Grad School Ate My Soul

I didn't want this to happen, but alas, it has. I have a half-written post from my cross-country journey, but I also have about 100 papers/tests to grade (not an exaggeration), an GTF application I need to complete, research I have to do... AND National Novel Writing Month is on the horizon! I want to attempt that... but I'm not sure I'll have anywhere near the time. I'm not giving up on this just yet, but I have a lot of stuff to get done before I can sit down and write some creative stuff. Any NaNo updates will be posted on my NaNo page. Won't be posting any of my papers on here, even if they're good, cuz that's just not what academic work is for. I also need to set up and familiarize myself with WordPress, as that is apparently helpful in getting Grad School Funding. Who knew?

Away I Go

I've never wanted this to be a "and then today I did this!" blog or a "here's a funny observation!" blog (unless that can spawn something along the lines of an essay. I mean, the whole point of this is that I really just need to push of putting stuff somewhere to keep my writing happening, even if it's not the highest quality that I can do.

That said, I just finished helping my grandparents move, followed by a respite at Handsome Man Friend's new apartment, and then tomorrow I'm embarking on my great big cross-country move to grad school, which should take me off the grid for a minimum of five days as I'm not sure what my internet situation will be. Regardless, I can pretty much guarantee that after 8-10 hours of driving a day for five days plus moving in I won't be writing anything for awhile. Hopefully this will just be a kind of "life happens" pause and it doesn't knock me out of the routine altogether. Of course, starting grad school might do that, but I've already got several topics I'd like to write something on lined up, so hopefully that will help.

I'll see you on the West Coast!

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

It's late, but it's long!

Massively delayed on this due to the fact that I’m in the process of moving myself and my grandparents and babysitting my small brother. It’s gonna be like this for a while, methinks.

(Saturday August 27) Today was supposed to be the last day of work, but thanks to the anti-climactic hurricane/tropical storm Irene, yesterday was. And it was a fiasco. The bittersweetness of the day was tempered by the fact that I already have hours guaranteed for me when I’m home for Christmas, which means I kinda need to come back to New England for Christmas, something I was hoping to avoid. Working on and off in one retail job for about six years… and I still love it.

I did mention that the day was a fiasco, and it was a fiasco for many compounded small reasons. Then there was the big defining moment of the day. Today, I’m not stylizing, this really happened, and this really happened the way I’m describing. The frequent use of the word ‘man?’ Yep, that really happened too.

Baby Chickens Are Not Currency.

Usually, there are only two kinds of people who come into a pet store two days in a row: children, and people who bought all the supplies the previous day and need to pick up their animal of choice. There is apparently a third category I hadn’t previously considered, and that category would be stoners.

This guy had wandered around the store for a grand total of an hour before asking if he could have a small cardboard box to transport his canary in. He came back in on Saturday in the same outfit as before. Ripped jeans, a red polo shirt with skinny black stripes, and a black ball cap. And this guy is baked. Really baked. He speaks slowly, pausing frequently and drawing out every word he says. This is not a casual stoner, this is a professional one. He buys a mouse. A mouse that he catches and boxes by himself while neither I nor the girl I am working with are watching. He pays cash for his mouse, begins to leave and then turns and announces “I’ll be right back.”

My coworker turns to me. “Shit, did he just say he’d be right back?”

I shrug “I hope not.”

He does come right back, with his hand cup. He sets a small, yellow chick on the counter.

“This is a baby chicken,” I state, for the benefit of no one.

“Yeah man, I thought that’s what it was.” I am somewhat appalled that my obvious statement has served to end this man’s confusion about what tiny animal he has been carrying around with him.

“Yep, that’s a baby chicken. Why do you have a baby chicken?”

“I dunno, man, one of my friends gave it to me.”

“IT’S SO CUTE!” My coworker squeals and picks the chick up, cuddling it to her face where it continues peeping.

“Ok, what do you want us to do with it?”

“I dunno, man. I thought maybe you could like, take it or something, sell it.”

“I WANT TO KEEP IT FOREVER!”

“Ok, well, we’re a pet store… so we don’t sell chickens… ever.”

“You sure, man? I’ll give it to you for five bucks… or a mouse. Yeah, could I trade it for like, an aquarium or something?”

“No.”

“Man, I don’t got no stuff for it. Can you like, give me a cage?”

At this point another customer has walked in. I point at my coworker, and then the customer.

“I can’t, I have the chicken!” She explains, cuddling it up to her face again. “I wish I didn’t live in an apartment so I could take it home!”

“Go put it in the sink out back while we get this sorted out… give it some dove food or something.”

She does this, and as I walk around the store for the next 15 minutes with Stoner Dude.

“So I need like, a cage….and some stuff for in the cage… and like, what do chickens eat?”

“They eat chicken food… which we don’t sell… Here’s what we have for chicken adaptable cages.”

“Alright, nice, man. Can you give this to me?”

I pause, it’s his use of the word ‘give’ that’s making me suspicious. Does he think that I’m just going to hand him a cage and shavings because he brought his baby chicken into the pet store? This is turning out to be more of a hassle than the time a woman tried to give me that baby raccoon she found in her chimney. “What do you mean by give?”

“Dude, I like, don’t got no money. Like, I’m good for it, I get paid Wednesday. Is it cool if I bring it in then? I mean, everyone around here knows me man, my name is J----- L------.“

“I’ve never heard of you, sorry. Let me call and check with the owner, if she has, we can work something out.”

Three tries to a home phone and four tries to a cell phone later, my boss is not answer. And the baby chicken is still in our back sink.

I hear the chicken consistently peeping louder and louder. It stops when you go in to scratch its head. A lap chicken, the thing is manipulating us for attention. Still, despite being stone-faced and snippy, trying to end this ordeal as soon as possible, I can’t help but smile and scratch the chick’s soft, yellow head.

“Who’s an itsy bitsy chicky-poo?” I coo as it runs in a circle and peeps.

“I knew you thought it was cute.” My coworker is standing in the doorway. “I wish I could keep it, it’s so cute and little! We should just take it and sell it.”

I sigh, “It’s a chicken, we don’t sell chickens. No one is going to buy it because no one is going to expect it to be here… besides, your grandmother will be pissed if she comes in tomorrow and there’s a chicken for her to sell that she didn’t approve of!”

“Whatever, she’ll think it’s cute.”

I’m pretty confident that everyone thinks baby chickens are cute, but I say nothing. Every time I start to walk away from the sink the peeping chick starts up again. I finally decide that it will just have to peep because I have things to do.

The phone rings. My coworker does not wish to explain that there is a man here wanting free stuff for a baby chicken that is hanging out in our sink to her grandmother/our boss. So I have the honors.

“There’s a guy here, he was in yesterday… wandered around for a really long time around 3:30… has a baby chicken and he wants us to give him a cage for it, says he can pay you next Wednesday.”

There is a pause on the other end while my boss thinks. “You mean that weirdo that was here yesterday? Not all there?”

“That’s the one.”

“Give him a box with some shavings and tell him to go to a grain store. I don’t know who the hell he is, I’m not giving him a damn thing on the honor system.”

I try to find the guy to tell him the news, but he seems to have vanished. I put together a box, some shavings, and a sprinkling of dove food and hope he didn’t leave and abandon this chicken here with us. I am pleased to find that he has miraculously re-appeared at the front register, and I hand him his box o’ chick.

“Man, you sure you don’t want to take it? Five bucks, that’s a deal.”

“I want it!” My coworker yells. We both look at her. Her face gets sheepish as she adds “well, but I can’t… my dad’s apartment…”

I turn back to the guy and helpfully hand him a small map with the name of a grain store that often sells chicks, and tell him that he’ll have far better luck there.

He takes his box o’ chicken. “Thanks man, it’s such a big help. Man, some of my friends are Mexicans and they like, fight the chickens and stuff but like, I’m not cool with that man! I try to help ‘em out when I get the chance. Hey, one more thing, what’d I have to do if like, I wanted to put a hold on one of them boas upstairs?”

“You’d have to put a minimum of a 20% deposit down if you wanted us to hold one for you.”

“Sweet man, what if I wanted you to hold one of those big Oscars out back?”

“Same thing”

“Right, what if I wanted to put a hold on the arrowana?”

“20% deposit.”

“Right, so like, that’s for everything in the store?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Thanks for your help, it was nice to meet both of you.”

And then, blessedly, he leaves.

Sidebar

I love the idea of the blogger "next blog" feature as a cool way to browse through and discover things, but I'm perplexed as to why the only blogs I come across are Spanish-language music blogs or blogs about the average Christian's walk with Christ. Do these simply make up the majority of blogs on the sight or is blogger trying to tell me something?

The Adventures of Fish Girl: Part 1

I've been told on many occasions that I should write a book about all the adventures (and misadventures) I've had working at a pet store on and off for the better part of six years. I'm by no means writing a book, and when I do get around to that project it will be highly fictionalized. However, as the point of all this is to jump start my writing, and this summer has been full of pet store related experiences my goal is to write a scene about the job and the encounters I have working there and post it on Sundays. The accounts will be somewhat true and fictionalized to varying degrees and while Our Heroine is clearly based on me, she is not exactly me. Without further ado, I bring you today's piece:

Wattage, It's a Pretty Confusing Concept.

Our heroine is at the front of the store, stocking Repto-Min, when three women walk in. One appears to be in her sixties and wearing a floral jacket, she is bewildered and clearly only here because she was dragged. The second woman is significantly younger, dressed in biker gear with an Adam Lambert ring tone. She heads immediately upstairs. The woman that stops our heroine is also dressed in biker gear, a particularly appalling sleeveless leather vest shows off some poorly done tattoos. She is missing some of her yellowing teeth, and she smells as though she hasn’t showered in a few days… although that may just be a by-product of wearing leather and riding a motorcycle in 90 degree heat. The following exchange transpires, leaving our heroine to think that retail would be so much easier were it not for the customers.

“I need a heat lamp for my snake.”

This I can handle. “Do you need the whole lamp set up, or just the bulb?”

“I have the lamp… so just the bulb.”

“Awesome, they’re right over here in the case. What kind of wattage do you need?”

“It’s for a snake.”

“That’s great, but I need to know the wattage of your lamp.”

“It’s a three foot red tail boa.”

Jesus Christ, does she do this when she goes to Wal-mart? ‘I need a lamp for my living room… I’m five foot five. “Those are great snakes. What size bulbs does the lamp you have for him take?”

“He’s in a ten-gallon tank.”

Fuck the what? You put a three-foot boa in a ten gallon tank? The one –footers we have upstairs go in at least twenty gallons… god, does the thing have room to move? “Ok, so it’s just a small tank, we carry bulbs in wattage from 50 to 150, what do you need for your lamp?”

“None of these are for snakes!”

What? “What? They’re all acceptable to use with snakes… the heat bulbs work with all reptiles; it’s just a matter of getting the right wattage.”

“Then why don’t any of these say you can use them with snakes? None of them have snake pictures on the front?”

“The pictures are chosen arbitrarily by the company. I assure you that all our bulbs are safe to use with your snake.”

“Get me that one. The heat bulb.”

“Which one?”

“The one for snakes!”

“They’re all for snakes.”

“The 150.”

“That’s a pretty high wattage, especially since most smaller sized lamps only go up to 100 watts… I would try the 75 watt, that might be better for your lamp and tank size.”

“It’s the only one you have for snakes!”

Seriously? She just decided the only one she can buy is the only bulb with a snake on the front of the packaging? Poor thing is gonna cook. “Ma’am I really think---“

“Just give me my snake bulb.”

“Fine. Make sure you check the wattage of your lamp before you use this, and keep an eye on the temperature in his tank. Do you have a thermometer?”

“No, I don’t need one.”

Why do these people get pets? And why a snake? Why would you buy the money pit that is a reptile if you’re not going to do it right? “Here’s your receipt ma’am… you can return the bulb if it’s the wrong size…”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Have a great day.”

Frustrated, our heroine grabs a bag of crickets and feeds them to an appreciative and properly heated bearded dragon. She can only hope the snake book purchased with the bulb can enlighten a very stubborn woman.

Dr. Stupidclothingsizes, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Ribs

http://inkdot.tumblr.com/post/7243925631/no-shit

A friend posted this link on Facebook and I read it. It talks about the fact that the reason rich people look so good in their clothing is because it’s all tailored. People spend so much time trying to buy things off the rack that fit, yet nothing off the rack is actually going to fit you perfectly because that’s just not how things work. As the author of that blog states, it’s so simple and makes perfect sense, yet it’s also not something you really think about.

Frankly, it made me angry. Not her well written post, which I found informative. But the information that I was informed of sent me into a fit of rage. I swore, I stomped around… and then I punched myself in the rib cage.

It hurts when you punch yourself in the rib cage, in case you were wondering.

My ribs and I have a difficult relationship. They are there and they function quite well. However, for whatever reason, nothing fits them. Things will fit me perfectly in the waist and (if I can get them to zip) will fit me in the bust. Nothing fits me in my ribcage. I have spent so many hours struggling with zippers wondering why I have the ribs of a wildebeest that things will Just. Not. Fit. I have cursed my ribs out for being these horrible, misshapen, disproportionate creatures that destroy clothes shopping experiences. I have hung so many cute dresses back on the rack to the sigh of “it just won’t zip over my ribs.” It’s something I can’t do anything about. The amount of fat on my ribs is minimal. Were it my stomach I could tone and lose weight, but I simply can’t lose the bones that are my ribs. I have squeezed them into things and felt like I was corseted, unable to breathe and wary of sitting down. All attempts to buy larger sizes just resulted in large gaps of fabric that would show off far more bra and breast than I could ever be comfortable with (and I show a lot of cleavage on a regular basis, so this is saying something).

All my fashion woes have been blamed on my ribs, my large and awkward and unbending ribs. Years of anger directed to them, and guess what? It’s not their fault.

I, like so many people, have always had body image issues. I’ve struggled with my weight even though it’s never really been a problem. I’m tall and subsequently longer than most average clothing will comfortably fit. I love that I have pale skin and dark hair, I love that I’m tall and leggy, but truth be told I don’t really look like any kind of ideal. I’m not quite tall enough to look like a super model, and even if I were to try modeling I’d never be able to get out of the plus-size range because of insane standards. Frankly it’s never bothered me because as much as I love playing dress up I love cleaning fish tanks more and I just can’t see any way to reconcile haute couture with siphons.

I determined long ago that since I’d never be able to find myself pretty (regardless of what other people think… or remind me of daily) I might as well dress well. And of course, when I say dress “well” what I really mean is “however the fuck I want.” I don’t do designer labels; I do sales racks, sun dresses, five inch heels and anything I feel like. I own some pieces with amazing necklines, crazy sleeves, and fantastic patterns. I own enough animal print to choke a tacky prostitute. I own a leather mini-skirt, and it’s been worn in public (albeit on Halloween). My jewelry is large and loud. I love how I dress, even if I can’t love how I inherently look.

I still can’t love my rib cage. I feel bad for punching it, mostly because it put me in pain. And I’m frustrated I’ve spent years blaming it for something it just couldn’t help. In a perfect world my clothes would fit all three of those torso areas perfectly. They MUST fit my rib cage perfectly, and then in this perfect world they can be tailored to fit my bust and my waist. There would be no more buckled zippers and evenings where I felt light headed. I could stop feeling like a Victorian and only feel like I was wearing a corset when I actually chose to wear a corset (because I do that sometimes).

Maybe I’ll get lucky; maybe I’ll start researching tailors and realize that there is someone out there who can accommodate my wildebeest ribs and my grad student budget. Until that day comes I think I’m just going to have to learn to stop blaming my rib cage for the fashion world’s problem.

Of online games and LDRs

For the better part of my dating career I’ve been involved in long-distance relationships. The long distance aspect of the relationship is never fun, but the one that I’m in now seems to have a lot of sticking potential. We survived ten months of me being in Korea through the power of Skype and Google chat and it was far from fun but we got through. So now I’m moving for grad school and he’s moving to a different place for grade school, sticking us with about two more years of long distance.

It is here that the fact this boyfriend used to be a World of Warcraft addict comes in. He has this thing for online games where you get to hit things with swords. This lead him to a game called Spiral Knights, which is free to join and play and filled with enough cuteness he didn’t have any trouble convincing me to join with him. I was sold on Spiral Knights because of the simple way he pitched it “It’s something we can play together, even when we’re on different ends of the country.” So romantic. It sold me on the concept.

I am by no means a gamer. I enjoy a rousing game of Viva Pinata or Katamari Damacy as much as the next person, but the appeal of the online gaming craze has just avoided me. My computer gaming repertoire consists entirely of The Sims 2, and games that involve interacting with other people, people I don’t even know (!), do not sound enjoyable to me.

On a basic review level the game works because it’s complex enough for all those serious gamers to enjoy seriously. At least, I think this is why they play it. It seems to be why Handsome Man Friend likes, and he seems to be a pretty average representation of gamers who function at a fairly high social level. It also works because us casual gamers who just want to spin around with the multi-colored snipes can enjoy that element, along with simple-to-use controls. I figured it all out in about ten minutes, which is impressive because I have been playing the Sims 2 since it was released and am STILL discovering new things about the game (reason number one I will not be moving on to the Sims 3 anytime soon). Handsome Man Friend enjoys making me weapons and armors that he can gift to me in the game so that we can stay at similar levels, and I love having a reason to scream about how much I hate dogs while being attacked by fox-like beasts called ‘wolvers.’ I also enjoy squealing about the cuteness while tiny chameleons and little pink things called ‘spookettes’ try to eat his face. I’ve learned that I work pretty good as a human shield, especially when my shield has an owl on it. I enjoy the whole thing enough that I will actually log-on by myself and run levels, although those stupid foxes usually kill me pretty quickly.

Thanks to cellular technology the two of us are in pretty constant contact, but it’s great to set aside time for this. We hunker down, charge up our cell phones, and then we load up our games, put each other on speaker phone, and beat little ghosty things that throw office chairs at you to a pulp. He talks about all the exciting things he’s learned from actually reading up on how to play the game, and I talk about how I’m still deeply insulted that the leopard gecko screams at me. This usually takes us about an hour and then we finish our run and return to the town so that he can shop for recipes to make new equipment and I can spin with my bird friends.

They say that couples with kids need to make time for just the two of them. Well, we certainly don’t have kids, but it holds true for long distance. We need time for the two of us, real time. It’s so easy to get lost in our days and rely simple on 160 character text messages to say all we need to. It’s just so impersonal to do things that way. We set these little ‘dates’ and are able to talk and do something together that we both enjoy. While I’d much rather be grabbing dinner and a movie with him, it’s impossible when you’re three hundred (soon to be a thousand) miles apart to do those kinds of activities. This works for both of us, and neither of us feels like we’re simply putting up with the other person’s whims. I’ve dissented against both online gaming and advanced technology, but if it gives me face time with Handsome Man Friend, I’m very ok with it… even if that face time isn’t really with him, but with his avatar, which sort of looks like a Thundercat.