help

So the answer to the previous post is a no answer on a cell phone. pfft. so much for trying.


in any case, i'm having a couple of things go a bit wrong, but hey, what's new.
first - i'm broke. not just broke but completely and hopelessly broke. i'm almost a thousand dollars behind in payments on my student loan. one of my paychecks is only 200 dollars. you can see my dilemna. what happened is i was behind a month, which made the total be 250 dollars, which meant that i had to wait to collect two paychecks as i cannot seem to keep more than a dollar in my checking account at any given time. but then by the time i got the 250, there was another bill and it was up to $375. geez! that's two whole paychecks. which started getting me down a bit. and i'm behind on chase and my substidized student loan. goodbye credit score.

so all of this has me thinking about that great dichotomy in my life. the choice between having money and being unhappy or being broke but loving life.
and every day i keep thinking that the whole loving life thing is quite a bit contingent on having money. and i rack my brain every day for ways to rectify this problem. just a few minutes ago when i was trying to figure out how to defer my student loans, i almost checked the box that i was going back to school. that would take care of the whole deferment thing. but then again, that would also add to the debt. and what the hell would i go to school for anyway, which is probably why i have not gone that route.

and it's funny, but i stopped going to my therapist because, well, i was paying her $50 an hour out of my pocket for her to listen to my blabber on about how my life is going and honestly, it didn't really get me anywhere. i liked going there because i could vent, but at the same time, i kept coming home and doing the same goddamn things with the same results.



so here i am, on my own and trying to figure it out. i have a wet dog in my lap, my feet are quite a bit cold, and my stomach is curling up into knots. the idea of becoming a waitress is looming with more and more impending doom. i can't put off my loans any longer. i can't seem to make the bills.
and yet i'm held back by this strange feeling that i owe everyone something. like everything that anyone has given to me, i need to repay back ten fold. i guess that's why i never care much for quitting jobs. it just seems strange to me that a business would spend money on training you and you just turn around and leave. i keep thinking that if i can just work around my current job, i'm sure i'll find something perfect that could supplament it.
and maybe i have. i'm interviewing for a mentor program for inner city kids in canton. it's from 5 - 8pm every day, which is nice because my winter hours at the nursery are 10 - 3 which leaves a bit of time for a nap in between. i guess all that i know is i can't have a full time job. i suck at those, unless they are active or i get to change up where i am.

anyway, i went to the akron children's hospital website and wanted to apply to work with kids there, but i ended up filling out an application to be a cleaning lady. they still haven't gotten back to me.
i just submitted my resume to work in the office of levin furniture for nights and weekends. i think that might be one step up from working with food, although sadly when i saw the now hiring sign outside of burger king, i did think about it for a second. hah. how about that. i'm paying my student loans with my salary from burger king.





in any case, that's life i guess.




the neverending job / money thing continues. but i also have another stresser right now that's kinda stressing me. jason.

ok, so this kid is great. always eager to help and we have fun together and plan things. pretty much we are the same person, only split into two bodies. he gets excited about the same things that i get excited about and we certainly get into a lot of mischeif together. i think that he eggs me on in some of my endeavors, but whatever. we'll save that for another time.
anyway, his downfall is the same thing that i fret over a lot, only he doesn't fret. he has no money. he's living at spring hill for free. he works a job with hours so flexible, he doesn't really have to go in on any given day.

well, now he's moving out of his place for free. he has nowhere to live, and a job that doesn't pay him enough to get a new place.


this means i'm freaking out. and he is a bit worried now as well. he turned in his two weeks notice at spring hill and was planning on moving out, but he just doesn't know where. which makes me nervous as i'm sitting here with my car full of his stuff, wondering where i'm going to dump it.
now don't get me wrong, it's not that i don't like him and all. i do. it's just this claustaphobic feeling is coming pretty hard at me again and i don't think that there is anyway he could move in and work fixing the house in exchange for rent. in a relationship that's evil in the eyes of the lord, no less.

pretty simply, define hell. yup. something like that.


so i'm hoping upon hope that he gets a place and fast. i'm definately going to miss his old house at spring hill. granted, it did kinda suck when i slept over only to wake up to a busload of kids taking a tour and i had to sneak out the back door with my bra under my arm, trying not to make a sound as i ran down the super long driveway, but hey... it's better than my house - at least he had heat.


today is my day off, which usually is about reprieve or getting something done or feeling better about yourself, but i'm not feeling that today. i don't even have $5 to run down and get a 40 and some cigs so i can sit on my back porch and whine about my situation. i owed the movie rental place that and they happily took it.


ok, now to clean up dog poop as mingah has lost all control of her back end. yuck

return of a ghost.

J.D just emailed me. This is the J.D that I dated in high school. The J.D that may or may not have faked a heart attack and gotten carted out of school. The J.D that lied about drugs making his lungs collapse, that was the star of the basketball team in his brain, the one that scared the shit out of me by stopping in the middle of nowhere to yell at me for... um, not sure what. The J.D that yanked me from the homecoming dance because his socks were too tight or too short or, I don't remember. The same boy who took me to the park to star watch on a freezing cold night and insisted that we fucking sit there until we see a shooting star because that means that we are made for each other.
We never saw that fucking shooting star.

And of course, it's been ten years. And of course I've only thought about him twice, usually while driving by the spot in the woods that he drove to yell at me after homecoming for embarassing him about his socks or something and I almost walked home half pissed off and half ashamed that I would have to go home and tell my parents that they were right and he was an asshole.

But then again, ten years ago, I was all about the jerks. I like them. I'm not sure what evolutionary chain thing that is because of, but some young girls like the mean ones. I guess maybe part of it is from idolizing Beauty and the Beast, where just with her innocent love, the maniacal isolated prince/beast changes into something amazing... a maniacal isolated prince with a little wifey.
Or was it the Phantom of the Opera where the maniacal isolated deformed dude falls in love with the underappreciated chorus girl and makes her a star. But then again, he disappears alone in that one, which always made me sad.
Of the Little Mermaid who falls in love with a different species, changes herself, sacrifices her voice and he still rejects her. but then again, that's a bit of a stretch.

Point being, 10 years ago, I really thought that I could melt this asshole's heart and bring out the good in him that of course only I saw.


In any case, the email threw me off a bit. I kinda half expect a half assed myspace comment or something, which is the cheap and easy way out. Maybe it's because I put the accent over the second e in my name making me very difficult to search for. But I got his email through local harvest, a website designed to bring local growers to their local customers.
Could it have been that J. D was searching for a thanksgiving turkey and found me? Or was it more of a concentrated search and that website is the first thing that comes up on google?


Oh well, only one way to find out. Now for the call....

you need a heart to live

so i'm not at work. i called off today to play a show in detroit. the show never happened. and i didn't have the heart to go into work today. call it boredom or burnout or just the weather being 90 degrees with nothing really to do, but i didn't want to go. so i didn't.

and all morning, i've just been thinking of all the things that i should be doing. and i guess i'm finally getting the fall out of a failed shrimp harvest fest. but fuck that. there was no way to succeed. ---hey janee, you are going to make money on this right? you won't let us down? we need to make money. hey, what kind of advertizing did you do? did you mess that up too? everyone is counting on you. everyone is supposed to have fun. aaaand we're going to make money, right?


i guess i don't feel like a failure as much as i'm angry. it doesn't seem right. i mean, i didn't pay for the shrimp and the feed in the first place, so maybe i don't have a "right" to be mad, but i also didn't sign any contract stating that this was going to succeed/make money/be everything that everyone wanted.
and i like feeding shrimp and eating what i grew and getting together with people.
i didn't like getting pushed into charging for parking or when my mom cried because she didn't sell any crafts or when my uncle who flew all the way up from North Carolina for the first time in years just to boss me around about how to harvest shrimp.

i feel like there is a spring inside of me, linking my throat to my pelvis, just wrapping itself tighter and tighter around itself. and i don't want to eat. and i don't want to get out of bed. and i don't want to breath.

but here i am, out of bed, cheese sandwich slowly digesting with slow breaths lilting from my sunken chest. my mom yells from the other room. i turn up my music. i try not to cry.


the turkeys are all in the coop. eating corn. panting. waiting to die. i've only sold three of them. i lost the deposit checks for two. i don't have enough money to pay the place to get them slaughtered. i hope my dad doesn't ask me how many i've sold. the only relief i have is that i've paid for them and their feed and their makeshift house. i figure i've got at least $500 in them. and now i'm questioning why i ever did it.

the day of the shrimp fest, my favorite chicken died. i don't even know why i keep favorites anyway. they always are the first to die.

but anyway, after shrimp harvest fest, i stayed away from my family. i ate the best dinners, shrimp cooked ten different ways. after work every day, jason would have my house filled with good smells. and my money being so short hits me even harder as we sold about 8 tshirts. we have 62 shrimp fest 2007 tshirts left. ow.


ok, enough about that. i think i'm trying to turn myself around and get in a different gear. the whole morning i spent looking for jobs and working on the highmill website. i think i only submitted one application. wait, maybe two. i don't know why, but i got on a hospital kick this morning and got very excited when i saw a posting for a social worker part time for akron childrens. they needed a licensed applicant, which i'm not, so i applied to be a janitor. i always imagine that if i start at the bottom, maybe after meeting me and i'm not late or terrible, then maybe i could see what other opportunities they have. that didn't work out so much for the red cross, but then again, there aren't really very many paying jobs for them anyway.
i also have the number for an after school program in canton, which would be nice. working 3 - 7 or so just playing with troubled kids would be nice. i think it's through the canton crisis center. i'm just trying not to think of all the money that i don't have.

i guess i do have a couple of encouraging people who keep stopping by. there is one woman who emailed me pictures and suggestions about what to do for next year's shrimp harvest. i chatted a bit with her and tried not to seem too doom and gloom about how it's probably not going to happen next year, but whatever.

and it took me only a few days to get enough sleep to think of my next project. a project that my parents can do NOTHING in association with except for come. i have no idea where this idea came from, but it got stuck in my head like chewing gum.
i'm going to host a pie baking contest.
yeah, like i said, i have no idea where this came from. maybe from reading too much literature from the health department, but i think that i found a loophole where i don't have to get any permits. it's kinda like a bake sale, only people can try the pie right there.
each person is to bake 2 of their favorite pie and enter for a $5 fee. then on the day of the bake off, admission is free to the public, but it's $1 if you would like to judge. anyone who wants to judge gets a fork and a voting ballot and then walks around, tries the pies and votes for their best. awards are given for best crust, most diabetic friendly, most fruity, and best in show.

i'll probably use the entry fees from the bakers all towards prizes. and the $1 judging fee will go towards forks, electricity and advertizing. i hope it works! i've really got to start pounding the pavement to get people to enter now.

i just have this idea in my brain of little old ladies coming out with their faces full of pride with all these beautiful pies everywhere. my mom can sell her crafts. i'll have a couple of turkeys out with a sign up sheet for thanksgiving turks... and now thanks to jason, we're going to have turkey breasts for sale and turkey sausage. genius! the guys who are too big for any oven (and i've got quite a few of those guys that would max out a restaurant oven) get sent to the butcher. slice off the white meat that most people love and use the rest for some garlic and spiced sausage. delicious.

so anyway, i don't know. i hope i get that hospital janitor job or something. i just need something and i certainly need it part time to avoid burn out. i would love some cooler weather, but i'm not looking forward to freezing cold nights. oh! i'm also painting my back room so i don't have to sleep in the un-insulated attic of my house anymore. maybe i'll get a roommie. not looking forward to that, but then again, not enjoying the guilt trip from dad either. so someone to share bills with would be good.

ok, i'm off to make a to do list, regain my focus, and maybe get a bottle of wine for later tonight and head up to akron to forget about turkeys and chickens and bake sales and crafts.



p.s. go tribe!