tightening the purse-strings

I am feeling the familiar pull of financial stress at the corners of my life. Like I'm sitting in the middle of a blanket spread out on the ground, and all of my expenditures are gathering corners in their fists, taking up more and more ground. Letters from the place I get my car insurance that inform me there's been a non sufficient funds issue, and that when they try to take the money out again, it better be there. Text messages from my cell service provider, asking, "Did you remember to pay your bill?" for the second time. The invoice for my unpaid board at the barn sitting on the coffee table where I left it two weeks ago. A quarter tank of gas. And thirty dollars and change sitting ineffectually in my bank account.

Then, at dinner, my mother tries to give me an elementary school lesson on the balance of income and spending. I don't know if she means to be, but she's condescending. So I tell her that I understand that concept, as it is fairly simple. Then she says I should be paying board and room, and did I understand that?

No, I don't understand that. I didn't say anything.

important things

I unintentionally (or was it intentional? Am I to be held accountable for decisions I make in the bleary-eyed moments between 6:05 and 6:06 am?) slept in this morning. Didn't go to my Legal class. Not sure if it was important.

Despite my busyness, I feel a little bit useless in a slow, unwinding way. I am winding down from usefulness.

I'm ready to do important things, I think.

necessary things

I meant to do a million things today, like start on a project that's due Wednesday, or go ride my horse, or do one or seven loads of laundry. While I didn't do any of those things, I went for sushi with my mother and two of my sisters, and then drank mediocre coffee out of a paper cup at an art show in Woodbridge. I wish they'd had wine, but you can't ask much of the old ladies on the county's arts committee. And anyway, it's not like I can afford to actually purchase anything.

When I got home, I did half of the crossword puzzle, like I always do. I've never actually finished one myself. I used to tag-team them with a friend at our summer job. Today I just left it on the kitchen table, unfinished, and went downstairs to watch four consecutive episodes of Sex and the City.

I should be studying. Doing homework. Laundry. Necessary things.

f is for fiction

Disclaimer: this is fiction. It's for a class that I have in two hours. I wrote it this morning during a particularly boring stretch of an editing lecture.

***

I've been trying to join all my letters to make words. I've been pulling my words together, shuffling them around on a page, all night long, until something makes sense. I lit some vanilla-scented candles and opened a bottle of merlot, for inspiration.

I am the most tired I've ever been in my whole life. The tiredness is mounting on itself, night after sleepless night, a growing monster. I could curl up inside its yawning mouth.

You keep watching me from across the room. We need to get rid of this open-concept apartment. Why are we living in a bachelor pad when neither of us is a bachelor? My shuffling around and constant wakefulness make you sleep lighter than usual. When I force myself to lie down for a while, I always stir you from sleep. I can't slip into bed quietly enough.

So we both lie awake, and you don't really talk to me and exhausted as I am, I can't sleep. There is too much to think about in the middle of the night.

Dawn breaks after the sixth night, and I gather my papers -- my countless letters and words, all settled into a decided order -- into a binding and put myself on the bus. I think about you watching me in the middle of the night, not speaking. I think about your wordlessness.

I rely on my legs and feet to carry me to the office building, on my hands and fingers to press the right buttons in the elevator. I give the stack of papers to the receptionist, mumble the editor's name, fumble through my purse for a card. I must look like a complete disaster.

Once I'm back on the bus, I find its unsteady lurches are making my head swim. There's a baby crying somewhere behind me, but it sounds so far away, like it's behind a closed door down the hall. I am staring out the window at a homeless man pushing a shopping cart across cracked pavement. The bus pulls past him and he blurs into my peripheral. As we lurch forward, the rest of the world blurs into my peripheral as well, and then I don't see anything at all.

I miss my stop five times. Each time the bus lurches past my stop, the monster retreats a little. When I finally emerge, eyes open, I find myself pulling the little bell and getting off the bus. I am on the wrong side of town, but I feel better than I ever have before.

"What are you doing, are you busy?" I ask you from a pay phone. "Let's do something. Let's talk."

sleep deprived data entry

I'm at work right now, doing some fascinating data entry work, as usual. I have an interview at the Christian bookstore today at 5:30pm. I can't decide what wage I won't work for a penny less of, and on top of that, I'm a dumb-feeler, so it'll be awkward bringing it up. Today at noon, I'm going to call Klondyke Flowers to see if I can arrange an interview. I think I'd rather work there.

Eric called me today and said, "I miss you," when I picked up. He said it like he was surprised. These are the things that I enjoy about our relationship. He's going to come pick me up for an essay-writing-coffee-break tonight.

Speaking of essay writing, I wrote one rather half-assedly last night. I got home from a weekend trip to the mountains with the girls at around 11:30pm. My eyes were involuntarily closing as I made notes and fired up the laptop. I printed it off and stapled it together without proofreading it. Tonight will be much the same, I fear. And the next night. And Thursday night, as well.

My plan is to hold off on sleep until Wednesday, the 24th. And then I'll sleep until final exams.

jobs and weekend trips ensue.

I should have done laundry before stuffing what may or may not be clean clothes into a backpack and declaring myself "packed" for the weekend trip I'm taking with some friends. However, I am a disorganized, stressed out, insane person; I don't think ahead and do laundry regularly. In fact, when I recently ran out of underwear, I did a load of just underwear and towels. Why didn't I, I don't know, throw in a few shirts and a pair of jeans? Because, I am insane and disorganized and I don't think clearly during the day, when everyone else does.

I just finished an extremely inane assignment for an editing class. My dreams of becoming an editor are waning slightly. Each time I go to class, I feel bored to tears. Like I actually might cry, it's so boring. But I'll graduate in a million years and get some sort of job, and then maybe I'll feel better about my life choices.

Speaking of jobs-slash-life-choices, I applied for three very select jobs today. The first is at a Christian bookstore. I'm still considering how I feel about working there. One of the questions of the application form was "list three books (besides the Bible!) that you've read in the last year and how they impacted your life." I feel that everyone else who worked there named devotionals or one of those end-times-bestsellers. I was stumped. I didn't know how to tell Trish at the Christian bookstore that the books that impacted me in the last year were The Bell Jar (a book about a girl who slowly goes crazy and attempts suicide) and The Robber Bride (a book about a group of women who have been wronged by an evil seductress who slept with their husbands/boyfriends and stole their money, and eventually winds up falling out a window, high on crack). So I said the Poisonwood Bible, because it shows a secular view of missions, and Practising the Presence of People, which is a book I only read one chapter of in the summer, but it meant to be a sort of devotional. I ended up putting The Bell Jar, and I hope they either don't know what it is, or are familiar with good writing.

The second place I applied at is a scrapbooking store. I think it might involve a lot of standing on my feet behind a counter, but at least I'll be in the presence of pretty paper. They didn't necessarily say they were hiring, but they took my resume and told me that things often come up.

The third place is the one I hope I get. It's at a flower shop, and the duties include maintenance of pretty flowers, helping customers, arranging displays, and doing some occasional paperwork/answering the phones. The job sounded absolutely glorious. The sign on the window said "Looking for Mature Help," and the lady looked at me kind of skeptically when she saw that I wasn't fifty, but I was very friendly and professional. I'm going to call them on Tuesday to ask if the manager had had a look at my resume. And then I'll call them every day until they at least agree to interview me.

I'm still working the retardedly boring administrative assistant job. The other day my boss told me he had a new project for me, and that it would be really challenging and interesting. I thought he was serious. He wasn't. It's going through every single business entered into the database and assigning them a category. Thanks so much. I feel so useful.

Dear Work --Give me my life-force back, please! Stop draining it out of me! I have a perfectly functional brain! I am not a primate; I'm a writer; hire a chimp and give him a typewriter if you're just looking for another body with a heartbeat around the office -- those seem like the only qualifications necessary for this ridiculous job. Thanks for all the money. --
D.

Anyway, it's almost one o'clock in the morning and I still have much to do. I have to finish some more homework, and then re-vamp my crappy packing job. I don't even have any clean socks, so I'll have to remember to purchase some from the Giant Tiger at lunch.

foolish behaviour

I am not above foolish behaviour. There's something about me that's important. I like to think I'm above it, to an extent, but really when all is said and done, I'm right there alongside fellow revellers, behaving foolishly.

The weekend wasn't a complete waste, though. On Friday night, I saw a movie and ate calamari and sipped a martini with Eric. It's nice to go on dates. I like that I have someone who will take me out on dates. He wore his tailored jacket and looked handsome. I had my hair in two braids like a little girl. On Saturday, I went riding around in tall grasses with three of my best friends. Eric took pictures while the three of us gazed off into the distance or looked at each other, laughing, portraying carefree friendship on the Alberta plains. We galloped up the hill overlooking the barn and I felt that familiar, exhilerating happiness that I get when the wind is in my face and I feel completely free. Then I had Thanksgiving dinner with my family at my sister's house. Our family is expanding to include babies and toddlers and significant others. It feels good to sit around a big table, drinking wine and listening to the bustle of a ten-person conversation. Then, at night, said foolish behavior ensued.

I've spent all day today doing homework. I don't have any more academic-sounding words left in me. They're all spent on essays and case studies. I don't have any more room in my brain left for prioritizing assignments and thinking about mid-terms.

I'm going to go make some phone calls to the people in my life that I'm worried about, and when I've been assured that they are okay, I will go to bed.

on being sleep-encrusted:

Today is a day to wear a toque instead of showering, and to wear last night's eyeliner without care, and to put on an oversized hoodie from a summer camp you used to work at (which may or may not be clean, come to think of it), and to sleep in your car between classes at school, and to make your family members take you out for a pity-lunch because you feel broke and tired and unfamiliar.

That's what I said to myself this morning when I looked in the mirror. I looked like sleep. I still do. I don't care.

People are yelling in the library again, so writing two pieces of short fiction for an assignment is out of the question. Useless blogging is the only thing one can accomplish in a noisy library. It's easier because nothing is expected of me. I like having nothing expected of me; it's refreshing.

Tonight I will start to think about the enormous essay I have due on Tuesday. Until then, I will just wear ugly clothes, go for lunch with my mom, listen to an audio book in the car to prevent road rage, go home and take a nap. Maybe I could watch re-runs of sitcoms on TBS like I used to when I had nothing to do and no one to see. Maybe I could pretend I haven't anything to do in the world, and just watch four back-to-back episodes of Seinfeld on the couch with a bag of chips and a cup of tea.

trouble sleeping

I put coconut in my latte this morning. Sometimes I like to try new things. Sometimes I like to run headlong into 1995 and never come back.

I'm feeling that familiar tightness again. Like all of my thoughts are materialized into a long, dark cord and it's wrapped around my chest. Every time I put something off or get into an argument with someone or spend all night losing sleep or find my bank account overdrawn, it pulls tighter. There have been lots of those sorts of things lately; the cord is much tighter this fall.

I have a lot of thoughts in my head this morning. I thought today would be better -- I got many hours of sleep last night, and I don't have to work today after school, and I don't have any assignments due in the class that starts in five minutes. But as I drove the commute, I felt like all of my thoughts were bumping up against each other.

Where is the solution?

I keep feeling like there's no time for anything. There's not enough time for me to make money. There's not enough time for me to go for lunch with friends. There's not enough time for me to write comparative essays before the ninth of October. And then, simultaneously, I feel that there is way too much time for me to prioritize. There is way too much time before I will ever get married, so what should I do with myself before then? There is way too much time before I will ever move out on my own, so why should I bother working towards it?

"We listened as he played the guitar & sang old love songs & then there was a moment we looked at each other & discovered we were much younger than other people might suspect & it was good to know we had that much more time together."
-- from storypeople.com

There's a song by the Perishers that goes, "I'm having trouble sleeping; you're sitting on my chest; I really need the rest -- leave me."