October Part II
10-17-02
Who Was that Rapping...Rapping at my Chamber Door?
After more than 9 hours of work and a very long woman's bible study, I was pooped. I only had energy to sit and stare after taking an online quiz and struggling to make it to the bathroom sink to brush my teeth before collapsing into my futon once again. So what do you do when you are too tired to do anything but sit and stare? Go to sleep? No, silly! Watch M*A*S*H!
So I stayed up and watched TV until my show was over at 1:00 a.m. I didn't consider it staying up late though, because I figure watching TV is almost as good as sleep because you're not moving or thinking. Soon as I turned it off, however, I fell asleep like a log. In the middle of the night I awoke to someone knocking on my door. I looked over and as far as I recall it was 1:00 a.m., but since my show wasn't even over until 1:00 a.m., I'm beginning to doubt my observation skills were very sharp at the time. In fact, I'm not even certain that someone knocked on my door, but SOMETHING woke me up and I'm fairly certain that it was knocking. Anyway, I got all weirded out and freaked so I fumbled around in the dark and found my stun gun and then fell back asleep. I wonder if it was drunken Jason wanting to talk again. Scary.
I thought this morning that I'd make coffee cake, but there was no recipe for the kind my mom makes, and the cakes I did find needed ingredients I didn't have (more than one egg) except for one. This was a buttery snack cake with broiled coconut frosting. I have no coconuts because I don't like coconuts. But this cake required only one egg. So I thought I'd try it without the coconuts in the frosting. It came out splendidly and I ate two pieces before dashing out the door for another long day at work. I worked all day and this one guy I remember talked to me while I was restocking chips. He leaned over and said, "See that? That's a motion detector!" and then he demonstrated how the little light would come on every time he moved and go off when he held still. He seemed entranced. I told him I'd never noticed. Then he went on to tell me how he has a motion sensor in his back yard that is connected to his security system. He said that his back yard has a wall around it that is taller than he is and that if anyone were to ever get past it, they'd set off the motion sensor, which would make a small alarm beep, and if they entered his house all hell would break loose with his security system. He also said that he had a gun and if someone set off his motion detector he'd have it ready before he could come in, as well as the cops on the phone. He had this huge vicious-looking grin that displayed all his clenched teeth plus most of his gums which was a frightening combination with his laughter and wide wild eyes. After I went back behind the counter to take another person's order he had one more thing to say to me before he left with his recently acquired sandwich. When the other customer finished, he beckoned me close with a finger and said that he never takes his gun outside of his house, no no no...he wasn't like that sniper guy on the east coast bwa ha ha...
......
We get all kinds.
I worked all day and felt like passing out. I was dizzy then had a headache, and always I felt short of breath and very tired. Near the end of the day I felt better though. My test was to make it through the lunch rush, which I did. Carol and Craig discovered kittens outback in a drain pipe and Carol has taken it upon herself to feed them daily. We both watched as they came out one at a time to eat the tuna in a dish and then the momma cat came and we thought it was cool that she was more concerned about her kittens than the tuna (she checked to make sure they were all there first and sniffed the drain). The Shadow drove me home and I told him about the bible study a little. As I got out I thanked him for the ride as usual and he said he wished I wouldn't because it's really nothing to drive a few blocks. He is still a mystery to me, but that is why he is the Shadow.
School is tomorrow. Since I had no school Tuesday I will have to complete all of my projects tomorrow. It will be another long day. I pray the bible study goes well and that I will hold out.
10-20-02
You Know it's Time to go Grocery Shopping when you have to Break Open the Ramen Noodles...
Thursday I discovered, to my horror, that everything for my online Color Theory class (all homework, quizzes, the midterm and the final) are due by this Wednesday! AAAAAAAAAAA! I started to panic because Friday was the last day before Midterm break and with the school closed, I would have no access to Adobe Illustrator to even attempt to complete this work. I was doomed! I was going to fail the class and I can't afford to fail any classes because I have only 13 credit hours! I confided in Bing and he said the answer was simple. He would give me a pirated copy.
.........
It was my only chance, T-Rex or no, I had to deal with pirated goods. So Friday before my boss Fred picked me up from school (they need me that bad at work), I met with a long-haired pirate named Daniel who let me borrow his burned version. I justified the use of this program in that I will only be using it to pass a college class, not to make and sell things with. If I find that I want to do that later, I will buy a legal version. In fact, I plan on purchasing Adobe Photoshop for this next quarter and then I can do all my sellable art with that.
Saturday I made a deal with Arkady to put her into my comic in exchange for two more chapters of her story. She came through on her side of the deal and now I have on my side. Arkady the pine marten. I allow my online friends to be whatever they want to be rather than cats or dogs (like the Roach), because they are special and as internet friends, they really can be whatever they want since I never actually see them.
I was running out of food. I was hungry but there was not much to eat. No munchies, no pot pies. I finally decided to break down and eat a pack of Ramen Noodles. Though a lot of them ended up on my head and floor, I was able to eat the rest and they were not terrible. Not exciting, but not hideous either.
Saturday I had a lot planned - homework, this comic, laundry, calling my sister...but after working until 4:30 p.m., I just wanted to do nothing. So I did nothing (except uploading aforementioned Illustrator). Probably not the most intelligent plan with my Color Theory class looming over my head, but a person's gotta have a break SOMEtime. Carol gave me a sandwich and Fred sent me on my way home with cookies and so I was happy. Also, Becky had started me on painting the windows with pumpkins. I was glad to paint rather than work the register. It was fun, but it's still not finished. I need a finer brush for the outlines. So it will be sitting there all through Monday with people looking at it unfinished until I get around to finishing it Monday evening. That bothers me. I hate leaving things unfinished.
Today (Sunday) I went to church and Sammi and Jess took me to Quiznos (Ach! Jo is a traitor!). Isaac came too and immitated my laugh. He seems entertained my my laugh, pointing out how I laugh and hold my stomach and take deep breaths in between my bursts of laughter. He also says the length of my arm from my shoulder to my elbow is very long. Okay. Oh well. Not much I can do about either, heh heh. I never thought about how I laughed before though. Now I will be self-conscious.
So now the plan is to work all week, do nothing but Color Theory homework until Wednesday, then HTML and Psych homework the rest of the week until Friday when I will go to the church college group "escape to the mountains" retreat. I will go camping for three days then get back just in time to go to work the next day. Blah...it wears me out just thinking about it.
So Jeanie and I went shopping for groceries. I spent a good chunk of money, but at least I know I will eat it all. And for as often as I go grocery shopping, it works out to about $10 a week, which I figure is decent. Jeanie is miffed because the strange druggie neighbor has succeeded in reaching the office ears. They have ordered her to shorten Jasper's leash further so he can't reach the sidewalk, and want to speak with her tomorrow about moving to another apartment. This makes Bob (the neighbor between her and the druggie guy) and I quite displeased because if anyone should be moved, it should be the guy doing illegal things in his apartment and dumping water on other people's pets. Also, Jeanie is going through tests at school and preparing for her mother's visit so moving everything she owns at this time would be a real pain. Especially since she doesn't intend to renew her lease when it expires in a few months.
Hmmf. Mayhaps I should visit the office as well and put in my two cents.
10-24-02
Long Paintful Week
Well, I've basically wasted my entire week of "vacation" away at work, nine hours a day. Some of those hours weren't so drawling though - I've been painting the windows of the store for fall/Halloween! I've done an entire pumpkin patch and a vampire on the door eating a sub and saying "Sink your teeth in to a Cousins SUB!". He's right next to the "New garlic bread" sign, though, so I think that Friday I'll add a bat saying "Try our new garlic bread - so good - even he can't resist!" Heh heh heh.
Jeanie is going to have to move, apparently, to help the apartment landlords in the suit that the druggie neighbor has brought up against them. He claims that he is afraid to come out of his apartment for fear of Jeanie and her cat. Ha!
Right now, however, I'm off to my weekend college retreat. It will be nice to be out in the woods and out of the city. I think I'll enjoy it immensely.
10-28-02
I like Trees
I had a wonderful weekend up in the "northlands" where it was actually cold and drizzly wet. I loved it except that I forgot to bring any sort of long-sleeved shirt or jacket. Lucky for me, I was accompanied by several kind-hearted individuals who lent me their own belongings. After our 'second session' (aka lecture/sermon thing), we were to go off on our own to a secluded spot and read our bibles and jot down some answers to some questions. I did this and prayed a bit, then I went out and found that everyone else still seemed to be in their little corners reading and praying and such. So I decided to go out and enjoy God's creation.
I saw some big boulders so I went over to them and stood on them. I saw some movement up on the hill near the water storage tower and it was a squirrel. It looked strange, though, so I climbed the hill to get a better look. It had long pointy ears and white under its tail and underside. It didn't scold me, but it did flick its tail and stare at me then scurry up the tree and out of sight. I decided to hike further into the forest of pines to find more critters and birds. The air was soooo fresh and so absolutely sweet with pine. Clean and fresh after a rain that morning and my steps were silent on the moist dead leaves. I found some deer scat but no deer, and I smelled a mustelid of some sort (likely a skunk) but my sense of smell wasn't keen enough to find it. There were not any birds for a while, which I found to be strange, but then I heard and located a red-headed woodpecker.
I kept running into man-made clearings and landmarks and trails though, which I found annoying. Not very wilderness-like. I was so desperate to find life that I started turning over rocks to find millipedes or anything. I found nothing, but I did find dirt (a rare thing in Phoenix!). I grabbed a handful and smelled it and it smelled really good...reminded me of being a kid and digging holes. I decided then that I wanted to climb a tree. It had been ages since I climbed a tree and I wanted to.
As I ran into cabins and signs, though, I felt depressed that I wasn't lost and couldn't get lost if I wanted to. So I headed back in the general direction I'd come and found the water tower again. Upon sight of the camp I grew distressed because I hadn't found a tree to climb. Then I spotted a great tree in the midst of the boulders. It was a huge holly tree. Someone had tied some sort of chord on one brance and it looked like other people had climbed it before by the looks of it, but that didn't bother me. It had relatively smooth bark and it seemed to be dying or something because it was hollow and only a few branches sprouted out leaves here and there. I climbed up and sat for a few minutes, then climbed higher because I wanted to be higher. Then I just sat and closed my eyes and did nothing. It was great. After perhaps fifteen minutes of just breathing and looking around at the sky and woodlands around me, I wanted to do something. So I plucked branches off the tree and wove a wreath of sorts. It took quite a while because I had nothing to tie it together with. I used pine needles and thin green branches to try to tie it in places, and then when it was finished and my fingers were cold and the clouds were gray and ready to pour more rain down, I crawled down out of the tree and put the wreath on my head just for the heck of it.
Hanging out with the other college kids was fun too. We played a few never-ending games of UNO, some inside frisbee, some taboo, family feud, hangman, and several other spontaneous games like "guess what Jo is drawing on the white board!" and "conductor" and "big booty" and some sort of invisible ball game. Conductor was great because it was one person conducting an entire choir of other people making noises. The conductor would point at you and you'd start to make a noise like a squeak or a bleat or an immitation of a real instrument. You would make the same sound over and over again, guided by the conductor's rhythm, and then the conductor would signal each person to stop or continue or grow louder until he or she ended it.
The invisible ball game was one of my favorites though. It involved impromptu. You would "throw" the ball to another person with some sort of sound effect and/or gesture and they would have to receive it the same way you sent it. Then they would throw it to another person with a new sound effect. There were lots of instances of coughing the ball or snorting the ball and many many instances of shooting the ball and getting shot by the ball. Sometimes you'd send it off with a phrase like, "Don't touch that it's hot!" and the person would receive it with "Ouch that's hot!" or something. It's a lot funner when you're actually playing it.
So I got home Sunday evening and found that Jeanie is going to be evicted in ten days if she doesn't "solve the problem" with her neighbor (keep her cat inside at all times). Apparently our landlord has quit or been fired and a new one has taken over. They at the office have decided that Jeanie is the problem, not the nutty druggie neighbor who is suing them. Instead of offering her the chance to move to another part of the complex as before, they are now telling her to "straighten up or get out". Jeanie feels that she cannot keep Jasper inside her little studio apartment, however. He is used to going outside and wouldn't understand. He would simply cry at the door constantly and wonder why she wouldn't let him out. Jeanie would rather have them evict her and go to a more friendly apartment complex. I don't blame her. Why should she have to suffer for some jerk's nastiness? She is not the problem! In fact, she has done everything she can to solve the problem he has with her and her cat. She has tied Jasper up, she has shortened his leash, and she has been ignoring the neighbor for some time so that there will be no arguments or conflicts. Jeanie knows almost everyone in our little niche of the complex and we all like her. She's a nice, friendly, out-going person! She takes me grocery shopping, she shares things with me and I with her. I only know the names of the other neighbors because Jeanie introduced me to them! She's a real treasure to this community.
And now, just because some crazy guy has taken it upon himself to torment her endlessly and complain about her constantly, the office thinks she's the villain! Just because this guy won't stop complaining. As though she hasn't tried to make peace. As though she sicks her cat on him at every chance she gets. It's ridiculous. I'm going to talk to them when I go to pay my rent Wednesday. I will tell them that one of the only reasons I was contemplating staying at my studio and renewing my lease was because of my wonderful neighbor Jeanie. However, if they are going to toss a fine person like her out over such an unfair issue, I have no reason to stay. Who's to say that this nut won't start complaining about ME next and getting ME tossed out because he feels like it? The only reason this guy hasn't had ample complaints filed against him (as has Jeanie) is because the rest of us are decent people who feel it is not right to constantly report and complain about our neighbors. That some wanker with a drug-problem who locks himself in his apartment for weeks at a time would take priority over a nice girl who knows and helps out all her neighbors is just wrong, and I don't want to stay in a place where such a thing can occur.
Yes, that is what I'll say.
On a side note, I had a dream last night where I was a hare (Mohok) and Fett (the roach) was chasing me around in a football uniform trying to tackle me because I said he was a teddy bear. I recalled my dream at work and started laughing out loud. They must all think I'm somewhat off my rocker.
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