So, not only was I a member of a national sorority [sigh], yes. Go ahead, say it. "You PAID for friends?!?" [sigh]. I'm too tired to go into it right now and attempt to defend my choice), I was also a member of the English Honors Fraternity, Sigma Tau Delta (that's right bitches! I was honors material...). Now I joined Sigma Tau Delta pretty much in name only. I think I went to two or three meetings and that was only because my friend was the president at the time. My SOCIAL sorority took presidence in my life...and......the lovely, brilliant members of Sigma Tau Delta made me cringe. They wore greek letters out...
Think hard. What's that translate to?
Uh-huh.
STD.
So sad, so sad.
Good people, bad name.

I'm panicking because I just received my bi-weekly paycheck and it's already spent. Mortgage, thou art a foul, foul creature. Food has become a luxury item. I will be paying for everything for the next two weeks with credit cards which has my heart already lurching and sitting way up high in my throat. This life of poverty (metaphorical...I know, there are many people wayyyy worse off than me) is not one I was cut out for. I'm considering marrying merely as a way to consolidate debt.

So I learned a few things. I learned that my Mac is not compatabile with Blogger. I can read blogs...I can type a title to a post but then whoa fucking nelly...I can't post a damn thing. This sucks because I was trying not to post from work or use my work computer at any time when putting my posts up. So much for me trying to be a concientious employee. I tried.Not too much has been going on here. I've been busy, busy, busy doing a whole lot of...I'm not sure. I know I proctored the SATs a couple of weeks ago. I can now say that I've smelled fear. I believe I've even looked fear in the eye. It smells like my aunt and it looks like my dog after she ate an inhaler (just so you don't have to go out and look for it). I went out with my friends pretty much all last week since I had off Thursday and Friday. It was more of the small town drama. One thing that I thought was particularly hilarious was this story. For the past few weeks my friend Tara and I have been running into this boy named Stt. Stt is pretty attractive in a not-so scruffy way, he seems really nice. He's in a band, he has a job...he's what we call around here--a "catch" (my mom says I'm a catch too, so obviously the definition of catch is flexible). Now Stt is interesting in Tara. Tara is interested in him too, however, she's more interested in his friend T. Tara and T have slept together, attempted to actually date but things didn't work out. Both T and Tara still have a thing for each other but now this whole Stt thing might be interferring with that. (Are you following this?)So Tara and Stt hooked up a couple of weeks ago and made out a little again this weekend (do 28 year olds still make out? Or is it a mass groping?) Tara turns to me at the bar the other night and said, "You should go for Stt. I think you guys would be cute together" And I laughed. Does anyone else get offered their friend's sloppy seconds? I will admit for about a minute I thought about it...until she went into further detail and told me that he has skills in the "going downtown" department. I'm all for that...I'm just not all for my friends having experienced that first. As she said that I had a premonition of Stt and my wedding...where Tara would be standing thinking, "That boy went down on me..." (I was kidding about the wedding thing if you didn't know...I was just trying to emphasize a point).In other news. Let me catch you up with my cast o' characters. Cr got married. Chelle was doing so well avoiding the Coworker since she realized that it was going to be nothing more than sex and she had wanted it to be more...then she fell off the wagon and landed on her head. He rang her up on Sunday and within a few hours she was over at his house mentally saying never again while verbally shouting, "Hell's yeah!" Drk's loving Denver. I hardly speak to him anymore. It was a couple short emails back and forth but I decided not to email him and I guess he didn't care to email me. That's fine. There is no one in the Cornfield (or anywhere else) that I'm interested in. You'd be proud though, I've been branching out and heading out of town here and there...can't say it's done much good though. There are times when I want to call Matty, but for some reason I don't. Alone's not so bad. And well, I've got batteries.

Today I was at work and in ran an 18 year old girl whom I've known now for three years. In those three years somehow I inspired her to follow in my footsteps (the positive aspects of my life...I don't share with her my drunkeness or my tendency to enjoy the company of emotionally unavailable men). In the past three years we've traded paperback and discussed them. She's been the first to ask me philosophical questions at times...it's hard to see her as a child and yet...she's so incredibly pure. While her peers are getting drunk on the weekends and banging each other silly (which I'm certainly guilty of too), she's doing charity work; making and selling hemp necklaces to sell for Hurricane victims, or hanging out with her frends doing silly things like forking yards. So when she burst into my room in tears at 7:15 this morning, I braced myself. I knew it wasn't the typical teen drama concerning boys. Her father had been killed in a motorcycle accident this weekend. She wanted to come to school today so that she could see me. Because she knew that all those people who said they "knew how she felt"--didn't. Her arms wrapped around my neck tightly and her tears poured hot pain onto my shirt and I cried with her. Because I did know how she felt. And so after work I went out today and thought about the things she might be comforted by. I stopped and picked up a nice fluffy teddy bear...perhaps this wouldn't necessarily help her, but I knew she had younger siblings...I bought a pretty blank card and two books I knew that she would like. I thought the books would let her excape when reality pressed down too hard on her. The hard part was to sit down and compose her a note. It went a little like this: Dear __________. I am so sorry that you had to go through this experience at such a young age. From what you told me about your father and the things he was able to overcome he was an incredible man and a loving father. When we spoke this morning you said that you wanted to come today because "I knew exactly how you felt" and to an extent I do, but you have to realize that no one is going to know how you feel. It's going to be frustrating, it's going to make you feel like you hate people and you'll be exhausted in your hate. Hopefully, that will pass. There is something that I Do know, this experience wil change you. You need to decide if you're going to let it eat away at you, or if you're going to do something with it. You won't be making that decision right now...but the time will come. My suggestion? Start journaling all the stories and things that you can remember about your dad right now, both good and bad...start practicing your stories on people and let him live on in your tales. How many times have you repeated a story I've told you about something ridiculous that happened with my dad and me? That's how I get him to live on outside of my own heart. If you need anything, I'm here for you.

Somehow I've managed to paint my kitchen the exact same mint green my whole house was as a child. I was going for 50's kitch...and somehow, I've reverted to childhood. (Shrugs) So be it. I still like it I guess.

Last night I went to the local microbrewery to meet up with my friend Ml and our other friend from work who's been out on maternity leave. This was Vi's first "official" boozing it up session since she gave birth to the cutest little baby ever. It was also her birthday weekend...let's just say that it was a drunken bonding experience.

I thought we were just going to stay local and that Vi would probably shade out and want to get home back to the baby just like they always seem to do on Sitcoms...Vi wanted none of that. In fact, after a glass of Jack Daniels and a couple pints she suggested, "Hey! Why don't we go down into the city?" And like that we packed Tara, Nina, Ml, Vi and myself into the car and made the trek far beyond my Cornfield comfort levels...but it was definitely fun.

We started out at another microbrewery. Vi was constantly hawking the crowd for good looking men that she could drag over to us since she was the only one who was not single. As it turned out, the music was too loud to have a conversation with anyone and there was no one good looking enough to even make the attempt. So I don't even know if some of them "had good personalities" because we ended up dancing in our own little corner.

Vi, then gets the idea to go to another bar. Now it been raining torrentially all day/night...none of us were bright enough to bring an umbrella, no one wanted to bring a slicker into the bar so we squealed like pigs and ran to the next bar. This bar reminded me of a frat party. It was like an old row home that had been renovated into a three level bar...it was a little cramped, pretty hot and there were lots of men taking all opportunities to accidentally rub up against us. We paid no mind. The bar had a great DJ and again we were the dancing queens. Ml got caught up with a handsome boy who was kind of grabby and I saw her at one point making out with him on the dance floor. My, my! Then I saw Tara being grabbed by this one guy who was so rhythmically challenged it looked he was kind of doing the twist while holding Tara's waist--Tara was just kind of half-assed dancing and rolling her eyes.

After numerous dances and all slick with sweat we all decide that it was time for food. Vi says that there's this great after hours place that also serves this amazing breakfast sandwich...you need to know the secret knock though. We go off in search of this elusive place. I've come to the conclusion that this place exists only in Vi's mind. We drove around looking for it for about a half hour until we decided the diner was the place where we should make complete asses of ourselves. That story a little later. I just wanted to get a post up here :)

The past two weeks have been pretty interesting. While I remain unchanged, change is occuring all around me. Last week it was Cr's wedding. It was a beautiful event and soo much fun. Cr looked gorgeous, her new hubby handsome as can be. We danced, we drank and sang all night.

Then on Friday Tash sent me an email asking if I wanted to get together after work. We agreed to go to dinner at the FQB I immediately realized what this dinner was all about when our waiter (none other than Billy) asked if we wanted to anything to drink. Tash replied that she was content with water and I immediated yelled, "You're pregnant!" And I was correct. She's been married now for about three years and her husband has been ready for babies since day one of the marriage.

I'm incredibly happy for them but I was also weirded out. My best friend having a baby? Inconcievable! I decided to do the mature thing and I got drunk with my single friends. Oh and drunk I was. I vaguely remember drinking Irish carbombs, shots of kamikaze and having an incredibly hard time staying on my feet. The only thing that hadn't slipped away from me was my ability to lust after Billy. Flirting occurred but alas, again...I was too drunk to do anything about it. My friend T, Billy, one of T's guy friends and I came back and drank a little more in the basement bar--and for the life of me I don't know how I ended up passed out on the futon fully clothed. I mean come on, back in the day--we'd all understand the passed out part, but the fully dressed part?? I must be growing up. Ha ha, yeah that must be it.

Saturday I went out with my friends from work to the local football game to support our community. Hey, the Cornfield's small--we do what we can. Then we went out to dinner and again drank our body weight in alcohol and then burned it all off on the dance floor a little later. It was hysterical when my friend Ml declared, "I'm going to go sing with the band" and with that she ran up to the stage, grabbed the tamborine and a mic and started singing. I can only say that she was an improvement to the cover band...believe me you.

I've also come to the decision that I'm not going to go to Denver for Thanksgiving. I still talk with Drk on email (not overly frequently, but not entirely that often either) but I figured that if I did go out there, things would be weird. He'd be assuming I was going to try to jump him (and I'm done with that idea), or he'd propose a pity fuck which would leave my head hurting and I'm sure my heart as well. So I'm claiming lack of funds and I'm just going to sit here on Thanksgiving and eat my mashed potatoes...unless I can talk another family-less friend into going somewhere fun. I WILL go to Denver one day...for my own personal fun...but it won't be any time soon.

So. Did you miss me? I misssed you all too. My computer is really crapping out. I bought a brand new Ibook but it doesn't have an internet connection as of right now. If you know of anyone who has a installation disk for AOL mac email ok? (and don't tell me how sucky AOL is...I get it for free because my mom still pays the bill...I just piggyback on her account). Hopefully I'll be back up to 3-4 posts a day as long as I can get my crap computer to stay online long enough to write a post.