elise_the_great's Xanga

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:25:27 GMT

A leetle update! This is, obviously, not a Cool Great Big Post, but I'm just keeping y'all up to date with my doings. There are a lot of them.

1) I work a LOT. Since I am the one-and-only maker of homecoming mums for Michaels of Overton Ridge, I clock twelve-hour shifts alllllllll the time and am basically made of overtime. This is, yes, exhausting, but the paychecks are nice.

2) I got promoted to Lead Sales Associate (a full-time, better-paid position) within like three weeks of starting the job. Unfortunately, they aren't allowed to give me more than a dollar raise for the first 60 days of my working there. Fortunately, I am guaranteed another raise after Halloween. It better be a good one.

3) Having a job, and therefore a second paycheck in the budget, is really dang good. Exhausting, yes. No boredom, oh yes. Adding to savings and getting ready for those big future someday steps like Moving to a New Place, Hunting for a Better Job, and Having an Adorable Baby or Seven. (All of these, it should be noted, are like waaaaaay in the future, and contingent upon circumstance.)

4) I still don't know a lot of people here, blargh. I am combating this in the best way I can think of: taking classes. Not the how-to-think kind of classes that (like Creative Writing, may it burn in a thousand fiery hells) drain you of all original thought or ability, but the kind that teach you how to make pretty cakes, and cook filet of sole in mango-and-chile sauce. And talk to the people that are in said classes and make friends with them.

5) I'm gonna go cook & eat something now. KBAI

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:14:42 GMT

Well, I promised! I am finally, finally employed, and I start today, in an hour. So here's some catching up:

1) My first month of marriage I spent being married. It rocked. I also assembled a resume, references, whole nine yards. How hard can this employment thing be, I asked?

2) My second month of marriage I spent applying to all the jobs I really wanted. Halfway through the month, rejections started pouring in. You'd think I sent them a manuscript instead of a resume. Ho-hum.

3) My third month of marriage I spent applying to all the jobs I thought I could get, while finagling to get experience (the crucial ingredient) for the jobs I really wanted.

4) Now here I am, assembling the paperwork for hospital volunteering and substitute teaching. Plus I needed money, so, inspired by Lina (who has been incredibly encouraging)... I walked into Michaels on a day when it was cram-packed, found the (absolutely frantic) hiring-and-floor manager, and told him he looked really stressed out and I could be there immediately if he wanted my help.

So that's how I got employed. It ain't no high-paying job, that's for sure, but the people are friendly and happy-looking and it's Michaels. Which I'm sure in the long run doesn't mean that much extra, except that I actually like what they sell... as opposed to Target. (MOAR LIEK BLARGET, AMIRITE)

Anyhow! Off to work. This is the only time I get to wear Normal People Clothes to this job. Where are those knee-socks...?

Friday, July 11, 2008

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:21:28 GMT

Finally, I have something worthwhile to tell you about. I mean, my life's been fairly eventful of late, but it's mostly the guess-what-Kevin-did variety of eventful, which tends to nauseate even me in the retelling. My life goes like this:

CLEAN COOK READ APPLY FOR JOBS SNUGGLE WITH KEVIN REPEAT UNTIL DEAD.

So, y'know. Time to mix it up a bit with a pinch of disaster.

________________________________________________________________

The Almighty Stench
or, I Swear I'm Not Being Abused

(As first told to Flynn Burklin, who is awesome.)

I sent Kevin to work, day before yesterday, with a big tupperware container full of Wal-Mart broccoli, rice and cheese. 'Cause, you know, that stuff's cheap. And it's a large recipe, too-- Kevin ate to bestuffment and brought home a good two or three ounces in the tupperware, which I set on the counter to be cleaned later.

Somehow it got tucked behind the paper towels, and I forgot about it.

Today, as I rummaged for something to fill my rumbling tummy, I noticed an odd odor in the kitchen. Poking around, I discovered the tupperware. Could this be the source of the smell?

Opened it.

YES IN FACT IT COULD BE.

Gagging, teary-eyed, and not entirely in control of my functions, I emptied the tupperware into the trash and ran hot water with soap over it. However, as you've probably already guessed, the trash failed to contain the stench.

So there I was, washing the tupperware, trying to figure out why I was still gagging. And I mean seriously gagging; I gave myself hiccups. Not cute little 'hup' hiccups, either-- I'm talking major diaphragmic spasms that sound like distressed seabirds when my mouth's open and rip my eardrums in when my mouth's closed.

Then it hit me: I just dumped all that nasty crap in the trash! WHAT

I sacked up the trash, still gagging and hiccupping, and hauled it to the dumpster. I was still barefoot and wild-haired, and I probably looked at least half-crazy. I scared this lady in the parking lot, who was just trying to unload her kids from her truck.

Then I came back up to the house, turned off the AC, opened all the doors and windows, lit candles and turned on the stove and bathroom fans. The cloud of stink was, at this point, nearly visible. And I was still wracked with hiccups.

Plus, to make matters worse, remember the reason I went in the kitchen in the first place? Yeah. I was still starving. And there was no way to eat anything in here without smelling that the whole time.

Thus, I was standing at the fridge, looking for something really garlicky that might help cover the stench long enough for me to devour my food...

...when I heard a voice at the door. "Are you okay?"

It's the lady from the truck. Her kids are clustered around her knees, making faces. Doubtless the stink has reached them where they stand, right outside my front door.

"Erm, yes," I say, "I just uh see there was this broccoli."

"Oh, I mean, I heard these awful whooping sobbing noises and I thought... you know.. I mean, I thought you might be injured."

Whooping sobbing noises. "Oh. Yeah. Um, I have hiccups?" Way to be persuasive there, Elise, now she's going to think your husband was beating you.

"Okay, well, you ummmm call the police if there's any trouble, okay?"

So now I'm sitting in my gassy house WITH THE DOOR CLOSED, eating green olives with capers and pickles on toast, hoping the woman didn't call the cops or anything because if they smell this place they will surely convict me of running a meth lab.

The end.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 05:15:16 GMT

The reason I haven't been posting or commenting or anything isn't because I have nothing to talk about, or because I don't care, or anything else I was worried it might have been.

No, it's because I'm reading four books at once and trying to get a job. In fact, I think I'm going to go fill out a job application right now.

So once I see more every day than the inside of my apartment, and once I run out of books, I'll probably get back into the swing of things. (It's already begun; I won the Factions campaign of Guild Wars last night, and I hung paper lanterns all over the wall the night before. You know. Normal things.)

Life continues to be completely awesome over here. It feels like I'm crouched on the starting line, listening to the hush of a crowd on the edge of their seats, digging my toes into the ground and waiting for the crack that will change the nature of all these passing moments from excited anticipation to determined joy.

Also, Kevin is the best husband ever. (I know some of you folks have awesome husbands, but I'm still pretty sure Kevin is the best.)

Sunday, June 08, 2008

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 05:44:04 GMT

Aight guys, show of hands.

How many of you read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time when you were young?

How many of you read it after you were grown up?

How many of you found it life-changing and still cry when Meg faces down IT for Charles Wallace?

How many of you haven't read it yet?

And besides Narnia and Hobbit, can you think of any other beautiful, terrible books that filled your tiny grade-school heads with wild questions and secret hopes and restless, half-formed dreams that still shape the way you are today?

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:33:15 GMT

When Kevin works night shifts, things get all wonky. I stay up all night and pass out on the sofa, after filling the groggy wee hours with video games and internet chatter. He comes in at some hour of the morning that doesn't really exist, peels me out of the pile of refuse (Wheat Thins, books, ipod, couch throw, cell phone, pot from the kitchen, just-arrived diploma) and guides me to bed, where we both pass out and sleep until, say, one in the afternoon.

Yep. I've been up for thirty minutes. I feel seminocturnal, and that's weird.

Anyways. Job search continues, today is grocery shopping day (after maintaining the household for two weeks on one trip! I am made of awesome) and I had horrible nightmares last night, ranging from being hospitalized in what was actually an evil cult compound that performed terrible procedures on me... to attempting to rescue someone's pet fish from the dryer and discovering that it had vaporized all over my clothes, leaving a tiny fishy ghost that bit me in public all the time.

Yeah. Analyze that, Freuds and Freudettes.

(Yep, I just made an oblique Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure reference. WHAT THEN.)

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:43:52 GMT

Job hunting, cooking, cleaning and hanging around: my life.

Right now, anyways. But man, I need something to do!

The upside to all this having-no-job is that I get to sleep way in, stay up all night, cook elaborate from-scratch sale-scoured tightwad meals, and lounge around my house indecently clad while Kevin's off at work. Really, folks, if you knock on my door and I tell you to wait a minute, it's because I save on the AC bill while Kevin's gone by puttering around the house in rather less than you want to see me wearing. Ninety-three degrees outside? No problem! I have a dollar-store bikini around here somewhere...

Unfortunately, and a few of you have probably faced his problem at some point in your lives, lack of having anything pressing to do is sapping my will to actually do things. I am reading a ridiculous number of books, including an awesome sci-fi-meets-fantasy series, Pliocene Exile, which Mrs. Burklin gave me a while back, and which just keeps on getting crazier and better; a couple of fantastic literary sci-fi books-- yes they exist-- loaned us by Kevin's brother Matthew; the third book in a trilogy of which I realized halfway through I hadn't read the second; and To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis, yet again. I love that book to distraction.

Kevin is thriving. I am, despite my ennui, happy and relaxed and feeling the possibilities of life. Our house, while sparsely furnished as of yet, is tidy and pretty and filled with books and the smells of good food.

Marriage is awesome.

(Yes, I know we're still technically in the 'honeymoon period', but it's nice to see how functional and simple and interesting our relationship is. We remain excellent communicators-- with each other, at least, as I can't speak for my ability to not be an idiot around other people-- and we are terrible pranksters and for all of our staring starrily into each others' eyes, we also have each others' backs and gosh, we make a good team.)

(End goosh.)

(Bye!)

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Sat, 24 May 2008 15:35:22 GMT

Oh my goodness.

I don't think I could cram the events of the last few weeks into one post with a shoehorn and a tub of Crisco.

1. I graduated from ETBU, summa cum laude. It was ridiculously difficult. I got a B or two or something, but I honestly don't care anymore. Because I HAVE GRADUATED.

2. I moved to Fort Worth. Well, first I moved to Cleburne, where I stayed at Donnave's house until the wedding.

3. I lost my voice during the pre-wedding week, and I got really dang sick, but I got most of it back. (Though I didn't stop it with the hacking cough until the middle of our honeymoon.)

4. I got married. It was FABULOUS and WONDERFUL and also REALLY FREAKIN HOT. Not in the sense that we had scandalously clothed bridesmaids or anything, just that it was six in the afternoon in the hottest place in the world. Or what felt like the hottest place in the world. I actually threw up from it, which sucked. But after that I was all good.

5. I went to Italy with Kevin on our honeymoon! That's worth a thousand or four stories in itself. There was the B&B with the roof so low we couldn't stand up properly (and the tiny window through which you could crawl to get to a secret abandoned balcony that looked out over the spindly-antennaed rooftops of the Jewish Ghetto in Rome), There was the macabre dance of tourist-ridden death in Venice, where two chamber orchestras on makeshift elevated stages battled for the attentions of the sightseers, who waded cheerfully through the ankle-deep water in the plaza in front of the flooded San Marco church-- all gaily waltzing and snapping pictures and spending money as the city sank into the sea. There was the never-ending flood of Nutella and Albicocca (apricot) flavors and fillings and juices; there were beds that functioned as drums; there was a turned ankle and a frozen credit card in Florence.

We were photographed by Japanese tourists, exhausted from dome and tower climbs, staggered by the immense wealth and beauty of the Vatican Museum, and constipated from an eternal diet of pizza, mozzerella and gelato. We took about six hundred pictures. We survived interminable train rides and forceful street vendors and blinding heat waves and a night in the Milan airport, where we slept beside McDonald's on a bench.

We had more fun than I think any two people are permitted to have in their lives.

6. I've been setting up a household. Mostly, this means finding out all the little vital invisible things that keep a place running smoothly, then shopping around until I find it for dirt cheap. Also grocery shopping, cooking, and fighting with the Social Security office about whether or not I actually can change my name. I haven't even been to the library yet! Also, I'm still on Milan time in my head, which means I wake up absurdly early every day.

7. Every morning when I wake up Kevin is RIGHT THERE! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

8. EDIT: Mrs. Burklin hooked me up with the link to her entry on the wedding! Here it is, fully written-up in her entertaining style (really, folks, read her xanga, it is awesome) with a billion pictures. Kevin has mostly sorted out the photos, and resizing will begin tomorrow-- he's working tonight and will be unconscious until midafternoon, probably. (Kevin, for those of you who don't know, is a lot more conscientious about picture-uploading than I am; expect some actual pictures this time around.)

9. Life is so awesome. How awesome is it? SO awesome.

Monday, May 05, 2008

Mon, 05 May 2008 01:09:34 GMT

Well, I graduated!

It's kind of weird. Obviously I have not yet adjusted to the idea of being All Grown Up, since it's been... like... a day? Maybe three days, if you count since my last test. That isn't even a proper weekend.

But on the other hand, everything I own (that wasn't already taken to Fort Worth) is packed in my car outside, and I'm sitting in my family's home using dialup to let you all know that things are going well.

I took my computer to Fort Worth on Tuesday, when Ames and I went to get Paul, so I haven't been on the Net very much. (That sentence is far too capitalized for my tastes. WE ALL KNOW I PREFER LOWERCASE AMIRITE?)

This week will be wild, hectic, insane and crazy, as I gear up to get married on Saturday. Kevin's moving into the apartment, Matthew's coming down from Seattle, and tomorrow I leave McLeod and head for Cleburne to organize, decorate, craft, buy and stress my way to Saturday, when I will become Mrs. Barrett, which will be WILD. On my way I'll stop and get a bit more dentistry done in Longvrew (I had a few cavities taken care of Friday before graduation rehearsal) (no, Longvrew is not a typo, it's a linguistic interpretation) (okay enough parenthetical statements) (and big words) (for real now). Also I will go see Lina, probably before getting drilled on by the dentist, and then hit Tyler to pick up my gown, and then drive like my heinie's on fire so as to reach Cleburne in time to meet with various professionals that have a monetary interest in my wedding, because I am paying them. Or my dad is. Because he is awesome.

Anyways I spent today repacking my car, hanging out with my family, and hoeing the watermelon patch with my brother Andrew. It was very hard work and I'm blown away that he's been so steadfastly holding a quarter-acre of weeds at bay with merely the power of his arms and the skin of his hands. Dude will have sentient calluses before this game is over.

Then it struck me: I graduated college yesterday, and today I am bent over hills of dirt hacking them with a hand tool to make plants grow. There is a regression here, perhaps? Or perhaps I finally got a chance to do some real work for once. Either way, we spent the whole time talking about computer programming, economics and politics.

So everybody hang tight, I'll be scarce indeed for these next couple of weeks. Then I'll be back, and you'll wish I'd go away, because I'll be whining about job searches and used furniture and how much I miss everybody.

'Cos I miss everybody.

Just not enough to not graduate, or get married.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:59:34 GMT

1. I turned in the first of my last week of major projects today! (And it was actually halfway decent, despite my certainty that it would suck.) Now I just have to do an annotated bibliography, an orchestration for full ensemble, and a set of journal entries before Thursday. Then I can start on my finals papers.

2. I feel the need to post this link. I am compelled to tell you to look at it. This, my friends, is brilliance on a grand scale rarely seen by mankind.

3. Our room is finally clean. (PRAISE GOD.) Lots of hard work.

4. I have been so incredibly absent from Xanga. A lot of that's been due to schoolwork and insanity. Y'all, once I get married, AND GET BACK FROM ITALY YES ITALY OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMG, I will probably post more.

5. WE ARE GOING TO ITALY ON OUR HONEYMOON OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMG. FLORENCE ROME VENICE MILAN AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

6. I got contacts. Then I also got new glasses, but I won't actually get them until the next time I see Kevin. ETBU will see my new glasses for... um... one day.

7. Kevin (and, to an extent, I) have been moving into the new apartment. Tommy and Becca loaned me their trucks, with which I ferried furniture to the Worthy Fort, and although the new place doesn't have a mattress or any chairs or a table or basically anything besides a bedframe, a pile of books that could kill a horse, a stereo system and a couple of sofas, IT IS TOTALLY TURNING INTO HOME. I cannot wait to move in.

8. Sometime when you have two meals available at the same time here on ETBU, try this. Get chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-A (and fries, if you want 'em), then get a few sticks of celery, a large dollop of sweet relish, an equally large dollop of mayo, and a couple slices of bread (I like wheat) from the caf. Take this whole mess home. Cut the crunchiest bits off of the nuggets and maul them into tiny bits, then mix the tiny bits in a bowl with the celery (diced), relish and mayo, plus a dash of salt and pepper. Toast the bread and smear all the stuff you just made all over it.

Do you know what that is?

THAT IS A CHICK-FIL-A CHICKEN SALAD SANDWICH, DEWDS.

9. Hockey is no more fun than any other sport. To me, anyways. (I'm kinda okay with soccer, but mostly because I don't really understand what's going on half the time, but everyone's running around constantly so there's always something to distract me, and there's grass.)

10. WEDDING IS COMING UP FAST. NOT READY. NO FLOWERS YET. HAAAAAAAAAALP