Lalalalala- Short Story

I love rent. Meaning "Rent". Not paying money to live somewhere, but the musical. It's probably my favorite movie. So here I am innocently listening to the soundtrack while working. Not quite whistling while I work. More like humming. And trying to not sing out loud.

Apparently I am not doing too well at the not singing out loud part. My co-worker just popped her head over the wall to get my attention since the volume of my CD player is pretty high. I hit "pause" and look at her. She says "Jessica, why in the world did you just say something about S&M?" Wow. It's a good thing that I sit by people that don't get offended by much of anything. But still, if I'm going to end up slipping and singing/talking out loud, then I'd better watch what I'm listening to......

Weekend Pictures

So here we are, Ladies and Gentleman. I got my pictures of Bear Lake onto a disc and now have them. I am the type of person that would rather LIVE than sit around taking pictures of living, so I never really have a lot. I'll just post any of them that I find interesting or worthwhile to throw on here. Due to my technological stupidity, I can't figure out how to have them enlarge when clicked so deal with the smaller ones:

The family on the beach:

My adorable neice Mikayla:

Little Romney with crazy hair:

James and Emily napping:

Mikayla with a scrunched face:

Mikayla again with a scrunched face:

The sunset from our deck:

More of the sunset:

The only good rattlesnake is a dead one:

Is this a gopher? Praire dog? ??

Sunni relaxing:

Sunni swam for the first time ever!!!:

Getting out of the water:

Rachel, James, Emily, Aleasa, and me laying across them:

My dad and Mikayla:

Carlos and Diego in Hoodies:

My family pic 1:

My family pic 2:

Just me and Michael when I got back:

And that's all for today.

Much love!

Pressure Cooker

I had a wonderful weekend. I'd like to post pictures but have some work to do on it since I cancelled my home internet. I will have to download my pictures at home, put them on a disc, bring the disc to work and put the pictures on my work computer. So pictures will be coming, but not today. I'm so sorry to disappoint. I'll try to get that done tonight so I can post tomorrow and write about my weekend.



But for now, I've decided to write something about myself that I just realized...... which is: I don't do well under pressure. I hate stores where people earn commission due to the buying pressure. I hate the end of a meal at a restaurant due to the tipping pressure. I hate talking to someone on the phone who is trying to convince me to do something, buy something, rush me into something. I have a really hard time saying "no" to strangers, but no problem saying it to people that I actually know. It's not bad enough to where I'll buy something just because one of these strangers tells me that I should or need to. I would never take a phone call from a telemarketer and agree to whatever product they are endorsing. But I do tip way too much, and I do walk out of a commission store feeling oddly guilty if I don't buy anything. The realization of it hit because of this: I have been trying to find someone to come and haul off a ton of junk that I've accumulated from living in my apartment for WAY TOO LONG. There is quite a bunch of it- enough to the point where I need to rent a trailer to get it all out. (And since I'm hoping to move in the next few months, I want to get rid of it now so that it's out of the way.) Anyways, I sent out some emails to people that I found to ask about pricing and if they load the trailer or if I'd have to, how big the trailers were, the hours they could do it, etc. I ended up with two people that were good candidates. Jared emailed me back with all the details. Roger emailed me and told me to call him. I didn't call Roger, I emailed him back with the inquiries. After back and forth emailing where he continued to insist that I call him, he called me. And I didn't answer. And he called again. And I didn't answer. And he called again. And I didn't answer. And not once did I call him back. That's when it hit me. If I talked to Roger on the phone, I would feel that "pressure". Emailing is a safe and distant way to communicate with someone and they can't talk me into something, and I won't feel rushed. If I can get all the information that I need over email, I won't have to say "no" to someone. I don't even have to reply. But you can't exactly just hang up on someone in the middle of the conversation if they start the pressuring. Well, you CAN, but it just doesn't fit in with society's "rules of decency" or whatever. Needless to say, Jared is picking up my stuff for me.

So why do I have this almost fear of pressure? Why can I easily stand up for myself to someone I know well and actually CARE about, but not to some random stranger that I will never see again? It intrigues me.



And moving on to something else- I went to meet the Jared guy at my house (just got back to work). I am generally a friendly person who talks to and jokes around with people. Like the lady in the JC Penny bra department (no, I DON'T spend twice as much on the same bra with the only difference being the brand name "Victoria's Secret" sewn into it), or the lady on the Verizon Wireless customer service line, or the salesguy at Best Buy, or..... a guy named Jared who is helping me rid myself of junk. Basically, I am of the opinion that though we all are just doing our jobs in whatever profession we are in, we still want to be treated with respect, and a smile and friendly banter go a LONG way. And the response to being treated as an actual human being is amazing. Without even suggesting anything, I have gotten discounts from the lady in the JC Penny bra department, a discounted phone bill from the Verizon Wireless customer service lady, the salesguy at Best Buy, and now Jared. Yep, the junk-hauler-away-guy gave me a discount. Wahoo! And the only thing that I can boil it all down to is that I treat people as actual people with lives and hopes and jokes and disappointments and failures and dreams and.... well, you get the drift. I have blogged about this before on a different website, but it hasn't changed. And in a way, it makes me sad that people are so shocked when someone is actually talking to them and being friendly that they want to "hook them up" and give them discounts. I mean, it is such an infrequent thing? Do people really just act as if the people servicing them are just some nameless faceless thing? Is it really such an amazing thing when someone meets their eye? I guess it just makes me sad for humanity. Trust me, I'm not so super special that people are just dying to give me discounts without even knowing me. People don't see a glowing aura around me that makes them instantly need to appeal to my glorious nature. I'm just a small woman with a smile on her face and a joke on my lips. And apparently, that's enough.



Anyways, so the junk in my truck in gone! Or more precisely, the junk in my storage room is gone. Which makes me feel motivated to go into a cleaning frenzy. So me and my friend here are going to be spending a lot of time together this week. Along with Mister Dirt Devil and Mister Comet. I hate cleaning but my God, it feels good when it's done, doesn't it? Then maybe I can actually allow people to enter my apartment and grace me with their presence. I haven't really let anyone in my place for a long long time. Though I'm sure a big part of that has to do with the fact that my landlady is Satan's spawn. And her son just may be Satan himself. Anybody know where to find some Holy Water? Do you need to be Catholic to get some? But seriously people- how funny would that be if I just ran up to my landlady and her kid and threw water on them? Haha! The image makes me entirely too happy.......... Yep, I need to move.

And a final thought for the day: In order to make lemonade out of lemons, you must provide the sugar. (I have NO idea what that means, I just made it up. But it sounds deep and ponderous.....)

Much Love!

Pray For A Good Severance Package

My office does not allow people to take time off unpaid. They won't fire you if you do, but they will count it towards your allowed amount of time for calling in sick, leaving early, etc. And they only allow a certain number of employees off at a time since we need the phone coverage and all the other work that we do around here needs to stay current. Well...... here's an email that we just got (and I'm X-ing out certain things since it's company stuff that I don't know if I should share):

"Afternoon All,

You have all done an amazing job at handling our office workflow. As you know our mail goes up and down throughout the year and we’re currently at the time of the year where the volume of submitted claims are down. We have been and are all looking for ways to offer assistance to other offices and share/distribute office responsibilities such as XXXX's and XXXX's. Since most offices are in the same situation we are currently in a position to allow additional staff off using PTO or E-time without being considered an occurrence. However, there are guidelines and expectations to be met before this can occur.

Expectations:
XXXX's need to be through 6/4/08,
XXXX (office) - needs to be blank,
XXXX's - PN's through 6/12/08, all others though 6/4/08 need to be completed or documentation on the status.

If it is your Early or Late you're are still expected to provide phone coverage

If you are interested in either PTO and/or E-time please contact the sups via the sup email list, 'xxx xx xxx xxx'. Approval will be based on balancing customer service, business need and workflow.

For those of you who have never had or heard of E-time the following is an overview:
E-Time allows employees to voluntarily take Time off without pay. The time away from work does not count against the employee's PTO accrual or attendance records. However, E-Time could impact an employee's yearly earnings; it could lower his/her total yearly compensation.

This could affect any benefit that is driven by this figure, such as:
· 401K
· PrinPay
· Defined Benefit Pension
· Hours worked toward FMLA eligibility"

So there we have it. For the first time ever since I've worked here (November of 2000), they are offering unpaid time and extra paid time off. And that scares me. We are the only West Coast office so we are in a good position for business from Oregon, Washington, and California. But things haven't been coming in. We have quoted on a couple of groups and done some presentations, but nothing has come of it so far. If we don't start getting some more business, our office could be in trouble. My personal job role isn't suffering since there's never a lack of work for what us "specialists" do. There are only 3 of us and nobody else wants to do what I do. And like I said, we ALWAYS have plenty of work. But still..... I'll just have to think positively and not let myself panic. We always have ups and downs (just as everyone else) so this is probably just one of our down times and will soon pick itself back up. That's what I'm going to tell myself, and honestly, it's probably the truth.

Much Love!

Dreams and Things

I have had some really wierd dreams in the past few nights. I'm not usually a dreamer, at least I don't usually remember them. For some reason, it's been happening. Four dreams that I remembered since between last Saturday and today. The last one is the most completely absurd and a bit disturbing. And keep in mind that though I remember the generals of the dream, the details are a little hazy. And they aren't exactly long dreams, either.

1. I was standing on the side of the road watching these animal control guys trying to load a cheetah into the back of their truck. I guess it had escaped or something and was roaming the streets. It somehow got away and then all of the sudden it was a baby cheetah the size of a kitten. I walked across the street putting out my hand to stop traffic- like the traffic control guys do. Everyone stopped and I said "Here, kitty". And the baby cheetah came up to me. I picked it up and went to give it to the animal control guys, but the baby cheetah wouldn't let go of me. It locked it claws in my shirt so that nothing we did could get it away. So they told me that I could just keep it......... And that was it.

2. I wasn't able to go to Bear Lake with my family like I was supposed to. So I was sad since my entire family was up there. Some guy that I don't know came to my house and told me that my entire family was dead. I asked what happened and he said "Diabetes". I responded "Diabetes doesn't kill an entire family over one weekend. What REALLY happened?" And he didn't answer me. And that was it.
*But I did wake up after this one absolutely crying my eyes out and couldn't stop for a while. Dreams have a scary way of sticking around even when you wake up. It's hard to get out of the dream state in the middle of the night.

3. The government had declaired Martial Law. I was at some sort of retreat with Michael and a bunch of his buddies that had formed a militia. They had tanks and all these things to protect their rights. At this retreat, they were deciding who they were going to accept as far as who would go with them. They had "accepted" me and I was approved to go and be protected by these guys. My friend Chad came to visit and he was a little mean to everyone. So the main militia guy (Michael's friend) said that I wasn't okay to go with them anymore. I kept crying and saying that I never really see Chad and that I don't understand why my friendship with somebody else has anything to do with me joining them in their militia. The guy said that I was just making it worse by making excuses. Michael was sitting there the entire time and didn't say one word in my defense. I started packing up all my things to go home and looked at the calendar. It was February 12th. 2 days before Valentine's Day and I was having to leave because Michael wouldn't stand up to his friends for me. And that was it.
*I feel like that dream actually had a lot of symbolism in it. I'm still thinking that one over....

****Parental Advisory on this last one****
****Disclaimer- this isn't about sex but is deeply disturbing to me and DOES talk about a certain female body part****
4. I was at this huge cabin for some kind of summer camp thing. I'm actually not quite sure what it was. I was in love with this guy that worked in the cafeteria, but he was in love with my friend. I was upset and went into the bathroom and sat down to cry for a while. I stood up and looked in the mirror and blood was coming out of my ear. I started freaking out. I wiped up the blood and noticed that my left eyeball was sunken in my eye socket. I looked at my ear even closer and realized that part of my eyeball was poking out of my ear. So I pushed at the ear-eyeball thing and heard/felt a POP. It wasn't poking out of my ear anymore. I wanted to make sure everything else was okay since my eyeball was still sunken in my head, so I stripped down. (This is where it gets disturbing to me.....) Come to find out, part of my eyeball was poking out of my vagina. (I could have used other words on this, but they all mean the same thing.) I didn't want to hurt anything by pushing it back in so I put on a robe and went into a room where a bunch of people were just standing around. My boss was there and I told her that it was a medical emergency and to call an ambulance. Then I just laid down on the ground in my robe. The "ambulance" came but they wouldn't come to the cabin. The were stopped at a park across the street and I needed to go to them. So I walked over there in my robe. Every time I took a step I could feel my eyeball in my head being pulled a little. Yuck. The "ambulance" wasn't an actual ambulance, it was just an old truck and it had a kid's car seat in the back. There were two old guys that were supposed to be the EMTs or Paramedics or whatever. They were just standing outside the truck smoking and talking about fishing. They weren't rushing or anything but I was freaking out because I had part of my eyeball poking out of my vagina! Finally, the one guys tells me that they are ready. He tells me to sit in the drivers seat, so I do. He got in the passengers seat and said "This may seem weird, but I need you to pretty much stradle me for this to work." (No, he wasn't naked or anything and he wasn't talking about sex at all.) So I stradled him and he rolled up his shirt sleeve. Said he had to push the eyeball all the way back inside. I looked at him with disbelief and said "Do you really think your arm will fit in there?". And that was it.
*I have NO idea what in the world that one was about. That's one of those dreams that makes me feel weird for even having.

So there you have it. My odd dreams that I have had and actually remember in the past 5 days. I'm not sure if I believe in dream interpretation, but for these dreams I'd actually take it.

Moving on...... what do you do when you know that someone is a manipulator and liar but says some things that are absolutely true? How much of what they say do you believe? I can't say "all of it" because there are pieces of truth that I already know for a certainty. How do we decide what is the truth and what is a lie in the rest of it that we don't know about? What do you think?

Last but not least- I'm leaving tomorrow for Bear Lake!!! Wahoo!! Gotta pack everything tonight so that I can just get off work tomorrow, pack up the car, grab Sunni and start heading out. I can't wait! My entire family is going to be there! The first time that my brother and all my sisters will be together at the same time since my wedding a billion years ago. I'm going to take a ton of pictures that I will share. Family time and freedom!! Tomorrow is going to DRAG at work since I'm looking forward to being off. I can't wait!!

Much Love!

BBQ and Hope

So to add on to my earlier blog:

It's not very often that I let myself sink low as I'm generally an optimistic person who (at least I like to think) knows herself, and though I fully admit to the many bad qualities that I have, am also able to confidently admit to my good qualities, as well. So now I feel the need to express the short little spurt of a pity-party that I invited you all to attend. My landlady is evil and insane. She didn't used to be this bad. I live in the basement apartment of her house. Joan (evil insane landlady) has a son about 10 or so. And he's even MORE evil and insane than his mother. Constant screaming, constant stomping, etc. Back when I drank all the time, it was okay. I'd be able to drink enough to numb it out and then fall blissfully into an unhealthy and unfulfilling slumber. And now that alcohol isn't in my diet, I just can't seem to attain sober sleep easily. So when you throw in the fact that my landlady was stomping around until 2 in the morning today, I obviously didn't get much sleep. I was able to drift off at 4 (at least that was the time when I last looked at my clock) and had to wake up at 8 for work. Some people can handle few hours of sleep. I'm not one of them. So when I got to work this morning, I was exhausted and frustrated and had forgotten that today was a food day at work (pot luck thing) and I was supposed to bring the plates and utensils but I was off yesterday and nobody reminded me even though they all have my phone number. Issues with Michael (yes, again) from the weekend were on my mind and making me feel sad. Then throw in all the mosquito bites I mysteriously contracted over the weekend..... I was NOT in the best of moods, to put it mildly. And the anger and depression set in. Feeling helpless due to that fact that I'm still paying off a lot of things for my DUI which prohibits me from just finding a place, ANY place to move into due to lack of funds. Then I cried and started typing out that previous blog with my rambling "feel sorry for me" catastrophe. I truly did feel some release while angrily typing away at the keyboard of my soul, which also happened to be the REAL keyboard to my computer, imagine that! Anyways, I obviously was smacked in the face with the realization that though I prefer to live alone (and actually HAVE lived alone for the past 4 1/2 years), I am still perfectly able to communicate with people and be around people, so why not find someone that needs a bit of help in their own living situation and see if we could benefit each other? Though I WILL have to sacrifice walking around in my underwear, which is a favorite pasttime of mine......
So I posted an ad (which I spelled as "add" in my previous blog) on Craigslist and KSL. I have had a couple reponses so far and will be meeting with some of these people to see if we can stand each other. If so, I may have found a way out of the sleep-deprived misery that I've been living with for so long!

And then I ate a BBQ beef sandwich, and who can feel sad when eating a BBQ beef sandwich?

And then a somewhat lost friend (who I have strongly missed) of mine actually conversed with me today for the first time in a LONG time.

And then Billy told me that he actually IS going to be able to come visit next month which is great since he wasn't going to be able to make it.

And then I remembered that I get to have dinner with my beautiful Momma tonight.

And a smile lightened my face and I ate some potato chips and then a laugh popped out and then my optimism was resurrected. A Lazurus of sorts.

So the pity-party is over. Please clean up after yourselves and hopefully we won't be having another one of these parties for quite a while.

Much Love!

I Hate Crying

I'm at work and I'm crying. I HATE crying in front of people. I'm perfectly content with the blotchy eyes, running nose, ravaged hair and tears streaming down my cheeks (where I mutter things to myself out loud that nobody else could understand) but ONLY when I'm in my own home, alone. With nobody but Sunni there to witness me giving in to misery. I require solitude in order to fully let myself open up to the crying game. Yet it's coming now while sitting here at work and I can't stop it and I just want to run away and curl into a ball in the middle of a field somewhere and stay there for hours and hours and hours listening to nothing and no one but the birds. I am STUCK and I can't change it and I'm desperately needing a change that isn't possible. My potential has faded away into nothing and my life needs a complete over-haul. I'm sick and tired of this person and that person and myself and absolutely every damn thing in my life. I need escape that I can't get and I'm going to completely lose myself in the process of trying to keep my damn head above the damn water but you know what- I CAN'T SWIM. This darkness under my eyes is going to be a constant and I see all those people and I hate them. Where is it coming from? Where is this anger and hatred and depression coming from? The worst? The worst is the absolute helplessness I am feeling. I'm completely helpless and I can't do it alone. Every single damn thing requires me doing it alone. By myself. Be strong, right? Well, I can't anymore. I am breaking down and have myself in the maze and I'm so extremely tempted to just walk out of work right now and keep going. To grab my pursh, walk home and grab Sunni, then just keep walking and walking and walking and walking and walking. Away from here, away from there, away from him, away from me. Even if I were to beg for help, there's no help to be given. All of them are far away and the ones that are close are busy and distracted and hurried and always forget about the little girl sitting in the corner all alone and lonely, named Jessica. I'm here but nobody can see me. Or hear me. Or feel me. I just need someone to love me right now. Please? Pretty pathetic thing to ask considering that nobody even cares enough to actually read this damn thing, anyways. I mean, who really gives a shit what goes on in my life or heart or mind anyways, right?
I'm in pain.
Okay, I got that out. Now I feel better. Seriously. Crazy how that works, huh? Plus, I figured out a possible solution to the biggest problem that I'm having. Hopefully it works out, but at least it's more of a possibility than I had this morning! Basically, I NEED to move out of my place but can't afford it. I'm posting an add to find a roommate (who I will meet for coffee first to see if we "click"). If they meet what I can pay a month, then we can get a decent place and I'll be free from the evil landlady!!!! Wahoo!!!!
Cross your fingers for me.

Much Love!