It seems as if everyone I talk to lately has a severe case of the broke & lonely blahs ... except for me. I've just got sore feet & heavy lids, but other than that all is well in my little neck of the woods. Aside from the fact that today is the first day I've had off in seventeen days. Yeah I've sold my soul to the almighty dollar, saving for unknowns & working my ass off for the as yet unseen. I'm happy though. Not annoyingly in-your-face-with-the-sunshine-up-my-ass happy, but pleasantly content with shite in general.

My animals are growing larger by the day. I swear Oonah is half moose, fucking huge. But she's got these gold rimmed eyes & looks at me so sweetly when I get home every day that I remember just what it is about dogs that I've always loved so much. I make a point to play ball with her for at least an hour after work on the nights I get off at a decent hour & she's such a dork. She'll take off after the ball, trip over her own ginormous feet & then prance circles around me with a proud look on her face once she brings it back, as if she's the first dog to ever fetch in the history of the universe.

Mu Shu on the other hand is all cat. He likes to hang out on the roof of the studio & look at me with disdain for spending my time with the goofy ass puppy & our endless game of throw-fetch-throw. The minute I'm not looking though, he's gnawing on Oonah's tail & swatting at her hound ears with as much enthusiasm as she shows toward the ball. He's not fooling anyone with his pseudo-teen-angst & hipster sneer.

The second job is going well, I'm not too tired yet & the podiatrist is making me some custom orthotics to put in my shoes & help with the painful retail foot syndrome I've been silently suffering through. From the amount of pain I've been experiencing lately I thought they'd want to amputate or something & felt rather stupid when he said, "you stand up 14 hours a day ... what'd you expect your feet would do? Feel great?"

So, I work & I work & when I have a minute or three I drink & hang out with my friends. Sometimes I talk to James on the phone, other times I lay around & read or shuffle around the stuff for my latest artistic ventures. Working on a large bit of decoupage at the moment, should turn out nicely.

I try not to think a whole lot, but driving home from work at 10:00 at night with the windows down & the balmy air sliding through tends to set my mind in memory mode. By the time I get up the hill 25 minutes later I can't remember the drive, but I'll be wallowing in thoughts I promised to leave behind & hearing the echoes of a certain man's laugh that I'd pay a thousand dollars to hear when I walk through the door at night.

Unintentional slips into reverie I swear. Blame it all on the Ipod shuffle function. Usually forbidden songs are bound to sneak in here & there & when you're on auto-pilot there isn't enough energy or interest to go searching for alternates.

When I do start thinking though, I think really hard about the next five years. They seem like a good place to start for a 31 year old single woman with no children & no real desire for married life (can you say soon-to-be-spinster?). Not that 31 is old, but I have so many unmarried & divorced "aunts" (translation: hippies my folks have known since before I was born but have no actual blood relation to us) that are having a difficult time supporting themselves in their mid-life years & I don't want to end up that way. I'd like to take care of myself properly, never want riches, but comfort would be nice. The whole idea of 401K & all that jazz takes the intrigue out of my future though, so I decided baby steps would be best.

Five years.

It's a long time that'll be up soon & I'm thinking the only thing I know for sure is that I'd like to be debt free & living at least ten hours from here. North, or West preferably, since ten hours South would land me in L.A. & um, that's not happening on purpose. When I visit for a day or two it's tolerable, but you couldn't force me live there amidst the shiny & the fake.

Let's see, let's see ... my Maddy turned Six & my little brother turned twenty-seven & his daughter turns three this coming Wednesday. Talk about time flying, Maddy is going to be in first grade after Summer is over. Seems like crazy talk to me. Picked up a copy of "Thickfreakness" (The Black Keys) for Cedar for his b-day & a copy of "Soup" (Blind Melon) as well. I was doing yardwork a few weeks ago & "Everywhere I Go" by The Black Keys came on my Ipod & it immediately reminded me of something he'd play on his guitar, so I thought Thickfreakness would be a good present for him. He's never heard them before, but I'm pretty sure he'll dig em. "Soup" on the other hand is a CD that he wouldn't stop stealing from me when it first came out & he was in high school & unemployed & so would steal it from his "rich" college attending sister & I know he doesn't have a copy right now, so that's the rest of his gift. Maybe I'll steal it from him next month, just for the fuck of it.

For Maddy & Serenity, it'll be books & instruments. Mads is starting to read so I'll get her some of my favorite authors from that age, Maurice Sendak & Crockett Johnson & such. Serenity gets a percussion collection from Bird in Hand, the mini triangle is so fucking cute & there's a tiny cowbell too. I could squeal with delight at the thought of her "exploring the space" with her own little cowbell. Egads!

Speaking of books, Davey is the manager for a bookstore & he called me at work earlier this week to ask if I'd work one night for them. The new Harry Potter comes out at midnight this-coming Friday, so they're having a large hoo-haw for it. Children's games & crafts & such, so I'm gonna do it, if only to play my nerd card & get a copy with discount right when they come out. I would wear my purple wizard's had, but the Magic the Gathering people might mistake me for one of their own & whisk me away to a spooky, sweaty-sock smelling dungeon. For safety's sake I'll be attending in plain-clothes.

My new job at the clothing store rocks if only because I get a 31% discount on anything I buy. This means that my entire first paycheck went toward the most wonderful "New Panty Day" in the history of "New Panty Days". I threw away every single pair of old panties I had in my drawer & purchased 12 bright, new, snug on my bum pairs & did a little dance in the car all the way home.

So working 50 - 60 hours a week doesn't completely suck, I mean, come on ... new panties rock.

I've got to work at 6am tomorrow, but that doesn't mean I haven't got time for a Red Stripe or three tonight. I'm off to find some conversation, I hope you're all well. I catch up once or twice a week, as time allows, & your lives all sound so much more interesting than mine.

:blowing my speakers: Ryan Adams & The Cardinals ~ Beautiful Sorta
:feeding my head: Chuck Palahniuk ~ Haunted
:rotting my brain: The 40 Most Awesomely Bad Breakup Songs (for the record, VH1 bites, because I have always absolutely adored that Phil Collins - Seperate Lives song ... awesomely bad, my ass! pthhhhbt!)

<< :: >>