go home and cry. And massage my aching extremities.

Sometimes, on magical days, I would get to go out and do field work. These days were by far my favorite. Bones and I would go to exotic places like Sanger or Carrollton. Once we even got to go to Harlingen. Even the day that I was a complete idiot and wore shorts into the Sangervian jungle, where I was attacked by poisonous plants and insects, was better than all my days in lab. These lab bitches are crazy. They spend hours upon hours trying to figure out where some miniscule and insignificant piece of clear glass was made. All the while, I am killing forests of paper trees to make copies of crap that no one will ever look at again.

Last week, they told me they don’t have any work for me to do this week. No warning, no notice, nothing. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Just sit around and wait for them to call me in while I have the Money Fairy pay my bills? Not that they were paying me enough to cover my bills anyway. It’s the principle of the thing.

So I’m out looking for a job. If anyone knows of anything a girl with nice boobs and not many useful job skills can do, let me know!

Go ahead, make my day.

This is a repost of a blog I wrote shortly after Christmas last year. I had no job, no money, and no food. Life was shit. But! Johnny Virgil (if you haven't read his blog, get your ass in gear and do it.) just posted a blog about Best Buy screwing him over (and really, who hasn't had THAT experience?), so I thought I would counter by resending some good retail joo joo (is that really how it's spelled? I'm at a loss on this one...) out there for a different retail establishment. "Bones" was a coworker from the worst job I ever had. More on that later.

A couple of days ago Bones and I were chatting about a website we'd stumbled upon. There were a bunch of pictures of these…well, southern gentlemen (read: rednecks) out digging up artifacts and bragging about them and taking them home. In our world, we call that looting. And it’s deplorable. But before you get all nervous that I’m about to bombard you with archaeology talk, fear not. That is not the point.

The point is this: I said to Bones, “People are horrible, I don’t wanna be one anymore.” But today, something happened to me that made me feel a little bit like people aren’t so bad. Well, at least this one person. We all know by now that I’m not rollin’ in the dough. I just moved, which didn’t help the situation. In fact, I’ve barely left my apartment for the last three days because I didn’t have the money to put gas in my car. But that’s not the point either.

My mom, sweet woman that she is, bought me all this stuff (crap) I didn’t need for Christmas. It was in my “stocking.” We’re talking labels for every cord in my apartment. And both my neighbors’ apartments, too. Do people really have this much trouble with cords? A travel door alarm. I don’t travel. A keychain don’t-rape-me whistle. That might actually be useful in my new neighborhood, but it was like $25. Crazy. Rubber gloves with cuffs. So water doesn’t…something. I don’t know. But they’re made of latex, and I’m allergic. You get the idea. A whole bunch of stuff I have very little use for and no room to store. So I took it back today.

It all came from The Container Store. Have you ever been? I love that place. I can’t afford it, but I love it. Mom had also bought me some kitchen organizing stuff that just didn’t work in my kitchen. So I have all this stuff, but no receipt. The lady at the register said she would have to give me store credit. What could I say? That’s the way it works. I made some joke about how it was too bad they don’t sell gas at The Container Store because I this was the first time I had left my apartment in three days because I couldn’t afford any. And we talked while she rang all my stuff in.

It ended up being like $182. Which would buy me a lot of containers. Well, some containers. Really that place is crazy expensive. So she looked at me and said, “You know what? I’m going to make it cash back.”

Wow. She’s like my new best friend. I’m not supposed to tell anyone, so keep your mouth shut. It was such a nice thing to do. And it probably could get her in some trouble. She stuck her neck out just to be nice to that poor girl who had no gas. And now I have a full tank. And I got groceries! Maybe being a people isn’t so bad…today.

See? Now don't you have the warm fuzzies in your belly about humanity?

Girls' Night Out with the Homophobe

Mardi Gras celebration has never been high on my list of priorities.

This can probably be better summed up as: I have never been to Mardi Gras.

As luck would have it, this past Tuesday, I had plans with a girlfriend I hadn't seen in a while. Turns out that this past Tuesday was also Mardi Gras. I had no clue.

We decided to avoid the bead gathering festivities (though I did bring out the ladies with a low-cut-ish V-neck top) and just hang out at a bar near downtown. And away we went.

We ordered our drinks and ordered our food. I had a wonderful seared Ahi Tuna burger. Delicious. And some Guinness. Not exactly complimentary, but it worked out all right.

We sat at our booth in the back talking and drinking for a bit, and then her phone lit up. Some guy she had met the previous weekend (not that kind of guy, she has a boyfriend) wanted to know what she was doing. Being as how it was Mardi Gras and he hadn’t really been in town very long, she felt like it would be mean to ignore him. So she told him she was at a bar with a girlfriend, hanging out.

Twenty minutes later, he showed up with ten pink tulips. Apparently, he was starting a “buds for beads” program. He was nice enough to give us each one, though we had no beads to trade. I never really got where he was from, but somewhere south. I’m from Tennessee, I recognize the accent and mindset.

Somehow, the conversation turned to religion.

Well, let me back up. First, we were trading stories of holidays or birthdays that had sucked balls in the past. Bethany shared a humdinger about Valentine’s Day, so my follow-up was my less-than-stellar 21st birthday experience.

Poor Bethany found out on Valentine’s Day that her (albeit douchebaggy) boyfriend of four years or so was moving to Finland within two weeks and was going out to drink with his buddies instead of hanging out with her, as planned.

I was living with the nicest girl you’d ever meet for my 21st birthday. We had been living together for six months or so, I think, and had become really good friends. I was so excited to turn 21, and I wanted to do something that I wouldn’t remember the next day. You know, typical stuff. Well, my roommate told me not to make any plans because she wanted to plan everything.

The key part that she forgot was that she was still only 20. Hanging out with her meant, really, that I couldn’t do anything that wasn’t legal the day before (buying her alcohol would still be illegal, you see). I hadn’t thought about this either, so I agreed to let her make all the plans.

As the big night approached, I had visions of bars and shots and parties and all kinds of fun stuff. Unfortunately, my luck was not so good.

My 21st birthday consisted of me and my roommate driving to the grocery store, so I could buy us some Mike’s Hard Lemonade (we didn’t really drink beer back then…gross!). Then her big plan was for us to hang out at home and drink it. We played Uno on our living room floor all night.

She meant well, and I don’t hold it against her, though her 21st birthday extravaganza was far more exciting.

Since then, a couple of years ago, I decided I should make up for this travesty of a monumental birthday. I have yet to be successful. Apparently, good birthdays only happen if you spend the time to plan them yourself. Which is the last thing I want to do for my birthday. Instead, I think I’ll just spend them alone from here on out.

So I told Bethany and the southern guy my story. I had to add that my 21st birthday was such a big deal because I never really drank before I was 21. I think I had been drunk twice. Not even one good or fun thing happened either time. One was worse than the other, but neither was fun.

I had this guilt thing about drinking before I was legally allowed to drink. One sip of an alcoholic beverage and I would get the worst stomach cramps. It was terrible.

To which Bethany said, “What, were you Baptist?”

And thus the religion conversation began. I was raised Southern Baptist (hard to believe, eh?), but now I’m an atheist. Southern guy asked about that. He said he’d been doing some research on religion because he wasn’t sure what religion to choose.

None of them, says me. But that’s just my opinion.

I don’t know what kind of research he’d been doing. My experience with most people from backwoods southern towns is that they’re not terribly tolerant of anyone who isn’t just like them. It appeared that this guy was no exception. The next words out of his mouth were:

“Well, there are some things about Christianity that I agree with...like, queers are unnatural.”

Seriously.

I almost fell out of the booth. Who says that? Out loud? At a bar? ON MARDI GRAS? I was just waiting for him to start talking about all the n-words in the bar or something.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom, both because I had to pee and because I didn’t want to climb across the table and beat him upside the head with my purse (hey, I’m a lady). While I was gone, he told Bethany that I was hot and if she needed to go, he would give me a ride home. Ugh.

Sir, you have no chance. Less than no chance. Which, thankfully, Bethany told him. She’s a good friend, that one.

I decided to keep my flower as a reminder that not only do people like that still exist and walk among us, they also think I’m hot. :-)

A repost of a blog I wrote a while back.

I think it still applies to life in general:

You don’t “sale” a house. You sell a house. You don’t have trouble “saling” your house. You might have trouble sailing your boat, but you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly. Selling your house right now is a bad idea in general, actually.

You know your cell phone has finished charging when it STOPS CHARGING. Usually this involves a completely filled in battery icon. If you don’t know what a battery icon is, I can’t help you.

Asparagus is a vegetable. It’s for eating. It is not, in any way, a scrubbing device.

One half and a half are, in fact, the exact same fucking thing. I say this because someone asked, "I'm sorry, professor, did you say one half or a half?" in my college calculus class. Really.

You cannot ever, under any circumstances, paste the text from a Word document into a folder on your hard drive, and expect your computer to automatically create a new Word file for you. It just doesn't work that way.

Files and programs are not the same thing. Equally, files and folders are not the same thing.

The remote control that came with your laptop is not a mouse, no matter how much you want it to be.

You can begin writing your check before the cashier at the grocery store rings up all your merchandise. There is no age limit on this one.

Ten Items or Less means exactly that. It doesn’t become void if there’s no one else in line.

Know your PIN, (Notice it’s not a PIN number. That’s what the “N” stands for in PIN. Cute little trick, huh? This also works for SSN.) if you plan on using it.

Buying gas is not a negotiable act. You cannot argue your way into lower gas prices once inside the establishment. Calling the cashier “Un-American” is just silly.

Your car is a vehicle that should be used to get you from point A to point B. You should not confuse it with your bathroom. Fix your hair, brush your teeth, read your book, but do it before you get in your car.

Strippers are not your friends. Accept this. Move on.

On a related note, if you sleep with a stripper, that’s your problem. Do not point your penis in my direction again. This rule also applies to hookers, and a few really dirty people I know.

It is possible to work at a fast food joint and not be an idiot. That should be your new goal.

If you’re a teacher, you should know how to spell. It doesn’t matter what you teach.

If you flip your hair and giggle like a school girl every time you’re within ten feet of a man, I think you’re dumb. Your IQ actually drops right in front of my eyes.

Aliens from outer space (not to be confused with illegal aliens, you understand) did not build the pyramids. If they’re out there, I’m sure they have better things to do.

Do NOT use God as birth control. Use birth control as birth control. Sometimes getting pregnant is a result of your own stupidity and not an indication that God thinks you should have more children, even though you don’t make enough money to support the ones you have.

If people tell you that your boyfriend is a lying, manipulative asshole, you don’t get to be shocked when you figure out he is a lying, manipulative asshole. This goes for any and all other boyfriend characteristics.

If you live in this country, learn to speak the language. Oh wait, we’ve all forgotten how to do it, why should anyone else learn? Just practice your lulz instead. It’ll be more useful.

Feel free to drive at least as fast as the posted speed limit on all roads at all times, except in the case of a blizzard. Do not slam on your brakes on the highway unless you’re about to cause bodily harm to another creature (insects are not included).

If you decide to make a commercial, seriously have someone edit it for you before you air it. You don’t want to end up like Rodney Anderson with CTX Mortgage. Here are some highlights: “…what I want to be known for is I want to be known for your lender for life. If you’ve went through a divorce, if you’ve went through hard times, if you’ve went through…” There are a few of us out here who still like properly formed sentences. Verb conjugation really isn’t that difficult. **Since I wrote this, he's made several more horrible commercials.**

As chicks, sometimes we kiss each other to make you happy. It does not mean we’re lesbians, or that we are in any way trying to insult the lesbian community. It is purely as entertainment for you. With the vast amount and variety of porn you’re watching these days, we have to find some way to keep up that does not involve fucking a toaster dressed as a French maid with a giant cock strapped to our pelvis (probably we’ll do this once if you ask nicely and buy us dinner).

Based on the book by...

Books are always better than the movies they make about them. We can all agree on that, yes?

Lately, though, I can't even tell that the person who made the movie even read the book. I read The Other Boleyn Girl a couple of months ago. It's not really my kind of book. I'm not much for the historical fiction. Plus, I had to put the book down and cool off every thirty minutes for the first few chapters. Having to read about men pimping their 12-year-old daughters out like property really gets to me.

--Let me just break here for a second and say that I'm officially reminded how glad I am that I live in America and that I live now...and not hundreds of years ago (although I wouldn't have minded being up close and personal with the '60s). Men were even larger bastards back then.--

It took me a while to get into the story, but it was interesting. Once your mind conveniently forgets that these are pre-pubescent girls.

If you haven't seen the movie, I'm going to go ahead and ruin it for you. It sucks. And it's really long. Even in the opening scenes, it is different from the book.

The book tells the (historically inaccurate) story of two sisters, vying for the heart of Henry VIII. You remember that guy from history class, right? HUGE jackass. He had many wives, most of whom he beheaded so he could move on to the next. He founded the Church of England and cut ties with the Catholic church. He couldn't manage to impregnate any of his wives with a son to take the throne upon his death. Generally, he treated everyone like a big ball of crap.

Mary, the younger sister, is married off to some older boy when she's barely old enough to wipe her own ass, but somehow she catches the eye of the King. Her family pushes her into a sexual relationship with him (and pretty much tell her husband to shove it), knowing that if she can manage to have a boy child with the King their family will gain great power.

Her sister, Anne, is not at the King's court, but off getting some French schooling or something. She and Mary aren't exactly close. They've had a pretty competitive relationship their whole lives. Anne is headstrong and witty and ambitious, where Mary is soft and caring and has her head in the clouds.

Mary gets knocked up. It might be a boy! So the family forces Anne to "entertain" the King while Mary is trapped in a dark room for her "lying in." Seriously, I'm so glad I will never have to go through that!

But alas, it's a girl (stupid girls, they're good for nothing). Mary resumes her relationship and gets knocked up again. My, my, she's fertile (and this time it is a boy, but it's too late). Anne once again is forced to entertain the King. But this time she decides maybe it would be better for her to be with the King than Mary. She wins the King's heart, convinces him to leave the Queen.

Once they're married, Anne can't seem to conceive a boy either. Eventually, Henry tires of her and has her tried for treason and incest and summarily beheaded.

Netflix delivered The Other Boleyn Girl to my apartment last week. I finally got up the strength to pop it in to the DVD player last week. Immediately, I realized that things were going to be rocky at best.

The story began with the family telling Anne (who is not off at French school) to sleep with the King. She pisses him off right at the beginning by riding her horse better than he can. So he falls for Mary instead. Ugh.

Shouldn't there be some kind of rule that if you're going to base your movie on a book, you should have to actually crack the book open at least once? Just about the only detail that matched the book was Anne's "B" necklace. Oh, and that she got her head chopped off. But that's in all the history books, too. It would have been hard to ignore that little tidbit.

Then this weekend, I went to see Confessions of a Shopaholic with one of my girlfriends. Again, in the opening credits, I was already disappointed. If you've never read the books, please stop reading this and go out and get them (unless you're a guy...then maybe you shouldn't). They're hilarious (again, unless you're a guy. I'm thinking some of the subtleties might be lost on the male sex).

This story takes place in ENGLAND. But in the movie, the main character is an American girl who lives in New York. Really. I mean, how hard would it have been to just set the stupid movie in England? Bridget Jones seemed to work out all right (although again, the books are far better).

It's like when I read the book Pay it Forward back in the day. My roommates had read it and they thought I would like it. I didn't. It's a really lame, cheesy story. But I refused to see the movie because in the book, the main guy is a large black man who is missing one eye. In the movie they cast Kevin Spacey to play this role, and he has a little scar on his cheek. I mean, c'mon. Was Morgan Freeman not available?

I understand that things have to change in a book's translation into a movie. The story has to move along much more quickly and well, things are open to interpretation. But really. How does changing the setting really speed things along? How can the color of a man's skin really facilitate the movie? Why would you feel the need to turn the entire story around on its head?

I find this so frustrating. Is there nothing to be done about it?

Lost and Found

I've been rediscovering my friends lately, since the recent demise of my relationship. I have some really great friends. :)

For the last three weeks, I have tortured myself trying to understand the logic behind a completely illogical decision, trying to find the rationality in someone's completely irrational behavior. I have been hurt more times than I care to think about. And yesterday, I was told that really, it's all my fault. Really, I'm the bad guy. Really, I'm delusional.

Well, folks, I'm here to tell you, that just ain't true.

Actions speak louder than words. Far, far louder. I have forgiven and forgiven and forgiven, and now I am done forgiving for a while. You treat me like shit, there will be consequences. For instance, you will no longer be able to partake in the pleasure of my company. And I am...kind of awesome.

I went to have sushi with a few friends last night. Mmmm...sushi. Sorry, I usually get distracted when I think about sushi. Back to the story at hand.

My friends dropped this sort of...bombshell on me. Not really a bombshell because I guess I had sort of heard it before and refused to really acknowledge it. They said that I wasn't me while I was in the recently demised relationship. They said that I didn't shine as brightly. I was shocked.

Then the real kicker. Even now, as I wallow in the pathetic-ness that has become me for these last few weeks. Even now, while I'm so sad and hurt and angry. Even now, they said, I am more myself than I have been in months.

It's weird because I felt like I was more myself with him than I had ever felt like I could be around anyone. But now that I look back on it...I don't think that's the case. Because in truth, I spent a year and a half of my life completely focused on the comfort and happiness of someone else. And that someone else didn't return the favor. So no one was taking care of me.

I can't blame him for this, of course. It was my choice. Not that he made it easy to make any other choice, mind you. But it was still my choice.

I'm a pretty strong person. I've been through a lot in my 29 years. I'm really bad at taking care of me, though. I feel like I've been gone for a year and a half, and that I'm finally coming home again. I found me again...or at least, I'm working on it.

The truth is, while I don't believe in marriage and I don't want to have children, I do believe in love. I do believe that relationships are what life is all about. I do believe that I am worth someone else's attention and affection. I do believe that I deserve to be treated with respect and care and love by the people who are supposed to love me.

This past December, I made some New Year's Resolutions. I think I need to scratch one of them off the list. I will not be more emotionally unavailable. That's not who I am, and I'm really not even capable of it.

But I will take better care of myself. I will be there for me. It doesn't mean that I will turn into a completely selfish person. That's not me, either. I will always care about other people, and I will put someone else's needs before my own when necessary (though hopefully in the future, not always).

I'm not afraid to love and I deserve that in return. I'm not afraid to trust (at least, not usually...right now is a different story) and I deserve that in return. I don't live my life in fear of being hurt, but I also need to stop putting myself in the position where hurt is a guarantee.

This is a notice. I AM BACK! At least, well, I'm going to be back. And I know that no one will take care of me but me.

Happy Endings

I'm so sick of every book I read and every movie I watch having a happy ending. Life isn't that way.

I wasn't recently told that there are no happy endings in life.

A friend of mine suggested that, in actuality, life doesn't have endings (I'm assuming, aside from death). I suppose in a way this is true. Endings just lead to new beginnings.

Generally speaking, I don't really want a lot of real life in my fiction...but right now, happy endings seem to be a little much.

I just read a book called True Love (and other lies). It seems the biggest lie is the title. The book is about True Love. Period.

I don't even know what true love is. It feels like love is just a word people use to hurt other people right now. Though I know that's not really true for everyone. Nothing hurts more than love.

Why is it so impossible to come up with a story line where everything doesn't necessarily fall into place in the last five pages? Is that really too much to ask? Why can't the asshole continue to be an asshole (never learning that this girl was really the best thing that ever happened to him)? Why doesn't the girl just get left alone? These are real life events.

Looks like I'm going to have to write my own damn book. Starting now.

Forgive and Forget?

Does anyone actually believe in this concept?

I guess I can see the forgiveness part. I mean, for me to be who I am, I have to forgive. I have to let go of the negative stuff. But forget about it? Un-fucking-likely.

Eventually, it all fades to the background maybe, but I'm not likely to just forget about it.

I still remember the time when I was 12 and my mother announced to a boat full of people (including a really cute teenage boy) that, "No, Rachel won't be swimming today. She's on her period and she can't use tampons yet." Seriously.

I still remember my little sister dragging a block of wood (cut to look like a clock) all through the house saying, "Sawwy, Rachel. Sawwy, Rachel," until she got to me. At which point, she whacked me upside the head and then proudly said, "Sawwy, Rachel." They were teaching her about manners, you see.

Or after my parents got divorced and my dad pretty much chose to have nothing to do with my life.

My mother constantly choosing my step-dad over the rest of the family. Choosing to believe him, not me.

My high school boyfriend walking away when he found out I was pregnant. Leaving me to deal with it all on my own.

I might have forgiven those things (there are varying degrees of forgiveness, right?), but I am far from forgetting them. As I get older, it seems people have just found new and more exciting ways to hurt the people they care about, while keeping the old standbys. I know I have to forgive if I'm going to be the person I want to be. But I don't have to forget.

Mr. Postman

Our regular mail guy at work is awesome. He shows up early. Any time he takes the day off, his counterparts don't bother to bring the mail until nearly 5:00 pm.

He's not very chatty, though. Usually, he just walks in, hands me the mail, takes the outgoing mail, and walks out.

Today, when he picked up the mail, he looked at me and said, "Oh! You changed your hair."

Huh?

He said, "You've cut it since I saw you last. And you dyed it?"

I was shocked. He never even looks at me. I said, "Yeah, I did. I'm surprised you noticed."

He said he always notices when I change my hair. Interesting...

Such a Pretty Fat

I recently read the second memoir of Jen Lancaster, author of Bitter is the New Black. It's an awesome read for any woman who has struggled with her weight. It's very real, but hysterically funny.

Essentially, it seems that Ms. Lancaster is a woman who is very comfortable in her own skin, no matter how much fat she has. She is confident and has a lot of attitude. In many ways, she is admirable. She is strong, she speaks her mind, she gets what she wants. But she does tend to piss a lot of people off in the process.

If you haven't read her stuff, I suggest you go out and get it. You'll laugh your ass off. And maybe even come to some healthy realizations about your own body.

For instance, I have great boobs and a great butt. I wouldn't really want to do anything to lose them. So I don't want to be skinny. Aside from the fact that my emotional turmoil over the last few weeks has kept me from eating much of anything at all...but I'm working on that.

I've also decided that what I need most is to exercise. I think I'll feel better if I can just develop some kind of routine. I have arthritis in my hips (thanks 14 years of dance!), so running isn't really an option. I like classes, but I don't want to spend the money on a gym membership. I'm also pretty sure that my downstairs neighbors don't actually want to listen to me sweat it out to my hip-hop DVDs.

Truly, it's a conundrum. Plus, I don't want to lose my boobs. Fortunately, they rarely go anywhere. I'm healthy and I look good. I'm not skinny, I'm curvy. It's okay to like my fat, right?

Cursed

I'm cursed with the need to understand things.

Well, I've given up on the more complicated aspects of physics and things of that nature. I can live with the fact that I don't understand quantum whatever. But when it comes to people, I want to understand.

Right now, I'm sitting in a giant pile of DO NOT UNDERSTAND. I'm not sure how to pull myself out of it. I feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall, but I can't stop.

And the worst of it is...there's no way to understand this pile of shit in which I sit. It's not understandable. There's no logic or rationality behind it at all.

Any advice? How do you flip the switch?

Fighter

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who fight for what they want, and those who don't. I'm of the fighting variety.

As a general rule, if I want something, I fight for it. I don't run away in the face of adversity. I hate not understanding things. I hate being misunderstood.

Right now, instead of knowing what I want and fighting for it, I have no idea what I want. I have no idea where my life is headed. I know who I am and I know what kind of person I want to be, but I don't know where I'm going.

My life has been something of a roller coaster lately. Frankly, I'm not really handling it all that well. I've been betrayed by the person who was supposed to love and care about me the most. I've found out some shocking news...twice.

I don't know how I'm supposed to trust anyone again. Mostly myself. If I made such a horrible error in judgment about the person I loved, how do I avoid doing it again? How do I stay true to myself and what I want and not become a bitter, jaded, cynical person?

Being in a relationship with a bitter, controlling, immature alcoholic taught me a lot. Mostly, that I don't want to be with anyone like that ever again. He was so good at lying to himself that it didn't matter that he wasn't lying to me...there was no truth in the relationship at all.

He's spending all this time and energy to make me out to be the bad guy so he doesn't have to feel guilty for hurting me so much. So that he can cope with turning his back on me when I needed him. So that he can deal with the fact that his last action (really more inaction than anything) was the most hurtful thing he could have done.

And, as usual, I'm the one who has to deal with the fallout. He just wants to go on like nothing ever happened, like he didn't even know me, much less love and care about me. Which hurts so much. Especially given that he promised me that he could never do this. And he promised me that he would always be there for me.

What does that even mean at this point? I'm big on saying what I mean, and not saying what I don't mean. It seems, though, that not all people function this way. It seems that love doesn't mean love. Love means...eh, you're all right for now.

An apology, of sorts.

Earlier this week, I wrote a pretty angry blog about someone who hurt me deeply. I was pissed off and sad. I needed to get my feelings out, and my blog is my outlet.

But.

It was unfair of me to put everything out there publicly like that, whether he reads my blog or not. So I'm extending this apology.

I'm not perfect, nor have I ever claimed to be. I'm dealing and coping with a very hard and hurtful breakup any and all ways I know how. And I feel I deserve to do so.

I lost one of the most important and best people in my life and I may never get him back. I don't know how to just turn my feelings off and be okay with that. I'm not. This wasn't my decision and I didn't get any say in it. I feel it's the wrong decision.

I was a great girlfriend and a great friend. And now my best friend has left my life, possibly for good. I'm hurting more than I can explain.

I was in love and I got hurt. I was stupid.

Remember Alf Landon?

I didn't. But I thought this article, written by Harold Meyerson at The Washington Post, was pretty interesting. Your thoughts?

"The New Landonists"

The leader of the Republican Party was fulminating against the Democratic president's programs. All that government spending, and yet, he said, "the nation has not made the durable progress, either in reform or recovery, that we had the right to expect." The problem was that the president didn't trust the market to right the economy: "The energies of the American economic system will remedy the ravages of depression," he argued.

And then there was that Republican radio ad featuring a couple wondering if they could afford to get married in a nation with so profligate a government. "All those debts!" said Mary. "Somebody is giving us a dirty deal," said John. The ad concluded with a somber narrator saying, "And the debts, like the sins of the fathers, shall be visited upon the children, aye, even unto the third and fourth generations."

The speeches were those of Alf Landon, the Republican presidential nominee of 1936, who turned his campaign into an attack on the New Deal and all its (public) works, including the debts that those works incurred. Despite the speeches and the John-and-Mary ad on his behalf, Alf Landon lost to Franklin Roosevelt by the widest margin in the history of presidential elections, while the congressional Republicans lost to congressional Democrats by a similarly historic margin.

Now, if you listen to today's Republican revisionists, the Greatest Generation voters who gave FDR towering majorities in all but two states were a bunch of saps. Rather than wait for capitalism to right itself, they backed a president who understood that when private capital stopped investing, public capital had to take up the slack. For some inexplicable reason, they warmed to a president who used public funds to bring electricity to rural America rather than wait for private utilities to get around to it in a decade or two. Oddly, they backed a president who put 4 million Americans on the payroll of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) at a time when private payrolls were contracting, and they actually found value in such federal "make-work" creations as post offices, libraries and the Triborough Bridge.

And the debt that John and Mary's government incurred? Invested as it was in productive infrastructure, it enabled them to live by far the most prosperous lives that any generation had ever lived. If John and Mary lived in the South, it plowed so much money into the infrastructure of that historically lagging region that it closed much of the gap that had long made it the nation's poor stepchild.

Today, the arguments made for and against President Obama's stimulus plan really aren't that different from the arguments that were made for and against the New Deal some 75 years ago. Where the New Dealers brought electric power to rural Americans, the Obama people want to bring them broadband access. Where the New Deal built dams to generate power from rivers, the Obama people want to build a power grid that can channel electricity generated by wind.

As for the Republicans, they remain locked in Landonism. While retail chains topple like so many dominos as consumers cut back, the Republicans focus on cutting corporate taxes, as though the problem confronting American businesses was the tax on their profits rather than the fact that, in the absence of sales, they have no profits.**

In particular, both the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats exhibit a Landonesque failure to appreciate the crisis of under-investment into which American finance, now as in the '30s, has plunged the nation. The essence of the crisis, and what distinguishes both the Depression and the current meltdown from every recession between the '30s and today, is that, left to their own devices, private lending and investment will not and cannot bounce back. Only the government can provide the capital to restart capitalism, which remains, absent diligent regulation, a periodically self-annihilating system.

At times such as these, the normal measurements of government spending need to be altered. What the Obama plan envisions government doing (and what I wish it actually did more of) is committing itself to what would under normal circumstances be lending and investment undertaken by the private sector -- lest lending and investment cease altogether. The Greatest Generation's voters understood the logic of such a strategy when they reelected Roosevelt and his fellow Democrats by unheard-of margins. They rejected Landon's belief that "the American economic system" would by itself fix the crisis it had created. We can only hope that today's Americans have the wisdom of their forebears.

**Bold added for emphasis

A quick question.

Are there any politicians left who don't have issues with their taxes?

You'd think they get caught often enough to be concerned about that sort of thing.

What about the children?

Is anyone else as tired as I am of this question?

Why should I have to live my life based on the needs of your children? If you don't want your kids to watch "filth" on television, get rid of your TV set. Or your cable. And your computer and internet access. It's not my fault you chose to have children.

Recently Michael Phelps was photographed mouth-to-bong. In all the uproar, the thing I hear most is, "What about the children?" One man called into a radio show last night to ask, "How am I supposed to tell my 15-year-old son, who is a swimmer, that he can't do those things if he wants to swim like Michael Phelps when Michael Phelps is doing them?"

I don't know. Just do? You're the dad, figure it out. Michael Phelps is a human being. He is not bound to live by some imaginary set of laws set about to protect people's children. Oh, wait. Actually, he kind of is.

You see, swimmers don't make money swimming. Michael Phelps makes money from endorsements. And guess who might not have that lucrative McDonald's endorsement now that he's been caught smoking pot?

The problem is that smoking pot is illegal in the first place. It shouldn't be. No more than smoking cigarettes or consuming alcohol.

So unfortunately for Michael Phelps, his indiscretion will probably cost him. Of course, maybe that McDonald's endorsement isn't so great after all. When he first started doing those commercials, people tried to sue him for making their kids fat.

Maybe it's time we start teaching our kids about the evil that is advertising, instead of trying to blame their obesity on Michael Phelps. He's not fat, kids. You know why? Because he works out harder than almost anyone, and he does it everyday.

Relationship Police

Someone should really establish a "Relationship Police Squad." This way, selfish pricks could be punished for their selfishly prickish behavior.

I'm not sure how exactly it should work yet, but I think public humiliation and a hit to the offender's credit are in order.

Do I sound bitter? Yeah, that's because my selfish prick boyfriend up and broke up with me (after saying "I'll always be there for you.") when I told him that my feelings were hurt about something. This man should come with a warning.

Oh wait. He does. He'll tell you himself, I suppose. But not really soon enough and you won't really believe it. Plus there's the added bonus that most of your friends will take to him like fat boy to a rice cake. But will you listen? No.

So I'm the idiot. I'm the idiot who trusted when I was told "I love you" and "I'll always be there for you" and "You should tell me when something bothers you" that these things were true. They're not.

After a year and a half my asshat boyfriend quit because he was too cowardly to come up with another solution. And to top it off, he got angry with me for telling him my feelings were hurt.

And the worst part? He's fine. It's like I don't even exist. He doesn't even hurt, because he won't let himself. So while I can barely walk into my apartment and continue to breathe because I hurt so much and while I am still trying to deal with the death of my dog a couple of months ago and while I am dealing with a bunch of family crap, this guy who supposedly loved me and would always be there for me just left. And it doesn't even bother him.

In a couple of weeks, he'll have found some new girl to fuck, then fuck over. He'll be bored with her in a week or two. But it doesn't matter, because no matter how awesome she is and no matter how many times he tells her that she makes him happy and that she's a good girl, it's all a lie. No matter what she does, he will hurt her.

Nice guy, eh?