Up at 6am
At work by 7:15
Who did I piss off?
Twelve hour workdays
I’m getting too old for this
Also too lazy
Broccoli and rum
Don’t tell me that they don’t make
A balanced dinner
Damn it workplaces
Stop giving me free candy
My butt is a shelf
Although I complain
Life is pretty good right now
Just need to add sleep
Last night, returning from another 13 hour work day, I tried to open my front door with the little button on my keychain that unlocks my car.
Yeah. Didn’t work.
Actually, the drivers here are more like driving zombies who are doing their decayed hair, drinking brainaccinos and moaning, “Braaaains…” into their cellphones while they swerve zombily all over the road.
I need a Halloween costume! It needs to be wittily hilarious. Or poignantly sexy. Or classically gauche. Or all or none of the above.
Apparently everyone at my new office dresses up for Halloween. And there’s a chili cookoff! Awesome, right? Except now the pressure is on. It’s my time to shine! And I don’t think I can go as Sarah Palin as I’d planned, because it might be a little more provocative than I am really ready to deal with after less than a month on the job.
A sexy nurse? An unconventionally attractive nurse, but there’s just something about her? A tank? A bunch of grapes? I’m at a loss. And I have ten days.
On North Carolina drivers: They’re not that good at driving.
Highway driving in North Carolina is like being surrounded by Intro Dance students who are all wearing floppy clown shoes and standing waist-deep in water. There is something magical about their clumsy, dangerous ballet of tailgating, sudden stops and abrupt lane changes.
So far, though, I like driving here. Because I’m not a particularly good driver, either, so I fit in. I feel like have returned to the motherland of Bad Driving.
And yes, I know that Massachusetts also has a lot of bad drivers. They’re worse here.
My posting might be a little disconnected or crazy-like over the next couple of weeks. I am starting a new job, and, because life is hilarious like that, will be working a different, temporary job in the evenings at the same time for the first two weeks of new job. Excitinggg! Wish me luck.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have found myself wandering down Bloodworth street at 9:30pm, clutching a laptop in my arms (didn’t think to put it in a carrying case, of course), and searching for the parking lot where I’d left my car. Another girl from the meeting I had been at had offered to walk me part of the way, and when we’d parted, I had been sure that my car was in a lot around the corner. But apparently, it had since become a school. And the neighborhood had become dark, and empty.
“I’ll be fine,” I thought, walking rapidly up and down the eerily silent streets, squinting into the darkness. “God protects drunks and children. Last night I was drunk, and now I’m acting like a child.”
A couple of guys shouted at me from across the street. “You having a good time?” they yelled.
I said “Maybe.”
I was reminded of the nights I used to stumble home at 4am through the dark backstreets of Honolulu in a miniskirt and flip flops, usually talking on my cellphone (it was still 10pm on the Mainland!). I remembered getting lost coming home from CBGB in lower Manhattan in high-school, feeling unusually frightened and vulnerable in fishnets and army boots.
Brian and I have occasionally butted heads about what I consider to be his overprotectiveness. I’ll call him as I’m walking home from somewhere late at night, and he’ll splutter, “I can’t believe you’re out this late by yourself! Get a cab right now!” That’s also my mother’s mantra. “Don’t take the subway home if you leave the party late,” she told me, night after night. “Just take a cab.” I loathed spending the money, and — I know this is sad– doing the math to calculate a tip. I just really hate math, particularly money-related math, under pressure. And I like walking. So I rarely take cabs.
In Honolulu a friend was furious when he found out that I frequented a certain sketchy downtown bar without him. “You go to the Hideaway by yourself?” he exploded. “Please don’t ever go to that place without me.” I was indignant. “I’ll go anywhere I want to go by myself,” I said, feeling resentful. I knew he spoke out of a desire to protect me; that he didn’t mean to imply that I was incapable of taking care of myself. He trusted me; it was the rest of the world he didn’t trust. But still.
Sometimes it feels like there is a fine line between independence and self-reliance, and using common sense to avoid putting yourself in certain situations. On the one hand, you don’t want to spend your life being afraid. On the other hand, strolling around late at night in an unfamiliar neighborhood clutching a laptop is not really a recipe for safety. Maybe I need to work harder at finding that balance.
I took him for a run, and he sounded like he was tap dancing.
It pains me to say this, but Fred Astaire, he is not.
“The only down side to this temp job I have for you,” the agent said over the phone, “is that you have to pay for parking.” She added that there were certain residential streets I should be able to find parking on– one of them had the word “Blood” in the name. Eep.
I decided to park in a garage for my first day at the job. There was one right around the corner and it was $8 for the whole day. Granted, when you’re making little more than that per hour, it’s a little sad to think about how during one of the hours that you are doing data entry, it’s for the priviledge of parking your car around the corner. The next day, I figured, I’d check out those residential streets.
The next day I did manage to find street parking– it was a ten minute walk to the office, which apparently, is an almost unfathomable distance.
“You parked WHERE?” more than one person said. (Parking is a hot topic of discussion an office full of temps who have to find it). “That’s so far away!” Several people also added, “I never park on the street. I just…wouldn’t do it.”
This left me seized with panic. I love my little car. Ours is a new relationship, but so far it is strong. On my lunch break I scurried back to the parking spot to make sure my car was not on fire or missing doors.
It looked fine to me. The neighborhood also looked fine. It was not the nicest part of town, but, I thought to myself, it was nicer than any neighborhood I have ever lived in since leaving home. I don’t know what everyone is talking about, I thought. My car will be fine.
Several conversations about not parking on the street later, I was less sure again. “I’ve heard that if you leave the building after 7pm, you’re supposed to ask for someone to escort you to your car if it’s in certain neighborhoods,” several people told me. I became alarmed. After all, I am new to this city. There’s a lot I have to learn about Raleigh. Perhaps my attitude so far has been a little on the cavalier side.
What if my car is being broken into…RIGHT NOW? I began to panic. What if my GPS unit is being stolen…AS I SIT HERE ENTERING DATA? I would never find my way home– or anywhere else again, for that matter.
At 6:15 I shot out of work and sped toward where my car was parked, noting with apprehension that it WAS in kind of a shabby neighborhood, now that it was getting late and dark.
When I reached it, my car was surrounded by flashing police cruisers. Although it was fine, the vehicles that had collided on the now almost empty street where I had parked were not fine. Not only that, but there was inexplicably a giant pile of horse droppings in the middle of that street. I hadn’t seen a single horse in Raleigh since I’d been there. I took it as a sign.
Back to the garage.
I Heard Tell 