Moved back in with my parents.

So, I moved back in with my parents, which means that I have direct access to the internet. This means that I will be posting a lot more, I think. Since moving in, I have set up my bed, and pretty much nothing else. I have not seen anyone I know, I haven't done much of anything except for laundry, which is something that desperately needed doing (Alex was out of boxers). Our room is beautiful: The only trace of my younger self that is still here are the pictures I had taped to my door in high school. We took a walk around town today to see what had changed and I was amazed at all that had. Stores had moved, gone out of business, people had moved, ect. It was a weird little trip down memory lane.
As you know, I ceased contact with my father last January. However, when I moved in, I found that he did not necessarily cease contact with me. Mom found out from my aunt that he was asking her if she knew that I was moving home: Something that I didn't tell anyone who is connected with him. He's stalking me, and I'm not happy about it, which is another reason I'm starting this blog up again.
When I lived in Oregon last year, I worked for the Marion County District Attorney's Office as a victim advocate for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Since finishing college, I have decided that I want to work with child victims of these crimes to effect change using therapy animals. I will be going to grad school for this, and it is really something I have been interested in since middle school, the time when I became aware that what my father was doing was abuse. Not only that, but he groomed me for sexual assault so well, that it wasn't until I was writing my "stay away" letter to him that I realized that what he had been doing to me was also sexual assault.
That being said, I would like to pass on information to women who think they are being abused, and to sexual assault families. It is my hope to get involved with a domestic violence shelter in my new home, or with the DA's office here, and I will be updating all the way.

We Are Like Jenny and Victor

Alex and I keep having this conversation that he and I are like Jenny The Bloggess and her Husband Victor. For those of you who are new to the blog Alex is my ornery betrothed. He steals the warm blankets from me all the time so I freeze to death. But that has nothing to do with today’s conversation.

This morning I was eating breakfast while getting ready for work, and we were discussing the hamster we adopted that I have deemed defective because it isn’t cuddly like it advertises with its fluffiness. I was telling Alex that we need to return it to Petco, because it is defective.

You need to know that Alex is just as crazy as I am. We keep an empty fish bowl on our mantel because I made the mistake of wanting to own a fish that I forgot to feed half the time but miraculously survived living with me for 3 months. Anyway, it died, and now we just keep the bowl full to confuse people. Which, as far as I can tell, only works on people that have recently smoked pot (Alex’s friends, not mine). Only all the water has evaporated, so I guess the fish drank it all or something. Anyway, what spawned this conversation about the devil-rat was that Alex pointed out that we needed a new fish.

I told him that we needed to take back the defective merchandise, and Alex proceeded to inform me that we would probably end up on Not Always Right, the customer service blog that we read occasionally (for Alex, it’s a little more than occasionally I think). Then he monologued the following conversation:

“Hi Petco Employee, we’d like to return this hamster that we adopted from you because it isn’t cuddly and doesn’t like us. Can you refund us the money, or give us a better, more cuddly hamster that’s easier to catch?”

And I told him that’s not the way it would go. No, it would go something more like this:

“Hi Petco Employee, we need to return this hamster because it is from the devil and hates us, and is planning to launch a nuclear coup on us when we are asleep.”

And the Not Always Right story, according to Alex, would continue like this:

*Boyfriend walks out of store*

Edited: Boyfriend to Cashier: “Sorry my girlfriend forgot to wear her tinfoil hat today to let people know she’s crazy. We’ll try to remember it next time.” *Escorts girlfriend out of store*

Is it bad that I really want to try this now?

It's definitely been awhile since I posted last, and I know it's on my Bucket List to post 200 times on this thing, and I'm in my last semester of college, so I guess I should start posting again. Well, plenty of new stuff since I posted last: I've been promoted at my new (as of November) job, I'm writing my super exciting, super cool thesis that will allow me to graduate this spring (if my professor ever sends me notes back, and I excommunicated my father, which I guess is another thing I can cross off my Bucket List. I sent the letter last month (January 11, 2011). I'm calling that day my freedom day. But it doesn't feel like freedom. Here's something I wrote:

"Hi, my name is X.
I'm a victim of y.
My freedom date is MM/DD/YYYY."
Together: "Hi X."
"Hi, my name is M.
I'm a victim of n.
My freedom date was MM/DD/YYYY."
Together: "Hi M."
My turn.
"Hi, my name is..."
Shit, what's my name?
Has his crime
Destroyed that much of me?
Where's my ID?
It says JA,
but that isn't me.
"My name is J."
What am I a victim of though?
What was the crime?
Dammit, why is this so
Confusing,
Difficult to Remember,
Difficult to Accept.
Maybe I don't want to remember.
Maybe I don't want to accept.
Fine.
"I'm a victim of domestic abuse and
Child Molestation,"
if that's what you want to call it.
I don't know if I would call it that.
Molestation is such a dirty word.
I don't want to be associated with that.
It's what pervs do,
It's what bad people do.
It's the stuff offenders tell their
VICTIMS
Not to tell about.
And he never told me not to tell,
So that must mean it wasn't,
or was it?
God, this is embarrassing.
Who am I talking to?
God must not exist.
He wouldn't have let this happen to me.
Whatever.
"My freedom date was 1/11/2011."
Only I don't feel free.
I feel guilt.
I feel sadness.
I thought freedom was supposed to be a
Good feeling,
like
Happiness
or
Joy.
So why do I feel lost,
like I'm in a large field with no landmarks on the horizon
or anywhere around me?
Lost with no name.
It's like Waiting for Godot
This is pointless.

I wonder if the slogan here is
'One day at a time'
like in AA.
Only here, we're not addicts,
we're victims of "addicts".
Mine's not an addict. He only did it to me.
He just has better excuses than
Others like him.
And better ways of hiding it,
And a better threshold for the
Boundaries
between
Getting Caught
and
Remaining Not GUILTY.
What he did is so much less than
Any other defendant.
But so much more
Because it's gone
Undetected,
and will remain so.
Maybe my letter was a bad thing,
Because it informed him he was
Borderline,
and needs to step back.

I look out the window and see a
Brick Wall.
Impenetrable.
Unwavering, despite my efforts.
No.
This isn't freedom.

Seeing that I told you all that I would be back once school started, I'm a little behind on my posting.
Here's a little bit about what you missed while I was gone:
Alex moved in. Interning at the DA's office was so rewarding, and I am 3 weeks away from being finished. My job at JewelryShop sucks, and I hate my boss, but have made some awesome friends. I'm back in school, and the workload is a little heavy for all the things that I am juggling, but once my internship is over, I anticipate having a little more time on my hands for things such as homework. I have an interview at a nearby EB, the company that I have worked for on and off for the past five years. I am excommunicating my father, finally, after he put me through hell, worrying about whether or not I was going to have to sue him for the money that he is court ordered to pay. I'm doing some night work for the Stillings', and other than that, things are going pretty smoothly.
So, now onto school. I'm taking four classes, but only 3.5 credits. Right now, school consists of Mondays and Wednesdays, starting at 9:10 with an art class, then an English class that does a lot of reading (all Pulitzer prize-winning novels), and finally ending at 4:00 with a Personality Psychology Seminar. I love the art class, though I'm not too good with art. In fact, my latest escapade in the art world had to do with basically a white sheet of paper, colored almost all black with charcoal, except for a little bit of gray on the sides. Definitely epic. So not good. I'll post a picture later. My teacher said, just as we were leaving class, "I'm not going to grade these until Wednesday, so if you want to add anything to them..." I just thought, man, if I add anything to mine, it's just going to be one big, charcoal-y mess. When you see the picture, it will be funnier, I promise.
The literature class is also very amazing. Right now, we just finished Beloved, the book that I was trying to put off reading for the longest time because I thought it would be painful. It was, to some degree, but it was also very delightful. I had a good time reading it. It's about a ghost, basically, of a baby, who comes back to haunt her mother. Quite an interesting and original idea. Next, we're going to read the Shipping News. I've already started because I wanted to get a head start on the semester, so I bought my books about a month in advance, and started reading the one that looked most interesting. I also have to read The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, and Olive Kitteridge, by someone I can't remember the name of right at the moment.
As for personality seminar, not so much. He assigns so much reading, and most of it is really dense, so I rarely get it all done. Not only that, but I don't understand a lot of the stuff that he says, but I'm too embarrassed to ask for clarification. *shrug* I suppose I'll get through it.
Finally, I'm taking the first part of my thesis class, which is a little scary at the moment. I am so not looking forward to writing that 20 page paper next semester. I thought theses were supposed to happen when you were in grad. school! Not in undergrad! Man, if I'm stressing now, think what it will be like when I actually start writing.
Also, I feel so accomplished today. I finished most of my and AS's laundry last night, so the laundry monster of monumental proportions is finally under control again. It took 4 hours! I didn't know it was possible to have that much laundry! Since school started, it has been easier to do it. While we still don't have a car, we can walk our laundry to the school (not far from the house) and pay 5-10 dollars to do seven loads of laundry (including drying!), as opposed to the 15-20 that we were paying at the laundromat, which was also a $5.00 bus ride away.
I love this. I love the freedom that I have now, even though I am working my ass off and taking odd jobs and such. Doing my laundry outside of my home, paying rent and my own bills, and the other downfalls are just a small price to pay for my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

It has recently hit me that I am four posts away from meeting my goal of having 200 posts, and not only that, but I haven't posted at all for the month of July. As of today, multiple things have changed in my life. AAS moved here to Collegetown a couple weeks ago, then, while setting up care with his new doctors, he landed himself in the hospital so they could kill the clots in him. So, he's been here since Tuesday, and I've been able to spend two nights with him. His family, luckily, was visiting, so they have been taking me back and forth from Collegetown to Hospitalville (an hour each way). They have been paying for dinner, they took us shopping for the things that we needed in our house.
DA internship is going extremely well, and I love some of my cases, and hate others. I can't stand my job at Zales, but I love the people I work with. Yesterday, I told my boss to not get hit by a car when she went to go get her lunch of pizza and soda. She stopped and gave me a look like, Did you really just say that? while my co-worker M. and I cracked up. I've made excellent friends with a girl named TM, soon to be TY, and ended up at a strip club for gay men, where all but one of the strippers were straight. (It was her bachelorette party). I'm totally stoked for her wedding, and also, the last wedding I went to, (LR and DH) Alex urged me to go try for the bouquet, and it's funny, because I actually caught it. Funny thing is, he's already told me he plans to propose in the next year. Freaking Awesome. :). We won't get married for a long time though, til we're 26. That way, he can stay on his parents' insurance plan in case something like this happens again. He's considering going into nursing, which I think is a good idea: more pay, better health benefits, and he'll be working in a hospital ALL THE TIME!
I love having him in the house. He's currently looking for a job, a hard thing to find in this dick-faced economy, and in the process, he cooks, he cleans, and best of all, he freaking LOVES me. And I love him... so much. Long distance worked for two years (a little less than), and now he's here, and he lives with me. *glee!*

Yo, Dudes.

I'm peacing out for the time being. I'm working at the DA's office in the Victim Assistance Division, and as a result, my life has become too interesting to write about. The other stuff is just boring in comparison, which is why I believe no one reads this damn thing. I will post random stuff here and there, but it will be rare, and I will pick up my once a week ritual when school starts again in September.
Love y'all.

Finally.

Neither of these postcards were sent in to PostSecret by me, but both of them describe pretty adequately how I feel. The one exception is that I had my loving and amazing boyfriend, and my fantastic mother as well as my TV show and movie companions. It's been a hard year, but it's looking up, folks. It's looking up.

New Place, New Life

It's been SO LONG since I posted last that I felt like I owed my one devoted reader a new article. I found myself a new place. YES! That is right. I found a new place to live, one away from the crazy old woman, one of my very own. It's very small. It's very dirty. But it's very mine. I have lots of new friends in my new place. Many of them are spiders, alive and dead. I let one live today, because my mother said that I shouldn't waste time and energy on such a small spider. I told her that the only reason I waste time and energy on even the small ones is because I don't want them to end up in my bed, which, by the way, is very close to my living room. The kitchen is attached to the living/dining area, which is attached to my bedroom, which is attached to the bathroom. I'm learning all of my new house's quirks, like not drinking the water, and that the facet leaks slightly when you turn on the cold water, and the heater makes funny noises when I turn it up past seventy (only for a moment, and I only did it as a test). Also, the kitchen smells like gas when I cook, and the cupboards and drawers really need some contact paper. My parents are coming here for my uncle's wedding in two weeks, so I'm making a list of stuff that I want them to buy me when they get here. A plug for my tub is one of those things, because the handle that is supposed to stop the water from leaking down the drain doesn't work. You are lucky if you even get it two inches full for a bath.
It's weird sleeping in my own house on my own. The first night I stayed there, I got scared, because earlier that afternoon, I had been sleeping on my newly made bed, basking in the sun, when a creepy guy knocked on my window, and asked if I wanted a beer. When I said no, he asked if I wanted a Coke. When I refused that too, he asked if I wanted an iced tea. I turned that down also. He looked unconvinced, and somewhat dejected. I closed my window and got rid of him. Later that evening, I had opened my shades again, and I caught him walking past, when he had no reason to. Creeper. So I talked to my landlord. Turns out the guy is a felon who was staying with his mom. A felon for kidnapping. Ha. No wonder the only thing he was offering me was a drink. Bastard was trying to drug me. Anyway, Landlord talked to his mom and had her kick him out. Thank goodness. I don't think I could live next to a creeper for a year.
I did all of my dishes today (that I have unpacked so far). I was shocked to see that I actually had a sink! When I was done, I had five wet dish towels on my hands, with no towel rack to hang them on. Believe me, that's on my list. I also started to clean up my living room. Now you can see slightly more dirty brown carpet than before. And no, the carpet isn't brown because it's dirty. Mom said she was going to bring a carpet cleaner down from up North when she comes in two weeks. That way, I can get my carpet cleaned without having to pay someone for it.
Best things about my new house:

1. I can stay out as late as I want, or leave as early as I want, and I don't have to greet or bid adieu to someone I despise when I come and go.
2. There is no biddy with unlimited access to an annoying call button on a walkie talkie that I am responsible for.
3. I can decide what to have for dinner, at what time, and I don't have to have something from every food group on my plate.
4. No one is around to tell me when to clean, where to clean, or how to clean.
   
5. No one is around to interrupt me when I am doing something important, or something I care about, which hasn't been happening a lot lately, since all I've been doing is working at the DA's and at Zales. But still.
6. I can shop for my own groceries, and plan meals that don't disgust me, like "Pork and ginger ragu with squash," shit like Chrys used to make when she came down from Alaska.
   
7. There is no one around to correct my grammar, tell me that it's "she and I" and not "her and me".
8. There is no one around to interrupt me when I am speaking to correct my manners. I can scratch my damn feet at the dinner table if I so choose. Oh wait... what dinner table? Oops.
9. There is no one that I have to serve hot meals to, who will jabber on until her food gets cold, then complain passive aggressively about the cold food.
10. I get to buy my own milk, good milk, milk that doesn't taste like it has gone bad the moment you open it.

This is the top ten. If I think of anything else, I'll add it.
Also, I think it's notable to mention that I am getting closer and closer to my 200th post, something that was on my Bucket List, a few posts back. Take a look if you don't remember, folks.

News... and Spam

So, spam is, for the most part, untraceable, correct? Sure it is! Not. I've been getting a lot of spam in my email as of late, and I've just been clicking the unsubscribe button. But today, I noticed something funny about my spam. It had another girl's name on it. Another girl that I happened to know. It started like this:

Dear L.
Thank you for signing up for a speeddate account...

Okay.... what the fuck. First of all, my name isn't L. Secondly, I know someone named L. who would have indirect reasons to spam me (she's friends with MZ and AK). But it cant possibly be her, can it? LB? NAH! So I click on the link to investigate further, see if whoever was a douchebag put a last name down. No, there wasn't a last name, so my suspicions weren't confirmed... right away. I then noticed that I had a profile picture. I looked at the picture, and what do you know! It was a previous profile picture of the same "friend" LB on facebook. So I called her on it. I cant wait to hear what her answer is. Dumbass. If you're going to spam someone's email, at least do it in such a way that it's untraceable.

In other news, I started my new job at Zales yesterday. Good stuff, except I don't know anything. Two teenage girls walked into the store last night, and one was like, "my mom's birthday is coming up, and I want to buy her a ring." So, the jewelry consultant in me was like, great, I know nothing about jewelry right now except that it sparkles and is pretty. What would be the first question I would ask if I was legit? "What's your price range?" Great question, JA, but you don't know ANYTHING about any of this jewelry. Luckily, she said she didn't know, so I told her I would let her look around, and if she had any questions, she could ask. She didn't and left the store shortly after. I fail at consulting. But I'll get better.

Less Unfortunate

So, last week was shit week.
This week is infinitely better.
I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders
Like all my prayers have been answered.
Not only do I have a place to live
(At least for a month),
But I also landed a job,
Selling jewels and beautiful things.
I'm moving in a week.
Quitting my shitty job.
AAS is moving in in a month and a half.
Exciting to be together,
Finally,
After almost two years of being apart.
The DA internship is going well,
I'm getting more and more cases every day.
Keeping busy,
Just the way I Like It.

Life is finally coming together,
Fitting all the pieces into the puzzle.
My motivation has returned.
My sense of self
My sense of accomplishment,
My sense of direction.
Things feel like they will be okay.