Tag Archives: aunt rikki

Everything is gonna be all right

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I’m missing my digital home already. I haven’t been writing there because I can’t talk about anything there. I don’t know exactly who reads my blog out of my family, but I feel as if I can’t say what I want. And that’s not good; the whole point in having a blog is so that I have a place to unload what’s on my mind. I usually don’t care who reads it, but now that my Aunt Rikki has fired me, I feel like it might be awkward if anyone in my family reads my thoughts.

I also haven’t been writing because I have to cancel my hosting, and it’s honestly kind of depressing. I’ve had my own sites for a few years now, and I can’t even afford the few dollars a month for that. I was already broke before Monday, but now I don’t have a job at all, and it’s pretty terrifying.

So, what happened? Basically, I couldn’t make it to a meeting scheduled for Wednesday the 26th. I told her the week before I might not be able to make it, and when I told her Monday the 24th I couldn’t make it for sure, she told me to find a new job. It’s pretty petty. I’ve ranted about it privately on my blog twice, and ranted about it to Mike a hundred times, so it’s mostly out of my system now. What’s bothering me is that I have to find a job now. I don’t want to be a web designer anymore, so I’m looking for something in retail, but the truth is, I don’t know what I want to do as a career now. So, identity crisis.

I also don’t feel like I can talk to my mom about this at all, since my aunt is her sister; I don’t want my mom to feel like she’s in the middle of it. And yet, I’d love to talk to her and get some advice. She is the person I most want to talk to about it… and yet my pride gets in the way. I’m also pretty angry at my aunt, who is pretty controlling and manipulative. I couldn’t make it to the meeting because Mike and I are sharing a car, and he had to work around the same time as the meeting. It just wouldn’t have worked. For her to be so petty about something so small — especially when the meeting was just to discuss what the client wanted from us, as opposed to us strategizing a marketing plan — is just ridiculous. She also said that I’ve done nothing for her, which burns me the worst because I quit my steady job to help her grow her business. I also brought a whole new set of skills to the business, without which she wouldn’t have half of the clients she has now.

So yes, I’m angry. Unfortunately, the anger is subsiding into depression, because for a long time I identified myself as a web designer. I hate being a web designer, but now I don’t know how to identify myself. It’s frustrating and confusing. And on top of that… I’m still broke. I’m going to wait another couple of weeks and call her to see if either of the two clients we’ve been expecting payment from have sent checks. Other than that, I don’t want to talk to her. I have nothing to say to her.

♦

I’ve regressed a little in the past week. I haven’t watched anime* since I was about seventeen, but I’ve become hooked on Nana. I have the first manga* volume and liked it, but didn’t continue reading it because that was around the time I grew out of manga and anime. But the anime is so good. It’s a shojo anime, meaning that the main characters are women and have problems that women have. I realized last night that I was hopeless because one of the episodes made me cry, then a few episodes later I was mad enough to yell at the laptop screen (but didn’t, since it was about two in the morning).

Basically, the show is about two girls who are both named Nana, who meet while on the train going to Tokyo. They end up becoming roommates. The older Nana is trying to make it as a professional musician, and is the vocalist for an underground punk band. The younger Nana — nicknamed Hachi — is a total trainwreck; she falls in love with pretty much every man she meets, and they usually end up being total assholes. I just finished watching the first season — the second season is yet to be made, since they’re waiting until the manga series is finished — and Hachi is knocked up, doesn’t know who the father is, and yet is going to marry the asshole because he has money to take care of the kid. I’m so mad. I wish she and Nobu would get it together. I guess I’m going to have to read the manga now — you know, when I find a job.

♦

In sicky news, my GI system is having a field day (as usual). A couple of days ago, I ended up pretty sick with bad diarrhea. Last night and today, I’m slightly constipated. This is nothing new, but I still bitch about it. Usually, it happens the other way around; first I’ll be constipated, then I’ll get the opposite. Both are almost always accompanied by bad stomach aches.

♦

Mike and I are doing well, I guess. I feel guilty that he’s taking care of me right now, but even if I protest, he insists. He keeps making jokes about me being unemployed, though, which at first didn’t bother me but are now chipping away at my already fragile mental state; I think I’ve had a mini-breakdown every day since Monday night, when she fired me.

But my other aunt** is right; I shouldn’t let her words affect how I feel about myself.  I’ve got to keep my head high, and keep looking at this as an opportunity for me to do anything I want. I can even go back to school if I want***. For now, my goal for this month — and probably next month**** — is to find a job with lots of hours. Mike and I want to move into our own apartment by the spring or summer. Hopefully, I’ll figure out everything else soon.

*Anime is Japanese cartoons, and manga is Japanese comics.

**My dad’s sister, my Aunt Wendy.

***If only I could stop doubting my wants.

****Please, please let me find a job before the end of February.

Just another Thanksgiving list

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As much as I’ve been whining lately, I have a lot to be thankful for.

I have two sweet cats (even though they aren’t so sweet to each other). I have a printer that does print (even though it is mentally challenged), and a laptop, both of which I use to write stories. Which reminds me — I am thankful that I have the ability to put my thoughts and feelings and imagination into words.

I have an awesome sister who is my best friend, and an awesome best friend who is like a sister. I have a beautiful family: my mom, dad, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I have a boyfriend who fits me completely.

I also have a mouth, which can taste and chew and eat (pleasepleaseplease let 2:00 tomorrow come quickly)! I have a body that may be diseased, but does allow me — roadblocks and all — to do what I love , and I am so thankful for that.

I have a great group of friends, both online and offline. I have a job that, although it can be stressful, I love, and allows me to work from home, during my own hours. I am so thankful that I don’t have to get up early in the morning, that I can work in my pajamas or sweats, and take as many breaks as I want, so that I can rest when I need to.

I have a beautiful niece and beautiful godchildren.

I have so much good in my life that, when I lump it all together, it far outweighs the bad.

And that is what I’m most thankful for.

What are you thankful for?

Hooray! My laptop is alive!

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Whew.

My laptop — lovingly referred to as my baby, since I am lame like that — has been repeatedly crashing over the last… couple of months. I know, I know; I should have had someone look at it the second it started. But I thought it would be something really serious and I’d have to dish out a couple hundred bucks to fix it. This doesn’t make sense, at all, but here we are.

This week, it literally did it three times a day — every day. Normally, when it crashed, I’d get a blue screen with a bunch of error messages on it for just a couple of seconds, and then it’d reboot itself. I couldn’t read fast enough to see what the error messages were saying, so I couldn’t even have Sandy look at it, who is super good with computers. At one point yesterday, it got stuck on a black screen, and I thought that was really it. When it crashed for the third time in three or four hours, my aunt announced that there was no way I was working like that anymore, she was calling the IT guy who had fixed her computer months earlier, and that I could pay her back when I next got paid.

Part of me was kind of afraid that it couldn’t be fixed. I wasn’t at all worried about leaving my laptop with a stranger; he works for a reputable local company, and my aunt’s brother-in-law is friends with him. (Did I mention that my uncle is a cop? That’s insurance enough for me!) He also fixed my aunt’s laptop, like I said, and it runs just like new now.

My aunt let me borrow her extra laptop so that I could continue working, and I packed my baby up and gave her — him? — to the nice IT. Let me tell you, it is so weird working on someone else’s laptop. Everything is different, and I’m stuck with Internet Explorer, and the keyboard is completely different from mine. (Read: If there are typos in this, it’s not my fault.) Luckily, the IT — his name is Mike, so I’ll call him IT Mike — fixed it literally overnight, and my uncle picked it up tonight as he went into work… Which means that I’ll have her back tomorrow! And, ladies and gentlemen, IT Mike only charged $50 to fix it!

She didn’t have a virus like we thought she might. I guess there were a bunch of temporary files, cookies, and of course McAfee and Spyware Doctor butting heads, so he cleaned all of that out and installed an antivirus called Vipre for me. Supposedly my baby is running like a clock, so I’m excited to see how fast she is compared to the other day.

Even better, I can do some writing when I get her back. I have tons of ideas for stories, and hate writing by hand, so right now they’re just simmering in my head.

My laptop may be a Gateway and she may have evil Windows Vista, but she’s like an extra limb. (I should probably stop referring to it as “she.”) I work with her, write with her, share my life (via blogging) with her, and she was one of the first big things I bought completely on my own when I was still a teenager. We’ve been together for five years. It might sound silly, but that laptop is a huge part of me. (Maybe I should just go all the way crazy and name her.)

In the meantime, I have a website project due for completion like, oh, tomorrow, so I have to get back to work. How is your week going?

My take on cake — the special birthday edition!

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Noni likes to celebrate her birthday throughout the entire month, and she’s always encouraged me to do so, too. So… Welcome to my birthday month!

As of today, I have twenty-seven days left of being 21. (My birthday is the 28th.) I don’t really have any wishes, yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something. Honestly, for some reason I’d rather skip 22 and go right to 23, but I guess I should be excited that I’ll no longer get that, “Aww, she’s just turned legal” look when I show ID at the bar, right?

I should probably at least make plans for the big day. The 28th itself is the day my sister Lauren goes away to college, so any plans will be minus her. Which I guess is okay, since those plans will most likely involve a bar of some sort, which she can’t go to just yet anyway. (Although, now that I think about it, she could go… She just can’t drink*.) Apparently my mom’s side of the family has decided to do all summer birthday parties as beach days instead, so I’ll probably end up having a cake with my dad’s side of the family, too.

Speaking of cake, here’s my take on the stuff. Regular cake is lame, unless it’s Costco or BJ’s, or if it’s the recipe I got while in tech school. It just doesn’t do it for me. I don’t understand why so many people love cake so much. BUT, ice cream cake is another thing entirely. Ice cream, as you probably know by now, is my crack. In fact, I have a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream in my freezer at this very moment, waiting for me to take it out and get personal. Now, take ice cream, put some of that frosting on it, and add those Oreo crumbs in the mix? You’ve got me. However, I hate chocolate ice cream**, so I usually eat that part first and save the good stuff — the vanilla and cookie crumblies — for last.

Obviously, you can’t take an ice cream cake to the beach, but as long as Aunt Rikki or Mom makes that salsa, cheese, and bean dip and someone brings Tostitos, I’ll be happy***.

I want to try to go away for a weekend with Mike, but who knows if he’ll be able to get away. Things are so complicated right now, for everyone. I just have to hang on to some hope, and a beer****.

*Which would come in handy if she had her license; I’d have a reliable designated driver!

**Chocolate ice cream and regular chocolate are NOT the same. End of story.

***Of course, some kind of alcohol will have to be involved, too, like Heineken. I think my favorite beer would go quite nicely with that dip****.

****I swear I’m not an alcoholic, but I am doing my best to work my way up there*****.

*****Please don’t yell at me, Mom. I’m just joking again.

Office supply high

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My aunt and I get really excited about office supplies. This is one of the reasons we work so well together. To us, a trip to Staples is like a kid’s trip to Toys R Us. New Post-its, Sharpies, notepads, and tape make us entirely too happy. So tonight, when I go shopping for a printer that I’ve waited four years for, the office supplies high will be intoxicating.

Ah, Staples.

I have finally started on that series of short stories I wrote about two years ago. I mean, I started a couple of them around that time, but never really got into them and never wrote much beyond a couple of paragraphs. Right now, I’m working on a story that I dreamed a few nights ago. I’ve only ever written a story based on a dream I had once, and never finished that story. This story is starting to look like it might end up a novella, though, so I’m going to have to be really careful.

I’ve decided that this series is going to be a series of six stories (instead of ten), all about six different characters living in Tent City — which was a section in the woods behind the railroad tracks near where I work where homeless people lived in tents. I read a newspaper article about it two years ago, and was fascinated by the idea of it. Supposedly, according to the article, the city ordered Tent City dispersed, but there was never anything else about it in the paper (that I saw, anyway). I have no idea whether it still exists or what became of the people living there, but it definitely lives on in my imagination. Reading about Tent City made me realize just how big of a homeless population we have here in Waterbury. I truly hope HUD helped these people like they said they might in that article.

My plan for these stories is to submit them to different writing contests so that I can build up credibility, and then take them to an agent to have them published as a book. When I was doing research for grants and fellowships, I read a testimonial from a woman who had done the same thing, using the grants to fund her submissions. I’m not sure I’ll actually get a grant at this point, but I think what she did was pretty smart, so I’m going to mimic her and hope for the best.

Aside from doing a little writing and making plans regarding my writing, I’ve been thinking about buying a bike. Most likely it’ll be a mountain bike, and I’ll probably ride it around my neighborhood because there are no close bike paths, and I don’t have a bike rack (nor do I feel like buying one and attaching it to my car). I’m thinking the bike will be an incentive to get outside and get moving, because:

  • I used to really like biking when I was younger, especially the summer I spent with my uncle in an Amish town. Lauren, Mindy, and I biked on this path out to this huge, beautiful field every day. There’s nothing like that here, but I still miss biking.
  • It’s exercise that doesn’t involve me trying to talk myself into running. I ran once, and never again, because I couldn’t talk myself into doing something that hard again.
  • If I spend $100 on a bike, I will have to use it, or else I’ll feel guilty and will be mad at myself for a long time for wasting that money. I can say, “Self, you just spent $100 on that bike, so you’d better get the fuck up from in front of the computer and GO RIDE IT!”*

Makes sense, right?

Tomorrow is my last day at work before my vacation starts, and Friday I’m hopefully going to the beach with my aunt and a few other people in our family. We’re going to create a social media marketing schedule for one of our clients while we get some sun, that way we can have a beach day and have a schedule ready for our intern to take over while I am on vacation.

Friday is also the day that my cousin Mindy comes from Pennsylvania. She’ll be visiting for a little over a week. I’m so excited!

So tell me, is there anything coming up that you’re excited about?

*Yeah, I talk to myself — entirely too much, actually.