More jobs and missing my fair city...
The past several weeks have been a blur, trying to hustle, trying to find money in order to stretch our savings just a little bit more. The Kangaroo Hut promptly collapsed and I haven't heard from them again. I filed for unemployment, they contested it in a way (how can I be "discharged" when there's "no work" to be had?), got a little money and then launched into several other part-time jobs.
I have three jobs now, working on potentially having a fourth. I received my first paycheck from the private practice, a whooping $171 from seeing clients a month ago. Considering I have to take out my own taxes, that's now $120.
Whew! Don't crazy now with all that moolah, Jess.
The second job is a mind-numbing call center gig that's a three-month contract. I call folks to follow up on satisfaction from their medical providers. It's similar to what I have done, but my personality can't come through and I can't establish rapport. I'm trying to be positive with that, seeing as I started using my planner again, wrote a very long letter, and started studying for my exam.
My licensing exam. I'm scheduled to take it May 18th and am subsequently terrified. I hate standardized tests; despite what grad school actually WAS, taking the GRE leading up to it was particularly harrowing, though I did do well. Now, I need to study what I did over two years of school, re-memorizing theories and stats, something I did well in the first time. But standardized tests still make me twitchy.
The third job is doing in-home psychiatric rehab, and apparently, they're assigning me four kids between the ages of 8 and 13. Which I am apprehensive about as I don't specialize in kids. I am hopeful this works out. They're taking a chance on me because of the non-experience in kids, saying I can try it, and if it doesn't work out, then I can be reassigned. It's comforting they're willing to work with me, though I have been complaining that the training was ridiculous, it's totally underpaid, and why the hell did I need to get ANOTHER criminal background check? Can't all y'all talk to each other? How many background checks can I get in so much time before the state and federal governments catch wise and are like, "Uh, Jess, are you PLANNING to do something? What you doing here?"
I have an interview for a fourth position on Tuesday, which is titled "Research Associate" at a hospital in the south of the city. It sounds impressive, but it sounds like I'll be enrolling folks for clinical drug trials.
My main thought is that I'll work all four for three months, then let the contracts expire on the second and the fourth. Hopefully by then, my caseload will be sustainable and the in-home job will be some extra moolah to complement.
We're still floating. We're still working on ourselves. I make empanada dough and am excited that silicone baking cups were delivered to my house. I fluctuate between wanting to get things done and then just resting. We argue, we fight, emotions bubble up and I spat them out. His eyes get heavy and overwhelmed. I try to stop the fluttering heart.
We go to bed with Sadiecat and conquer another day.
I don't know what the next six months will look like. I have no idea about this move with my parents. I don't know if we're going to have Socks move in with us. I don't know how we're getting to Florida for Dippy's wedding; are we driving a truck back? The only thing I definitely know is that I'm scheduled to be in Florida during the last week of May/first week of June.
It'll be my ten-year reunion at the Crest that weekend. Part of me wants to roll up after driving all the way from Florida, sitting on Butz Patio with too-baggy jeans, smoking too much, and just look at the women on campus with half-lidded eyes. Ten years may have passed, but nothing has changed.
I go through baking spats, wanting to be more organized, frantically writing on notes when I'm at the call center of how to organize my life to make it more functional. I make empanada dough from scratch, talking with Fidget's best friend about bringing me vegan "ground beef" so I can have something for him for dinner. I shake the pancake batter from scratch, put the other dough in the fridge. Make more chili powder, then add another spice blend to my spice rack.
I feel somewhat manic. I'm excited about these changes, the jobs starting, having some type of viable and sustainable income. Maybe finally be able to do something besides pay bills and make food. Maybe not have to second-guess going out for dinner or actually meeting some former coworkers for catching up. I miss that freedom.
We have conversations about whether things were really better before, were we always struggling, are we a sham to those single friends of ours that look at us like some type of Holy Grail? Were we happier? Am I dragging him down with this vat of shit I've been wading through the past two years and change? Do we put too much pressure on ourselves?
Were things simpler then? Or were our quotas so filled, we could roll with punches more? Where parents weren't dying or jobs weren't ending or educations weren't happening? When our biggest problems were having enough booze to get through a weekend or being sober enough to drive home from the bar? How we had to choose which houses we were going to go to or how to balance seven weddings and all of the accompanying showers and parties?
That we would smile and drive and smoke, happy to have his hand on my knee as I danced to music deep in my soul that he couldn't relate to? Or how attuned to me he was when I would randomly break down? How we would frantically clean because we were having yet another house party? Before there were babies and budgets and trying to figure out where our next paychecks were coming from? When there was a rent payment and it wasn't mortgage?
It's been five years, Jess, that little voice says. We're older, we have more responsibilities, it's the American Dream and trying to be adults. We take on more debt because I wanted that house instead of an apartment that would flood every time there was rain. I wanted my own property. I wanted the education. I wanted to go further.
It was so much simpler when we had nothing.
I remember having the conversation with Trips about how things were simpler when we were poor. He would make bills, then drive through drive-throughs with Numfar to look for forgotten change. I would try to work overtime to pay back the money I owed him, living off of cigarettes and whiskey, working more swing work. We would have knock-down drag-out parties, but I couldn't tell you if we actually made anything to eat, or if our "guests" would bring their own Wawa and there was enough booze to make a rent payment.
Now, there's houses and credit checks and trying to keep in the black, though that black gets a little pink every month. Granted, I'm working now on bringing that pink out of that black, and thankfully, we might be okay through May on smart money and my ability to compulsively plan. He's doing well at school, a long ago dream finally coming to fruition, finally getting that education he can spend time on, excited about the prospects and irritated at his classmates. I don my trusted heels and "real" pants I haven't wore in over two years and talk about gender norms and sleep hygiene and pre-grief. A man talks to me in my car, telling me about cultural considerations for my licensing exam. I continue to nurse off a box of wine that Caterpillar brought down weeks ago, trying to forget where we are in five years and relive the spontaneity we so desperately crave.
For all my years down here, I was a city kid, running those streets and those bars, helping clients in the zip codes in this area. You give me a zip code, I know which side of the city you live on. And now, I'm based in counties not around the city, traveling south and west, knowing nothing of the services where I'm going. I went into the city Thursday for orientation for the third job, a block from where the Starship was. The parking lot was all tagged, beautiful but sad at the same time. I came out of the city when it was over, remembering the streets, seeing the tent cities, remembering how I would ride the bus home after school. The city lights with their familiar orange, the haze that comes from the industry, the bright lights in crime areas, the tourists stumbling down the streets. City buses I've ridden, side streets I've walked on with friends, freeways I traveled over. Passing the arena where we'd seen acrobats, under the convention center walkway, past the stadiums, and back out of the city to the clearer skies of my fair county.
I'll come back to you, City. Let me make a little money first, so when I roll back into that bar or stumble down those streets myself, I'm not too guilty and worried about not making house payments. I'll get gussied up, put on my heels, and sashay back into that bar, making friends and taking shots. Maybe I won't be unhappy. Maybe I won't be as worried. Maybe we'll be together and forget where the past five years have brought us...
... then we'll come home, I'll drink more wine, and wake up the next morning to return to money- and dough-making like the previous night didn't happen.
I have three jobs now, working on potentially having a fourth. I received my first paycheck from the private practice, a whooping $171 from seeing clients a month ago. Considering I have to take out my own taxes, that's now $120.
Whew! Don't crazy now with all that moolah, Jess.
The second job is a mind-numbing call center gig that's a three-month contract. I call folks to follow up on satisfaction from their medical providers. It's similar to what I have done, but my personality can't come through and I can't establish rapport. I'm trying to be positive with that, seeing as I started using my planner again, wrote a very long letter, and started studying for my exam.
My licensing exam. I'm scheduled to take it May 18th and am subsequently terrified. I hate standardized tests; despite what grad school actually WAS, taking the GRE leading up to it was particularly harrowing, though I did do well. Now, I need to study what I did over two years of school, re-memorizing theories and stats, something I did well in the first time. But standardized tests still make me twitchy.
The third job is doing in-home psychiatric rehab, and apparently, they're assigning me four kids between the ages of 8 and 13. Which I am apprehensive about as I don't specialize in kids. I am hopeful this works out. They're taking a chance on me because of the non-experience in kids, saying I can try it, and if it doesn't work out, then I can be reassigned. It's comforting they're willing to work with me, though I have been complaining that the training was ridiculous, it's totally underpaid, and why the hell did I need to get ANOTHER criminal background check? Can't all y'all talk to each other? How many background checks can I get in so much time before the state and federal governments catch wise and are like, "Uh, Jess, are you PLANNING to do something? What you doing here?"
I have an interview for a fourth position on Tuesday, which is titled "Research Associate" at a hospital in the south of the city. It sounds impressive, but it sounds like I'll be enrolling folks for clinical drug trials.
My main thought is that I'll work all four for three months, then let the contracts expire on the second and the fourth. Hopefully by then, my caseload will be sustainable and the in-home job will be some extra moolah to complement.
We're still floating. We're still working on ourselves. I make empanada dough and am excited that silicone baking cups were delivered to my house. I fluctuate between wanting to get things done and then just resting. We argue, we fight, emotions bubble up and I spat them out. His eyes get heavy and overwhelmed. I try to stop the fluttering heart.
We go to bed with Sadiecat and conquer another day.
I don't know what the next six months will look like. I have no idea about this move with my parents. I don't know if we're going to have Socks move in with us. I don't know how we're getting to Florida for Dippy's wedding; are we driving a truck back? The only thing I definitely know is that I'm scheduled to be in Florida during the last week of May/first week of June.
It'll be my ten-year reunion at the Crest that weekend. Part of me wants to roll up after driving all the way from Florida, sitting on Butz Patio with too-baggy jeans, smoking too much, and just look at the women on campus with half-lidded eyes. Ten years may have passed, but nothing has changed.
I go through baking spats, wanting to be more organized, frantically writing on notes when I'm at the call center of how to organize my life to make it more functional. I make empanada dough from scratch, talking with Fidget's best friend about bringing me vegan "ground beef" so I can have something for him for dinner. I shake the pancake batter from scratch, put the other dough in the fridge. Make more chili powder, then add another spice blend to my spice rack.
I feel somewhat manic. I'm excited about these changes, the jobs starting, having some type of viable and sustainable income. Maybe finally be able to do something besides pay bills and make food. Maybe not have to second-guess going out for dinner or actually meeting some former coworkers for catching up. I miss that freedom.
We have conversations about whether things were really better before, were we always struggling, are we a sham to those single friends of ours that look at us like some type of Holy Grail? Were we happier? Am I dragging him down with this vat of shit I've been wading through the past two years and change? Do we put too much pressure on ourselves?
Were things simpler then? Or were our quotas so filled, we could roll with punches more? Where parents weren't dying or jobs weren't ending or educations weren't happening? When our biggest problems were having enough booze to get through a weekend or being sober enough to drive home from the bar? How we had to choose which houses we were going to go to or how to balance seven weddings and all of the accompanying showers and parties?
That we would smile and drive and smoke, happy to have his hand on my knee as I danced to music deep in my soul that he couldn't relate to? Or how attuned to me he was when I would randomly break down? How we would frantically clean because we were having yet another house party? Before there were babies and budgets and trying to figure out where our next paychecks were coming from? When there was a rent payment and it wasn't mortgage?
It's been five years, Jess, that little voice says. We're older, we have more responsibilities, it's the American Dream and trying to be adults. We take on more debt because I wanted that house instead of an apartment that would flood every time there was rain. I wanted my own property. I wanted the education. I wanted to go further.
It was so much simpler when we had nothing.
I remember having the conversation with Trips about how things were simpler when we were poor. He would make bills, then drive through drive-throughs with Numfar to look for forgotten change. I would try to work overtime to pay back the money I owed him, living off of cigarettes and whiskey, working more swing work. We would have knock-down drag-out parties, but I couldn't tell you if we actually made anything to eat, or if our "guests" would bring their own Wawa and there was enough booze to make a rent payment.
Now, there's houses and credit checks and trying to keep in the black, though that black gets a little pink every month. Granted, I'm working now on bringing that pink out of that black, and thankfully, we might be okay through May on smart money and my ability to compulsively plan. He's doing well at school, a long ago dream finally coming to fruition, finally getting that education he can spend time on, excited about the prospects and irritated at his classmates. I don my trusted heels and "real" pants I haven't wore in over two years and talk about gender norms and sleep hygiene and pre-grief. A man talks to me in my car, telling me about cultural considerations for my licensing exam. I continue to nurse off a box of wine that Caterpillar brought down weeks ago, trying to forget where we are in five years and relive the spontaneity we so desperately crave.
For all my years down here, I was a city kid, running those streets and those bars, helping clients in the zip codes in this area. You give me a zip code, I know which side of the city you live on. And now, I'm based in counties not around the city, traveling south and west, knowing nothing of the services where I'm going. I went into the city Thursday for orientation for the third job, a block from where the Starship was. The parking lot was all tagged, beautiful but sad at the same time. I came out of the city when it was over, remembering the streets, seeing the tent cities, remembering how I would ride the bus home after school. The city lights with their familiar orange, the haze that comes from the industry, the bright lights in crime areas, the tourists stumbling down the streets. City buses I've ridden, side streets I've walked on with friends, freeways I traveled over. Passing the arena where we'd seen acrobats, under the convention center walkway, past the stadiums, and back out of the city to the clearer skies of my fair county.
I'll come back to you, City. Let me make a little money first, so when I roll back into that bar or stumble down those streets myself, I'm not too guilty and worried about not making house payments. I'll get gussied up, put on my heels, and sashay back into that bar, making friends and taking shots. Maybe I won't be unhappy. Maybe I won't be as worried. Maybe we'll be together and forget where the past five years have brought us...
... then we'll come home, I'll drink more wine, and wake up the next morning to return to money- and dough-making like the previous night didn't happen.