The Work Day, Issue 3

So I'm trying anew approach to the work day blog. I'll just blog what happens as it does! This morning at the Coffee Shop was really busy. It's been so nice to see things pick up around here. I was doing something from the moment I walked in until about 10AM. Which is really good for this store. I'm exhauseted though, last night I stayed up a bit too late, didn't get that much homework done and will pay for it today. I absolutely have to get yesterday's homework done today so that I can spend Saturday and Sunday either reviewing that which I have problems with or getting ahead a bit. It would help so much if I can manage to get slightly ahead. 

I'm really torn about my work situation right now. I hate it but I love it. The idea of waking at 6 am sucks, but once I get here, I'm fine. I really feel that having to be somewhere at a certain time is what makes me dread working. If I could work on my own schedule it would much better, yet knowing every friday that I have to be here is draining. 

The afternoon was pretty good, long, but uneventful. I'll be getting a couple more hours a week by taking my cousin to a movie every Tuesday. Hopefully my paycheck will be nice and juicier now. Maybe I'll be able to save a bit of money or just cover my bills without have to ask my parents for help. I hate that feeling. You'd think that I'd be able to stand on my own two feet by now. But my education has always come first and that has left little to now time for a job, even part time. Now, when I work part time and do school part time, I can't even keep my head afloat.

Let's see how well this goes. With school work getting the best of me, hopefully tuesday afternoon movies will be a good stress reliever.

Not good

Well, I missed another day. That's two times now in two weeks. That's not a good sign. Yesterday I did start my new math class, so it makes sense that I may have missed it. It's no excuse though. My days are going to be consumed by math for the next five weeks, I'm guesstimating around six hours a day, including in-class time. I don't have anything brilliant to surmise about today, nor anything from yesterday.

I feel like I'm failing at this whole blogging thing. I feel like I should have something funny or brilliant to write about, the only really useful thing that I've done is that post on 'How to Date Yourself'. I want to continue that sometime, but I'm not sure how to quite yet. So what I think I'm going to do to create a list of everything that interests me and try to create some intriguing blog posts about them.

I think it will help get me on the right track with this whole blogging thing and make my brain take a break from all these math things running through my head. I hope that it will help ease the tediousness of my life in the next five weeks.

Let's see, I like rain, theatre, fruity pebbles, and that's all I have right now. Great. This is going to be tougher than I want it to be.

Last day of Freedom

So, tonight is the end of my summer vacation. I'm starting my math 122 class tomorrow at 10am. I'm nervous, scared, annoyed and excited. I managed straight a's last semester, so I'm hoping to at least pull a B for this class. My GPA didn't improve with a whole semester worth of A's though..I'm still at a 3.3. But that's better than some, I suppose. And what have I done today? Absolutely nothing. I woke up at around 10am and left the house once to get cigarettes and snacks. That's it.

I feel so lazy it's almost sickening. Granted, I have done a bunch this week, the house is in much better shape than it was last week, I started a new exercise routine and I've started to look into home business opportunities. It's been rather productive, just not my last day. I personally feel it's due to my boyfriend's prolonged trip to Iowa. Also one of my best friends left for India. I had to meet my mother 100+ miles out of town. It's a number of things that made today completely useless to me.

And it wasn't as if I didn't want to do something today, that just happened that I didn't. I don't blame anyone but myself. I know that I'm going to miss this freedom come Wednesday probably and Friday I'll be cursing this class because I don't want to be in class all week and then spend an entire day working. Gone will be my three day weekends. Hello to a full schedule and more headaches to come. Take everything one day at a time and you'll always be moving forward. That's what I'm telling myself. Hopefully it will help ease the stress.

It's been an eventful day. Taking a mini road trip to meet my mom for brunch and exchange items. I discovered that the new route I have to take to Globe is probably the most dangerous road in Arizona. I've never dealt with more assholes on the roadway ever today. Even with all the snowbirds. 

I'm also taking some time to do some research so I don't have to go to work. I would love to have a home business or a work-from-home situation. I'm sick and tired of exchanging my time for money. It's not very bad right now, only working one day a week, but I work 10 hrs that day and only make $8/hr so $80 before taxes a day. Which isn't enough to pay the bills. 

I'm looking into Passion Parties, AVON, and other network based marketing business plans. I have a soft spot for them due to the fact that my mother sold Mary Kay when I was growing up. Plus I think I have what it would take to do it. Maybe not to the point where I can retire in ten years, but hopefully enough so that I don't have to continue going to my other jobs. It would also be a great help when it comes to school and show schedules. I'll be able to work whenever I want to and not have to tell my boss that my availability has changed yet again in a six week period. 

So that's the update for the day. I'm pretty excited for something new!

The Work Day, Issue 2

I know this was supposed to be posted yesterday, but I just didn't get to it. Anyway, it was a glorious rainy morning that I left for work in. I actually had need of my umbrella! Or at least I told myself I needed it, it was really only a drizzle, but using it made me happy. The coffee shop was busier than I expected it to be on a rainy friday morning with a holiday weekend approaching, so that was good. Still pretty slow though, in comparison.

Working with my cousin was easy. She's out of school so we didn't have to worry about homework and she was really into her beading so I didn't have to keep her all that entertained, which was a god-send. I only stayed for four hours vs my normal five hour shift due to bordem and the fact that I can. My paycheck will suffer slightly, but having that extra hour to myself was really needed I feel.

I started doing some research on Avon and Passion Parties while I was there. I think that they may be the solution I'm looking for about having my own business/work from home sort of deal. I received a call from an AVON lady earlier this morning and will be giving her a call back after my morning rituals are complete. I'm typing this from bed right now. It's amazing.

Looking forward to one my best friend's going away BBQ this afternoon. I feel like I want to get her something, but I know that she can't take much with her to India, so I think maybe just a letter will suffice, not 100% on that idea yet, but we'll see. School starts back up for me in a few days. I'm nervous about it. And at the same time, a bit excited. Not looking forward to going everyday, but I think it will help cement everything in. It's a math class. Life is continuing even with my Boyfriend being in Iowa til Tuesday, I'm sad, but it's good to know that I can function without him sometimes. Don't want to be little miss co-dependent!

Going on a mini-road trip tomorrow morning to meet my mother for brunch. Should be fun. That's all that's new. Signing off now.

Today's Shopping List

It's never a good thing when your mother is calling you at 6am. Especially when it's my mother. She never calls my that early, unless someone's lost and drunk, in jail or dead. Fortunately, none of those things were the subject her call this morning. Though I kind of wish it was so she doesn't get into the habit of calling me at 6am. No, Mommy dearest was calling about a shopping list she needed me to get for her. She lives in the middle of nowhere and is a teacher, so last-minute wal-mart trips are out of the question for her.

Item 1: a one-piece bathing suit, size 7-8.
Item 2: a single copy of 'Merchant of Venice' by Shakespeare
Item 3: three different sizes of rocket engines.

All to be gathered today and mailed up to her in hopes to get it there by Tuesday. At six o'clock in the morning, I'm not thinking clearly, so I just copy it all down and go back to bed. But upon waking and returning to the list, I'm struck with how odd all these requests are. Especially all together. What is my mother planning on Tuesday for her class? Blowing up bathing suits while reciting Merchant of Venice?

I shrug off my odd thoughts and get to work. First off, I start calling Hobby shops. No point in driving around town looking blindly. Well, out of the dozens of hobby stores in town, only two had what I needed, and only 2/3's of it. 'Don't worry, the other one you can pick up at wal-mart'. I thought that the day was shaping up to be pretty easy. So I get ready to go out and hit the town. In the rain. Of course.

First off, does any one make one-piece bathing suits any more? I'm seriously thinking that they don't. The only ones I could find were maternity suits. Not appropriate. So I spend about two hours going from store to store looking for a one-piece bathing suit and finding nothing. Finally I hit up Savers. Good ole Savers. But they only had one in size 7-8, so I snatched it. I hope it will work.

Next, getting Merchant of Venice was easy and painless. Thank God for Bookmans!

And finally get around to the Hobby Shops. Well, they have the sizes I need, but what KIND of size D do you need? Call 1 to my mother. Figure out the details and continue shopping. How many? Call 2 to my mother. Now, my Mom had alerted the front desk of her school to expect me to call in today and to bring her the phone even if she was in class. The first round of calling went fine. No problems. The second call, not so much. A man answered the phone, I gave him my info and that I was calling for my mother. He proceeded to inform me that she was in class right now and couldn't be disturbed. So I explained the situation and how when I called earlier it was no problem. His response: 'So you want me to take her the phone and disrupt her class? Is that what she would want?' Yes. You asshole. Yes. A few minutes later, talked to my mom and got the number of engines I needed.

I thought it was smooth sailing from there. Just needed to stop at Wal-mart then UPS and all would be well. Oh no, Wal-mart discontinued rocket engines six months ago. So I tried Target. Nope, nada. Finally I decide to go to another Hobby shop that initially didn't think they had what I needed. I explained the situation and they fixed me right up. For $77. So it's now been four and half hours since I left my house, all the items gathered and UPS is right across the street, perfect. Not so much. UPS doesn't mail 'flammable' objects. Neither does Fed-Ex or the Post Office. Short of doing it myself, I was screwed.

Call number 3 to mom. I meeting her half-way on Sunday. Four hour drive, round trip. Not too bad. But still, rather obnoxious. So, mom bought me lunch and I went home. To start another long task of doing the dishes. Go life!

Money

Nothing to brilliant to give you guys today. Just some amusement.

Being Productive

I finished up with my spring semester last week feeling pretty good about. I'm pretty sure I passed all my classes with an A. This is the first year I'll be taking summer classes so I only have a week off of school before I go back and I made a deal with myself: be productive. Do what you want to do, but make sure it's a step forward. And I have to say that it's working out very nicely.

Since I have this week off, I told myself to spend 1 hour a day cleaning. And already the house is looking much nicer. Tomorrow is going to make a bunch of difference cause I'll be working in the kitchen. Once school starts, I won't have that much time to clean every day, but I will try to spend at least an hour a week cleaning. That should help keep up all the hard work I put in this week and make moving out cleaning much easier. Hopefully it will work out and I'll have a new habit. Plus, it's exercise and every little bit helps!

Speaking of exercise, I've started the 200 situps, 200 squats and 100 pushups programs. It's just strength training but since I don't have my twice a week dance class anymore, I was feeling sluggish and wanted something physical to do. It's not so much that I want to lose weight or get in shape or anything, it's just a test to see if I can stick with it and whatever results I get will be better than sitting on my ass doing nothing. 

Those two things, along with blogging once a day are kind of my three 'make changes for the good' plan that I told myself I would work towards. They have nothing to do with future ambitions or goals, but they are for a better me. Making me a better person. Which, if I can make better choices for myself, they will hopefully transfer over into my career and other life choices. So wish me luck in my journey and hopefully everything will work out for me.

So I'm not very up on some views about dollar stores but I can't help but have this nagging little voice in the back of my mind telling me not to shop at them. But it's so hard. I needed cleaning stuff, what costs me $30 dollars at a grocery store, cost me $10 at the dollar store. As a college student whose income would make a homeless person laugh, $20 in savings is like a month's worth of groceries. Or two weeks of gas or help with the bills. 

I have a very hard time with seeing the downside to that. I'm sure that there is one, but it's not in plain sight and I'm not looking very hard for it either.

For now, I will keep my dollar store shopping to a minimum. But I won't do away with it all together. I just can't afford it.

How To Date Yourself

What usually occurs with me, is once I get some spare/free time, I immediantely try to fill it with all the 'fun' stuff I don't normally consider doing. That doesn't always work out to my liking, so sometimes I'm left to my own devices, which can get frustrating at times. So instead of skulking and throwing away my time, I've learned how to date myself.

This may be a bit of a stretch for some, especially if you haven't had a lot of experience with dating to begin with. But trust me, it can be very rewarding if you're willing to embrace it.

Now, I'm in a long-term relationship that is very fulfilling but sometimes I find myself with an evening alone and nothing really to do. I have a couple of fall-backs that I like to call 'me-dates'. Now the trick to self dating is simple, you have to know what you like to do. It's the same when you go out with someone else, you want to do something you both enjoy. Which is why dinner and a movie are still the most common date nights out there: who doesn't like to eat and who doesn't enjoy seeing a movie, for whatever reason that is.

Here are some of my favorites.

1. Sit-down dinner At first, this one may seem pitiful and you would never, ever be seen at dinner by yourself. You have to get over what everyone else is thinking, remember, this is still a date. You're on a date with yourself. And after the nervousness of the first few times, you'll start to feel a sense of satisfaction that you took yourself out to a nice lunch or dinner and paid for it yourself from your own money. That's not something you can get from someone else.

2. Going to the Movies Once again, you're probably thinking, 'What loser goes to the movies by themselves?' Well, I've been doing it for years and love it. You can go when it's convienent for you and not someone else. You never argue over which flick to see, it's all your choice, and you don't have to worry about what you look like because it's going to be dark for two hours.

3. Personal Spa Day Now, due to financial issues, I usually partake of this date in the comforts of my own home. This is geared to the ladies, so fella's, I apologize. But there's nothing better than setting up your nail polish, foot scrub, popping in a good movie and just pampering yourself. Or maybe your favorite way to relax involves just staying in bed and that's great too. Whatever makes you happy, that's the point.

4. Do something New You can't keep doing the same things over and over again. It get's old. So every once and a while, take yourself to go do something new. Preferrably something you wouldn't normally do. You may find yourself with a new passion in life.

There you go, a decent start to your new relationship with yourself. I may come back to this at a later date, but I'm not sure yet.

First Freedom Day!

It was a glorious realization that I had today. I am completely free from anything for this next week. It's an amazing feeling. I can sleep as late as I wish, go to bed whenever I wish, do whatever I wish, whenever I wish. I'm not quite sure what I am going to be doing for this week. I think the best thing is to not make any decisions about it just yet and just go with the flow.

So if anyone wishes to do anything, hit me up and we'll do it.

On another note, I'm very excited about this summer. It should be full of great fun and adventure, even if most of it will be spent taking summer classes. It's hopefully my last summer here in Tucson, but never fear, I will be back to visit plenty! I'm looking forward to monsoon season, of course. It's always my favorite time here in Tucson.

This is just about all I have to say today. Going back to doing nothing and not worrying about having anything to do. Bye-bye!

The Work Day, Issue 1

Since I'm attempting to blog everyday, it makes sense that every friday will become all about work. I work Fridays and only Fridays right now. That may change in the next few weeks, but I'm not counting on it. First of all, I have two part time jobs, and I really can't even classify them separately as part time, but together they do. I average ten hours a week making little over minimum wage for each. Hey, it's something and some money coming in is better than no money coming in.

My morning consists of waking up way too early on a Friday and getting to work at the perfect place to be at 7:30am: a coffee shop. That's right, I'm a barista. Which isn't as impressive today as it was ten years ago. Granted anyone can be trained to make coffee, so it's not like I went to school for it, but it's still better than flipping burgers. Today was rather busy, which is good, but kind of surreal at the same time. My two met together. After my coffee shift I work as a caregiver to my cousin, who is mentally disabled. Right as I got to work this morning, my cousin and her teacher walked in. My demeanor is much different around her than it is in regular life. I have to be very careful about what I say and how I say it without making her feel like she's a toddler. So needless to say, my 'barista' mode didn't ring true to her idea of what I'm like and her feelings kind of got hurt when I couldn't drop everything and bring her back to help me make her drink.

Of course, by the time I got off and got to her house she had forgotten the incident entirely and was her usual bubbly self. Or so I thought.

So, another story. Last week was mother's day. And last Friday my cousin really wanted to go shopping for a mother's day present. Well, after he homework and chores that we do every friday afternoon, it was dinner time and not enough time to go shopping. Not going to lie, I didn't really feel up to an afternoon of making sure she didn't have a mental break down in some mall shop. But I did let her know that next week, which is today, if we got her homework done early we could go. That thrilled her.

Well, we got her homework done early, she made sure that her chores were done before I even got there so we went to the mall. Somehow, in the course of everything, she got into her head that if she didn't buy her mother jewelry, it wouldn't be a gift. Right there should have been a red flag for me. Basically, the last few weeks, she has been going through her own massive collection of jewelry and getting rid of the 'kid' stuff, as she calls it. She's turning seventeen in July but mentally she's only about six, so her idea of pretty jewelry is the fake, plastic stuff you get at Chuck E. Cheese's. Her mom had been helping her sort through everything as have I. We got finished about two weeks ago and her jewelry collection was much smaller than what she was used to.

Fast forward to the mall. She can't decide what stores she wants to go into and keep getting drawn to places like Claire's or Forever 21, you know, the places pre-teens love. I am constantly reminding her that those stores were fine if we were shopping for something she wanted, being barely a teen herself, but not a good choice for a mother's day present. She still is convinced to get jewelry for her mother though. I should've caught on then. But I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, thinking she just truly wanted to get her mom something really pretty and meaningful. We had a budget of about thirty dollars which meant all the Zale's and Mall Jewelry stores were out completely.

After about two hours of trolling the mall, I'm getting tired of being there and trying with all my might to convince her that jewelry probably wasn't going to happen this year. Still, she persisted. And still I remained blind.

We finally stopped at a little jewelry kiosk that sells decent-ish jewelry at decent prices. Think the Walmart Jewelry department. I was anxious to get out of there so we sat examining every strand of silver and every pendant of gold. Another red flag should have alerted me was the fact that she was being drawn to the belly-button rings that you see the thirteen year old prancing around in. I let it slide and we found a nice sterling silver pendant with a 18k plated gold spiral in the middle. It was marked at $24.99 AND 50% off. It was the best thing for her to get and her mom loves spirals. Perfect.

Or so I thought.

She seemed pretty excited to get it. Yet was uncharacteristically silent on the ride home about the necklace and didn't really like my idea of surprising her mom with the necklace on her dinner plate. Once we got back to her house, I asked to look at the box and she proceeded to think she had lost it. I now know it was because she didn't want to accidentally leave it out in the open in case her mom found it.

So, I left the issue alone and we started to get her ready for dinner. My aunt, her mother, got home shortly afterwards and I expected my cousin to tell her mom about our shopping adventure and proudly present her the necklace. Since she was tired and hungry, I assumed she had already forgotten all about the afternoon so I gently reminded her about it, upon my utterance of the present, she shot me the most terrifying gaze she could muster and didn't say a word. Her mother went into the other room and she marched over to me and said "You didn't have to tell her about it," I was puzzled and hurt and shocked, "We told her we were mother's day shopping, I'm sorry if you wanted to surprise her with it." I replied. Another evil glare and she said "Yeah, and I'm going to have a nice afternoon once you leave." She then proceeded to go to the living room and pout.

Time passed and when it was just me and my aunt together, I mentioned the encounter I had with my cousin to her and she just said, "That's because she had no intention of giving me anything. She just wanted new jewelry." I felt really bad that my aunt had been cheated out of a mother's day present by my inability to see the warning signs. I shall now never underestimate the extent my cousin will go to get what she wants. And that little game she played will not go unanswered for.

So there it is. My one day a week of work. I doubt that the rest of my work days will be this interesting or enlightening for me.

College life

Already onto day two. I'm proud of myself. Anyways, after finishing my latin exam earlier today and finishing up this spring semester, I had to go over to the book store and drop $113 on my math textbook for the summer semester. Which starts in roughly a week. Maybe ten days. But it was then that I realized how insanely stupid I had been with my education and if I could, it would be the one thing that I would change about my life.

I dicked around the first few semesters, taking the 'fun' classes for my degree and a sometimes just pure elective courses that I wanted to take. But I never stopped going to class. That has never been an issue. I even did some online classes for two semesters and except for math, did very well in them. Luckily they actually helped in attaining my degree. So there's the first two years of my college life and I'm only sixteen. Of course, it should only take two years to attain an associate's degree so I'm already behind. Then next year was spent taking 18 and 19 credit loads attached with 'fun' classes and the required gen ed courses. It was horrid.I basically became a full and a half time student for about a year.

And look at where I am now. I just finished up a part-time semester, the first one in about a year and a half. And I am taking summer courses just to make up for it.

I realized that if I was smart, I wouldn't have stressed myself out with high course loads and trying to scramble to make my schedule fit around having to take certain classes. What should've been happening from at least my first 'real' semester back was take the 'fun' degree classes, take as many as you want. Then do gen ed's during the winter and summer sessions. If all goes as planned, I will be completely done with every math class I will ever have to take in roughly ten weeks. TEN WEEKS TO MATHEMATICAL FREEDOM! I've spent years trying to get there and all it would've required of me was to sacrifice two hours out of my day for a month. And this would all be over.

So kudo's to me for finally making sense of this whole education thing right when it probably won't do me any good. Though I am transferring to a different school and I may need to spend another three and half years figuring out that system.

Vivacious-ness

Here we go. You know what I really like about starting new projects, the terrifying prospect of it failing, falling in pieces at my feet. That's not exactly a good mentality to have going into something like blogging, but you have to start somewhere. I want to make a deal with myself: I will post a blog everyday. No matter what it's about. Even if I think I have nothing to write about. I will write something everyday. Goodness knows that I spend enough time on the internet I should be able to find something interesting or at the very least amusing to show you guys.

So that's about it today. And for an introduction. I can't really think of anything else to put here. So I'll leave you with a picture I really enjoyed today.