The girlfriend and I are moving to North Dakota in three weeks.
I’ve already posted about my parents moving there and now, for a variety of reasons that we have spent the last few months avoiding/denying/trying to fix, we too are North Buttkota bound.
We both have really mixed feelings, a large portion of which are borne of the fact that we’re moving in less than three weeks, basically. Have you ever tried to pack up your whole life on three weeks’ notice? It’s dumb. It’s so dumb. I don’t know what happened in our decision making process — we’ve been mulling this over for months basically — or if we thought my parents would change the schedule — they’re coming home to move their stuff and we’re going with them — when we decided to move or if it’s just because we were in so much denial and the final decision just came so FAST. I don’t know. But three weeks! And packing sucks so much. OH MY GOD. Packing sucks.
We’ve packed six boxes so far and they’re only books and movies and only ONE SHELF of books at that. THERE ARE TWO MORE FULL BOOKSHELVES that have to be packed. DO YOU KNOW HOW HEAVY BOOKS ARE?! WHY DO WE OWN SO MANY BOOKS?! And for the first time in my life — I’ve only moved three times before and two of those were to college and the other was to a furnished apartment for an internship last year RIGHT AT THIS SAME TIME LOOK AT THAT — I have to move FURNITURE. How does that even work?! FURNITURE! Oh god.
Anyway, I’ve been not-typing this post for the last three hours, instead dicking around on Tumblr and generally doing nothing of any use to anyone because I can’t sleep normal hours anymore, so don’t even talk to me about accomplishing anything. And also because what do I say?! I’m moving from the best place in the world — PERSONALLY, god don’t start a fight with me about how wherever you are is better, DON’T DO THAT TO ME — to the middle of nowhere! I don’t have anything more eloquent to say about it.
It’s an ~adventure~ and a chance for us to probably pay off some debt and save some money and live pretty comfortably (we get a whole giant finished basement to ourselves, I mean, that’s kind of okay even if I’m 27 and moving 1500 miles to literally live in my parents’ basement) and see some new places and try a new thing. A really new thing! Crystal and I are nothing if not creatures of habit, so, you know, trying something new is good. And it’s TEMPORARY. A year. Or two. Then back home to California where we belong.
But it still means I have to leave my beautiful, wonderful friends and family. Which is the hard part that I’m not ready to dwell on yet. So instead, I am going to focus on the fact that I have to leave all this:
And also this aka my favorite place on this entire planet:
I’m legitimately more upset about leaving Disneyland than anything else. My family and friends can continue to communicate with me and share wonderful, fulfilling relationships and shit at a distance. Me and Disneyland can’t exactly keep up our serious relationship as an LDR. Check in on me about a month into my North Dakota residency and you will find me listening to the Main Street music loop and staring at the HoJo Mattercam and shaking and crying on the floor of my new basement home.
Plus I’m going to have to keep paying my $40 a month through NEXT APRIL for my pass even though I’m not here to use it. >:(
And don’t even get me started on what a disaster it’s going to be when it SNOWS.
But I guess I have this to look forward to?
And I guess my parents or whatever. Plus the dogs are totally ready to go. (The cats are, of course, another story. And that’s who Crystal and I are in charge of. Of course.)
So wish me luck! I make no promises about blogging for the next three weeks, but I may very well panic-procrastinate a million and nine posts between now and our departure time. And I’m going to make Crystal make me blog our trip, if not here than at least on Tumblr because I had all these great productive plans for last summer and I didn’t follow through on any of them and that sucked. But, I’m stronger than her, so. No promises on that one either.
Oh yeah, two unrelated final points:
I dyed my hair! Like a long time ago. Yay.
And:
A PSA, free of charge, from me to you: ALWAYS WEAR SUNSCREEN NO MATTER HOW EXCITED YOU ARE ABOUT GETTING INVITED TO SWIM. ALWAYS. SPF 1,000,000. SUNSCREEN. I haven’t been burned this bad since I was a TWEEN.
Also, sunglass tan lines. >B(
I guess… no pool-related-sunburns are a North Dakota bonus?
Today I am going to ~get real~ and talk about my feelings. I like personal blogs, this is a personal blog, I am a person, the website is my name, and I want to talk about some SHIT, okay?!
My girlfriend and I have been home from Kansas City for about a month. And it has been an excruciatingly hard month for both of us. She is readjusting to a killer commute and a rough office environment and I am unemployed and mooching off of her and generally feeling like a massive, tragic pile of crap.
I liked Kansas City. A lot. And I really, until the last three weeks, enjoyed my internship immensely. It’s more complicated than the following sentences, but: I was good at my job. I enjoyed it. And then that was taken away from me very suddenly and very… unfairly isn’t the right word. Unexpectedly. Shockingly. Unbearably. And it made our last weeks there just unbearable. Really and truly stressful in a way that moving those 1600 miles had not even come close to being. And it sucked. And getting the hell out of Kansas City felt SO GOOD. But I left happy. I mean that. And I can remember the good parts of my job. And I’d do it again if they asked it of me. And/or something similar. I don’t know if I could stay there for more than a year or maybe I could. No, I definitely could. I could stay there forever. Maybe? I don’t know. What do I honestly know from second to second?
But I was so glad to be home. I am so fucking glad to be home. I missed my family SO MUCH. And my animals. And Disneyland. And my incredible friends. And California. I adapted to KC and I liked it, but I can’t imagine it ever feeling like home. Or maybe I could?
But having my feet swept out from me before the end of the internship has left me inconsolable in a lot of ways. The internship fell together so easily, so simply, and everyone spent so much time assuring and reassuring me that it was meant to be (because I am, like all creatives, eternally my own worst critic) and that I deserved it. And I left feeling a lot like I really hadn’t deserved it and a lot like I’d failed, even if failing isn’t why I left. Even if no one ever used the word failure. Even if my co-workers threw me a wonderful going away party and gave me cards and food and gifts and sent me away feeling warm and fuzzy and appreciated. And even if coming home is what was best for both me and my girlfriend.
I have anxiety. I AM SURE THIS IS SHOCKING AS SHIT TO EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, NO REALLY. And I experience immense, heart-heavy periods of depression when I feel like things are out of my control, when I feel I’ve failed. And the last month has just been that. A train wreck of misery and sadness and bad hygiene and being broke and frustrated and embarrassed and disappointed. I have taken it out on my girlfriend and my family and I’ve tried to hide from every single human being on Earth.
I haven’t looked for jobs because my blood pressure spikes when I think about going back to work, when I think about interviewing, when I remember how fucking awful it was the LAST TIME I was looking for work. People were constantly telling me I was overeducated and inexperienced and now I have an additional degree (a terminal Master’s!) and very little additional experience! And when they weren’t saying that, they were questioning why I would want to work so far away from where I live (I LIVE IN A SUBURB, THESE ARE MY ONLY CHOICES) or looking at my fat body and thinking that meant anything about how good I would be at a job or who I was at a person or better yet, telling me how I wasn’t the right representation of their office. THIS WHOLE PROCESS JUST SOUNDS GREAT, SO GREAT. I CANNOT WAIT.
And my girlfriend has been wonderfully patient and kind and takes incredible care of me. But I have to get a job. I want to work! I want to contribute to my household and to the world at large! I want to be upstanding! I am able to work! I am a capable, intelligent, competent person! I can work! I should do it!
But I fight with looking every day and every night and I hate myself more every week and the anxiety gets WORSE AND WORSE and I have more nightmares where my internship manager tells me how much she regrets hiring me and where I lose a house I don’t even own in real life and where planes crash and I fight with my friends and things break and I can’t pull myself together to handle any of it.
And I know writing this out won’t solve it. I’ve been talking this stuff out with the girlfriend for weeks and it has done little to ease the aches and pains and agonies and tensions in my brain, but it’s down anyway now and it’s loose in the world.
This week I am going to try to take hold of myself and apply for jobs. I’m going to work at that proactive thing. I’m going to shake myself out of this bullshit. Because that’s something I know I can do. Because I’ve done it before.
So check in with me in a week and it’ll either be resume sendin’, application fillin’ superchamp Ash. Or I’ll be in bed passed out in the fetal position surrounded by garbage and dog hair with a pizza box from Mamma’s Brick Oven Pizza between my knees and a 22 of Wyder’s Pear Cider clutched in my fat fist as I cry into a wad of filthy paper towels while watching Drake & Josh. Only two options.
Or I’m going to knock over some sort of financial institution and head straight to Vegas. Three options.
Also, I groomed my eyebrows today (pluck pluck pluck) and didn’t overtweeze for the first time in maybe my whole life. NEW CAREER PATH?! j/k j/k I would rather touch someone else’s poop than the meaty end of their freshly plucked eyebrow hair.
So! Kansas City is BEAUTIFUL. And hot. And humid. And kind of awesome. There’s a lot of good food, even though the gf and I are too lazy to really go anywhere after work. It turns out that working eight hours a day is, like, a lot lot different than going to class once or twice a week and playing video games in your underwear the rest of the time. Work is great, but they get real weird when I play Tetris topless.
Jokes aside, work is AMAZING. I don’t want to talk about my company here because they probably wouldn’t want to associate themselves publicly with someone who calls Jesse Eisenberg a rapscallion and makes as many poop jokes as I do — BUT. I get to WRITE all day in my own happy little booth and be surrounded by people who are kind and talented in a variety of fascinating and jealousy-inducing disciplines and wander around this beautiful and massively confusing building with a bunch of other interns who are turning out to be way more excellent than I imagined. Most of them are leaving on the 12th of August, but I’m here for an entire month after that — the joys of being the last to arrive — and I am ACTUALLY going to miss other human beings when they start to disappear. I’m going to miss coworkers! How is that even a thing?!
Our apartment is lovely and our landlady is great and friendly and sort of like having a mom out here who politely stays out of the way, but gets really excited and or angry on your behalf when necessary. At the end of my second week at work, the back window of my car was smashed in by shit-bag vandals and EVERYONE was scandalized and furious on my behalf. People in the midwest are NICE. REALLY NICE. L.A. nice is a different kind of nice — we’re polite, we want to be friendly, but we don’t really have time for you — here, people CARE and are INTERESTED and want to hear all about your life and stuff. It’s weird and has not yet stopped being weird.
I miss my family and friends desperately. DESPERATELY. Like, wake up when the alarm goes off at six and cry once a week while rolling around on the bed because you just WANT TO GO HOME ALREADY EVERYTHING SUCKS WHERE IS MY MOM SOMEONE MAKE ME A SANDWICH AND HUG ME. But I am so happy with my job that it’s keeping me sane. Crystal is putting up with SO MUCH and being SO EXCELLENT and she doesn’t even complain or cry or tell me how much she hates me for forcing her to come here. Instead she just makes dinner and does the laundry and does weird sex things with me sometimes. She’s the best. And she’s made this entire experience so much more survivable and excellent that it ever could’ve been if I had to come alone.
So yeah, people out here talk funny (it’s ADORABLE) and they apologize a lot, like, for things that are completely out of their control. Like the weather. EVERYONE HAS APOLOGIZED FOR THE HEAT. I feel like the governor of Missouri is going to send me a letter soon, just to check in and apologize.
Today an unmanned rolling cart rolled into me of its own volition while I was standing near it and I apologized to it. THE MIDWEST HAS GOT ME, SEND HELP.
I’ve said, “Oh, the heat’s not that bad, it’s the HUMIDITY” so many times I want to slap myself. Also, “CALIFORNIA DOESN’T HAVE…”, especially re: terrifying insects, food chains, grocery stores, coupons, milk in glass bottles in the regular grocery store, delicious Sonic-esque PERFECT ICE everywhere we go, etc. See also: “CALIFORNIA HAS…”, re: EVERYTHING ELSE EVER.
Here are some pictures of things!
Midwestern thunderstorms is NO JOKE, yo. Crystal locked herself in the bathroom while I stuck the camera out the window and tried to catch some lightning while yelling at my parents via Skype. I have NEVER seen lightning like that. INSANE. And amazing. And a little terrifying. The Midwest is the weirdest.
Inspired by this nostalgic-seizure inducing post by the oft-hilarious Kevin Babbles, I am compelled to talk about the ridiculous summer playlist I put together this year.
It’s like… 70% flashback 90s/00s music (mostly rap, hip hop, and pop), 10% awful dance music, 10% indie bullshit, and 10% newer but still outdated rap and hip hop.
A sample of the randomized, 467 song playlist:
Some of my favorites:
L’Trimm, “Cars with the Boom” — 1. I love how similar this video is to JJ Fad’s, “Supersonic” and how fucking awful and great they both are. I have way too many memories of hearing this song blasting from my sister’s bedroom growing up and hearing her and her friends laughing and talking about dudes and generally allowing me to grow into a hateful, resentment-filled pain in the ass. Bitches.
Vengaboys, “Boom Boom Boom Boom” — What horrifies me about this song is that I have this really distinct memory of singing and dancing to it at a slumber party at my house and I always though, “LOL SIXTH GRADE” until I looked it up and this didn’t come out until June of 1999. I was FOURTEEN. What the hell? My shame, let me show you it. Second, what the actual fuck is happening in this video, man? Gay cowboy! Blue lipstick! All those horrible outfits! Titties everywhere! Drunk bros! Ejaculatory champagne! Rampant lesbianism!
Come to think of it, that explains a lot about why I would have been into it at fourteen.
Sarai, “Ladies” — This is the EMBODIMENT of my trip to Las Vegas after high school graduation. I still remember rolling down the strip in my BFF’s dad’s Explorer Sport Trac SCREAMING this song at everyone on the street.
Like this.
Oh, to be eighteen. Additionally, watching this, I do not understand how I didn’t figure out I was a lesbot earlier. I MEAN, COME ON. Also, watching Sarai rap is like watching my BFF talk. We call her DJ Xis.
Khia, “K-Wang” — THIS WAS THE DANCE. I remember watching one of my BFFs (Bryce) teaching DJ Xis how to do this shit in front of the big screen TV in my living room. Their dance was closer to this version (although people are CRAZY adamant that this is NOT THE RIGHT DANCE in the comments) but they disabled embedding because the world hates me. Better version of this TERRIBLE SONG here.
Mr. C, “Cha Cha Slide” — I wasn’t going to embed this one because, seriously, line dance hip hop is so god damn terrible, but this is every dance I went to in high school. Gym full of uncoordinated white kids being led by all the black kids. Diversity at work, y’all. And the video is just spectacular.
Edvard Grieg, “In the Hall of the Mountain King (Techno Remix)” — Also a high school dance thing. Just a representative of the terrible, terrible techno remixes that plagues the late 90s/early 00s. See also: Tetris Techno Remix, Super Mario Bros. Theme Techno Remix (not the one of my youth, but close). I listened to a lot of god awful techno in the early days of mp3.com, OKAY. Don’t judge me.
Monifah, “Touch It” — Bringing the troops joy since 1998, girl.
Eminem, “Role Model” — Every white person I am friends with knows every word to this song. I don’t know what that means, but it’s nice to roll down all four windows of my 2010 Honda Insight and blare this motherfucker with a bunch of white girls in the car. Oh wait, awkward, I meant awkward.
I’m a big fan of the end of the year holidays; Halloween and Christmas have been neck in neck for years and in the last few I’ve realized that I’m never going to be able to choose between costumes and presents and that I’m okay with that.
But today I got all wound up thinking about fall. I love autumn anyway, the way the air smells and the wind and the way southern California cools down in this back-and-forth way, spread between days that are miserably hot and bitingly cool. I like that fall is just a little bit melancholy — the end of the year is coming, summer is over, school is back in session — and that once you’re right into the thick of it, when everything’s yellow and orange and shades of brown, you put on a costume and walk around in the dusk light and get treats! It’s brilliant and thrilling. I’ll never get tired of the anticipation of it, even though I haven’t trick-or-treated in years.
Disney does Halloween right. I haven’t talked about my love of Disneyland yet, but it’s BIG and their treatment of holidays is just one of the reasons why.
I love that each land has it’s own theme for the holiday and I love Frontierland and Main Street the very most.
Disneyland at Halloween feels like everything you imagine Halloween should be.
And I love love love the Halloween Tree.
Since Halloween is… quite far away (210 days!) I’ll settle for perusing flickr for images to live vicariously and listening to my fall playlist.
