Plan with a Man

It's funny what different people's ideas of how your life should be shape up. Whenever my dad talks about that vague time in the future when my life will be better he mentions "some great guy." My mother focuses on whatever teaching job I'll have, and hasn't quite accepted my need to move to Chicago (then again, nor has the rest of the family). I think about Chicago, of course, but I also think about writing.

I've been writing fiction since I was a child. I wrote my first story at age 8 on notebook paper, illustrating and collating it for public view. I brought it along with me to school, showing it to all my friends. I even clasped it to my chest at recess- dropping it once in the wind on a moist fall day. It still bears mud spots.

I wrote new stories regularly. My file cabinet is brimming with folders labelled by grade and stuffed with drafts of tales full of horror, unrequited love, and unrecognized genius meant to mirror the inner turmoil of my true self. As I got older, I wrote poetry, plays, and even an unfinished screenplay or two.

Being a writer was one of my early career aspirations, that is after queen of the world and nurse. I actually started out in that direction. I've gotten paid for some freelance articles, some blather and treacle about kids who won math awards as such. I even won a national semifinalist spot in a playwriting contest in high school. But it's been a long time since I've been in contact with that muse.

I am fairly out of practice. My heart has not been in the many book reviews and research papers I have been writing as part of my graduate studies for the last many years, and the creative outlet I had in music and writing dried up after high school. I would like to begin writing again. I have had a few ideas for fiction percolating in my thoughts for a couple of months, and I am anxious to start a new, regular routine that includes writing for myself.

In my ideal version of my life, that is, without winning the lottery, I will teach part time either at high school or community college, and spend the rest of my time writing fiction and participating in some community or small time professional theatre after teaching full time and writing for a few years in order to get my footing. It's not as if I don't want a man in my life. Heaven knows a little snuggling and companionship would be nice. However, men do not a life make. I am possibly more excited about getting another dog when I get a new apartment than I am about finding a new husband/partner.

So with this being the last day I will work at the video rental place and thus about a 60 hour week, I will now make it part of my routine to write a little bit for myself each day. It's time to start using that muscle again in order to get it ready for that someday. It may not be a plan with a man, like my father often suggests, but it is my plan.

Early Morning Gem

When I work opens at Starbucks, my alarm rings at 3:35 a.m. Or rather, my television turns on at that time. The sound of my alarm clock tends to make me incredibly angry and ends up starting me out on the wrong foot for the day, so I find it's much gentler to wake up to the hum of the television.

Since I find that the television often distracts me in the mornings, lately I have been watching whatever my television lands on that early so that watching one of my shows will not make me run late. My tv has a mind of its own. My tivo, my one splurge, decides what channel my tv will wake me up on. Most of the time at 3:35 a.m. it is an infomercial. This morning it was the subject of this week's random fandom, an amusing 1980s zombie movie called Night of the Creeps.

I caught the last 20 minutes of the movie. A hardscrabble detective was going about a college campus looking to kill zombies heading to a sorority house filled with young women with deliciously big hair and cheap formal dresses. A young hero handed a young awestruck heroine a flamethrower so that they could fight off zombies together. All in all, it was so bad it was good. There were slithery alien slug-monsters and the possibility for a sequel- not all the slugs were killed by the gasoline explosion in the sorority house.

I wouldn't recommend anyone spend much money on this guilty pleasure, but if you like bad 1980s movies and bad horror movies, I would recommend you check this out.

The Issue

Is money. I make far too little of it. I make about 250 dollars less than I need in a month to scrape by- and it will be about 350 more once the weather gets cold. I'm not saving any money, even for stuff like oil changes or quarterly hair cuts. I am working over fifty hours each week (usually mid fifties) and I still can't make ends meet. And I'm exhausted.

I got in a car accident. I slept through my alarm Sunday for half an hour. I don't wear anything but pj's and work uniforms these days. I don't feel like a real person. I worked an open shift (4:15-12:45) at SB, a close at the video store (5-12:15 a.m.) and then another open right in a row. There's a possibility I may have to do that three times next week. I don't have a day off this week.

I was planning on waiting it out another week at the video store, attempting one shift a week to make some extra money to help pay the bills, but the prospect of next week sleeping 3 hours about 3 or even 4 nights next week makes me think it is time to quit. Now, perhaps.

If only the house would sell, or if there were a date in sight that I would know it would be off my hands, I would not have to feel so bad about draining my savings while working my ass off.

I feel like I need permission to quit my second job. It's my responsibility to work- to make it all work. I keep telling myself that it's too much, that I'm not being weak.

Random Fandom

In part entertainment missionary, and in part to alter the general woe-is-me course of my blog I shall now be instituting a new Thursday feature I have decided to call random fandom. I will recommend to my rather meager audience a television show, cd, book, or other such item based on my personal enjoyment of such. That's where the fandom fits. The random is basically a cue to the fact that my endorsement will generally have nothing to do with what is new or what has recently gained a popular buzz. I will merely recommend what has recently captured my (rapt) attention.

This week's random recommendation is truly connected to the missionary zeal I mentioned earlier. Life on Mars is an interesting and well written show with a great soundtrack. I discovered it one night on BBC America while indulging my love of an older comedy show they run called Father Ted .

In the show, present day detective inspector Sam Tyler is hit by a car and wakes up a detective in the 1970s, almost inexplicably. He works to solve crimes all the while clashing with old-school boss and detective Gene Hunt. Tyler is politically correct and more of a CSI-type detective who always attempts to dot his i's, cross his t's, and respect prisoner's rights. Hunt is from another mold- he punches first and asks questions later.

As Tyler attempts to fit into this department with his new-style detective strategies, he also occaisionally gets visited by a girl inside his television, and hears voices and machines from what appears to be in his hospital room. Is he merely in a coma? Is he really back in time? Is he a looney? At present, the audience does not yet know. The series is somewhat a mystery/cop show with a cultural and personality clash between offbeat partners, but the coma lends an aspect of the supernatural that lends it even more depth.

The last episode of this series (British television runs in somewhat a different fashion than U.S. tv, many shows are at most 12 episodes long for each season, called a series, which in my opinion cuts through some of the filler that appears in a 22 episode season on U.S. tv.) will show next week, but I am sure they will continue to show repeats.

There is also news that David E. Kelley has picked up the American rights to remake the show. Hopefully the series will turn out more like the American Office instead of the hopefully forgotten American Coupling.

The New Guy

I am at the point prior to a relationship in which the object of my affection can be all things to me. I know him little enough so that he's only a vauge outline in which I fill in the details. He looks like a model in a Rosetti painting. He likes Simpsons and Seinfeld. He enjoys racing bikes in his spare time. He says good-bye to me specifically and by name every time his shift ends before mine. This is all I know about him.

He could love children and animals, and be consistently punctual. He could be somewhat outdoorsy, but prefer day hikes to camping. He could like Buffy enough to talk about it, but not share my obsession. He could enjoy running with me once a week instead of just biking every day for a change of pace. He could be fiscally responsible, be attracted to redheads and smart, opinionated women.

Then again, he could be a total blackguard and cad.

In some ways this is the best part- the wondering, the expectation, the heightened excitement. As I find out little by little who he is and what he likes and dislikes he will become much less a dream and much more a person who will at times annoy me because he doesn't like my habit of watching tv in bed or spends too much money on his bikes.

I finished training at his store. He has my bike. And my phone number.

Day Off

Today is my much fabled day off. It's been over three weeks since I last had one. I really needed one. I punctuated my double shifts on Saturday with a minor car accident in the middle. My life sometimes really sucks. That is, when I think about it. Which, since I work so darned much, isn't as often as most people I think.

I haven't heard from the library. I suppose they could still be undecided, but I'm guessing I didn't get the job. This is a little bit sad. I would not have to work 60 hours a week there to not afford to pay my bills.

I got my first full paycheck from the video rental place, and my first check from Starbucks. Though it is nice to get paid, both checks were disappointing. To know that I am working too many hours and still can't pay all my bills is depressing. Not to mention, I can't keep up the kind of hours I'm pulling in for much longer. So my bills will fall even shorter from getting paid.

The rest of my schedule for my day off include running 9 miles, having dinner with a friend, and snuggling with my dog as well as returning some topsoil to Home Depot. I am also making my way through Charlotte Bronte's Villette. Virginia Wolff and George Eliot both wrote that this book was even better than Jane Eyre which is one of my favorite books. I am about 100 pages in. I also have some more classics waiting for me at the library.

I am incredibly excited to say I have two days off next week. What will I do with all that free time?

Beware Flying Car Thieves

I'm not big on cars. I really don't like driving. I will be extremely happy when I can rely on the el most of the time. Also, I'm not very impressed by horsepower, or fancy suspension, or German or Italian car makers. I am impressed by seat warmers, but that's besides the point.

Basically I love my Toyota Corolla because it goes. It gets me from point A to point B on a reliable basis. I get a little unhappy when it gets scratched or bumped, but mostly it's just a car. It could have, however, been a much cooler Corolla.

My parents helped me buy my car. I put down the rather extensive down payment, but my dad helped me sign for the car. Since I was working two jobs and very busy, he did the car shopping. I wanted a Toyota or Madza because of their known reliability.

I got a very basic model. I don't have automatic locks or windows. No big deal, I wasn't too interested in those things anyway though they would have been nice. Yet during the purchasing process a nicer model was offered to my parents for the same price. It had the slightly nicer fabric seats. It had a cd player, automatic windows and locks, and one of those nifty remotes to open my car. The sticking point was a moon roof.

When my parents found out that the car had a moon roof, they said no. They did not want me to have this nice car for the same price as a stripped model. This was not because the moon roof might leak, or because our religion is opposed to moon roofs on moral grounds, but because of the neighborhood I lived in.

At the time, my neighborhood was not terrible, but not particularly suburban. Crime was an issue in the area. I was once backed into by a stolen car at a nearby stop sign. My mother, the paranoid suburbanite she is, decided that a moonroof would be another way for a car thief to get into and steal my car.

Now, as far as I know none of the thieves on my street had rocket shoes, and there were no trees near where I parked for them to drop onto the roof of my car, but perhaps my mother is on to something. Car thieves of the world- try pogo sticks.