Feeling: wordy
Listening to: Rent, singing "Out Tonight"
Reading/Watching: Son of a Witch, Gregory Maguire

I just wrote this in a message to a friend I haven't spoken to in quite a while, and decided it was a decent little recap of how things are going.

"I have no idea where to begin, hence why I waited a couple days to answer... so I'll start in the middle.

Work is making me crazy, because it's four days until Christmas and shoppers are (for the most part) very demanding and deeply stupid. (Let me ask you this: what person in their right mind expects speedy, attentive, courteous customer service and a fully-stocked inventory on December fucking 21st?) It's also nonstop busy, and it's 40 hours a week instead of the 20-32 I signed on for.

Mon coeur's brother is in town for a month before he transitions into the army (he was in the air force), and so he's hanging out a lot. We're becoming friends now, which is good, because he disliked and mistrusted me before he knew me. But now his wife is pregnant, and he's panicking about being gone when his baby is growing up (their dad was in the navy and continually absent), so he wants to get a civilian job and stay in Texas so they're close to family and he can see his baby when it's born. Mon coeur is helping him job-hunt, but I've drawn the line at letting him pay their bills until his brother gets a job, because it's a slippery slope, and no one fricking helped us when he was unemployed (if we'd asked, they wouldn't have been able to, because they always spend all their money while we save).

I'm really excited about being an aunt. A bit jealous that she gets to be a mommy, even though I'm definitely not in a place to try for myself right now. I need to go to grad school, and I need to start teaching full-time.

I'm a little scared about how I'm going to define myself now that I'm a "singer" without an actual singing job. It feels more like now I'm a bookseller with a $100K worthless degree and two voice students.

When you lose fifty pounds, you feel really skinny for a long time. The first time you gain back five pounds, you feel disgustingly fat. It's not fun at all, no matter how much I convince myself that if I can fit into size 12 jeans, I'm still fine.

Having Christmas and the 26th off will be the first time I've had two days off back-to-back since August. My family is complaining because I can't visit longer.

I love my husband. I really, really love him. I'm so glad I didn't let cold feet throw me (I wasn't sure I could keep him loving me for the rest of my life, and I started panicking about how much it would hurt when he left me). One constant in my life is him. When everything else is a question mark, I still know I love him.

I have discovered that I am a pretty decent cook, after all. I just don't like to do it every night of the week, because it's time consuming and messy. But the list of standard foods I've doctored into tasting really, really good is growing, and I feel accomplished.

The other night, in the kitchen of our cheap apartment with the major appliances that were born before I was, we discovered a rat skittering under the oven. It took everything I had not to freak out.

We are moving when our lease runs out in March, brick fireplace notwithstanding.

I miss having the time to properly celebrate holidays like Halloween and Christmas. I don't think I can have time for graduate school if my job keeps working me like this.

If I quit my job, we may not be able to afford sending me to graduate school without serious student loans.

I have never had a student loan before and I am terrified of going into debt.

Sometimes I forget that I'm only twenty-four and I have a good sixty years left to live all the things I'm trying to tackle in the next six months.

~ Katie"

Comments? 0 so far...
Not a Diaryland member? Sign the Guestbook.