Leaving the Unabomber Cabin

I have been online for a while now, pontificating about health care, so I decided to retire to the blog so I could pontificate about something even more important: me.

It's been a bittersweet last few days for me, and by that I mean mostly bitter. Let's recap.

Before I went on vacation, I was thrilled to be offered a temp writing job by a friend of a friend - even if it meant spending a few hours inside each day while I was at the beach. I was even more excited when the person told me that when the job ended she would like to hire me to do more work on a long-term basis. Given my professional situation as of late, this bit of news was a godsend. I celebrated. I really liked the lady, the work was something I already had years of experience doing, and it would just fit with my life right now.

When I got back from my vacation, I went about doing whatever crap-work I could find until I was to start said job. I also decided I needed to have internet at my house again, no matter what.  I called AT&T, asked again if they could provide me with regular internet, since they claim I can't get U-Verse. The nice lady I spoke with said, "But you can get U-Verse. Let's set it all up now." I tried to tell her no, I was not going through that again. An hour later, she and I hung up, and I signed my life away for U-Verse. I was going to have to wait two weeks for my services to be set up, but dammit, I would have cable and internet again. She promised. 

Fast forward to last Friday. I was sitting on my parents' sofa (I've spent a lot of time here over the last couple of months, using their internet), and I realized my muscles were aching as if I'd been working out, but I hadn't. I felt like like I had the flu. I figured I'd go home and sleep it off. I had no time to be sick. Because I hadn't yet started my new job and because I have to pay taxes shortly, I'd have to work doubly hard this week and next doing the aforementioned crap-work.

By Saturday night, I had a fever of 101, it felt like someone was sitting on my head, and every bone in my body hurt. Sunday was miserable. Sunday night was the worst. After a night of fever, chills, hallucinations, and sleeplessness, I got up at 5:00 on Monday morning and took a hot bath, hoping it would calm my body down.  There was also an incident in which I convinced myself I had meningitis, but that's neither here nor there. I finally forced myself out of the tub and dragged myself up to my parents' house to get started on my week 'o work. I told myself it was only for a few more days. I'd have internet again on Wednesday and surely I'd hear from my soon-to-be new boss this week (because I didn't the week before or the week before that as I thought I would).

So, I'm sitting back on my parents' sofa on Monday morning, trying to convince my mom I have meningitis, trying to figure out why one of my crap-work outlets has no work available, and trying not to fall over and die when my phone rings. I didn't recognize the number, so I didn't answer it, but the voicemail confirmed what I suspected all the time. It was AT&T. They wanted to inform me that...wait for it, wait for it:

I CAN'T HAVE U-VERSE BECAUSE OF WHERE I LIVE!

Are you freaking kidding me?  I wasted two weeks for this that I already knew?  (If it sounds like I'm over-reacting, please take a moment to read AT&T, Why Won't You Let Me Love You.) How in the world am I supposed to start my new job and keep doing crap-work if I don't have internet?  Oh, wait, yeah, new job. I still hadn't heard anything about that, so I sent a quick email, just to remind her that I'm still waiting for her to get back with me.  

Well, as it turns out that's not going to happen either..

So, it's Monday afternoon, I'm sitting on my parents' sofa, I don't have my internet, I don't have my new job, I may or may not have viral meningitis and I've got about three to four days to come up with a whole new game plan for a whole lot of things. I wanted to die.

Yesterday, my mom asked me to take my landlord some squash and cucumbers from my dad's garden, so I did. While I was standing there, I blurted out, "I'm moving out." I hadn't really planned to say it; it just sort of happened, but when it did, I felt like someone took 1,000-pound cement block off my shoulders.

I probably could have stayed. I probably could have figured out something - I always do, but that's the thing: every month lately seems like "I'll figure out something." I devote all of my time and energy to doing crap-work for pennies and hunting down jobs and I'm not going forward, I'm digging myself deeper into a hole and I'm really just wasting my life, trying to get by, which most months I'm not even able to do right now.

My parents have offered, reluctantly, to let me move in with them several times. Yesterday, I took them up on that offer, at least for a few months. Did I want to be the 31-year-old who moves back in with her parents? No. But I do want to be the 31-year-old who has time to finish her book and doesn't die of heart disease because she sits at the computer all day looking for work and doesn't have time to exercise. That's not to say I'm going to stop looking for work, but at least, I can add some balance to my life now. I realize that not everyone is as lucky as I am to have family to fall back on when they need to, and I am very thankful for that.

Anyway, I drove home last night (that's my driveway in the picture), and it felt a little sad to know I'd only be doing that for a little while longer. I've lived there for three years, which is longer than I lived anywhere else as an adult. I've been through a number of professional and personal ups and downs there. I added Sadie to my little family. I got snowed in there, and I suffered through floods and tornadoes and nasty windstorms there. I wrote my book there. I will have a lot of memories of that place, but I also feel like it is part of what's holding me back from doing more with  my life right now, so that makes leaving a little easier - well, that and the fact that I can't seem to get internet at that place. Thanks a lot, AT&T.

Why Aren't You Reading Jen Lancaster?

I know; I know. I promise there is a rough draft of a post called "Vacation: All I Ever Wanted" sitting there on my computer that will be up soon. (She says as if people are really waiting to find out what went down during her vacation...) 

But duty calls.

Instead of talking about me, I'm going to talk about someone else for a change - someone who you should be reading if you aren't or haven't already: Jen Lancaster.

I've written about her before, back when she came to Atlanta, and my gay cousin and I almost sort of got to meet her.

I won't rehash that whole post, but to sum it up: my gay cousin has been talking about this author for a few years, and telling me how much she reminds him of me. He finally read me some passages from one of her books last year when we were traveling for my job, and I wound up buying her first book, only to park it in my "to read" stack that didn't get read at the time, because I was playing Journalism Girl almost 24/7 and having the time of my life.

And then, when the Journalism Girl title was jerked out from under me, as well as some part-time freelance writing work I was doing, I found myself depressed and bored and having to get my parents to buy my groceries. I picked up Lancaster's Bitter is the New Black one day to take to the bathtub, thinking I wasn't in the mood to read about someone else's fabulous life, so I probably wouldn't finish it, but after a couple of chapters I was hooked. The book wasn't about her fabulous life; it was about her fabulous life being jerked out from under her and how she eventually had to ask her parents for grocery money, too! I could so relate to the topic, and I love to wallow in other people's misery, so, of course, I asked my gay cousin if I could borrow the others from him (normally, I'm anti-borrowing books, but desperate times and all). 

I Twitter'd and Facebook'd about this fabulous new (to me) author and was surprised when several of my friends responded with "Isn't she the best?" and "She is my long-lost soul-mate!" and "If I met her, I'm so sure we could be best friends!" And I even convinced a few other jobless gals to pick up Bitter is the New Black, and they all loved it and claimed to be the BFF she just hadn't met yet, too.

So, if you need a good reason to read Jen Lancaster, there it is. Everyone who reads her books, at least, everyone that I know, thinks they could so be her BFF if they met her. As creepy as that may be, I kind of, sort of agree.

Seriously, it's very easy to relate to her situation if you've ever been knocked down a peg or two or twenty, and let's face it: most of us have. But it's not all about being broke. Eventually, she launches her writing career and re-enters the world of the economically viable, which I understand some people took issue with (I imagine those types are also the ones who are currently "occupying" things because they spent hundreds of dollars on a new iPad instead of rent and learned that, as it turns out, paying over $100,000 to go to a private university to major in Peace and Conflict Studies doesn't guarantee you a job when you graduate), but I found it pretty darn inspirational.

By the way, she also tackles weight loss (could so relate to much of this), fashion, and becoming less of a reality TV junkie and more of a cultured person who goes to plays and fancy restaurants. Of course, she does it all while being hilarious (and maybe your future BFF)?

Anyway, I've spent the last month going through the rest of her memoirs, and I have about ten to twenty pages left in My Fair Lazy. Her new book (the one she was promoting in May), Jeneration X, is the only one I haven't read, but I will do so as soon as I can afford to buy shiny new hardcover books (or until my gay cousin finishes and loans me his copy). I suggest all of you follow suit.

Check out Jen Lancaster at her fab website, Jennsylvania.

(And ignore any and all typos and grammar issues. I still don't have internet, so I have to come to my parents' house to use my laptop, and the less time I spend here the better.)

In Training

I've been swimming since I was about two or three years old, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I love being in the water. Even when I go to the beach, while most girls get a kick out of laying out in the sun, getting their tans on, I'm out in the ocean swimming and goofing off. Last week, when some punk lifeguard who was driving down the beach, came down to the shoreline and unnecessarily yelled at me to "be careful because the wind can really knock you over out there," I wanted to scream back, "I've been swimming in this ocean since probably before you were born and used to swim at near Olympic-like times, so please shut your piehole and move along!"

 I've been fortunate enough to have access to a swimming pool for my entire life, and at one point in time, I used to train like I was going to be the next Janet Evans/Summer Sanders/Dara Torres. While most of my friends were worshiping Tiffany Amber-Thiessen, Winona Ryder and Shannon Doherty, I wanted to be like the girls in the Olympics. Unfortunately, swimming as a sport was not something that was popular in my neck in the woods, and my parents couldn't drive me to Atlanta every other day, so it never went much further than me sometimes getting up at 4:30 a.m. to swim laps before school and recording and studying moves during every swim competition I ever caught on TV. Though, to be totally honest, when I went to UGA, I decided to make it my mission to try to walk on the swim team by my sophomore year, but well, that never happened either (the swim team or my sophomore year at UGA, oops). 

Anyway, since I'm 31 with a bad knee now, I don't exactly see myself having some fabulous Olympic career, but I do miss having that kind of fitness in my life. Okay, as you can see from my last post, I probably need to have that kind of fitness in my life. But that's the thing, when I'm exercising or eating well for my good health or whatever, I get bored and fall off the wagon really quickly. I need a different kind of motivation, which brings me to the point of this post.

While I was on vacation last week, I watched people partake in all sorts of water-related activities. Swimming, kayaking, surfing, diving etc. - all things I've always wanted to try but just never got around to or felt too out of shape to do. So, what if I made that my goal for next summer - to get into great shape for something beyond trying to look good in a pair of jeans (and, you know, not having a heart attack at 40 or something). I don't have one specific goal in mind, but I do have an idea of what I want to accomplish, and I'll work on making that more specific as time goes by. 

I've already committed to turning my living room into a home gym, at least for a few months. (Which basically means moving my sofa and loveseat over to the little bar area between the kitchen and living room and replacing them with my exercise equipment.) I've been downloading all of my favorite Jock Jams tunes of the 90's to a workout playlist. I've also been researching both dry land and water workouts for swimmers, and I'm putting together a daily/weekly plan. And yesterday, when I went grocery shopping, I tried to stick to mostly fruits and veggies and protein that is not fried chicken.

I'm posting all of this mostly for my own benefit, so if you're reading it, and your eyes are glazing over, I apologize. I've been working on a post-vacation wrap-up and a few other posts all week, but I still don't have internet, and won't until June 27, so my time is limited. I don't plan to make weekly updates or anything, but I'll be sure to let you know when I've joined that adult swim team, learned to surf or gotten certified to go SCUBA diving.

The Fried Chicken Diet

I'm writing this from the beach. Yes, it's Saturday night, I'm at the beach, and I'm making a blog post.

Hold up; it gets better.

I was watching the Ron Paul Revolution on C-Span 2 before I opened my laptop. Not even C-Span 1. (For what it's worth, I've since switched to King of the Hill and am debating a movie after I finish this.)

Anyway, I've known I was going to be coming on this trip for about a year, but two weeks ago, I decided it was the perfect time to try to get into some kind of shape for the beach. Because, you know, two weeks is plenty of time. My go-to when I need to lose some weight quick is sort of like Phase One of the Atkins or South Beach Diets - nothing but meat, cheese, nuts and green veggies. 

I started exactly two weeks ago by eating roast and green beans for like every meal, and over the next couple of days, I had grilled chickens, salads, celery and a pretty well-balanced diet. By about Tuesday, I was miserable, but no pain no gain or whatever.

And by Wednesday, I decided Chick-fil-A nuggets are totally low-carb, I mean, compared to like bread or something right?

So, for the rest of the week, I had Chick-fil-A nuggets every single day. And that's fried, not those nifty new grilled ones, by the way.

This lasted for nine days instead of the fourteen I had planned, but honestly, that's probably longer than I've ever stuck to any other diet in my life, and I did actually see some results. Hey Chick-fil-A, I could totally be your Valerie Bertinelli.

Anyway, as I stated, I'm at the beach now with several family members and their significant others. (My gay cousin and I are the only single ones here we realized when we walked out on a moonlit beach tonight and decided it would be a lot better if he was walking with this young Hispanic guy we saw walking with his parents and I was walking with this guy who was out playing his huge, adorable Black Lab. But I digress.) 

The house we're staying in is amazing. The huge, private backyard with every amenity you can think of is the selling point, and my bedroom with the amazing view leads right out to it. Granted my cousin's adorable 20-year-old girlfriend, who's staying in the next room, keeps slipping through my room in her bikini and reminding me that a bikini body doth not nine days of chicken nuggets make, but eh, I like my chicken nuggets dammit. And besides, now that I'm officially "in my 30's," *shudder* it's all downhill from here anyway unless you're like Jennifer Lopez or something. 

Plus, I'm still nursing a knee injury, so even if I were in great bathing suit shape, the fact that I hobble down the stairs that lead from the pool to the beach like a geriatric patient is enough to scare off cute beach guys with big Black Labs anyway.  

Here are a couple of pictures if you're interested. I'll post more another day.

This is the view from my bedroom. The ocean is not quite as far as it looks. Also, the black thing is a bug.

And here's the pool. My pool at home is nicer, but the atmosphere around this one trumps everything else. Also, those steps that go over it lead right to my bedroom and balcony. Unless you're a creepy stalker, then those steps lead right up to my cousin's huge husband's bedroom.