On Thanksgiving evening we had a chance to do some catching up, and he told me that he had talked to a recruiter on Monday. He told me the good news and the bad news, and I encouraged him to not give up his idea. He said I was right about him making more money if he was married, and then he suggested that I marry him. I truly thought he was joking, so I said “Sure, lets do it!” Then he started explaining why it was a good idea.

He’ll get more money by enlisting as married. I, as his wife, would get a housing allowance, free healthcare, and access to the military base near my home. He also mentioned being able to transfer his GI bill to me, but there was some confusion about that, and he’d have to stay in the military at least six years for that (and I was imagining this little “arrangement” to last for just a couple of years.)

Gosh, as I’m typing this, I’m imagining how pissed off I would be if I was a military wife reading this. I was a military wife once. I totally respect it. I don’t mean any disrespect, it was an idea that started as a joke, and probably will turn into a joke, but was tossed around as an idea for a while.

Anyway, I was talking with Edgar tonight, and since things between us have been so “friendly” and “buddyish” lately (like him telling me about going on a date etc..) I thought it would be ok to tell him about this idea. I was wrong. He got all offended and started on how it must be a cultural thing and that Americans think low of marriage. I did try to defend my country..men, but it was hard for me to swallow that I, personally, think low of marriage, so I just let him think as he wanted.

I’m not sure what the truth is. I don’t really think low of marriage. When I used to imagine marrying him, I never thought bad of it. Marrying for a mutually beneficial arrangement doesn’t seem like a terrible idea. People marry people for green cards and other reasons all the time, right?

Edgar says:
you cant marry a guy you dont love

…I can’t marry the one I do, either.

Anyway, before anybody starts feeling the need to lecture me, don’t worry about it. I can’t marry this guy and have a clear conscience. It’s not like you can be married to someone for a couple of years and just shake hands and walk away. There’s much more serious matters to think about. Like…how our credit would be mixed up together, and how if something happened to him…I’d have it on my conscience that the whole thing was a sham. It all seems so ugly when I think about it very deeply.

But free healthcare…man.

On the list of things that will change were two very important things.

1. My company has decided that our mental health and well-being is important enough to be covered by insurance. Not only will antidepressants be covered, but if I want to talk to a headshrink, the insurance is cool with that. I think that’s amazing. Terrifying, but amazing.

2. Our new insurance will pay for weight loss surgery. I could lump that in with mental health issues, but I won’t, but omg. It’s sad for me to think that I can’t lose weight the way most people do, and that having a weight loss surgery is “cheating a bit.” But when I really start thinking about the surgery, recovery, and side effects, I don’t feel like I’m taking the “easy way” out.

I’ve gotten myself psyched up on before and after videos of people who have lost astonishing amounts of weight. I haven’t bothered to look for the negative stories. I know they’re out there, and I want to be open-minded and fair, so when I visit my dad over the holiday, maybe I’ll discuss it with him and we can look some of those things up together.

Maybe I’ve just got the fall blues, but I’ve been feeling like such a fatty lately. I look in the mirror and I don’t like anything I see. My skin looks blotchy, my hair is frizzy, my eyes are dull, and wow I sound like Debbie Downer. Seriously though, I’ve been experiencing quite a bit of self-hatred for the past few weeks. I’ve been trying to stay busy, because I seem to do better when I’m distracted, but quiet evenings at home bring it all to the surface.

I’ll just hope that visiting my dad will rejuvenate my spirit and ease my mind a bit.

C’mon Thursday….

I was really amused by the number of “adults” in the theater. Seriously, I think there were more parents than kids. There were a lot of groups like mine: women in their 30′s and 40′s. I guess we never grow out of that need to escape into fantasy. (Should you see it? If you liked the first one, yes. Otherwise, save your money until someone loans you the DVD version saying “You MUST see this movie!”)

I also saw 2012 last week. I could sum it up in two words: awful and fantastic. Some of the scenes in this movie are so hilarious that I had tears rolling out of my eyes from laughing. It’s not that the movie is a comedy, and I did laugh at the funny bits, but some of it is just unintentionally funny. Brilliantly so. (Should you see it? Not in the theater. Wait until it comes out on DVD.)

I’m counting down the days until I go to my dads for Thanksgiving. I’m not sure what I’m looking forward to the most; the train ride, the amazing food, or the uninterrupted sleep. Maybe a combination of all three. Just getting out of the ghetto for a few days will be nice.

I’ve been talking to Edgar a bit lately. It’s fascinating to me how much love I still have for him, and how swiftly forgiveness changed me. I am trying to keep my head. Honest.

My Serbian friend Darko says “love is masochistic in its’ core” and I tend to agree with him.

I’m catless. Bits died of some unknown ailment about 2 months ago. Two weeks ago I decided to get rid of my baby Bug, and I found some kind lady on craigslist who just happened to be looking for a Maine Coon. The story goes downhill after that, so let’s just pretend I had a happy ending from craigslist.

I got a B in my US Fed. Gov’t class. I suppose I could have gotten an A if I hadn’t been so distracted. That class was the most fun I’ve had since I went back to school. Very different from the Biology/Nutrition class that I’m still plodding through.

That Bio professor can be a real jerk sometimes. Overheard in class yesterday:

“I don’t teach to the bottom half of the class anyway, those people aren’t going anywhere.”

I’ll reserve my final judgment of him after I get my final grades. Yes, my opinion will be swayed by how harshly he grades me. He claims “I don’t like to be a bad guy.” Sure, buddy. (I’m just a little bitter. The man is teaching a simple Nutrition class and he’s turned into pre-Anatomy/Physiology. It’s brutal.).

Last month my mother used Facebook to let me know that my daughter has Celiac disease. Besides being absolutely heartbroken that my daughter has suffered through 7 years of digestive pain, I was livid that my mom chose such an impersonal manner of communication to tell me such a personal thing. That’s not to say that I think Facebook is “impersonal”, but there’s a huge difference between poking and pillowfighting your friends, and getting a message that can potentially alter your life. (I tested negative, still waiting for results on my sons.)

I can’t wait for Thanksgiving. I’m taking the train to Dallas to visit my dad.

I’m looking forward to time away from the ghetto. All of the original tenants that used to make life crazy in my building have all moved away. I wish I could say that my landlord moved in some upstanding citizens, but we’ve got our very own drug dealer AND a prostitute! The alcoholic grandmother who frequently mistakes my door for her own and who has an adorable puppy that she likes to kick around is still…kicking. The paranoid schizophrenic parolee moved out at the beginning of this week, but I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of the next outstanding specimen of humanity.

I’m looking to move, and I found the perfect place. It’s less than 2 miles from my school, and about 5 miles from my job. The only problem is that I already think the property manager is a jerk. I guess it’s not a good idea to move somewhere when I’m already sensing conflict…but the rent is amazingly low, and it’s ‘all bills paid’ so I won’t have to deal with utility bills.

Sometimes I understand why people move into tents in the woods.

Happy November, and Friday the 13th.

My grades for the summer classes were a little unexpected. An A in English, and a B in Sociology. After classes were finished, I really wanted to go on Ratemyprofessor.com and rant about my Soc prof. but then I realized my problem with him was more of a personal one than his ability to teach. I left it alone, and I’m sure he’s busy terrorizing another group of students.

My last post here was about my stepmother ODing, and as horrible as it might sound, I wish it had been as simple as an overdose. Unfortunately, there has been some deeper mental issues going on and she’s been hospitalized at least three times since the end of July. Now that we’ve moved into October, the doctors feel that they have her condition fairly well controlled by medication, and she is starting to behave more like herself.

When my stepmom was at her worst, my dad asked me several times if I would move to live with him. The pressure he put on me to drop everything here and move to Texas was unbelievable. I know that most of it was because he was feeling overwhelmed and he needed to have someone to share it with, but it was, unfortunately, bad timing. I know that might sound horrible, but, honestly, the whole thing went down about 2 weeks too late. By the time my dad asked me to move there, I had already started my school loans, gotten my first disbursement, enrolled in classes, and spent half the money.

Fortunately, she does seem to be doing better. The pressure from my dad is off, and my family has stopped reminding me about it.

School is going fairly well. I’m taking US Federal Government, and Nutrition. The Gov’t class is a lot easier than I expected it to be. The hardest part so far has just been staying awake. The class is 5 hours long every Wednesday night. The nutrition class was supposed to be an “easier” Biology class. I’ll be lucky to pass.

My exes cat, Bits, that came to live with me early this year died about 3 weeks ago. It was unexpected, shocking, and heartbreaking. I don’t handle death well, and I had to deal with this on my own because the ex was out of town. When I finally disposed of her body, I got into my bed and cried myself to sleep and slept for about 14 hours. Now I feel super-protective of Bug, my other cat, and I’m constantly worried I’ll find her dead too.

I’ve debated on whether or not I’d write about Edgar in this post, but…in my life or out of it, he’s in my head so often. There was a really bad typhoon where he lives, a little over a week ago. I tried not to care, but every time I saw his city mentioned in an article about it, I’d wonder if he was okay. Then mutual acquaintances started asking if I had heard from him. I tried to joke about it, that he’s fine because rats can swim, that you can’t kill a cockroach, that shit floats etc… but then I’d see pictures on the news and any jokes or humor would go right out the window and then I’d worry anyway.

I wrote him a short email asking if he was okay, told myself it meant nothing and that I didn’t care if he replied or not. In the grand scheme of things, his response means nothing except “yes, I’m alive” and I really shouldn’t care, but if I’m to be honest, I have to say I’m glad he’s alive to lie another day. I still miss him sometimes, and I know that seems stupid and foolish, but its fact.

I’ve already said more than I wanted to say, and written more than I planned to so I’ll wrap this up. I’ll try  not to let another two months pass before writing again.

His voice cracked when he said “Something happened to [stepmother].” My heart sank, I was imagining a car accident, a heart attack…some horrible accident. No.

“She overdosed yesterday.”

This is a 60 year old woman who has been married to my dad almost 20 years. She’s had the same job for 15 years. She’s got two kids (three if you count me), and nine grand kids. This is a woman who, while she might drive me crazy with her batty personality and strange habits…is pretty settled. I guess this is one of those moments where you have to sit back and realize that there is no one, not one of us, who is immune to depression.

My dad is convinced that it was accidental, and that she emptied her two prescription bottles in an effort to get some “relief” from her “pain.” He said that these scripts were refilled on the 9th of July. So, a little math: 30 pills in each bottle, subtract 17 pills from each bottle, that leaves 13 pills in each bottle. 26 pills. One, her “nerve pill” and the other some sort of pain pill with codeine.

I’m sorry, it doesn’t sound like an accident to me, and my dad is deluding himself.

I’m not angry with her, I know the headspace she had to have been in to do what she did. I’ve been there. I think that’s why I’m so  disappointed in her. She was married to my dad when, many years ago, I overdosed. She saw how it crushed my dad. She saw what it did to my family. She lived through it from the “other” side…and she still made the choice to do what she did.

I hurt for my daddy. He’s such a good man, and he’s so tenderhearted. He worries about everything, and he loves his family so much. This has hurt him in ways that my stepmother will never know.

In other news, I managed to survive both of my summer classes. I’ve not gotten my grades back yet but I’m quite certain I pulled in two B’s. I think it was an 88 in Sociology, and…86-88ish in English Comp 2. That English class was not nice. That English class made me change my mind about ever considering a career in Journalism. Kudos to Miss Pantry, who not only survived English classes, but chose a career in journalism. More power to ya, sister, and you never need to worry about me coming to take your job. I couldn’t tolerate another English class, I could never be an English major of any sort.

Honestly, I’d have had a B if I hadn’t turned in my last paper late. It’s just that it was an 8 page synthesis…argument…rogerian…something or another. Hell I don’t even remember. I chose Healthcare Reform as my topic, I used super long quotes, and I rambled quite a bit. In the end I wasn’t sure if I was arguing for or against healthcare reform, or if maybe the argument had suddenly shifted to starving chihuahuas in Chihuahua, but I finished the essay. I turned it in two days late, the fuckface professor took 10% off my grade, and I was just happy not to give in to the urge to stab him with my #2 pencil.

Passive aggressive? Me? Pfft.

I admit I’m having some anger issues lately. I’d like to put my foot in somebody’s ass, but unfortunately that person lives too far away for me to reach, and he’s really not worth the effort. That being said, I’d still like to put my foot in his ass.

Is it strange that I’m getting angry almost 3 months later?

I can’t help it, really. Every time I have a moment where  I miss him, I feel so incredibly stupid for missing him, and that pisses me off. The more I think of him, the more I miss him, and the more I get mad at him, and the more I want to hurt him. I want to hurt him worse than he hurt me.

Somebody that used to be his friend told me today that it would basically be a waste of time to try and hurt him, that he’s unfeeling. Then I got really pissed off, because I know it’s true. He’s a heartless bastard, and a fraud in every sense of the word. For all I know “he” is a 16 year old girl from Sacramento who is a vegetarian that eats meat on the 29th of each month. Or maybe he is a 40 year old married man from Moscow who is a manager at a sex toy store.

You see how these thoughts make me want to hurt “him”? I don’t even know him.

I heard his voice once when he let me, and once I heard his voice when he didn’t know I could, so I do know he really does speak Tagalog. Chances are he really does live in the Philippines. I saw lots of pictures of “him” but I never saw him on camera. I don’t think he is who he pretended to be.  He’s a fake and a fraud and a stupid fucking pig, and I hate him.

And I miss him.

Anyway, now that that’s out of my system, I think I’ll sleep. I hope I haven’t offended anyone with my potty mouth. If I have, oh fucking well. Go read my Disclaimer.

Love.

Okay maybe not so much that second one, but for me, I dreamt I was in love! Shaquille O’Neal was my boyfriend! Haha. I don’t even like basketball ya’ll. But in this dream, Shaq and I were cuddled up in bed playing grabass and talking about sandals vs. flip-flops. Seriously, I cant make this crap up. Well, I mean, my brain made it up, but you know what I’m saying.

So when I woke up yesterday, I was all heavy-hearted about Shaq. Or maybe it wasn’t so much about Shaq, as I’m lonely! I suppose dreaming about some random sports figure is better than dreaming about the guy who dumped me more than two months ago, right?

Speaking of…him. What’s wrong with my brain that he dumped me in the cruelest way possible, and has made no attempts to contact me whatsoever, and I still miss him like crazy? Dreaming about Shaq was a  welcome break from the almost constant dreams about Edgar. Even last night I dreamt that I had a daughter named Alirah, and that  he was the father and I was looking for him to tell him we had a baby.

Sorry, I won’t go on and on, but sometimes my head gets so full of it I just want to scream.

Tonight was my last Sociology class. I got an 84 on the last test, which leaves me with an 88 final grade. Damn. I hate  a B.

I was supposed to turn in a rough draft for my final essay in Comp2 on Thursday last week, but I didn’t get it finished. I said I’d email it to him over the weekend, but…my computer crashed. Seriously. Not only did the computer crash, but I lost every damn file on the computer. Every picture, text file, chat log, program….everything. Gone. I downloaded a data recovery program at work today and burned it to a disk, and sometime tomorrow morning I should know whether or not I can recover any of that data…but I’m certainly not going to hold my breath.

My truck did finally get fixed by the way. It cost me a grand total of $285 with al the parts and gas I had to put in it, but I”ve got some really cool pictures that sort of make up for it all. (Not to mention that, hey, I”ve got a new fuel pump and my truck is running better!) I probably should add in the cost of having to hear lectures from the Tard about taking care of my vehicle, and also the moment that the Tard and Red told me that putting the fuel pump in it didn’t fix it, and that it was probably an electronic issue and might take weeks to fx….and how I thought the world might end….but they were lying to teach me a lesson. Ugh.

Anyway, I really do have an essay to write, and no topic to speak of, so it looks like I might be up a while. Thursday is the end of the summer semester! I can see the finish line!

I have a bad habit of running out of gas. It’s about time or convenience. My favorite gas station is a few blocks from my apartment, but lately their prices have been a few cents higher than a couple of others, and I’ve stopped using them. The gas stations with really great prices are often five to ten miles away from me. So, there has been many an occasion that I’ve driven to work on the E, and coasted my way into a gas station with my truck begging for mercy.

Usually, when my truck putters out, I can let it sit for a couple minutes, and then it will turn over and I can drive another couple miles on it, and I don’t go very many places where I would be more than a couple miles away from a gas station. (I say usually like it happens a lot. Does once or twice a month count as “a lot”? Yeah, I thought so.)

Today when I got off work, I was in a hurry to go buy a vacuum. I didn’t even realize I was on Empty. I stopped at a red light, and when the light turned green, I put my foot on the gas and my truck said Prrghhhh. (How come guys are so much better at making engine sounds?) So I died in the intersection, but was able to coast through…and almost into the gas station parking lot! I literally was in the driveway of the gas station! It’s just that the entry is uphill a bit, and there was no oomph in my truck.

I thought if I sat there for a minute looking pathetic, that some kind stranger might stop and push me in (and believe me that had this happened, my night would have ended on a different note.) Instead, people honked at me because I was in the way. So, after a few minutes of honking and hand gestures, I gave up, put the truck in reverse, and took my foot off the brake. This got me out of the drive for the gas station, but put me right on the street in front of it.

Two men saw me in the street…and pulled over to push me into the parking lot…of the restaurant across the street! Apparently nobody wanted to risk damaging their own vehicle to push me into the gas station where I needed to be, so I had to be pushed out of the way.

This is where this story turns to crap, because had I just left my truck alone, walked across the street to the gas station, borrowed a gas can and put gas in my truck, the whole embarrassing ordeal could have been wrapped up in about ten minutes. Instead, I decided to call for help. I called my ex. (Yes, the fucktard.)

I really didn’t want it to be him that rescued me, so I kept trying to start my truck. Apparently this is not the proper procedure. Apparently my truck has electronic fuel injection. Apparently in my efforts to save myself, I screwed my truck up.

The tard got there, we put 5 gallons of gas in my truck, it wouldn’t start. We tried to start it for about 30 minutes, and he proclaimed “Well you royally fucked up this time, kid!” Thank you, Captain Obvious.

He called his best friend, Red, who is a mechanic. (Yeah, that’s not really his name, but it’s what color his face turns when he’s annoyed by the stupid things that women do to their vehicles.) Red tried to fix it. He got underneath my truck, banged things around for 20 minutes or so, and decided it’s my fuel pump. (No big deal…just the most expensive problem of all the problems it could have been.)

$230 later, I’ve got a fuel pump waiting to be installed in my truck. My truck is parked at Reds house. I am spending the night at….

wait for it…

yeah…

the tards house.

Could this day get any worse? Actually, yes it can. Because now it’s almost 3 a.m. and I can’t go to sleep on the couch because the fuckknuckle is on his laptop in the living room. I’m tired and grumpy and, oh by the way, I’ve got an 8 page rough draft due tomorrow.

So the plan is: I’m going to drive the tards truck to work in the morning. I’m going to work until about 2:00, and then I’m going to have to be “sick” or something. Then I’ll have until 5:30 to scrounge together some semblance of a rough draft. Brutal.

How come I have to learn everything the hard way? Don’t take your medicine, Steph? Bleed to death! Don’t put gas in your truck, Steph? Mess your truck up and spend hard earned cash fixing something that wasn’t broke until you got stupid!

Next, it’ll be a “craigslist serial stalker” followed by “why you shouldn’t buy prescription drugs from countries you can’t pronounce.”

Just so I can end on a high note…at least I didn’t get a ticket for not having insurance, right? Right.

We had our 5th of 6 exams tonight. I actually studied for this one, but the man totally blew my plan. I studied our study guide, and the notes I took in class last week, and a few of the graphs from the four chapters that the exam covered. I did not, however, go online and study the bonus material that goes with our book. Apparently I should have. We usually have 60 questions on our exams, and this one was 72 questions. I made an 86. That’s a B. I suck.

Next Monday is the last night of class, and we have our last exam. It’s not a “final” or even a comprehensive exam, just one more multi-chapter quiz. Fortunately this one will only cover two chapters. Unfortunately it will only cover two chapters. Yeah yeah, I know what I said. But really, the ones with 60 questions cover enough material that you can miss “a few” and not fail. This quiz promises to have no more than 40 questions…so the pressure is on! I have poor study skills and I’m easily distracted. Have I ever mentioned that?

I also have really bad homework habits. Case in point, the rogerian argument that is due in English tomorrow. We’ve had this assignment for ummm, four weeks now…and I finished writing my essay TONIGHT!

Here’s the thing about English. My prof likes to push my buttons. He says I don’t try hard enough, and the assface keeps giving me B’s! Nevermind that he’s probably right. He’s supposed to be blinded by my fantastic vocabulary and brilliant writing style, and give me A’s simply for being the wittiest woman in class. So far that plan has failed. He says I have “more” in me and that I need to push myself a little.

So I used this damned rogerian argument as the time to push myself past what is usually comfortable, and it’s pretty much pissed me off. It irks me to write paragrpahs longer than 5 sentences, and the way he wants me to write, there’s just no way to cover everything I need to say, per paragraph, in 5 sentences. The man is making me change my style!

I had all my research done, notes made, and reams of printed materials for quotes etc…but I don’t focus when I’m at home. (Especially with the cats in heat, and it being 100freakingdegrees outside.) I also don’t focus while at the library, because I can’t seem to stop staring at all the pretty, artsy fartsy, happy people. So I did what any unpretty, unartsy fartsy, unhappy person would do…

I went to IHOP.

Oh yes I did.

All by myself!

And yes, I wrote a 6 page essay (handwritten on college rule, who knows how short it will be when I type it up tomorrow.) …and yes that assface better give me an A. Or I’m going to have the homeless guys at IHOP beat him up.

OH! And while I was at IHOP…I had what has to rank in the top 5 of Stephanie’s Most Embarrassing Moments. Should I write it here for my 3 readers to laugh at my mortification?

Okay, well, after I had my oatmeal and toast…and half a carafe of coffee, I had to pee. In my peripheral vision, I saw a mother letting her two little boys go into the restroom, so I went to the one across the hall. I have to say that I did notice the urinal, but I just thought “What a nice idea to put a urinal in the women’s bathroom, so that mothers can let their little boys go…” but by this time I was already in the stall, and was thinking I shouldn’t drink so much coffee…and then there were ugly feet next to the stall. Big feet. At the urinal.

Oh yes ladies, I was in the boys room.

This story can only get worse when I mention how I was stuck in the stall for more than 5 minutes because every man this side of the Red River obviously needed to pee in THAT urinal, and there was nofreakinway I was going to come out of there until the bathroom was EMPTY!

When I did finally stop laughing, I slipped quietly (read: hysterically laughing) from the men’s room to the women’s room to wash my hands and face. And hands again. And again. Ugh.

I took a good 5 minutes to compose myself, then went and found the mother that had taken her two sweet little boys to the ladies room and had totally thrown me off. We had a good laugh, and she said she was glad that it was me and not her, and “We’ve all done that….” (yeah, I bet she’s not done it twice. I have. The horror!)

Anyway, I’m not sure how I managed to pull my head back together after the bathroom incident, but I have to say that my writing was a bit improved after the laugh. I’ve been writing about Solitude and the Modern Man, and it’s actually turned out to be a bit depressing.

I’ll refrain from making jokes about solitude in the men’s room…and I’ll go to bed now. God I hope I don’t dream about ugly feet.