February: Scapegoat, or Menace?

I may have, as we were nearing the end of this January (the coldest January of my life), blithely remarked once or twice that February is routinely the worst month of the year. It has been an important facet of my personal belief system for quite a while. Still, I was feeling optimistic. It can't get worse than this is a sentiment I'm sure many of us have shared as we trudged through or avoided the -30 degree windchills of the polar vortex (parts one and two), oblivious to the fact that though the snow couldn't get much worse, it also wouldn't leave us for another month; instead, the mounds would steadily grow, and the slush and ice would persist, threatening our safety on the roads and sidewalks.

I escaped to Florida at the end of February's first week. When I booked those tickets at the end of October, I had no idea how well-timed the trip would be, how bitterly and persistently cold a winter Michigan would have this year. I just knew I wanted to visit my friend Rachel, and that winter was a good time to be in Florida.

It still hadn't let up when I returned from the long weekend. Now, a week later, it has snowed some more and will snow again tonight -- 100% chance.

*  *  *

And it did snow. I guess it snowed several inches last night. On my walk to work, everything was basically the same, just cleaner and fresher again, the various snow control vehicles repopulating the university campus to clear the paths I reluctantly take.

Today, like yesterday, like Friday and Thursday and Wednesday before it, I cannot bear the thought of my afternoon job. I ate breakfast, I eat lunch, I'm still hungry. My eyes, exhausted, my head, achey, I cannot bear these computer screens I have to stare at. This has to stop. Make it end. Let me go home. I know the particulars of the job are part of the problem. But I think it's really the February-ness of life right now that is to blame. I was feeling pretty good about things until I got entrenched in February, and February told me there was nothing I could do but whine.

*  *  *

At the end of January, we decided to fly to California for "spring" break. The tickets were at first so cheap that I thought (what hubris) that I could simply eat the cost, take it from my monthly budget and not pull the money out of savings, from my jealously guarded travel fund that is really only meant for a long-awaited return to Europe. The plane tickets went up, and then there were hidden fees, and still we bought them. If I continued to buy no new clothes, and didn't eat out, and put my paltry tax refund toward it, surely I could still maintain all my other money.

Nope. I'm slashing savings goals left and right. There is still a week and a half of February to go -- that's almost half this deceptively short month -- and the usually comforting knowledge that my afternoon position pays 50% more than the others can't make up for how pathetic it makes me feel. Because all that money is already spent.

February, when I say goodbye to you, I will be 30,000 feet in the air and heading west. This means I have to bear a few extra hours of February -- we get into Oakland International Airport at just about midnight, Pacific time -- but whatever. Once we've crossed the continental divide, who cares.

Successes of 2013

New camera!

I learned to make delicious chicken pocket pies. I finally replaced my rain boots. 

I took the train to St. Louis; best decision of the year. I had gooey butter cake for breakfast; favorite moment of the year?

Louis the cat is always a success.  

Lots of friend-time (not enough), lots of burgers, lots of sangria.

Tourist icons of Chicago and Milwaukee; friends from Freiburg!

German-themed fun, Cuban-themed silliness (and more burgers). Birthdays!

A successful dinner chez les parents; an unsuccessful drive to dinner in Detroit.

 The exact bookcases we wanted, found on Craigslist; a new bathing suit!

Lake Michigan from both sides.

Cactus without cats; cactus with cats.

 We stayed in; we went out.

Our apartment was warm and cheery and boiling hot, and my hair got long.

It was a good year, and a good start to life in a new home.

I Changed My Mind

The verdict is in, and my previous thoughts are overturned: cover letters are the worst.

I say this because I wrote, not one, not two, but THREE cover letters before Thanksgiving, for three jobs I was totally qualified for but that weren't all totally generic and essentially beneath me, and I heard ZILCH.

And now I am trying to write another one, but I feel like I need to do something different because, again, no one liked the last letters! But what can I do different. How do I make you hire me for this lackluster job no one could possibly really desire. But I do want it, I do, I really do! (Really, please, make my next twelve months less of a giant, gaping, mysterious hole!)

I have to go to work number three in two hours, and before then, I also need to call someone, who then will tell me to call someone else, about how my identity has still not been verified for the healthcare exchange application, and isn't this life FUN?

Today's an all caps, all cramps kind of day, I guess.

In other news, my computer is by a window today, and although the window is extraordinarily drafty and chills the keyboard, the heater goes all along the floor under my desk, and it is warm and great. Thank goodness for fingerless gloves and SUNLIGHT.

(Also I now have over 30,000 Delta SkyMiles, thanks to my newest credit card, so, watch out, world, I'm halfway to Europe FOR FREE.)

Cue Christmastime

        

I'm almost ready for Christmas! Happy November 30th!

Edit: Apparently my phone always fails the first time I try to post? So much for blogging from the bar and actually getting it on the internet.

Can't Wait for December

This photo is from my last NaBloPoMo post last time around, and I still think it is so perfectly pleasant. I jinxed myself, back then, when I wrote, "I think, after all those false starts, I've brought the blog back." Ha. I posted four times that December (almost entirely about the great trials I faced in finally getting internet in my home), seventeen times for all of 2012, and then I made an effort in 2013 from January to April, before complete ignoring the blog until NaBloPoMo came around again. So that was a bit of a disappointment. I was going to say that I had totally forgotten the blog existed over the summer, but truthfully, I thought about it a lot. I battled with myself over whether or not I needed to start an entirely new blog, or just get a new template, maybe with a new name. I searched for pre-made, free templates; I despaired.

It's really thanks to this temporary job I have right now, which is, at times, even more soul-crushing than my old law office job, that I did NaBloPoMo at all. On November 1st, I had nothing to do. I had just received an email from BlogHer about NaBloPoMo starting. I thought, why not?, and so I tried a little harder to figure out how to make my blog look more the way I wanted, and met with some success. I went home feeling pretty accomplished. 

I still need to make a new header, and I am seriously considering changing the name. It's not like I've built any sort of brand recognition around it. Instead I have years—five and a half years—of personal identification with "der Landstreicher," even as I have lived in the same town for the past four and a half, "[spinning] out the fragile thread of [my] pseudo-career." 

Speaking of pseudo-careers, I have to be at the restaurant in just under an hour, so I should probably pile up a plate with Thanksgiving leftovers and prepare myself, mentally and physically, for six hours hosting at a downtown Ann Arbor restaurant, the night before the Ohio State game. Let's hope for the best (crazy-customer-wise; I'm not sure hope's gonna help the football game).

And for the record, I am excited for NaBloPoMo to be done. I'm going to work out a posting schedule, and have plans for different kinds of posts, and I am not going to blog every day. No more cop-out posts with one picture that may or may not relate to the included words. No more staying up past my bedtime every night because of it. I would have much rather read a book on the couch before the sun set than stared at this damn computer screen in my post-workout-shower-M&Ms haze for two hours. Grrumph.

Feast At Our Place

We hosted our first Thanksgiving ever this afternoon. Cooper's mom and sister came into town with pies and wine, I made a corn casserole and set up the apartment, and Cooper did the turkey, gravy, potatoes, and broccoli. Straightforward and delicious.

I didn't take a picture of the full spread, which we served on our side island/cart in the kitchen, partially because I forgot and partially because we had some turkey difficulties. The turkey was ahead of schedule, so he turned down the heat to slow it down, and slowed it down too far. So the full platter of carved turkey was not on display until after I'd started putting the sides away. (We ate parts of the bird as they reached doneness, but most of it was in the oven 'til we finished eating.) We ate at a card table in the living room, because the kitchen felt like the inside of the oven, and because we can't fit four chairs in the kitchen even though the table is larger, and because there were things everywhere. Card table + tablecloth = good enough for me, though. Whenever we had big meals at my grandparents' or cousins' house the kids would eat at a card table. It feels good to continue the tradition.

Haroun pretty much spent the whole day in the living room. In the morning he sat on the back of the couch, meowing at us for attention while we cooked and cleaned. All afternoon and evening, he sat on the couch or on the floor and napped, with some fun interludes of mouse-on-a-stick play. What a people cat.

BTW: Yesterday's post, which I will admit I posted after midnight because we were en route from Grosse Pointe and it didn't occur to me to blog in the car on my phone, failed to upload but I didn't notice because I blogged in bed on my phone and my phone let me down. So I just uploaded it again now. Oh, and I found the errant leftover pie and I ate it for lunch. Delicious.