Everyday my otherwise enjoyably and socially informative Facebook wall get plastered with dozens of those generic image-style Facebook statuses from certain well-meaning friends of mine who have clearly fallen victim to someone else’s Facebook page-promoting guilt tactics.You know the ones I am talking about. Someone has taken a wall of text and turned it into an image so that it is easier to repost over and over and over and over…

For example: “If you share this image of a premature baby hooked up to life support 300 times I won’t punch a kitten in the fucking spine. “

I generally overlook the egregious nature of these eyesores on account of having a type of unconditional respect for my friends no matter how sappy or temperarily weak-minded.  But enough is enough.  If you want me to repost, share or like something on Facebook…

Don’t post things like this:

Let’s be very clear here. There is nothing at all wrong with being patriotic and feeling that you need to tell everyone that you are supporting the troops, or that you are supporting your favorite  cause, or that you have a lot of religion and want all to know.  This issue here is trying to insinuate that if your message is not re-posted by me, then I must be some kind of cold-blooded, baby seal clubbing, fire-breathing, dead-to-all-emotion Facebook Nazi. That is how you make me feel.

It has been said that if I don’t have anything interesting to say, reposting a badly written, pointless repost that requires my other friends to repost if they love you is a good attempt at being a needy douche wad. These friends will all wish for hornets to fly up your ass and out your eyeballs for being an annoying twat.
Reposting statuses are a stale, three layer cake of annoying. It’s unoriginal, needy and you’re ordering people to also be annoying to their other friends. It’s the Facebook locust, eating up all the interesting things on your news feed and replacing them with soul withering reposts. Even if the repost has good intentions, posting up a status for an hour to “show awareness” for club footed guinea pigs doesn’t make their feet less clubby or do anything for their awkward gait.
Don’t feel bad if you’re guilty about posting one or more of these statuses, most of us have done it at least once, but the secret ingredient that forces friends to ban you from their news feed is repetition. On Facebook, status scarcity makes the heart grow fonder. Before you post your status, remember that you have an audience who’s probably on company time and being very ninja about their Facebook visits, don’t let it be all for naught.

Look what I built!

Ok, so I found the lights and the wood framed table in the basement under the stairs, but I rigged the pulley system to raise and lower the lights myself. This was my own idea.

Here is a few snapshots of how things are looking so far.

Now on a completely unrelated note, I always knew that the trees outside our house were listening to us. But now I have hard physical evidence that I am not mad. This tree has an ear!

I had to do a little plastic surgery…..

So I wound up spending the evening drawing some things on MS Paint. The idea I had started out with was something dramatic, like a unicorn and a wolf battling over something, probably the tv remote.

But then it deteriorated into this…

And this…

And this…

And this…

I am really excited about starting a garden this year. Gosh, how long has it been since I had my own garden? Probably about 9 years. Since that time I have either lived in an apartment that didn’t even have enough window sun for a small herb garden, or in a completely windowless dorm room, or in a house where there was a garden, but it was meticulously managed by some one else, and I had better not even think about changing anything, or a commune house in the middle of a ghetto where everything outside gets destroyed by rampaging school children.

It’s only February, but I have begun some seeds in hot houses indoors.

I am also starting a potato crop. Below you are looking at a small bag of microwavable potatoes that sat on the shelf for too long and began sprouting in their package. Why throw them away?

I cut them up into pieces leaving 2 to 3 eyes per piece and then left the cuts to heal in this tub over night.

Since the hot houses are kind of pricey, I am just borrowing some old planters I found in a bin in the basement. …Ssshhhh! The seeds and soil I purchased at Home Depot.

To keep these seeds at the right temperature for germination, I have placed them on the floor in a large closet and set our floor heater next to the door, which I left propped open about 2 inches.

The great thing about this house is how many windows it has. I could feasibly place all my vegetables right in the windows after they have sprouted and keep them there until they are either ready to harvest or until the end of the last frost date outside, which ever comes first.

The  outdoor growing season in Northern New Hampshire is very short, about 5 months: from June to October. We are located right on the border of growing zone 3 and 4 according to the USDA growing zone map for all of you gardening aficionados out there.

This is why I have a strategy. I am building a greenhouse which I intend to add a heating unit.

It’s not much to look at now.

But, it is in the process of being assembled.

The owners of this place left it under the back porch and I found it. ha ha ha! Here it is all laid out and ready to be put up. It will go somewhere out here.

I would like to report some very good news.  You may remember me telling you how several weeks ago before we moved out of Manchester that Husband and I were very nearly homeless. That I had been laid off from a retail sales position at Macy’s and now Husband’s waiter job was the only thing earning us any money. On top of all this there was no money in the bank, and we had very nearly depleted our credit card’s credit limits. Just as we were reaching a disastrous breaking point, I was offered a real nursing job and we miraculously found a place to live only two miles away from the place where I would be working.

Now Husband as found a fine dining waiter job. It only took looking on Craigslist once and applying to the first and only job offered in Franconia. Yes, you read that right. It was the only job in the town! That is as far as Craigslist ads anyway. All Husband did was walk in on day with his little resume and they basically hired him on the spot. How cool is that?

From the looks of things, he will probably be making quite a bit more at this place, which caters mainly to people who come up north to take advantage of the snow and the mountains. On an interesting yet related side note, Husband told me today that the lady who is training him is the step mother of the famous Olympic and World Championship gold medalist, Bode Miller. Maybe you remember him back in 2005 and 2008 if you were paying attention to the Winter Olympics.

 

I feel the need to blow off some steam.

In a few moments I am supposed to go online and log into my bank account to check my account balance. My mom asked me to do this at a specific time today in order to confirm a deposit she is making. I may have already told you that I had to ask her to help us with the first months rent and the security deposit on our new place up in Franconia …because we are completely broke and can’t even afford to move out of our old place so I can start a new job. Anyway, I am extremely grateful that she can help. In fact, I even took all the flack I got from her about it right on the chin, because I know that 1) I deserved it, and 2) I know I will be able to pay her back.

Because this is her first time actually wiring money to another bank and it is somewhat of an emergency, she is worried that something will go wrong with the transfer and her poor little baby will be stranded out in the middle of nowhere with all her things along side the road in the snow. It will be ok, Mommy. I promise.

But I digress. This is not the unpleasant thing I am referring at all. Let me start over and begin again at when I woke up this morning.

The first task of the day was to get myself downtown to the Department of Health Services for the city of Manchester and pick up the results from my TB test. A test that is required from all healthcare workers before they can begin employment in a healthcare setting.

On the way out the door I couldn’t find my purse, so I began searching.

The 1st place to look was on my dresser where I normally keep it. There was some laundry piled up on my dresser and a bunch of clean bath towels. Last night Husband had taken the pile of clean towels off of the bed where they had been tossed after coming out of the dryer and put them onto my dresser.  This gesture was meant to punish me as I had not folded them and put them away before he was ready for bed and now they were in his way.

But the purse wasn’t beneath the laundry or the towels.

The next place I looked was out in the living room. I looked on the coffee table.

I looked on the couch.

I looked under the blanket and under the pillows.

I looked under the couch.

No luck.

Seeing as how my purse was clearly not in the living room, I went into the spare room. Maybe it was on the floor in the closet.

It was not.

I looked on top of the table next.

Then I looked on the chair.

I looked on top of the microwave.

I looked on top of all the boxes that I had piled up in the corner yesterday.

It was nowhere.

Then I looked again in the closet. Maybe I had missed it the 1st time.

Alas, it still wasn’t there. So I continued searching.

I looked on the top shelf in the closet thinking maybe I had thrown it up there.

Nada.

The next thing I did was go out to the kitchen and look on the kitchen chairs.

A highly unlikely place but maybe  I put it on one of the chairs when I came home and then pushed the chair under the table. Maybe it was  just hiding on one of those cushions.

But it wasn’t.

So I went back into the bedroom while Husband was sleeping and looked around some more.  At this point when one has searched the entire house for an artifact and all logical places have been inspected yet that artifact has not been located but it is still not reasonable to believe that said artifact is not in the house, one begins the search again. This time one includes all the illogical places.

I looked under the bed.

I took all the clothes off of the chair, through them onto the bed, looked on the chair, and then through all the clothes back onto the chair again.

I looked on the dresser one more time. Why? I don’t know.

Finally, after scanning the room slowly and robotically with my eyes,

I just stood there without any idea about what to do next.

I went outside and walked down the street to where my car was parked.

I opened it up and looked inside.

The purse wasn’t in there either.  Why would it have been?

I walked back home.

Back inside. Back into the bedroom where I continued to stand like an idiot.

The only thing that I could conclude was that somebody had stolen it. But that was a ridiculous idea because my wallet and keys were right here on the dresser. I had clearly taken those things out of the purse at some point in the not too distant past. And why would anyone want to take a purse that had no money in it anyway?

But I was unwilling to accept this notion. There had to be a better explanation. I just didn’t know what that explanation was.

I angrily inspected on my dresser for the 3rd time.

This time I sarcastically grabbed the tiny pile of socks and mittens which remained on the dresser, and which couldn’t possibly be hiding anything beneath them. I lifted them high into the air above my head and  and stared down at the dresser top while making a face. This was my way of mocking of how  stupid and pointless this all was.

There was my bastard purse.

And this is EXACTLY why I passionately dispise having to search for things.

It’s funny how sometimes life seems to hang in the balance between random chance and one’s best efforts. Right now husband and I are in a situation where we could possibly be homeless in a few weeks if nothing changes however we also have great hope that something will. I have been unemployed for several weeks now. Prior to that I was working a seasonal position at Macy’s and women shoe apartment. And that is how we paid for rent. Seth is working as a waiter at Ruby Tuesday also in the same mall where I worked, but the tips aren’t all that great there. When my seasonal position came to an end after the NewYear, I was unsure as to how to make ends meet now.

Since then I have been spending literally every single waking hour of every day looking for a job on the Internet. (minus the time I used to complete that last post about my 2nd week in Manchester) Craigslist has been the best help so far as it has proven in the past to produce the best results for me.It has been the only things that has produced any kind of results for me.

At first, I only applied for registered nursing jobs, and I only applied for jobs listed near by. Then I expanded the search to include a greater and greater territory. As I did this I also began applying for everything; pizza delivery person, secretary, receptionist, waitress etc. The fact that I worked a year at a doctor’s office as an RN apparently doesn’t count as real experience.

I apply for things I know that I’m not qualified for and I know that I won’t get but I have nothing else to lose except not get hired. So in my random willy-nilly applying for jobs I applied for a position that was 97 miles north of where we live now figuring that I would never even be considered, but what the hell.

Life also has a funny way of throwing surprises at you when you least expect it to. I had already been through several tragically embarrassing interviews for a nursing job so when some lady e-mailed me back and wanted to schedule an interview I didn’t think this would be any different. I just figured that since Husband and I haven’t explored the northern tip of New Hampshire this would be a great opportunity to do so.

The interview actually went pretty well. I wasn’t stumbling over my words, I wasn’t acting all insecure, I wasn’t leaning over the desk and asking “what?” every few words, and, most importantly, I managed to keep the conversation light with some witty stories about my travels and places that I’ve been. I’m certain I didn’t come off as the total doofus I normally do.

What does this mean? it means there is hope.

Husband and I were both extremely happy as he drove me around Franconia that day to explore the area. There was a fresh white blanket of snow covering the ground which made that story-book little town look like a winter wonderland. We ate lunch in the local delicatessen. We even had time after the interview to visit a house that I had found listed for rent on Craigslist. It was only 2 miles away from the place I would be working if I got the job.

This house is everything that Husband and I ever dreamed of having as our 1st house together. The rent is a little steep but I could afford it with the salary I would be making. We even explained the situation to the couple who were wanting to find renters and they were completely cool with the idea. This was the description of this place:

[Private, custom built home for rent in Franconia. 2 bedrooms plus loft, 2 bathrooms, wood floors, clawfoot tub, large kitchen, open floor plan, radiant floor heat, woodstove, 2 porches, large deck, vegetable garden, 12 acres, minutes to skiing and hiking.]

Here are some of the Craigslist pictures:

So now everything feels like one giant waiting game.

On a side note, I was rehired by Macy’s a few days prior to all this happening, but it will only be for a part-time position and I will not be earning commission as I did before. I am scheduled to begin on the 29th of this month. I sincerely want to hear back from the place in Franconia before then. I can just tell Macy’s I found another job. I have no idea what to expect. Or how are we going to manage to get all our things up there in time for me to start work. Or how we’re going to pay for the 1st month rent with only a combine sum of 300 dollars in both of our bank accounts. So much seems to ridding on mere chance right now. It’s ridiculous.

I don’t even know what to feel. Expectant. Melancholy. Cautious. Hopeful. Happy.

This is the place in the process where everything has come to a halt before. I get through the interview and they request reference and tell me they’ll get back to me but never do. They just disappear off the face of the earth..

So here I sit, quiet and wondering.

Just thought I’d share.

Update: 15 minutes  later.

So this morning, right after I posted this, I checked my e-mail and found out that I got an e-mail back from the place up in Franconia where I interviewed the other day. They’re offering me the position!

This is also surreal.

I sent an e-mail back to the lady whose property we visited on he same day and told her the good news.

Everything seems to be falling into place. Now I have to start thinking about packing and putting things in boxes again.

My “employer” wants me to come back up in a couple of days to sign some papers. Hopefully S ETH can take me there on his day off. I suppose I could drive there if I had to.

Holy cow! This is like my 1st real nursing job out of nursing school. Finally.

I’m scared.

Sometimes there are days when it feels like life is making fun of you for trying. Doing everyday tasks is like attempting to run through an obstacle course thought up by clowns on crack;  almost everything you attempt renders the same pointless result.

To be even more specific, imagine how it would feel if you were trying your hardest to get around a brick wall which stood between you and something you really wanted. And imagine if instead of simply walking around the brick wall you could only think to repeatedly smash your face into said wall as hard as you could and hope that one of these times the wall wouldn’t be there anymore. This wouldn’t make too much sense would it? Well, on these types of days few things do.

One such a day happened to me quite recently.

One morning, as I was still lying in bed it occurred to me that I had a lot of things to do. And for whatever reason today was the day that I was supposed to do those things.

It was with deep conviction that I contemplated the many tasks at hand as I lie there in the dark beneath the covers. “I would be an adult and go out and run a bunch of errands today.” I thought to myself.

With the same deep conviction I got out of bed several minutes later,  brushed my teeth and put on my socks. And then I made myself some toast.

Today  had a purpose.

And then I burned my toast.

This single event, in my retrospective opinion,  was what started the cascade of events that was to follow.

Somehow my burning the toast had set into motion a chain reaction. Kind of like when you stub your toe or bite your cheek. Insult will continue to be added to injury until that part of your body is no more than a bleeding pulpy shadow of its former shape.

Cascade of Events

Irritated, but not completed derailed I had made some coffee and was sitting in the living room plotting out the day, when Seth poked his head out of the bedroom and asked me to go to Dunkin Doughnuts for him.

“Ok, sure”.

Add Dunkin Doughnuts to list. And soon after this I had left the house.

Cascade of events continues…

I’ll stop right here for a moment to explain something.  Finding my way around in a strange city was not on the top of my list of skills. If fact it is nowhere on that list.

Given you now understand this about me, I don’t need to tell you how long it took me to get downtown or how many detours I made along the way. I will say that when I did arrive it was right during morning commute. Randomly picking this particular location out of the 10 or 15 other doughnut shops elsewhere in the city might not be something I would want to do again, I thought.

I tried to look on either side of the street for the sign, but the flow of traffic was moving along too fast for me to have enough time to read anything. Same with the tiny green street signs, and address placards by the doors.  Main street was whizzing by in a streaky blur.

How was I supposed to find Dunkin Doughnuts like this?

I just wanted to pull over and park so I could get out and walk there, but all parking spaces were taken.

Cars were creeping up on my back bumper. This only made me feel like I had to speed up to get out of the way, which meant I couldn’t be looking for the address anymore, which meant I had probably already missed it in my haste.  This meant that now I was going to have to figure out a way to turn around, but that meant finding a place to do that, which was just as likely to happen as me finding a parking place, and, thus, I found myself in an endless loop of impossibility.

Surely Seth would understand if I came back with doughnuts bought at the regular old grocery store.

And the Cascade continues…..

New task: Go to post office. Pick up mail.

This was actually the first time that I had actually gone to this particular post office so before I left the house I made sure I had found it on Google Maps and written down the address. I was even using my cars GPS.

I was instructed to drive to an area that appeared to be the outskirts of the city.

I pulled into an empty parking lot and got out.

There were several buildings that in that parking lot. none really bore much resemblance to a post office. Come to think, I think they were probably condemned warehouse buildings, in hindsight.

Naturally, I decided to walk over hoping I was just confused and that the ramshackle structures in front of me would suddenly transform into a post office before my eyes. After all my effort in coming out all this way, it was only fair.

Disappointed after this did not happen, and reluctant to stick around to see if the guy on the floor in the abandoned building was actually  alive or not, I got back in the car and continued to drive down the road a little, hoping I’d see something more post office like.

But then….after a while…. the road all together ceased to be a road.

It was now a dirt path.

Once again, I desperately keep going, rather than wondering, “what the heck”, and immediately turning around as anyone else probably would have done.

After some time of driving on sand and rocks through an ever encroaching funnel of bushes and weeds, i wound up parked in front of a closed metal gate.

Who ever lived here was probably manufacturing Meth and didn’t want to be disturbed.

Giving up and going home seemed like a great idea. Fuck being a grown up. I clearly had issues.

But then, out of no where, this happened.

This was probably the owner of the Meth lab now.

Or a customer.

After several minutes of staring at him through the car window, I determined that he wasn’t going to try and kill me. Eventually, I mustered the strength to roll down the window a few inches. The guy merely informed me that people often make the mistake of turning on to this road think it would be a short cut. Next he showed me how to get back on the free way.

Next task

Go to dmv. Apply for NH driver’s license.

It was no surprise to me as I pulled into a small triangular shaped parking lot on the corner of two streets in the middle of a ghetto that I was probably not where I needed to be. But I had my GPS to thank for that.

I got out of my car and approached the supposed DMV building, hoping just like before that something magical would happen and surprise me. But this building didn’t look like any DMV I had ever seen. There were no signs on the outside of it,  and it was perfectly cubicle in shape. As I came closer I also discovered that this place had no discernible entrance way.

Maybe who ever was inside could tell me why this was not the DMV and where I was exactly.

I Walked around outside of the building twice before I noticed there was a shiny thing painted on the wall outside resembling a door so knocked on it. And waited

As I did that I noticed a lady sitting in her car. She had actually stopped pulling out from her parking space to just watch the my show of stupidity. I could see her through her window smiling at me silently in semi-concealed voyeuristic amusement.

 

The shiny painted thing slide back suddenly and startled me.  The  “door” I had been knocking on turned out to be some type of special mirrored window and the face that appeared through it was that of a scary looking old man.  I Asked if this was the DMV and how I was supposed to find the front door.

The scary-looking old man laughed really hard in my face and then started coughing up crud out of the bottom of his lungs. He had what looked like a glass eye and when he was done laughing he stopped and leered at me sideways through the “good” one making me feel kind of violated. Behind him I could hear what the sounds of a noisy bar instead of the quiet hush of aggravated people sitting in hard plastic chairs awaiting their turns. The Scary looking old man identified where we were standing as being the “D.A.V.”  for whatever that meant. He stared at me long and hard like there was something seriously mentally wrong with me probably wondering why I had not taken whatever medication I was supposed to be on.

“I’m sorry” I said, “My mistake. I am really new to this area and am having a hard time finding anything. Do you know how to get to the Department of Motor Vehicles from here?”

The scary-looking old man rattled off some completely garbled instructions that were barely even audible but I thanked him anyway and left.

Humiliated and angry at the world, I just sat in the car for a good fifteen minutes and contemplated calling Seth and complaining to him about how the whole world was against me.

Then I remembered the grocery store which was only a few blocks from the apartment. I could at least do that.

But as I walked up and down the aisles I felt completely defeated. I doubted whether I was even capable of leaving  the house anymore. Simple tasks like finding the things on this grocery list seemed to be way beyond my abilities.

Minor annoyances that I would have shrugged off on a ordinary day stuck out like flaming red reminders of how my very existence incongruent with the world around.

Even these cans of tomato paste were were too complex for me.

I think it was right about at this point when my frustration with what was happening to me today had to be directed somewhere, and as I didn’t know why any of these things had occurred, my anger was denied a proper target.

The only possible solution was to hate everything was around me at the moment.

This is how burning my toast eventually lead to a complete psychological meltdown in the middle of Stop & Shop grocery store.

I was thoroughly convinced that I had no reason to believe I could do anything at all anymore.

Except feel angry.

And think angry thoughts.

THE END

but first….

There are a surprising number of things in life that can cause even the most self-assured person to feel like an idiot almost instantaneously. By now it is an undeniable fact that I frequent these situations more than most. That would make me somewhat of an expert on the subject mater. Being an expert at anything is a huge honor for me. It also entitles me to give guidance to those that need it.  I have put together a mental list over the years of some of the more common akward situations and have come up with some possible solutions. This is just a few of them.

Scenerio #1

You are in a hurry to get somewhere and as so are attempting to leave,  someone steps into a doorway right in front of you putting their body between you and freedom. They are super friendly and nice and clearly know who you are but you have forgotten their name and you can’t for all the rewards on earth remember what it is. Maybe they have just stopped by for some completely unrelated reason but since you just happened be right here now they want to tell you all about their entire day leading up to this point. “And how cool is that we met each other here? Do you work/live here? OMG, I should totally call a mutual friend of ours right now and let her know so we can all go hand out sometime.”

Following this you do the only thing you know how to do in order to extract yourself from this situation: Acting out a series of painfully obvious and cliche greetings along side a string of theatrical flailing motions of your arms to hopefully demonstrate, what you hope they will take as, a sign of recognition.

You simultaneously and stealthily move the rest of your body towards the door keeping your eyes entirely focused in the direction you want to go as though willing a passage to open up before you, but tragically the longer this goes on the further away that door seems.

Finally all hope appears to be lost as they begin asking you event specific questions that you have no idea how to answer.

You are now trapped. What do you do now?

Solution:

Push them down and run out the door.

Having to pretend that someone else’s baby is the cutest thing on earth can actually be considered a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

This is most likely to be true when you are tired and uninterested or if you suffer from something called “baby-anxiety disorder” or BAD. If you are one of those people that feels awkward around children and small infants you will undoubtedly at some point need to come to the realization that children and babies are an inevitable and unavoidable part of life if you have not done this already. There are babies everywhere and a lot of people really love showing them off. But unfortunately for the sufferer of this above-mentioned condition, sometimes these people believe that everyone else in the world should be just as enamored with their little bundle of joy as they are. And if you live next to one of these people you may be asked repeatedly to look at how cute the baby is or observe some particular thing the baby is doing, and at the very worst you may be asked to hold the baby.

This last one is especially offensive to someone with “BAD” because it usually takes you by total surprise thus removing the option to say no. On the other hand, flat out refusing to hold the baby can result in being perceived by everyone as some kind of maternal-instinct-devoid ice queen who can’t even warm up to the face of an adorable, sweet baby.

People with BAD are deathly afraid that they will become tricked into holding the baby for extended periods of time while the owners of this thing disappear from their presence on some ambiguous task shortly after failing to state when or if ever they will come back. The individual is left alone with a creature that feels like a bomb in their arms and are horrified to the point of being panic stricken that something will happen with the baby that they wont know how to deal with.

Solution: Say dryly,“Yep, It’s a baby” Turn around and leave the room before anyone can take their next breath.

Having your space invaded by your overly friendly next door neighbor who just wants to talk to you all the time about how the world economy is collapsing and you should really switch over to using non-petroleum forms of fuel so that you will evade the coming transportation crisis.

Solution: Come home one day wearing a Hazmat suite. When he asks you what is going on, say “What? No one told you?” then scurry into your apartment quickly and slam the door shut.

Unintentionally responding, or responding incorrectly, to a comment made by some dude who just passed you by on the street that was actually a disguised attempt to hit on you and thus giving him the impression that you are interested.

Now he is turning around. What do you do now?

Solution: Once again….Run away

Moving all the way across the country to a town that you have never been to before and trying to do anything at all.

Solution: Seethe with anger and quietly plot the destruction of the entire human race.

As it turns out there really isn’t an instantaneous solution to this one. But if you want to you can draw some cartoons about it and then post them online to show how frustrated you have been and see if you can gain any sympathy from anyone. At the very least, you can try to get people to laugh at your expense.

UPADATE: Please don’t think this is actually real advice or attempt to follow it.