better

Thanks, everybody, for the nice words. I love my online friends. :-)

Today, so far, is better. The weekend sucked because I worried about getting in trouble for missing work, but I called in this morning and told the Answering Girl I have a doctor's note and asked what I should do with it, and she talked to me a bit and said that if the note has the appropriate days on it then it should be no problem for me to use my sick leave, which I wouldn't be able to use if I missed less than five consecutive days. So that is a relief.

I took an online career test last night, which told me that I am most inclined to clerical work. I have a feeling, though, that all my answers were colored heavily with fear and I would be terribly bored filing things and taking notes all day. I don't know. I still think massage therapy is a good choice, but clerical work is steadier and frankly, is easier to find. I still don't really know what I want to do...what I do know is I can't afford to go back to school full-time. So I don't know what I'm going to do.

I still haven't spent the night in my new apartment. It's a nice apartment...I will say it's nicer than the one in Tom's Scrotum; actually, very much so. The cabinets are actually wood, not particleboard, and they don't sag. The floors don't creak (but I would be alarmed if they did, since I'm on the first floor--creaky ground, anyone?) and the ceilings are really pretty high--I'd say between twelve and fifteen feet, which makes it feel roomier. And I don't have a fireplace like I thought I would. I looked at a third-floor apartment, which had a fireplace and lower ceilings which made it feel kind of like a cave, so that's partially why I've been not so happy about my decision to move there. I also felt uneasy about the area, but my brother used to install appliances for apartment complexes before he became an electrician, and he says my apartment is really nice and absolutely not in the ghetto. I do feel safer since he said that and since I realized there is a double row of hedges right in front of my bedroom window that would be quite difficult to get through. Plus, NO STAIRS. Rock on with the first floor.

This time, too, I have a real bed and a couch and a TV that is bigger than 13 inches. My bed is beautiful and my wonderful family switched out the mattresses, so the crappy ones I had in the Land of Hell are now on a bed nobody ever sleeps in at the lake, topped off with an extra mattress so nobody ever touches the Taint. My couch is nice and comfortably broken in, and now that it has a slipcover it doesn't hurt my eyes. My TV is big enough to see from the couch. I forgot my DVD player at my parents', and actually there's more that I forgot, but I hate moving. I hate it so much. So I elected to leave things there rather than move them, because that's how much I hate moving. Have I mentioned I hate moving? I do.

I'm still afraid everything's going to go to shit right when I don't expect it, so while I'm trying to have a positive attitude, my anxiety and depression are getting in the way admirably. I'm still afraid, too, of living alone. I know I will like the freedom but really am worried I'll be lonely. And I don't mean lonely for just any old person, but I mean lonely without my parents, and not just because they are my safety net. I've gotten used to having them around. That disagreement we had over the stupid cup was really an isolated incident; we got along amazingly well, especially after I got a job.

I realized that I overbudgeted on gas, so it looks like I might be able to go home about once a week. I am very much looking forward to my schedule changing. I think this split-days-off thing has really been detrimental to my mental health. When I agreed to it, I did so only because they were OFFERING ME A JOB and I was so desperate I would have taken a job chopping up frogs had it paid a living wage. The bad news is that the soonest my schedule will change is September. The good news is that I have six days off at the beginning of August, guilt-free, because I've already asked and it's already set.

Sometimes I think about going back to teaching. I must admit that the amount of vacation is spectacular. Then I remember taking work home on the weekends (unpaid), staying at school late (unpaid) to finish things, being responsible for controlling thirty preadolescent children at a time, the aching feet, the headaches, the lesson plans, the frustration of teaching twenty-five English-speakers, three Spanish-speakers and two Special Needs children all in the same class with no help whatsoever, the stupid fucking standardized test (rot in hell, Dubya), the art shows on the weekends (unpaid)...and last but definitely not least, the principal who just expected me, a first year teacher with only 12 weeks of student teaching experience (and only two of those 12 weeks had me teaching alone) to know how to deal with it all and punished me when I just couldn't. Then I am reminded that teaching is not for me and it never will be.

All I've ever wanted is a job that I could do and do well and get paid enough to comfortably support myself. I don't understand why that is too much to ask.