"Death will be a great relief. No more interviews."*

   [After righting (really??) writing this and rereading it, I imagined it in a deep, emotional voice.]  

   Hello.

   It’s been a while.

   My life is a series of unimportant misadventures, so I won’t try to make this seem more epic than it is.

   But changes have occurred.

   No, I’m not majestically thin and one-chinned, like I hope for every year.

   And I do have new stories and drawings…but they mostly play on iterations of my failures at life, which is fair game for this blog. But still.

   Okay, enough. This post is veering toward what seems disturbingly like a Todd Rundgren song (not that there's anything wrong with Sir TR).

   I had the worst interview of my life the other day. (Just kidding I've had worse.)

   I’d been in Omaha for FOUR WEEKS (what?!?) and I’d only been back in Austin for a day when I received an email from one of the higher up professors here at school (we’ll call him Dr. W) saying that I’d been suggested as a viable candidate for a TA position (no idea who would have gotten that idea).

   These TA positions are rad. I mean, at the very least, you get in-state tuition, which would, if I were to receive it, significantly decrease the inevitable hell of debt I’ll face upon graduating from this super expensive lofty institution.

   So I pulled my hung over responsible, well-rested ass out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn to be at Dr. W’s office at 8:30. Okay, so it’s not really that early, but whatever, I was coming off 4 weeks of 13-hour sleeps. I was seemingly the first person in the building. The janitor was just getting started, classes hadn’t begun and I had on my most responsible looking ensemble (eye-drops, blazer, socks, etc..). Another gal was sort of sneaking in and out and around through the building, but I figured she was lost. Dr. W wasn’t in his office yet and so I had to be his first interview of the day.

   By 8:45, I was draped over a chair, my chin on the back, staring out the window at the fog.

   Dr. W stepped off the elevator with the creepster girl and started walking towards his office.

   I followed them.

   “I’m early,” she said.

   “No, I think you’re right on time.”

   “Maybe you’re thinking she’s me. I’m Lacey. I’m supposed to be your 8:30.”

   He turned and stared at me for a moment.

   “No, Lacey, I think I have you at 9.”

   The other girl said, “I’m supposed to be at 9.”

   He said, “Lacey, you won’t mind, will you?”

   I'm not gonna lie to you. I think he took her first because she's black. But whatever.

   So I slunk back to the lobby and read the 3^rd installment in the Caroline B. Cooney’s The Face on the Milk Carton series for young adult readers for half an hour.

   When he finally ushered me into the room, everything seemed odd.

   I sat down.

   He got on his computer and typed for a few minutes.

   “So, do you have any questions?”

   We hadn’t spoken before, so I had several.

   I began by asking him to explain the class.

   He said that in addition to one graduate TA, he would have 5 undergrad GA’s who would effectively do all the work. Then he explained the online discussion forum, how they'd tried it 3 or 4 times, how he didn't think it was so great and he wasn't sure why the University kept doing it.

   I said, “And you’ve done this before?”

   He said, “Yeah. I just said that. Literally one minute ago.”

   I suppose I’d meant the question as more of a rhetorical one, as in "why do you keep doing a virtual discussion that you think is counterproductive?" but okay. I was shamed, in the way I generally feel shamed anywhere I go outside of grocery stores, the only place where I feel free to tell people how rude and inappropriate their behavior is.

   “Sorry.”

   Meek.

   Then he talked some more about the class, and the program in general. He was mostly reading emails and looking out the door.

   “Do you have any questions?”

   I tried to explain what I felt the class was about, structured as a question. “It seems to be a class about the practical application of advertising in different career fields…?”

   “No. That’s not really it at all.” You could feel that what he meant to say was, "No, you fucking moron. That has nothing to do with anything. Shut your mouth when you're talking to me."

   I felt like I was in some sort of awkward shame spiral. I didn’t have anymore real questions to ask, because usually people ask me questions during interviews.

   “Well, do you have a syllabus I could look at?” I had asked him repeatedly to just tell me in plain language what the class was about and every way I approached it, he acted as though I were some sort of feeb who didn’t understand English.

   The syllabus cleared up a few points. But not many.

   But for some reason, we looked at it for a long time and then he started telling me stories about undergrads who'd tried to use this class to get into the advertising major and how they'd failed: Jason and Maria, in case you're interested. Yes, he was naming names. I was sweating in a weird, sick person sort of way. My face felt really hot.

   He asked me if I had any questions. I was very uncomfortable. I couldn't keep coming up with questions for a whole interview, could I?

   So I asked if he had any questions.

   He pulled out my résumé and stared at it.

   It was all misformatted (not a word), with a bunch of crapola HTML printed out in large type all over the top.

   “Oh no. That’s not right.” I pulled out a copy from my bag.

   “Well, now you know that this can happen,” he offered, throwing the ill-formatted résumé in the garbage. "And, so you know, you're here because what's-her-name Natalie bailed on me. Maybe you know her?"

   “I don't know if I do?"

   "Well, she flaked."

   "Sorry...?"

   Meek again. Who was I? Why couldn’t I speak? Why did he keep ratting people out?

   Long silence.

   “Why did you spell ‘copyeditor’ as one word?”

   I panicked. As you already know, if you read this blog at all, I AM A HORRIBLE SPELLER.

   “Um, I don’t know.” I crept behind him and read over his shoulder. “I thought it was one word?”

   “Hmmm…maybe it is. I don’t actually know.”

   He stared some more.

   “If you want to know, I’m actually a really bad speller. I mean, not bad. I’m a good writer. I write. I mean, I use the computer to help me when I’m spelling. I have a blog. It’s about how I’m good with ideas and not so much with spelling…?”

   (OH MY GOD WHY AM I TALKING ABOUT WHAT A BAD SPELLER I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF AN INTERVIEW FOR A TEACHING POSITION??)

   “Are you in creative?” he asked.

   “Yes. But I just got in.”

   “Okay, so what was your answer to the question?”

   He pulled out the prompt from a month ago. The one that caused me a lot of sleepless nights and hard, hard work.

   I told him my answer to the prompt.

   He raised one eyebrow and shook his head as if to indicate that he had no idea why a big old dumb-dumb such as myself could have made it into Texas Creative.

   Silence.

   “Why don’t you send me a copy of that application?”

   I agreed to it, though I was scared he'd tell people all about how bad it was. It seemed clear that he didn't keep secrets very well.

   “You wanna see some really great résumés?” he asked.

   We spent the next 15 minutes looking at résumés on his computer, beautiful résumés clearly created by graphic designers, with timelines and pie charts and arrows and colors, and he said he’d email them to me, so I could make mine better.

   I felt thoroughly shamed.

   My résumé was bad. And it was not well formatted. I couldn’t spell. My creative application was awful. I’d arrived at “the wrong time.” And I asked a question he’d already answered a minute before. I couldn’t wait to get back into bed.
   He said he'd be in touch and let me know by the day's end.

   On my walk of shame home, I looked up “copyeditor." Chicago Manual of Style agrees with me, as does Word. Your basic Google search and this here Blogger: not so much.

   But She of the 9 o’clock appointment got the gig, even though it turned out all the words on my résumé were spelled correctly..

   Life is a game of whack-a-mole, as my friend Rebecca always says. And I’ll talk more about my insane blessings in a future post (yeah right, who wants to hear about things going great for someone? Isn't that just a blog about bragging?), but it feels good to be back and telling you all my troubles. 

Do you think my résumé really needs work?

*Katharine Hepburn. Dark, admittedly, but she has a point. Although I'm pretty sure she wasn't referring to job interviews.

"Benjamin Franklin said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. But I'd like to add a third certainty: trash. And while some in this room might want to discuss reducing taxes, I want to talk about reducing trash."*

   It’s true: I’m hypersensitive. I think I’ve mentioned this before. I’m one of those HSP’s you’ve read about in the media. (Side note: being sensitive, I’m aware that you may not have read about HSP’s, so I’m sorry if I made you feel weird about not knowing about us. Read this.)

   Anyway, so that means “sensitive” on many levels:

   I’m easily startled.

   I cry a lot. At weird stuff. Not just because I’m a woman.

   Loud noises disturb me to the extreme.

   I cannot function outdoors during the day without sunglasses.

   Et cetera.

   I’m not OCD, so don’t get the wrong idea. I can eat food off the floor or pee and not wash my hands. (Hmmm...does my lack of a comma over there make it seem like I eat pee off the floor? Cuz I don't.) I’m super normal. But just very, very sensitive. I’m a delicate robin’s egg of feelings and senses.

   Anyway.

   Today I tried to recycle a bunch of crap at the student Co-op by my apartment. I have lots of packing paper, newspaper, boxes, etc. And cans and bottles and egg crates and what not. My apartment has no recycling. My car was straight-up full.

   There was an Eminem-looking dude smoking a cigarette by the recycle bins. He watched me park. He watched me unlock my car. He watched me walk halfway to the bin before he said,

   “Ma’am, you can’t dump here.”

   Okay, let’s start with “ma’am.” I know it’s a Texan thing. Maybe even a southern thing? But I’m having a lot of trouble adapting to it. It makes me feel like I’m 200-years-old. I know it’s just a “polite” mode of address, but it drives me bonkers. Ugh. I’d rather have someone say, “Bitch, you can’t dump here.” Anyway.

   Next let's talk about how he waited for me to get all up next to the bin before he bothered to say anything. What a master of the dramatic pause. Fuckface. 

   “I’m not dumping, I’m recycling. See? These bags are full of newspaper!”

   I felt really proud of myself. In Los Angeles, you’re encouraged to recycle. They provide bins for it. You can even make money from it (remind me to tell you about the time I read in the LA Times about a family that sent their oldest kid to MIT on recycling money…then they sent their second-oldest to Irvine, so that was a bit of a come-down. Ok, never mind, that’s the whole story).

   “That bin is already full.”

   “Oh, okay. Do you know of another recycling bin?”

   The woman that had joined him on his smoke break shook her head like, “Stupid, stupid person. She doesn’t know about ANYTHING!”

   “Um, maybe the recycling center?”

   He said it like I was some sort of fucking dickhead moron who was being intentionally obtuse.

   As if my California license plates and dumbfounded expression weren’t proof enough that I had no idea where that center might be.

   “Do you know where it is?” I asked, determined to turn the situation in my favor somehow. The color was rising in my cheeks. I could feel myself wanting to cry or scream. Okay. At this point I was pushing him so he could find an opportunity to be less of an asshole and I could find an opportunity to feel less embarrassed.

   “Maybe if you look it up online you’ll find it.” Drag. Puff.

   “Okay.” I started walking back with my bags of newspaper.

   “You know, it’s illegal to recycle here.”

   “What?”

   “It’s illegal to recycle in this bin. This bin is just for the Co-op.”

   “Ok. I didn’t know that. My landlord told me I could recycle here.”

   “No. It’s illegal.”

   “Okay, well I certainly wasn’t trying to commit a crime. I'm not, like, a criminal or anything.”

   Thought in head: why is this person working so hard to discourage me from recycling?

   “I understand.” Puff. “But it’s illegal." Puff. "Ma’am.”

   “Gotcha.”

   It was strange. I didn’t feel embarrassed anymore. I felt angry and a little confused, but not embarrassed. I got in my car and found the nearest recycling center on my phone.

   The recycling center is downtown and not too far from my apartment, so that was a plus. It looks like a place you might get stabbed at night, so that was a minus. And one of the boxes got stuck in the backseat of my car so it took me twenty solid minutes of ripping and tearing to get it out while at least 5 different men drove up with their recyclables and never offered to help. (What, you can call me “ma’am” but you can’t help me get a goddamn box out of my car? Chivalry my ass. Not cool. And certainly not what one (i.e. me) expects in The South.)

   The whole time I was driving down there and during the sweaty scenario that involved wrenching that fucking box out of my car I got to thinking really hard about garbage (both literally and figuratively). I’d been afraid on my drive to the center that they’d have objection to the size or contents of the boxes, insist that I break down even the enormous, reinforced, unbreakable one, that they’d insist that I drink all the water in my recyclable water bottles or something. I don’t know. I guess I was just intimidated by the amount of criticism I’d already experienced while trying to RECYCLE.

   And then I thought, "What if, at some point, we just can’t get rid of the garbage anymore?" I remember reading about that disgusting, floating island of rubbish that exists somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean (The Pacific Ocean Vortex). What if, someday soon maybe, we have nowhere to take anything so we just have to keep it? I’ve never personally experienced a garbage strike, but it seems like it would be mind-numbingly disturbing and terrifying. I can barely get rid of my recyclables in a doable fashion in a decent-sized city that cares somewhat about recycling (at least, they don’t provide shopping bags, so I assume they care…though that seems more of a cost-saving ploy than anything else, really).

   I’m not trying to give you the idea that I’m one of those amazing change-the-world types, because I’m far too lazy for that. But I do try to be conscientious. I try to recycle, I try to use less plastic, I try not to waste. But for each day I take a huge pile of packing papers, boxes and newspaper to the recycle, a new pile grows in it’s place. What if I’m creating the Austin Garbage Vortex all by myself? Or at the very least contributing to it? And those a-holes at the co-op won’t even help me! I’m virtually living on an island in a sea of recyclables. Am I gonna have to buy a truck?

Me being sad in front of my garbage. Which, incidentally, is in front of my door. Not a good fire plan.

   It took a full two days, but my feelings stopped hurting. I will continue to drive down to the corner of Murder Avenue and Drug Deal Lane to recycle (only during operating hours, of course), but I would appreciate if the fine men of this city would stop calling me ma’am or hurting my very sensitive feelings and help me change the world instead.

   Reduce. Reuse. Drive 12 miles. Recycle.

*Ruth Ann Minner, D-Del, 2001-2009. 

"You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."*

   Hey, you crazies.

   Sorry it’s been so long since my last post.

   I live in Texas y'all.

   I am very hot.

   I have an apartment now.

   And go out a lot.

   That was a poem. Did you get it? Didja?

    Can you keep a secret? I can't. That has nothing to do with my next statement: I’m super in love with this town. I’m so hot most days it’s hard to concentrate or remember my name, but when I’m in my car blasting the AC, and I can focus on life, I find every sight I see highly entertaining if not downright inspiring. 

That's the reading inside at 12:30 a.m. Yikes!

   This post isn’t worth much…just a shout-out to the blogosphere to let y’all know I’m alive.

   Top 5 things I like about Austin so far:

1.  Despite driving in what I’m told is heinous traffic, I can’t help feeling Austin is a paradise compared to LA. Nothing takes more than 30 minutes, and it usually takes a lot less.

2.  Every street looks eclectic and original and bizarre. This is not a town of strip malls and Walmarts, praise Jesus!

3.  Some lady very nicely explained from her car in the lane next to mine today that I was in the wrong lane and about to experience a head-on collision. She offered to let me move in front of her. What? Courteous, kind fellow drivers? What planet am I on?

4.  My new apartment has a balcony overlooking a charming creek. Yay, nature! 

How cute is the GE stove from the 70's? And, as Ouisa pointed out,if it works, I'm one step ahead of my last apartment.

5.  Everyone here dresses fashionably: but not LA fashionably. We’re talking personalized, outrageous, adorable, crazy fashion from vintage to full tattoo sleeves to head-to-toe UT gear. In LA everyone dresses to look thin or importantly chic, here people dress to look unique, different, and like they just don't give a shit. And it’s WONDERFUL. I’ve never seen more beautiful people in one place in my entire life (except of course, at family reunions, duh).

   Honorable Mention: to Louise “Moose” Hopp: Gabe’s kitty has been my go-to companion, whether I’m on the front porch or the back picnic table. She sleeps at the end of the bed and only talks when she has something important to say. She searches out the strange rustling under the backyard steps and keeps me from running in the house screaming because I’m afraid of creatures. Thanks Gabe and Dan and Louise for letting me crash here!

Moose working security on the front porch.

I’ll keep you posted.

*That quote is from Davy Crockett.

"Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it."*

   It seems like major life changes always come in bunches. When it rains, it pours, if you will. And I started with one change and then things sort of spun out of control. As they do.

   So, there’s the fact that I’m moving again. And this time I’m moving across the country (but only halfway) to Texas. (Yeehaw!) But then there’s the fact that I’ve got a lot of packing to do, recently quit my antidepressant, have applied/am applying to a butt-load of internships, went to the wedding of one of my best friends and learned that one of my other best friends is engaged. I’m going to live in Omaha for the summer and need to find a job. I’m starting school in Austin in the fall and need to figure out how to pay for it. I have to cancel all the utilities, get rid of some furniture, pass my marketing class, and remember to water my plants and shower occasionally. Whoa, lordy, lordy. I’m a mess. Sadly, I’ve not skipped a single meal so I’m still not one of those people who lose weight when they’re stressed out. 

I'll have to get better at drawing Texas...

   Let’s start with the fact that I’m moving to Texas to raise, ride, and rope broncos. No, not really. I’m just going to graduate school. (The bronco thing will just be a side gig.) Did you know that graduate school is very expensive and there are no dorms? It’s okay, I didn’t have a dorm in undergrad so I’m not that worried. But a little handholding and a helpful to-do list from the U would be useful. I can’t think about that now. There are too many things between now and then that have to get figured out, if I think about that now I’ll go crazy.

   I’m moving back home (Omaha) for the summer. I have to find a job of some type, since I’m almost positive I will not be receiving an allowance. Finding a job in a new/old city is hard. Especially when the city is so small that there’s a good chance you’ll wind up giving a lap dance to one of your high school teachers. Just kidding. My dancing days are over. But it’d still be slightly awkward to wait on my parents’ next-door neighbors or serve coffee to my ex-boyfriend’s best friend.  Shoot. Fingers crossed I get an office job and never have to explain my poor life choices to someone from my past this summer. But Omaha doesn’t usually work that way (3 degrees of separation), so my hopes aren’t very high in that regard.

   But even BEFORE I can panic too much about summer employment, I have to move. Again. And I hate moving. Moving is a heinous, boring nightmare that forces me to really examine when and how I became such a ferocious hoarder. And I have to shut off all my utilities, but I can’t get out in front of them: you really have to cancel them right when you move or you’re sort-of fucked for electricity and gas and Internet for a few weeks. Nards.

   I generally respond to stress by taking a nap. But even that is biting me in the butt, because napping prevents me from packing. And if I don’t finish packing, I can’t move. And if I don’t move, I can’t go to grad school. And if I don’t go to grad school, I’ll die of sadness and poverty. Life is viciously stressful.

   And did I mention I stopped taking my antidepressant? Good timing, that. But I couldn’t bear to go back to my mean, old psychiatrist. She’s a bitch and makes me cry every time I see her. I’d rather cry for free. Plus, it was probably time to quit, anyway. But now I feel like everyday I’m standing outside of my body watching things happen to someone else and it’s extremely disconcerting. And it’s super hard to feel energetic or to get good sleep. I really couldn’t have planned a worse time to go cold turkey on my mental health meds. But…such is life. And it is, yet again, a first world problem. But I’m insane (for real) at the moment. And I probably sound like a bona fide psychopath. But that was always lurking inside of me, and its time I start appreciating myself as the fucked up individual I’ve always been…and may always be.

   And it’s making my insides feel like they’re full of poison and tears. But my insides are also working desperately to expel them, so it’s sort of like a cleanse, right? I’ll add “cleanse” to my California bucket list. It’s such a California thing to do.

I didn't really drink poison. That was artistic license. But it feels like poison's going to come out sometime soon...

   In an effort to stay the positive course, here are things I’m looking forward to in the next few weeks/months:

1.  Leaving Los Angeles.

2.  Spending summer in Omaha.

3.  Paddle-surfing (tomorrow!): bucket list! Bucket list! (Thanks to Gabe and Em!)

4.  Road trips (to Omaha, to Austin, maybe to Mt. Rushmore this summer).

5.  Summer, summer, summer.

6.  Cowboys.

7.  New beginnings.

*The quote is from Lily Tomlin. I don't know how much it applies to me personally, since my grasp of reality is questionable. But it's a nice quote anyway.

"The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate."*

   Hi from Austin, Texas, y’all! Yee-haw!

   I’m visiting Gabe again…but now she lives in Austin instead of Minneapolis. I have to say I never would have visited her in Minnesota this time of year, but the weather in Texas is jeeeess right. Although it’s not as sunny as California, but what are you gonna do? Move everyone in the world to California? Oh wait, that already happened. That’s probably one of the reasons everyone there is leaving. That and it’s freaking expensive. And everyone is a narcissist. And it’s the place where dreams go to die. But I digress…

   I had a meeting at U.T. Austin because it’s one of the schools I’m considering attending next year. Halfway through my meeting with the kindly Graduate Advisor, Dr. Wilcox, I realized that I had something sticking out of my nose. It was sort of a white, flakey booger-type thing. (Okay, it had to be a booger—what else comes out of your nose besides snot and occasionally blood?) I hate typing those words as just thinking about things one finds in one’s nose makes me want to vomit all over this keyboard. It's pretty much the only thing that legitimately grosses me out. But that’s what happened, so I had to write it. (Did I?) Fuck my life. I’m sure he’s advising his whole committee to write me out a scholarship check right this very minute.

   “Hey, team! Let’s get this booger girl a scholarship! She showed some real courage coming in here today with crap coming out of her nose. This woman deserves full tuition, and I won’t rest until she gets it!”

   Gabe tried to reassure me that it probably wasn’t obvious to Dr. Wilcox, and suggested that maybe it was IN my nose and hidden rather than sticking out of my nose. This is one of the reasons I am friends with Gabe. Thanks, Gabe! I’m going to tell myself that she’s right and that there’s no way Dr. Wilcox would let me sit there and talk about internships and graduate housing with a booger on my face. If I were he, I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate for one goddamn second. And now that I think about it…he did seem a little distracted. FUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

   Oh well. I’ve already been accepted there, so he can’t do anything about it now! Haha! The day is mine!

Here's a picture of campus. Sorry for the lack of original images in this post. (Image Source)

   At least I made a lasting impression?

*Tony Benn.