Coffeebration

This is basically a sequel to the last rant. I’m just not happy this time of year.

This morning I awoke to the ringing of my doorbell. Expecting it to be my stupid landlord coming over to yell about something I sighed and opened the door. Since cave-dwellers are not used to sunlight, I was immediately blinded by a burst of sunshine … oh and this cute guy. So he was asking me if he could bring over a big orange extension cord so they could vacuum their apartment. They are moving in today and have no electricity. Being the nice person I am, I offered him one of my outlets to do his stuff. I think he is the same guy who was there last year, but who knows … they all look the same to me. Standard tall, muscular guy with nice brown hair, sporting a shirt. They’re everywhere. Blah, I may have called him cute, but that is about it. Yes, he is appealing to look at, but so is Cheers. And after a while everything just looks the same. If I ever saw him walking down the street, I wouldn’t recognize him most likely. Anyways, my point is that last year the people who lived next door had parties all the time. When the weather was nice, they would party out on the balcony which is above my apartment and slightly to the left. The balcony can’t be more than 5′ by 5′ but they managed to squeeze at least 30 people out on that balcony. I often wished it would just come crashing down once and for all and it all be over. So I’d wake up the next morning to find at least 2 or 3 smashed beer bottles waiting for me outside my front door. Lovely. One morning one of the guys was out there actually sweeping up the bottles and he apologized to me. That was only one time though. The other times, the bottles just sat there because I don’t have a broom. I have a vacuum and a swiffer, and neither are going to be sacrificed for some broken shards of glass that some stupid drunk people dropped off the balcony. Anyways, I’m sure my landlord is going to come over any minute and yell at me for letting someone else use “HIS” electricity. I live in a big house, but my landlord only owns my half of it. The other half is owned by some rich wannabe hotshot who drives an Orange hummer and doesn’t care that his tenants throw garbage everywhere and make this place even more miserable to live in. Under the balcony next door there is like a little backyard. I can’t get to the backyard because there is a fence up. Anyways, they throw all their stuff off the balcony and it looks like a mini-landfill over there. The basement door over there has been broken for almost a year and there are probably stray animals living in it. There is also a mattress that has been sitting out there since I moved in, a few tires, and some other random junk. And on top of that, my old refrigerator is now just laying out in the parking lot/ alley. I should really file a complaint. Oakland needs to be condemned.

I used to look forward to Friday’s because that meant that I probably only had one class and then I had the whole weekend to study for tests, which of course never took place until late on Sunday night. Now that I am a college graduate with no intentions of ever going back to school I look forward to Friday’s as the last day of the week. No more work until Monday morning. No studying or homework to be done over the weekend … now I can just relax and do whatever I want! Plus I have more money so if I want to go shopping or take a trip to Madagascar, I can! It is so nice not to be in school anymore. I don’t envy any of the college kiddies moving in this week. Not a bit.

I watch them with their parents, moving carts of stuff down the street. The parents are freaking out and its just way too much. I guess it is an exciting experience for a college freshman, but I’ve been there and done that and don’t ever want to again. Perhaps the reason would be that, if I count all of the times I have moved my crap, from home to school, back home, back to school, from one apartment to the next … well then I have moved 9 times so far which seems like a lot of moving for someone, who afterall is not even a quarter of a century old! It wasn’t like I was getting evicted and carrying my stuff around in a sack on a stick, seeking shelter. I had loads of crap that required a Uhaul and moving so many times was a result of leases ending, roommates abandoning me, me abandoning roommates, going home for summer jobs, moving away for summer jobs, coming home after the summer jobs, and moving back to school for a new school year. And I would like to move right now, away from the garbage and annoying children, but my apartment is cheap and I have zero motivation to move.

Anyways, I’m rambling about this, of course, because I live in a college neighborhood. In fact, I live about a block away from some of the college dorms. In the summer, it is peaceful here, but as soon as the school year begins, it gets nasty. So everyone is moving in … or moving out. I think the garbage men have gone on strike. I would go on strike too if I knew I had to pick up all this crap around here during the beginning of the school year. On my walk this morning, I was attacked by flies. The streets are lined with old cardboard boxes, chairs, couches, tables, broken beer bottles, and rotting food. The August heat only makes the smell worse. And I frequently complain about trash …. but this trash is trash on top of that trash. Oakland is turning into a landfill. The other morning I opened my door and a flying candy bar wrapper flew right by and stuck to my door. Pretty soon I’ll be buried in trash. So if you are walking on top of the mounds of dirt, trash, and stink around here and see a leg or arm sticking out of the trash …. be kind and pull me out. I’d be ever so grateful.

According to Julie I’m a garbage lady. That is nice of her to say about her friend. She could have called me scrappy or resourceful, but instead I’m referred in words that just don’t describe me. Garbage? No, I might be messy but I’m not all about garbage. Garbage attracts flies and I do not. Lady? Ladies are proper, prim, and I think of ladies as old. Like old lady. I’m a girl. Nobody says old girl. And I’ll never be old so I’ll never be a lady. Obviously I’m bored. Todd threw me to the side of the road to talk to his mom and watch a movie so I have nobody to talk to. I’m Sad.
🙁

Earlier tonight, Nate, Julie and myself went to the Pgh bloggers fest. I don’t really think I fit in too well. I’m anti-social and didn’t have a business card. Haha, just kidding but I think someone did give me a business card! So I just joined the Pgh bloggers and am sad to say that I never read any of the blogs there and since I don’t just go up to people and talk to them I was kind of left out of the mingling and bonding scene. I had Julie & Nate though, who are the only friends I really need. They kick ass .
🙂

Anyways, I’m bored because its only 9:45 and I drank three beers. If I don’t do something to stimulate my brain I’ll fall asleep. I guess I’ll just sit here and try out this Yuengling light. I never had it before, but ya know its ONLY 99 calories! Ha. So I’ll be drunk in a bit. I must be turning into an alcoholic. I have drank more beer in the past few weeks than I have drank in like the last two years. Hey, alcoholism runs in the family … and I do believe that I am correct that studies have proven that you are at a much higher risk to become an alcoholic if people in your family are. Well, there is my mom, my uncle, my great uncle, my grandfather. … and the list goes on. Its all around me … on both sides of the family. I can’t ever picture myself being an alcoholic though. I don’t really like getting drunk. And I get hungover very easily. Oh well, I could probably be a pot addict if I didn’t fear that usage would turn me into a schizophrenic. I am way too paranoid. Man, I need to stop writing!

Bye 🙂

Complaining:
I’m not feeling very good tonight. I think I’ve been poisoned. I was in a bad mood today. I kept thinking about evil things I wanted to say out loud but of course I kept my mouth shut. Is it that hard to learn: File > Print. Or File > Print > selection > ok. Memorize it for God’s sake and don’t effing ask me again.

Scared:
So on my way back from my lunch break I heard a loud buzzing noise, looked over and saw what has to be the world’s biggest bee ever. It was like a monster, and I’m not even sure if it was 100% bee. It had huge buzzy wings and I could see the yellow/black stripes, but it seemed to be encased in this clear shell. It was so weird! It was about the size of like a large spoon … excluding the handle of course. I was so mad that I didn’t have my camera with me. I just stopped and stared at it. I never saw anything like it. I think it was a mutant bee or something. Well with all the ample garbage around here, I’m not surprised that the insects are getting bigger and changing form. I wouldn’t be surprised if grew some new body parts too.

Daydreaming:
WalMart has a swimming pool on sale for $98. Its nice. I am thinking about buying it for my apartment. I was thinking I might just turn my living room into a beach. Ya know, buy a few tons of sand, put in a pool …. knock out a wall and let the sunshine in. However, I’d have to also buy 99 gallons of bug repellant because of all the trash and mutant bugs. And a gun to kill my landlord since he would most likely have to be dead before I would be able to successfully execute the plan. Hehe.

Bye bye.

Dreams of death will not escape me. Honestly, I think it is my apartment. I never had this many bad dreams before I moved here. And when I’m not here I do not have nightmares. For instance, I do not have nightmares at Todd’s house, at my parents house, and I definitely did not have any at the beach. However, on Friday night I had one. It is rather amusing actually.

I was in a beautiful swimming pool. Maybe I was still at the beach. I was with some random made up people who aren’t real. Then I got shot in the stomach. I looked down and saw that the bullet had gone through my stomach, come out my back, and was sinking to the bottom of the pool.

So I got out of the pool and was like “hey random people I’ve been shot.” They were like “what?” I said “yeah look in the pool.” There was a big puddle of my red blood neatly floating in a circle. So someone called 911 and I was just waiting. I didn’t feel any pain, and I was holding my back so the blood wouldn’t come out. I layed down on the cement by the pool and asked if someone would put pressure on my back to stop the blood. One old lady did for about a minute then she said she was grossed out and stopped. Nobody else wanted to help me. Then I heard the sirens, so I got up and started running while still holding my back. I was kind of hobbling but I thought the ambulance was coming. It turned out to be some men on a firetruck, but they stopped and asked if I needed help. Just then, I heard more sirens and saw the ambulance coming in the distance so I said they could go ahead and I’d get in the ambulance. So the firetruck left and the ambulance just turned out to be a hay truck or fancy motorized wheel barrow with a siren on it. And I think the drivers were like Amish or something.

I layed back down on the ground and waited for the real ambulance. Suddenly my entire body just got really warm and I felt hot pins and needles all through my body. I knew I was dying then so I closed my eyes and decided I would just die. Well, then I woke up. It was 4:45 am and I was sleeping on my stomach with both arms stretched above my head under the pillow. Both arms were completely numb from shoulder to fingertip. So … perhaps that is why I was dreaming about having hot pins and needles. I think I’m a nut. Anyways, it was kind of funny actually. Better than the natural disaster nightmares.

In other news, I have nothing really. The beach pictures are up. My weekend was uneventul for the most part. I went to Todd’s house on Friday night and hung out with him and the kitty. Saturday I bummed around and pretended to clean my house but really didn’t get much accomplished. I went out and bought a six pack of Yuengling and thought I’d make a night of it and put up the beach pictures. That didn’t really happen either. I drank all six beers which of course makes me drunk because I’m not a hardcore alcoholic. I talked to someone on IM from myspace for like two hours and don’t recall much of what I said but I do seem to remember being coherent enough to ramble about God knows what. I do recall him saying that he is good at dealing with people with “problems”. I need more friends like that! Not that I have any major problems, but I’m definitely abnormal. At least according to society. I get really annoyed when people act like they want to know me but once I say something that isn’t super happy and cheery they get all weird around me or don’t want to talk to me anymore.

Anywho, today I sat around and watched TV, cleaned more … I’m a really slow cleaner because I get very distracted. I spent two hours putting up the beach pictures and writing little recaps for each picture. I went out and bought a chicken salad because there is still no food in my refrigerator unless I want to snack on mustard or butter. I watched some of the E! True Hollywood story on the Simpson sisters. If you didn’t know, I’m a big Jessica Simpson fan. And no, I’m not being sarcastic. She is one of the few celebrities I actually like. I loved watching Newleyweds. I think she is pretty cool but I don’t think we’d get along as friends. She shops way too much and is more whiny than me.

All in all, it was a good lazy weekend. I needed a weekend to just kind of chill and not really do too much. I’ve enjoyed it but now its back to work tomorrow, so I’ll be grouchy soon.

Bye!

Sometimes I think that I live in a bubble within myself. I know I promised beach pictures and stuff, but I’m not in the uploading mood right now. Anyways, today was a huge celebration because one of the last unmarried girls at work got engaged today. She is my age I guess, bubbly, and always laughing. She is someone I thought I’d find annoying, but I avoid her just enough not to hate her or like her. So I heard all the hype this morning about it and she was showing everyone her ring. I was busy and didn’t want to join the circus ogling her ring, so of course she had to come over to me personally to show it to me. “Oh wow, congratulations … fake happiness for you.” Ok, go away now. If I had gotten engaged I would be doing the exact same thing, BUT I’m not getting engaged, having a baby, bungee jumping, buying a house, NOPE …. I’m doing nothing. Not that I am sad about it, but I just feel like everyone around me is like growing up or something.

My one co-worker who is a few years older than me eloped last month, got married, and now is putting bids on houses with her new husband. Everyone from my hometown had babies in the last few weeks … thats ok. No babies for me just yet. I just turned 24 last week, but I feel like I just left home for the first time like a month ago. I still cry when I have to leave my parents house and come back to my ugly apartment. I want a porch and flowers, a garden, oh and some windows would be nice. Instead, I have what I have and I’m still lucky.

I don’t know what my problem is. I know I get jealous of people who are getting married and starting new lives, but yet I still just want to be a kid sometimes. I feel stuck right now. I feel that I have no direction or real future sometimes and I truly wonder if it is just going to happen suddenly or if I’m going to be right here in the same exact place 20 years from now. I also really believe that I control my life and destiny and it drives me nuts when I have nothing to plan. I say I hate change but I need it for the sake of staying sane. I know I make no sense. Lately I’ve really been thinking about just finding a job in some other big city, packing it all up and disappearing. I’m independent and I’m sure I could do it. I’d miss my family, but I’d visit a lot.

Is 24 old? I mean, I could still be living at home with my parents, working at WalMart or something. I’m going to finish paying off my debt this year and then maybe I’ll buy a car and learn to drive for real. Then I could move out of the city or to Madagascar …. and meet my prince and live happily ever after. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do.

I know I’ve written a similar variation of this post last month and the month before, and the month before that. I just can’t get it out of my head. I feel like such a loser sometimes.

The beach was great. The weather was beautiful and the pool and ocean were very fun. I like to swim and lay around in water so I was very happy about the abundance of water available to me. I have pictures and stories, but right now I just want to shower for 6 hours to get the train dirt off of me and find a back scraper because my back has thick brown skin (aka my tan) coming off in chunks. Yes I know, disgusting. It is the only part of my body that is burned and I guess I wouldn’t look too good in any cute little halter tops unless you find multi-colored people attractive. I look like a freak in all of my pictures, but I’ll post them soon anyways. Bye!

So I’m feeling quite happy tonight despite the long stressful day ahead of me tomorrow. But after tomorrow is over I’m off to the beach, leaving at 7:15 am on Saturday morning! WooooooHippityHoooo! I’m going with my friend Courtney. Here is a picture of Courtney. She’d be pissed if she knew I posted this picture, but not as pissed as she was the day I put her profile on Yahoo Personals. Hey, she met some people and I don’t hear her complaining about it anymore. Yeah, I’m a bad friend. Anyways, here is a picture of Courtney’s armpit:

So I was just browsing for a picture of me and Courtney … you’d think I could find one. We’ve been friends since like 1995 … she was even my penpal in 2nd grade before we even went to the same school. I guess we were destined to meet. So I just found one of us from 1999. I am sure I have a more recent one. I have no patience though.

Hahaha, here is the best one. It is a picture of me all dressed up in Courtney’s winter outfit. Literally …. this is waht she wore outside all winter. Not kidding, not even a bit!

See! Here she is sporting her fuzzy blue “middens”.

So after I came home from work today I went over and told my landlord that the refrigerator was broken. He of course did not believe me and had to come over and inspect it. No problem, I’d do the same thing. Anyways, he felt the inside and said “well it feels cool”. So I opened my freezer and picked up a stick of butter. It was so melted that it just kind of flopped over. Yeah, it works alright! Landlord does some more inspections and finally admits it must be broken. He states that it isn’t very old. OK, do new refrigerators come with 1000 rust spots all over them? Generally, rust takes quite some time to form. Well, don’t quote me because I’m not really a rust expert. Landlord then yells at me and says that if I would have told him before 6pm he could have fixed it today. WELL, I’m leaving and I don’t care if it is fixed today. Die landlord, die.

So I go out and get a tasty grilled chicken salad from the pizza place, sit down to eat it around 7pm, and as I’m about to take the first bite, my doorbell rings. Landlord (keep in mind he is like 90) is standing there with power tools. I’m afraid. “Ok” he says, “I’m gonna take this thing apart and you and me are going to carry it outside.” The refrigerator is like the size of a house. I’m not that big. Landlord is maybe 130 pounds. Maybe. So he unhinges the thing and takes the doors outside. Then he brings in a dolly and instructs me to lift it onto the dolly. And then he shows me his arm “I got blood taken today! Hope I don’t pass out!” Dear Lord! This is getting really scary. So we get it outside. Then and ONLY then he tells me his son is on his way over to help put in a new refrigerator. OK. If he would have said that to begin with I would have refused to help him do this crazy stuff. His son could have done this! 90 year old men should not be engaging in really hard labor.

So the son gets there, rolls in the new fridge …. by the way it is brand spanking new! I don’t know how they did this all in one hour, but kudos to my landlord. Maybe his son owns an appliance shop or something. Anyways, it was funny when they were standing outside.

Landlord: “Yeah I don’t think this refrigerator is very old. I don’t think there was anything wrong with it.”
Son: “Dad, this refrigerator is 20 years old.”
Landlord: “Oh, no it can’t be that old!”
Son: “Dad, I bought this refrigerator for $150 from a used refrigerator shop in 1985. It is at least 20-25 years old.”
Landlord: “Oh”

I guess when you get really old, 1985 seems “not that old”. Anyways, enjoy the boring refrigerator pics. I’m excited so I decided to share:

Look at the pretty new fridge! So white and not rusty!

I have dedicated an entire shelf to my Italian dressing collection.

Had to throw all my food away, so its pretty empty ….. but it looks nice!

Partial view of my old refrigerator laying outside in many pieces. You might get tetanus if you get too close!

The End.

So another $140 later and I think I’m ready to go to the beach. Yeah I went to the mall again. I think my shopping is going to cost more than the actual vacation!