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Oct

New Smells…that’s weird

By rei 1 Comment

Categories: rants

As of this past Saturday, I am living in my new apartment. As suggested by the title, it smells..different. Nothing like the Freeport house.

This post is very disorganized and not totally sensical and I just deleted a good portion of it, but that’s just a reflection of my mental state I guess. Moving is always a time of disorder — you don’t know where anything is, you are making due with the clothes that aren’t in bags and eating ramen because it is easy, regularly using things out of boxes because you don’t have places for them yet, still learning where light switches are, and which way certain cupboards open, and doing your best to remember, if you wake up in the middle of the night to pee, that you are now in a loft bed about 6 feet off the ground, so you can’t just swing your legs over the side and walk. Your normal routine is broken — not only can you not just go home and put your feet up, since there is still a ton to do, the places on your journey there are all different. The places you might have stopped for groceries, for example, no longer make sense, so you have to map new routes with new grocery stores and gas stations. You have to get used to having house keys after living in the country, and care about tv volume when that hasn’t mattered for the years away from civilization.

And you get rid of stuff because you just don’t have room for it and don’t need it anyway.

The change that is going from living with another person to living alone for the first time in a very long time is an even greater one…there is no one with whom to share an idle thought, no one to ask for opinions or help, no one to cook for but one’s self. There are certainly good sides as well — no one to eat the last of the left over fried rice, no one to make messes but one’s self, no one taking up any couch space but you or roll their eyes at your show choice or make you feel slovenly for your choice to stay in PJs all day.

But, regardless, my routine is broken. I am a person of routines. I am, honestly, excited about finding a new routine — there are so many interesting parts of my new world, from coffee shops to parks, and I want to see what they have in store. I have a nook under my loft bed that contains a love seat, and will soon, I think, contain my drawing table. And some lights. I want to make use of it, to curl up and watch tv and draw and paint under my bed. But first, I need to get order back into my life. I need a closet that makes sense and to get the items cluttering my hallway to the trash and the basement. I need to put away shirts that were used for wrapping breakables, and throw away the stack of empty flattened boxes. Or recycle. There is a place to recycle things not far away, I think.

And I need to get a spray bottle, because, apparently, the kitties think that a new apartment means that the ‘stay off the counter’ rules no longer apply.

And I need to get my day started. It is full of stuff to do.

Sep

weak week

By rei 1 Comment

Categories: rants and work

So, last week was the week from hell. It was overwhelming, stressful and painful lesson teaching.

Monday was actually not too bad. The previous week, I had been placed on a somewhat high-profile project — in other words, one that might actually see the public light of day — and had spent the afternoon designing potential packaging…which I had to scrap entirely on Monday because we decided to go with a display rather than a box, so the day was spent discussing and designing said display. This, I did not mind. It is part of the design process and I enjoyed actually working with other people and bouncing ideas around, and I was relatively excited about working on a real project.

My first warning, on Tuesday morning was squishing my finger quite painfully between my travel mug and the door of my car. I don’t know how I accomplished said accident, but any pondering of personal clumsiness was interrupted almost immediately by my car utterly refusing to start, regardless of threats, promises or begging. So, I got to be an utter jerk and wake up Briggs a good while before his accustomed rising time to ask him for a ride to work. My day at work included the surprising news that I would be doing pretty much all the start-to-finish design on the previously mentioned Big Project, and on my woefully under-powered work computer. My mid-afternoon brought me news of a friend doing something rather feeling-hurting (not with any malice or intention, I am sure, but it still bummed me out) and then, while walking to the gym, I fell down (because I do that sometimes. Walking is hard.) and skinned up my knee and elbow. In front of many people on their way home from work.

The rest of the week went in much the same fashion.

Wednesday I called out of work and got my car towed to the closest mechanic that had an opening before the next Rapture, and got to experience first hand the ‘she’s a woman so we can take advantage of her’ syndrome, getting a quote that was, I have been assured by the more mechanically savvy, about three times what I should have been paying. And was told I wouldn’t get it back before Friday.

Thursday, I had to get a ride again and was then yelled at by my boss for not having the project done yet (after 3 days) when, every time I tried to work on the large files in Illustrator, the program would crash.

Friday I had to be at my new apartment so that the gas could be turned on, which meant getting dropped off in a mostly empty space with no food and hanging out all day, as I still didn’t have my car back. One of my coworkers did drop by to keep me company (and brought me a sandwich! Oh sweet nectar of the gods!) but by that point I had heard from the mechanic — my car WOULDN’T be ready because they found something else wrong with it…or at least that’s what they claimed (working theory is that they either snowed me or forgot to check that at all in the first place, because they were so busy doing possibly unnecessary repairs to my electrical system) and that it would cost another $200. After a few hours of pondering and venting to a few friends, I grudgingly agreed to the additional repair…and was informed that they had to order the part and it wouldn’t be in until some time this week.

(at the moment, I still have no car.)

However, with the weekend came some sort of relief from constantly getting kicked in the jewels by life — Briggs and I packed up all my big and heavy stuff in a trailer. Then we ran errands and I found a couple things I need for my apartment (like an over-toilet shelf thingy). And a perfect love seat at Goodwill for $15. And then we watched Doctor Who, which generally makes a day better.

On Sunday, Briggs’ sister Burgandy, her husband Barry, our friend Dan, Briggs and I took the trailer to the new apartment and, in less than an hour, had EVERYTHING inside. Even the couch, which was a close thing. Everything is still piled everywhere, but it is IN the apartment, so THIS Friday, when I wait for the internet guy to show up, at least I won’t be in a barren, chair-less wasteland. Perhaps I’ll even remember to bring some food or some caffeine or something.

Sep

Far away, far away…I wanna go far away

By rei 2 Comments

Categories: rants, Travel and places and work

Despite my artsy and adventurous nature, there is one thing that a large percentage of people my age have done that I have not.

I have not left the continuous United States.

Well, when I was about 3, I think my family visited friends in San Diego and we all drove down to Tijuana for the day. But I haven’t, as a self-aware, globally curious person, traveled to another country. Or even any parts of this country that are separated from the rest by considerable amounts of land or water.

Early this year, my BFF and I had an excited conversation in which we discussed the fact that, for her 30th birthday, the two of us need to go…somewhere in Western Europe. We hadn’t reached the official part of planning, but we knew we wanted to go to somewhere like Great Britain or Italy or Germany or France. There would be no boyfriends, just two friends exploring cities — not going clubbing every night as we might have desired when younger, but going to museums and wandering old city streets.

She turns 29 this month, and based upon our current situations, I don’t see our plans as likely to bear fruit. She is between jobs at the moment, stressed out by trying to find a new one in our bad economy. I just started my first design job a few months ago, and plan to stay at least a year, and just signed a year lease on my apartment — and actually the timing on those two things works out pretty well for a late September trip. But my first design job pays first design job wages — enough to (hopefully) cover my rent and bills with a little left over for (theoretically) fun stuff (but probably to cover emergency car repair, finally getting to the dentist, getting new glasses, taking kitties to the vet, buying furniture for my apartment and other similar fun things.)

I have occasionally expressed my jealousy to people who have been or are traveling, and the response I get is, 9 time out of 10 “If you want to travel, you just have to go do it. Just go.”

And I wonder if it’s really that easy. I could just pack a bag and turn my feet towards the setting sun. I mean, I have certainly had dreams of doing so before. Just…striking out. Going somewhere new. Seeing new things, perhaps living in an apartment with a window seat over a cobbled street, with baskets of flowers hanging off lamp posts…Or just, wandering the world like Julia Roberts’ annoying, self-centered character in Eat Pray Love. I could do that, right?

Then I wonder…

What world do these people live in?

First of all, even buying a TICKET to some other country costs more spare money than I have, and once you get there, there’s the issue of hotels, food…and I know that there are guides on how to travel ____ country on $0.25 per day, but I think I’m past the point in my life when staying in a youth hostel, awake all night with my arms wrapped around my bag for fear that someone will steal my laptop in the middle of the night, is appealing. Ditto for hiking through the streets of Hamburg crusted in two weeks of my own sweat. And I kind of like the idea of seeing the occasional museum.

And of course, I couldn’t just….GO, even if I were financially able. Someone would have to be requisitioned to take charge of the detritus of my life in my absence. Mail. PETS.

Then there is the job issue. I’m a bottom level designer in a position that isn’t strictly necessary for my company’s continued welfare, AND in a field flooded with hungry young designers that would love to take my position. Even if, say, 12 months from now, I decided to take my year of experience and find a different design job, that certainly doesn’t seem like it would be a responsible time to jet off to another country. That is a time in which to save money and hope to find a new job before ending up kicked out on the street with three kitties.

The thing is….people DO it. People I KNOW do it. One of my friends spent a spring working in Italy. The ex is planning a work abroad thingy in New Zealand this coming year. One of my other friends regularly travels to either England or Germany in the summer or fall, and often coerces other friends in our group to go too.

I just don’t understand HOW.

Money, I guess, can be saved (though at my pay rate and level of expenses, unless I lived on ramen for a year and never left the house but for work in between, I certainly couldn’t do an annual vacation). House sitter is not to difficult….but how do you convince your place of employment to let you just…NOT GO TO WORK for a week or more? I mean, I can only imagine that, were I to make such a request, I’d be told that I might as well just take my stuff with me now so I didn’t have to worry about packing it up on my return. Which would leave me, once again, spending my vacation looking for a new job and spending vacation funds on keeping my power on — not looking at monuments.

How do you just…GO?

May

Rant of the…quarter: “…I hate chicks who are like, ‘Does it have dressing on it?’”

By rei 2 Comments

Categories: rants

So, this is something that has been irritating me for a while, but this morning, the internet sealed my fate, and yours, by showing me this:

This particular bit of internet humor puts it’s finger right on the pulse of a particular social/cultural viewpoint that has become popular in the last decade or so — the ‘stop trying so hard and be your beautiful, natural selves, ladies!’ viewpoint.

In theory, this sounds great, and even empowering. I remember, as a teen, reading some chick magazine or other that contained advice about how, if you went on a date with a boy, he didn’t want to see you picking at a salad, he’d rather see you enjoying real food, because if you had an appetite for food, you probably would for…other things as well. It became common knowledge that most guys preferred fresh-faced beauties to those girls that applied makeup with a palette knife. We should stop worrying so much about our hair, our makeup, our outfits, and just have fun, for gosh sake! Boys would love a girl they could pal around with and touch without reenacting the train station scene from Young Frankenstein.

This makes a lot of sense, coming on the tail-end of the 80′s, an era of hair sprayed to the sky, aroebicizing, and the mainstreaming of many new diet foods and drinks. The 80′s feminine vibe wasn’t very…well, feminine. It was hard and cold and untouchable. So, in contrast, a girl that wears comfortable clothes, has silky, touchable hair and, eats a chili dog with her man at a ball game instead of dragging him to a weird french restaurant and fake-laughing at his jokes comes out a pretty clear winner. Queue a whole revolution in how us ladies were to present ourselves. As OURSELVES. Le gasp!

Movies and tv shows began regularly ridiculing girls obsessed with what they put on or in themselves. In the modern fairytale retelling, ‘A Cinderella Story’, one of the antagonist ‘ugly stepsisters’ comes into the diner and is waited on by our ‘Cinderella’, and asks what she can get that contains ‘no fat, no carbs and no calories’, to which she is told ‘Water.’ A hilarious set down to a girl who is clearly only interested in her superficial physical appearance! A point driven home by the sweet, beautiful and down-to-earth protagonist later happily chowing down on something fattening and delicious. In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, Wild at Heart, Oz meets another werewolf, the sexy, sexy Varuca, who informs him, as she stuffs her face with a cheeseburger, that she ‘Likes to eat,’ and ‘hates those girls who are all, ‘does this have dressing on it?’ Oz is taciturnly intrigued by her healthy attitude. Faith, the ‘bad slayer’ also proves her sexy vitality with a desire to eat awesome fattening food after a night’s slayage. In the romantic comedy ‘How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days’, Kate Hudson (a lanky, leggy blond with an athletic build) likes sports and chili dogs, and keeps her sexy tomboyish nature secret from her love interest in an attempt to chase him away by being a ‘typical female’ — an over the top, clingy, girly girl that, among other things, is super conscious of what she eats and wears girly dresses rather than jeans and sports jerseys.

The problem with this is as follows:

It’s bullshit.

I apologize for the strong language, but I see this attitude as unhealthy and possibly sexist as expecting women to wear hose and heals and spend their Fridays at the salon ever was. I think it may be worse, because it’s darn near unattainable.

Yes, there is a small percentage of the female population that wake up with lightly tousled locks falling sexily over their shoulders, eyes bright and skin uncreased by the pillow. Women with metabolisms high enough or lives active enough to easily dispose of those stuffed waffles with whipped cream they ate for breakfast. I call them freaks of nature. And even THEY occasionally agonize over what to wear.

Most of us, however, aren’t so lucky.

Yes, we are told that having a few curves is a good thing (and that our personality matters way more than our looks), but for the majority of females in this society, regularly chowing down on pizza with the bros will result in curves where no one wants them, turning us into ‘that fat chick that hangs out with the guys’ rather than ‘the pretty tomboy that is happy with who she is’ that the movies promised we would be. Most of us wake up looking bedraggled with our hair sticking up (and not in an endearing sleepy way…in an ‘oh, god..get that woman a brush’ way). Our ‘fresh faced and natural’ faces include dark circles, uneaven skintone, Brook Shields eyebrows, or lashes so light that they don’t show up without a coating of mascara. We have occasionally thrown on the first thing our hand touches in the closet and left the house without any maintenance for an emergency run to the grocery store, and we know full well how we looked. ‘Lovely’ is not an adjective that would have been used. Nor, ‘Glowing’.

However, due to societal opinion at large, we are made to feel bad about the personal upkeep that makes us look pretty (And there is nothing wrong with wanting to look pretty.) Any time spent trying to get cranky hair to behave or putting on makeup feels like vain primping…especially in a situation that involves living with another person, romantically or not…they are witnessing the shameful fact that we make an effort to look good. Having a regular exercise routine rather than simply burning calories in gleeful games of pick-up football with your boy bros, or with marathon sexcapades makes you kind of crazy and obsessive, and again, totally vain. And eating! If you are eating with other people, you darn well best be ordering something greasy…dressing-free salads are for eating alone in your room in the dark, while crying.

Now, I’m all for an occasional treat, and for taking a break from time to time, but while that girl eating the funnel cake may not blow up to the exaggerated proportions of the heavy honey in the upper right, unless she is blessed with a metabolism that most of us lack or is a surfing and rock-climbing instructor that goes mountain biking in her free time, she’s going to put on a few pounds. But us girls who know how our bodies react to a payload of sugar and fat like that are told that we are high-maintenance freaks for choosing to say no to delicious fried pastries.

At least in the 1950′s, women were expected to put effort into their appearances.