Back from the dead.

Well, hello! Long time, no post. I've been meaning to start writing on here again and I just end up doing something else. But tonight, I was out for beers with a friend, and we decided we should create a few goals and stick with them. Here are my goals.

1. Write a blog post at least three times a week.
2. Join a gym and work out at least three times a week.
3. Drink less (this needs to be improved on as a goal).

So I'm gonna do my damnedest to stick to those. I need some sort of way to busy myself all the time to avoid dealing with life. I'm beginning to feel stagnant again. For awhile, I had distractions by way of Zach. But I don't have that anymore. Which makes me realize that Fargo isn't the place for me and this life I'm trying to build for myself isn't going to work out here. Until I can move away, though, I need to find ways to avoid getting sucked into hopeless situations. Namely, I need to stop pretending things with Zach are going to become anything more than they are now, which is nothing. Less than nothing, really.

Toffee isn't too impressed with my faces.

Anyway, quick update on my life. It has been, like, two years since I blogged. John and I broke up. I had my fallopian tubes removed. I'm still living in Fargo. I got a dog! She is probably the best thing that has happened to me in a considerable amount of time. Her name is Toffee aka Toffmonster and she is so wonderful. I have changed jobs a few times and am currently the office manager of Spotlight Media, although I want to apply for a web editor position there. I'm feeling more and more disheartened each day, though, so I don't foresee that as part of my future.

I want to plan an adventure for myself. I need to get outta Fargo. I'm thinking Chicago for a weekend would be nice. I've never really traveled by myself, so that'll be its own adventure. I just need to break out of this funk that I've been in for, fuck, like, nine months. I feel like the last nine months have been a blur of drunken shenanigans and stupid drama.

I need something more. I can't keep living like this.

Apparently it's time for an update!

I always forget I have a blog...

Anyway, I'm at work right now. It's a conference day so that means I really have nothing to do. No kiddos to tutor, nothing. I spent my day updating my resume and applying for jobs. And right now, I'm procrastinating applying for an internship with The Stranger by updating my blog. I'm debating if I should send a link to this blog when I apply for that internship. I think this is a pretty accurate representation of me, both my writing style and my lifestyle, so I'm thinking I will.

So what has been happening in the last, like, nine months? Not a whole lot. Still with John. Still serving in AmeriCorps. Still don't know what I'm doing with my life. That part is a little stressful. I'm trying to just take life as it comes, though. No need to worry about things since they're gonna happen regardless.

My dad is in some trouble with the law. That's been freaking me out for awhile. I found out about that in, like, October? I think. And it's still going on. But both him and my mama are optimistic things will work out and the charges will be dismissed. I'm hoping so too. She told me his next court date, but I can't remember.

John is working in Lakewood and he's hopefully being trained as a manager for the next store they open. If I can get a job here doing something cool and that I like, we might be sticking around. If not, we'll be packing up and moving back to Fargo. I'm feeling conflicted about that. I really like it here, but I do miss home and all the wonderful shiz the Midwest has to offer. Plus family and all that jazz. I've made some pretty keen friends here, though. And I'm pretty terrible at that whole long distance friendship thing, so I'm scared to move away. Eep. Life.

Only other thing to update is this: I'm thinking about dyeing my hair red. Some people are supportive, others are concerned. My supervisor told me I should do, like, a dark brown with red underneath or some sort of ombre-type thing. I just need something new in my life. And I haven't dyed my hair since high school, so why not? I guess we'll see!

Well, that's about all to update. It's kinda ridiculous that the last nine months of my life haven't given me very much to write about. Oh well! Maybe I'll blog again sooner than the last. Maybe...

Rawr! I wish I was a dinosaur.

Hello! Long time, no post. :)

Since I've been MIA so long, lemme give you a quick recap of the last few months:

January - John and I moved into a new house. From day one, it's been pretty shitastic. It was pretty okay at first, but the house is so petty and juvenile. I've been seriously miserable.We've had to take care of our housemate's dog because he's a selfish, inconsiderate, narcissistic hunk of shit. I hate him. Truly and with every fiber of my being, I hate that man.

February - Same shit continued. Our gas/electricity might've been shut off this month. I can't remember. It's happened/almost happened a few times since we've lived in this house. It's pretty ridiculous. Paying bills on time is a challenge for some people, I guess.

March - Uhhh. Same shit. One of our housemates who we were originally cool with went to the dark side. It might've been this month. I think it was. She's kinda two-faced, so it's been interesting with her.

April - John's brother came to visit! Highlight of my time living in this house, for sure. I love Jeremy. I wish he could live with us. However, his visit led to some more unnecessary drama in the house. I don't care, though. It was so awesome having him here.

May - John and I started looking for a new place to live! We wanted to move either to Seattle or Tacoma, depending on the cost. It was stressful.

This might've been the month John let me play with Audrey. I can't remember. In either instance, it was a bad idea. John doesn't like me playing with others, even when he says he's cool with it. However, I am perfectly okay with him doing it. In fact, I encourage it.We've been looking into having threesomes and other somes. It's pretty exciting!

June - Here we are now, and John and I are moving to Tacoma at the end of the month. I just got an email today from someone who's possibly interested in moving in. I already feel bad for them, but hopefully two months won't kill them. And there's speculation that Martin will be moving out before the lease is up, so they may not have to suffer with him, only Christina.

Throughout all of this, my school has been awesome. I'm staying here through the summer to help out with summer school even though my contract is up on July 11. It's gonna be stressful and tricky since John and I will be in Tacoma and I don't drive and the bus system in Tacoma is kinda dumb. But we'll make it work. And the people we're moving in with seem way chill and much saner. So that'll be nice.

John and I have been having some issues, which kinda scare me since we're moving into a new house. He found out I slept with some dude back in October, so he's been more interested in going through my phone lately. It really sucks. We had a pretty bad night last night, so I'm not sure where we're headed. Maybe we won't move out? I don't know. I guess we'll find out.

On a less serious note, I wish I was a dinosaur. If I was, I'd want to be an apatosaurus or one of those cute little ones that attacked that little girl in Jurassic Park (I think it was the second movie). I'd totally terrorize people if I was one of them. If not, I'd probably just chill, eat leaves and whatnot. Life would be so simple.

Liiiiiiiife.

Alright. So if I had written this earlier today, it would be a completely different update. However, I didn't. So this is what you get.

I haven't updated since I started at my site [if my memory is right]. A lot has happened, but at the same time, not much has changed. I still love my job. Working with kiddos is amazing. I really enjoy going to work each day. And I changed my schedule, so I'm working with even more kids [something like 80 now]. I get to interact with many more than that, but I'm documenting 80. And I'm working with three kindergarten classes now. I love love love kindergarteners. So cute.

As for my personal life, shit's crazy. John moved here on Nov. 6. I should give you the entire low down about us as of late. In order to do that, we gotta travel back in time. So while John was in Australia, after I came back from visiting, we decided to have an open relationship. Srsly bad idea. [In hindsight, I'd say we basically broke up. At least, that's how I feel about it. Clearly, neither one of us gave a shit about the other's feelings, so that's pretty much being broken up, right?] Anyway, this decision was made and it was shit from the start. I started playing around with the idea of hooking up with other people pretty much right when I got to Washington. I'll admit, I was being really selfish. So some stuff happened.

Jump to my birthday, and John gave me permission to hook up with this couple. So I did, but I broke some ground rules John had set. As a result, John wanted to end our open relationship, be exclusive, but still have the chance to fuck other women to punish me and feel like it was fair [or some bullshit. I don't even know.]. Oh, also, before the couple thing happened, John had made out with this woman Carolina. And I wasn't comfortable with their friendship because it was clear that she liked him, but he kept seeing her anyways, although he kept telling me nothing was going on besides that they had made out a few more times, once after the couple incident [and he said he felt guilty].

Fast forward to shortly before he is to move here. He hid from me that he was still talking to women online. One of these women is Skye. He became FB friends with her, so I just asked who she was, and it came out that he had been talking to her. That's it.

However, that wasn't it. Because he told me later that they had hung out and whatever. He told me this while still in Australia, and since John had never lied to me before, I assumed he was being honest.

Big mistake. So he moves here, and despite what he told me, I still wasn't feeling that he was being totally honest. I don't know. He lied to me once about Skye, why wouldn't he lie to me again? So one morning, I had this terrible idea to creep on his iPod, since I knew he was logged onto FB. And that's when I found out that Skye had given him head. I confronted him about it, and he told me that that was all it was. And even though I still was skeptical, I believed him. Because why would he continue to lie when he was so clearly caught?

Well, apparently, that seemed like a good idea, because he did lie to me. Turns out, he fucked Skye and Carolina, and he wouldn't have told me if I hadn't been a psycho and creeped on his email and FB. To be honest, I didn't really care that he did that. I mean, whatever. But I was upset because he kept talking to Skye once he got here. Like, telling her how hot she was and that he'd date her and accepting pictures from her. All sorts of bullshit. That hurt a lot. I mean, like. Why does he need to be talking to another girl when he is living with me? Am I not enough? I was srsly hurt.

To be fair, I wasn't completely honest with him either. The dude from that couple, Tony, and I hooked up once and I didn't tell John. I told him everything that happened with Tony, and I thought that that was that, and we were gonna start being completely honest with one another. But then today, I asked him if he had been talking to Skye [which I wouldn't like, but I wouldn't keep him from doing]. He told me no and got all defensive. So being the crazy person that I am, I snooped again on his FB. And he had been talking to her. Or has been. Whatever. And instead of just being honest when I asked him about it again, he acted all stupid. Bah.

So now he's sleeping on the couch. This trivial shit is trivial. I wanna punch him. And it sucks because I don't trust him, but we're supposed to be moving in to Jade's place soon. Fuck.

Anyway. That's that. I'm done for now. I don't wanna talk to him or deal with him. It all just makes me nauseous.

And I wouldn't have typed all this, but today's training was about emotional intelligence, and Miss Debbie McGee said journaling for five minutes would be good. So blogging is my form of that, and this is a no-holds-barred forum. So if you want sugarcoating, go somewhere else.

-Laura

Americorps Training: Day 1 [plus two weeks of Tacoma, compact style!]

So today was the first day of Americorps training. Before I jump into that, I feel like I should describe the last two weeks so I can accurately describe my feelings going into training today. So with that...

Well, in case you missed the memo, I went to Australia just a minute ago. And I had the bright idea to fly back from Australia on a Sunday and leave for Tacoma on a Tuesday, arriving here that Thursday [two weeks ago]. Not my smartest plan, but let's be real: Australia was probably on the lower side of the list of genius things I've done in my short life. Anyway! I arrived here two weeks ago, and since then, I've been struggling with trying to get on a "normal" sleep schedule [at least normal for me]. As it stands, I've been going to sleep anywhere between two and eight in the morning and sleeping until eleven or one each day. Since training started today and goes from eight to fiveish, I'm trying to tweak that, without much success so far. I went to sleep last night [technically this morning] around 1:30 and fell asleep around 2:30, only to get up at 6:50. And that only added to the anxiety I had going into training. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, I arrived on Thursday morning and pretty much slept all day. Then on Friday, my awesome roommate Taylor took me to experience Seattle's very own Hempfest. I gotta say, that was probably the best introduction I could've had. It was awesome. I got to see a variety of people and see a chunk of Seattle. It was good. That weekend was pretty quiet, I don't even remember what I did. Probs nothing. WAIT! I got lost. On Sunday, I believe. In a park about 15 minutes from my house. I went to check out the beach, walked on a random path and got spit out into a residential neighborhood [that turned out to be private, so I was technically trespassing]. It was awesome. I saw a goat farm, too!

Then on Monday, I had plans to go to the Atmosphere show in Seattle. Well, originally, Taylor was going to go with me, but then she had to work, so I was going to go alone. Instead, I creeped on Craigslist and found another lonesome hip hop fan who was going and asked if he wanted company. He said yes, so I had a buddy! Then Monday came, and Taylor and I went to the Americorps office to pick up paperwork to get food assistance. I went into the office wearing a tank top, sporting my 8g septum ring, showing all my tattoos. Typical Laura, right? I didn't think anything of it. So Taylor and I got our paperwork and went to the DSHS in Tacoma. Well, we sat around waiting for our names to be called, and while waiting, my boss lady called. I didn't answer since I didn't recognize the number, but I listened to the voicemail and decided I'd call after we were done at DSHS. Well, my boss lady then called Taylor's phone to get the message to me that she absolutely HAD to meet me that day. I was a little freaked out, but naturally assumed it was because of my appearance. Anyway, we stayed at DSHS to get our food stamps, but we got hungry so we left to get lunch. While gone, they called our names [of course]. So we ended up not getting food stamps that day and had to come back the following Wednesday. And by this point, I had decided not to go to Atmosphere since I wouldn't be able to catch the bus and make it to Seattle before the show started. However, my buddy said he'd drive to Tacoma from Seattle to pick me up, so I was stoked!

So we left DSHS and went to the office so I could meet Monda. I was super nervous since I had never met Monda in person. Well, I had reason to be nervous. She wanted to meet me because two of the office ladies had been dismayed [to say the least] about my appearance when I came to the office. They had found it disrespectful and were surprised I'd come to the office like that. So I got a nice lecture about professionalism and all this other stuff. I was none too pleased, but I understood where they were coming from [to a point]. Anyway, that kinda put a damper on my mood. But I was going to see Atmosphere [and PROF!] so I was staying positive. The show was amazing. Will [my buddy] and I got to meet Evidence and Slug before the show, and we got to meet Prof, Evidence and Blueprint after. It was sooo amazing meeting Prof. Srsly. I'm in love with him. I'd let him have my babies any day. Then a bunch of awkwardness ensued after that. I have a problem with meeting new people off the interwebz. So I had planned to meet this guy after the show on Capitol Hill, and that turned out to be a terrible idea and it was supes awkward. He kept trying to, like, feel me up kinda so eventually, I had to send out an SOS to another guy I had been talking to [Jonathan] and he came to rescue me. Thankfully. It was super weird and a crazy night.

On Wednesday, Taylor and I went back to DSHS and I got food stamps so we went grocery shopping at Trader Joe's, which was awesome since I had pretty much been living on generic Captain Crunch. Jonathan and I also went to this vegan restaurant that was okay. He came over Friday and made dinner too. It was delicious. From then until today, I haven't been doing much. I met another random dude off the internet that also turned out to be crazy awkward and did some messed up stuff that caused drama with John and I and that's about it. And I've been stressing a little about this program. Since my meeting with Monda, I had been thinking, like, what if this was a huge mistake? What if this program is totally wrong for me and I hate it and I'm miserable? I was super anxious about going to training, even though I had previously been super excited about it. It was kinda dreadful.

Then I went into training today. And it was AMAZING! Everyone was super warm and friendly and awesome. It was a little overwhelming, but I think that's always to be expected on the first day of anything new. It was really great though. I made a new friend right away, Charlene, who is a returner and I expect to be good friends with her throughout my time. And Monda told me I could wear 3/4-sleeved shirts for the rest of training [today was business casual, which is the required attire for service in the schools], so that was awesome. I have a really good feeling about this now.

In other news, I'm kinda super worried about my relationship with John. LDR never work out well for me [or at least the one time I was in one, I fucked up royally], so I'm scared. Plus, we keep bouncing back and forth on this open relationship issue, so it's causing a lotta anxiety and tension. It sucks a lot. I'm not sure what to do about it. However, assuming we stay together until June, we're planning to go on a road trip in July once I'm done serving with Harry [Australian friend!]. Let's hope that happens.

Other little details I forgot: Taylor has the most amazing family ever. We went to her house Tuesday for a quick minute and they were awesome. Her mom was trying to feed me even though she didn't quite understand my veganism and her dad acted like we knew each other. Taylor and her mom even gave me clothes they didn't want, which is awesome. Raynai and Tim [my other roommates] are sweet too! I feel like all of us are super different, but I think somehow we're gonna work well together. My house is super cool, too. It's kinda in the boonies, but it's a really nice house with a really nice view [creep my FB pictures]. And I'm hoping to be placed at an elementary school nearby, so I'd only have to walk 2.5 miles each way. Oh, and I'm trying to lose some weight. Becoming vegan helped me trim some excess fat, but I'm trying to get even slimmer. We'll see how that goes. John has given me a workout schedule but I don't know if it's a feasible one. I finally unpacked on Tuesday, too. I ordered some shelves and a wall decal, but it's pretty sweet. I'll have to take pictures once it's completely finished. And I'm hoping to blog, like, daily or at least weekly with updates about training and life in general. Maybe if I do it more regularly, I won't write little novellas every time I blog. Maybe.