Security Check

Friday I'm going to Dallas to cover this giant fund-raiser event for M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. I guess they hold it in Dallas because there's more money for Houston; I'm not sure, but this will be my third year going and it's a chance to get out of the office for a few hours, get a free lunch of "eh" quality (but it's free!), and write a quick and easy web story.

This year the guest at the event is former first lady Laura Bush, so the PR people for M.D. Anderson had to get names of reporters turned in ahead of time so we can be checked out by the Secret Service, I guess. Check-in for media is also scheduled for much earlier--so they can frisk us? Who knows? I'm not really one to complain about it; it is what it is, that's fine, but it got me wondering what would be found if anyone did a background check on me.

It made me wonder if the government has a file on my somewhere because I'm a reporter, or because I have a blog where I say I work for the damn liberal media. I wonder if they know I have several thousand dollars on a credit card that seems like it will never, ever be fucking paid off because I've moved on it several times, lived on it for an internship, bought tires and dental services on it and used it to bridge pay gaps with my furloughed job. I'm not a heroin addict or alcoholic, but I like beer and some wines and tequila. Mixed drinks are usually screwdrivers or whiskey sours. If they looked hard enough, would they find the old websites I made when I was in high school, where I posted these melodramatic short stories I would write? Half my characters had some weird disease or syndrome because I had this set of medical encyclopedia things that I would peruse until I found something to obsessively research and then was compelled to use that research in something. (Yeah, ok, we were all weird kids, let's remember that.)

I don't particularly have anything interesting that people could find, I don't think. No arrests, only one speeding ticket ever (I'm usually able to charm my way out of them). No Swiss accounts, although those won't be secret for very long for a lot of people, so that's a moot point. Well, that and I'm a fucking journalist, so I've got shit money anyway. Anyway. I wrote some passionately-worded opinion columns for my college newspaper, but they were all about vaccinations or keeping religion out of science classes or how there were too many freshman clogging the sidewalks and admissions should be tougher.

In grad school, I took some class--I can't even remember the name or topic anymore--that was taught by a conspiracy-theorist honorary professor who was a big writer in her day (although I'd never heard of her, but I've been known to read stupid shit like Twilight and the original Star Wars books, so my knowledge of authors isn't always tremendous). She would talk about how she knew her phone calls were bugged. I'm not sure how she knew this--she was discombobulated at the best of times, and I earned an A by showing up regularly and giving a presentation about the New York Times (the sole grade in the class). But it makes me wonder if my life is boring, since I have no good dirt to dig up.

But then I realize, fuck, that's generally ok with me. I go to work; that's fine, I generally enjoy my work, it keeps me busy and (barely) keeps a roof over my head. I go spend time alone with the horses. I feed Fenway marshmallows and donuts and caramel corn, because he is strange. I go out with friends and drink, I spend time lazing around napping with the boyfriend on weekends. I blog about stupid shit.

Sometimes I think right now that's all I can handle. I'll muss up my reputation when I've got the money to rectify it.

(And as a complete side note, my internal clock is effed. I stay up way too late, and even getting up late feels too early during the week. I had this theory it was anemia or something, so I started taking an iron supplement, but I dunno, it's not helping. I think what it really comes down to is that I am naturally a night owl, and sometimes I lapse back into that. Hence why I'm here blogging when I should be finished writing stories and going to bed to read for a bit before sleep. I haven't done the story I thought I would. And I will try to get up early to do it, and odds are I'll sleep in. Good thing there's only two weeks until furlough/vacation.)

Escape

As if you didn't already know from Monday's post, it has been a shit week. Some other things happened, which I won't bore you with, but I spent most of yesterday simmering with general anger toward the world. I felt better when I saw Dan for a short while last night--he and his sister are roadtripping to California and left today--but it all returned with a vengeance this morning because it's deadline day.

And then, lo, yonder in my inbox, behold: My second couch confirmation. I am going to Albuquerque.

I will be splitting my time staying with two different people, sleeping on their couches. Room service? No. But I will be meeting some cool people who are young and generally poor, like me, and are willing to open their homes up to a stranger with a serious case of furloughitis, as it shall henceforth be called. I found them through the CouchSurfing Project, which I cannot recommend enough. It's free, and you sign up, post information, and give as much as you can. In return, you can take what's offered if you ask nicely. It's taking the idea that travel shouldn't be financially treacherous to the next level.

While I do have a place to stay, I am still considering scaling back my plans once in Albuquerque because of my furlough nonsense. I will get paid a few days into my trip, true, but it will be a furlough paycheck. I have decided there are really only two places I must eat at (the Owl Cafe, which serves a great green chile cheeseburger, and Garduno's, a local chain that makes sopapillas that are so perfect and fluffy and delicious that I'd like to live inside one). I've decided I should probably skip the art museums. I may not drink much beer while there. These are serious decisions. But hiking is abundant and cheap--usually just a few dollars parking--and I like the idea of just being outside in the pretty weather.

Speaking of outside endeavors, I may have also found a lead on leasing out the pony. With the days getting shorter, I will have a hard time riding both of the horses this fall and winter on my own. But a trainer I'm friends with has a student who needs a reliable ride, and Po is nothing if not reliable. Reliable and cute. He's pretty damn cute.

Tonight I'm going to the barn then going to watch Project Runway, which is back on, bless everything that is holy, in Tim Gunn's name we pray, amen. Tomorrow I have a concert after work to go to--free!--and Saturday my mother has offered to take me out and pay for my day. Plus I get to see the house they bought in Rockwall. Sunday I will be lazy, and same goes for Monday. This three-day weekend could not come at a better time.

Third Time Is No Charm

Yep, a third round of furloughs.

This was announced by e-mail yesterday. It's not exactly the best way to crush the hopes of your employees, but hey, I'm not the boss. I would have preferred they wait until Friday, when I'd gotten paid, because I would have been brilliantly blinded by the non-furlough paycheck I'd just gotten and may not have realized it was the last one until well into the next week.

I'm not going to do the calculations, but I think this means we get more furlough paychecks--paychecks with 10 percent taken right off the top--than regular paychecks this year. It also means there's another five days that have to be dealt with, but no money to help out with them. I'm also stuck with nine vacation days to use, so I scheduled to take off about two weeks straight for the end of September and early October. I'll still have four vacation days to use up somewhere.

I'm still planning to use part of those days to go to Albuquerque, but now my plans have been hit by paycheck worries. I'd planned for N.M. because it was fairly close, fairly cheap, and I thought I'd at least get three or four regular paychecks before going. But no: two regular paychecks, and then back to the skimpy ones. I'm reining in my plans for the trip; not as many museums, not as much food, maybe not buying Christmas gifts there. (Fuck, maybe I'll just scrap Christmas gifts this year. Maybe if I tell everyone now I'll skip accepting them if it means I can skip giving them, my budget will be a bit happier.)

I was really, really pissed off about the whole furlough things yesterday. It happened to fall on a bad day--a Monday, first of all, and secondly I was sore from the crossfit class on Saturday that I think sprained or strained my right elbow. That arm is kinda wonky since I messed it up in college with a bad riding fall and really badly broke it, and I can't straighten it now. I went home and had some wine, took a hoarded muscle relaxer (from the most recent bad riding fall, back in 2007), called my student loan company to get an extension on only paying interest on my loan, and went to bed at 9 p.m.

Today I'm pretty dejected, and I've got shit to do. There are special publication stories to be written and people to track down for this week's normal stories. I just don't want to be here at work today. It's not worth it. I can't really concentrate, and I just need a few days to be in my funk and then I'll be fine. But some days you know you're not going to get much done at work and you still have to be there, and it's frustrating. I'm looking forward to 5 p.m., when I can bolt out of here and go to the barn. A trainer at the barn found a potential family to lease the pony, and both the boys have shoes again, so I'd much rather be at the barn than here at my desk.

I know I'm grateful to have a job, to have health insurance, to be able to afford groceries, even if I'm going to have to redouble my efforts to not spend money. I'm grateful to be with a company that appears to be doing everything it can to not cut people.

But fucking hell, they did a shit job of telling us all this, and we're all pretty damn tired of it. Sometimes I feel like fate is trying to give me a sign but I'm too dumb to take notice and get out. I don't know. What I do know if there's a cold half-bottle of wine in my fridge and I look forward to finishing it.

Pilgrimage

Thanks to the handy-dandy recession and the generally shitty state of journalism, I've been using up a lot of furlough days this year and still have nine vacation days to figure out what to do with before the end of the year.

Until now, my vacation days have been saved up for taking off luxurious amounts of time for the holidays, since my parents were in Virginia. Now that they're an hour and a half away, I should use the days for something else. I mean, I still want some days off to see how many pounds I can pack on during Christmas by eating cake for breakfast and the like, but I need something different.

Last year, Dan and I took a four-day vacation to San Francisco, where some friends of mine from grad school got hitched. We celebrated Halloween, we drank beer, we gawked at the tourists, we saw the modern art museum and new science academy and one of us cycled up Mt. Tam. (I know it's a difficult thing to do, but I'll let you guess which of us what was.)

This year, Dan's halfway into a new job and only has a few vacation days, which he's using to help his sister move to California, where she'll be entering Stanford's business school for an MBA. I rather like the idea of taking a vacation on my own, and I think tonight I've decided to knock off a few days to drive to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Albuquerque and the surrounding areas are a key part of my years growing up. We lived there briefly before going to England, and then moved back from England to the city, where I attended second through fourth grade. We moved back again for one year when I was in high school, and that year we lived on the east side of the Sandia Mountains and I went to my junior year at a high school that was crappy.

Of all the places I lived growing up, New Mexico is where I spent the most time. I took lessons there, I went to night classes about various animals at the nature reserve, I learned how to ski on the Sandias. I ate fry bread at the pueblos, I went to the movies with my friends, I got my driver's license there. (It was a rocking photo, something I've tried hard to replicate but never had much success with. Maybe it's because I was 17.)

I haven't been back to New Mexico since we moved away Alabama. Going back to a place where I lived as a kid is always a very personal thing. When I went back to Orford, the place we lived in England, I did it on my own, and it was deeply cathartic. I think going back to Albuquerque would be the same way, plus October is the Balloon Fiesta, which is awesomeness. I can go to that, I can potentially take my bike, I can go hiking, I can go to the nature reserve and to the museums and the restaurants. (The thought of real sopapillas is enough to make me hungry right now.)

Plus, it's Albuquerque. Compared to other parts of the country, it's practically free. I can drive there in nine hours, I can stay in a hostel for $25 a night, and I can probably afford that if I save between now and then.

Here's hoping. I'm calling the hostel tomorrow to check on availability.

The Dork Reporter Redux

Yeah, so it was a failed experiment the first time around, but now www.dorkreporter.com is back. It's back and it's filled with journalistic fantasies. Other people from all types of journalism are encouraged to share their fantasies. I want it to be an orgy of journalism fantasies, just without the awkwardness afterward.

I paid for that domain, and it's gonna get used, dammit!

The Same But Different

When you put your foot in your mouth, you've embarrassed yourself (or someone else) with what you say. I don't know what you'd call a foot-in-mouth action--something you do that doesn't require words but still feels the same--but I totally pulled it on Friday.

(Maybe they just call that a "fuck-up." For a journalist, I'm having a crap time with words today. Anyhow.)

Friday afternoon I got out of work, went home and changed clothes, grabbed an apple to eat, plugged my iPod into my car's tape deck (and yeah, I have played tapes on it, and I feel like I'm 8 years old when I do) and headed out for the barn. My parents, after being in North Texas for a few weeks, were going to come out and meet me there and watch me ride as well as see the horses. It was their last chance before work caught up with them, as well as all the mechanics of a move, since they bought a house, and they were looking forward to an easy evening.

I meet them at the barn, where they fawn over the horses, since they haven't seen them in a few years, since we moved them out to Texas before my senior year of college. They fed the guys a bag of carrots, I let them split the apple core I had from the drive, and brought them both in from their paddock to get groomed. I tacked up Topper to take him out for a ride, and went out to the arenas while my parents took the pony out on his lead rope to let him graze outside the arena.

The large covered arena had a sprinkler set up in it that was taking up half the arena, and a full course of jumps meant it was pretty crowded when it came down to dodging obstacles as well as sprays of water. I went into one of the smaller arenas at first, but Topper's afraid of it because it's close to the road and the number of 18-wheelers and jackasses in souped-up pickup trucks is pretty high. We walked around once and the footing was crap, all dug up into trenches for some reason, so we went to the covered arena instead.

Topper takes a long time to warm up, especially now that he's recovering from a third serious injury. We took a good long time walking around, and then did some trotting and kept things light. The arena was pretty cramped--there was another horse out there sharing the fraction of space with us--and he was spooky because of the sprinkler and a bit sore with his front feet. I let him off easy and we're walking around next to the other horse and rider. Her horse is stabled across the aisle from Rio and Topper, and she's a middle-aged working professional, so we get along better than me and the middle school girls. I let Topper's reins out long and take my feet out of the stirrups, and we're just relaxing and talking, and all of the sudden Topper's halfway out from under me and I'm precariously balanced in thin air. I held on for about two seconds, my ass hanging out in the breeze to his left side, and I finally come down with a thump.

Topper, like most horses, wants to get away from a dropped rider. He puts one of his hind feet down directly on my foot and pivots to canter off a few steps away from me. I landed almost immediately behind the other horse, so I'm incredibly grateful he was calm and didn't step on me or kick me in the face. (When I was in middle school I knew a girl who ended up brain damaged by getting kicked in the face, and it's always been one of my rotating horse horrors since.) I bounced up immediately, because it was an easy fall and the adrenaline kicked in, and went over to where Topper had stopped a dozen yards away, his ears back in alarm and his eyes rolling. I calm him down and lead him back to the mounting block and we get back on and finish cooling down.

"I hope that wasn't for our benefit," my mother said when we rode past the section of rail where she was standing.

"Trust me, if I could have avoided it, I would have," I said.

It was pretty humiliating. I know my riding has gotten sloppier since I was younger; I haven't been with a trainer since I was 16 (holy shit, that was a decade ago), and there have been lots of time-outs from riding (like semesters at college, studying abroad, Topper's year-long stints on the disabled list, graduate school in Boston, etc etc). I'm still a good, solid rider, but I don't have the same grace and technical skills I used to. I was already nervous about my parents seeing me ride, and I was thinking I got through it well until the last lap or two around the area, walking and cooling off. Then off I go.

It was like putting my foot in my mouth.

Speaking of the foot, it did swell up and was really tender. Flip flops were ok, and walking wasn't too bad, but any pressure on the top was painful. I got myself drunk at a party on Saturday night, though, so that helped. It was the first time in a long time I'd had any substantial amounts of liquor to drink. Usually I'm a beer and wine person, but this was a Big Gulp Coke and Bacardi (thanks, 7-Eleven!) followed by several strong screwdrivers, a cranberry and vodka, and a dobblebock named Lobotomy Bock. I don't remember what it tasted like, since it was the last thing I had to drink, but the name alone will probably prompt me to buy a six-pack of it in the future.

All in all, embarrassing, but not as bad as some of my verbal foot-in-mouth incidents, like making a joke about death in a cancer treatment facility, my second day on the job as a full-time health reporter. Rock on.

Mild Forms Of Pain

I heard once that an itch is the lowest form of pain. I'm pretty sure that what the horses went through on Friday was more than that, but they did get drugs, which is nice. When Dan met both of my parents over the weekend, he did not have drugs, so there's that.

Friday was an appointment with our horse vet, who (as I believe has been previously documented) is awesome and cute and funny and smart. He also is passionate about horse teeth for reasons too dorky to get into here, so he came out to float the horses' teeth and make sure their dental works were all good for the next year. I don't know where the term "float" came from, but floating teeth means filing them down, since sharp edges from uneven wear can start to cause sores in a horse's mouth.

Both the horses are decidedly middle-aged, and Topper's got a bit of an overbite, so our vet filed everything down and pulled two pieces of cracked, loose tooth out of the pony's mouth. Topper had teeth pulled last time, so he got out without anything pulled this summer, but they were both heavily sedated during the procedure. I stuck around for a few hours after the procedure, to make sure they woke up okay and could eat and drink, and went home with part of one of Rio's molars in my pocket.

That piece of tooth is what I gave to my parents as a hello gift on Saturday, but I don't think they were particularly impressed. My parents showed up in the grand town of McKinney, Texas, about 30 miles north of Dallas, last week, and they're staying in an apartment there while they find a house (they put a bid on one in Rockwall, east of Dallas, on Sunday, so cross your fingers). Dan and I went out to see them on Saturday night, since I got four tickets to the FC Dallas soccer game that night.

Now, Dan and I have been dating for four and a half years. He has met my father once, briefly, when my dad was in town between flights and took my sister and I (and Dan) out for dinner. Dan has never met my mother. My parents have been living halfway across the country during the time we've been dating, and they've only come through Texas two times, maybe three, but it was always for a day or two. I usually only see them once a year for Christmas, flying home, because of my work schedule (and before that, my school schedule). Dan has had an equally nutty schedule with school and work, so although it sounds bad that he hasn't met them both, it really isn't.

My parents took us out to get burgers before the game, and then the stadium seating separated us all into a row and gave us a game to watch and talk about. It was a beautiful evening after thunderstorming all day, and I think everything went well. I guess you'd have to ask my parents and then Dan to find out how it really went.

Now it's a Monday, and Dan's off with his sister enjoying a day off while I'm watching the clock. He is now switching over to a Tuesday through Saturday work schedule, so we're only going to be able to spend Sundays together, which sucks. A lot. But I guess it's good I got him to meet the parents when I still had the chance. I wonder how long they could have managed to not see each other while living in the same metroplex?

Word

I pass this church on the way out to the barn, which is in Mansfield, and it has a marquee outside that has churchy-kind of inspiring sayings or things to make you think Christian-like thoughts, like "Is your life Christ-centered?" and whatnot.

On Saturday I noticed they had something to the effect of "Hope and faith are a choice. So are fear and depression." Now, I totally get what they're saying--you can choose to look at things in a dismal way, or work to make them better. Fine with that. But irked by their (speaking of choices) use of the word "depression."

Today on the way back from the barn I was feeling awesome about myself--Topper and I took a few turns over a little jump, and we both survived!--and I saw the sign. I pulled over, got the phone number off the sign, called and left a message asking them to change the word to "despair" since "depression" is a chemical imbalance in the brain and cannot be wished or prayed or chosen away, even if you're a Scientologist. I left my phone number, too, in case they want to call back and debate medical terminology with me. I'm no nurse, I'm not doctor, but I'm a journalist and it's my job to be picky about words.

I joked to Dan that someone had to defend the depressed because they were too depressed to do it themselves. I dunno if he thought it was funny.

Fin

Tonight is my last night in North Virginia (Nova, as some say), as tomorrow morning I fly back to Fort Worth and by the end of the month my parents will have also moved to North Texas. This whole trip was about seeing things and people again, and perhaps for the last time, and it's the first time in a while I've felt the sort of full sadness that has always been a part of my military brat upbringing.

When I was a kid, moving was fairly traumatic in the short term. I'd have to say good-byes to friends, and we'd pack up in the car and drive away, and sometimes I'd be sobbing in the back seat as we left behind what had been home for a year, two years, three years. The last move I did with my parents was after my freshman year of college, when they moved from Alabama to Virginia for my dad's assignment at the Pentagon. (This was probably the only move where I never felt sad about leaving, too.)

My sister attended high school here in Virginia for three years, and I came back here for my summers during college and all the holidays and breaks. I worked at the steak house down the street, blew Christmas money on shoes at the Potomac Mills mall, rode Topper at the barn where he lived before moving to Texas. After I graduated from TCU, I stayed in Fort Worth for the summer before grad school, and that summer my parents moved from Virginia to Tampa. I never got to say good-bye to everything I knew in Virginia, which made me sad, but it was OK; my sister and my horse were in Texas. I saw my parents twice in Tampa, one for each Christmas they were there, and then my dad was offered another job in the D.C. area, working in the acquisitions office for the Secretary of the Air Force.

I was excited when my parents moved back to Nova, which they did shortly after I moved back to Fort Worth from Boston, after grad school. Now, two years later, my father has retired, and he's accepted a job for a large company north of Dallas, and he and my mother will be moving to North Texas, a place they've never lived before. Coming here was my last chance to go to the grocery store we used for years, drive through the woods and hills, eat whole steamed Maryland blue crab in a giant mess of shell fragments and butter stains and orange goo from the guts.

The retirement marked the first time we saw a lot of military family friends in many years, too. The primary core of my dad's helicopter group was formed at Woodbridge Royal Air Force Base, in England, where I lived when I was young. My dad was one of about 18 pilots or so under a commander who was one of the pioneers of the 53 helicopter during the Vietnam war, and most of those pilots formed a tight, close bond that survived because it was such a small group and there were so few places these men could be stationed that you'd run into them again on other assignments down the road. I'm the oldest kid of all these pilots; my parents had us when they were fairly young, in their mid- and late-20s, and so these people have known me the longest of anybody besides family.

My dad's extended family also came for the retirement too, which made for this strange juxtaposition in my mind. Here was my traditional family, those who were together with my father, and here was this military family that I saw more than the relatives and with whom I often felt closer. These were the people who ate dinner at our house, and whose houses we stayed at when Mom and Dad took a weekend trip, and people who gave us stuffed animals and books for birthdays and Christmases in person, as opposed to the packages from relatives. These are men and women who were like second parents, or extremely close aunts and uncles, and it was a relief to see them again. They were excited to be together again as well, and the event was a mini reunion, more about the group than my father. The helicopter has since been retired, and the Pavelows are no more; the V-22 Osprey is the replacement now (as I wrote about here), and the men are all retiring from their high-ranking desk jobs now. My dad was one of the last.

As great as it was to see them, I know there's no guarantee of seeing them all like this again, just like there's no guarantee I'll ever live here in Virginia again, as much as I'd love to. (It's pretty much guaranteed that as a pair of journalists, Dan and I would never be able to afford it. The high living costs up here is part of the reason why my parents are moving.) My parents got married on the Fourth of July (my dad was able to get a day off from his Air Force training), and so to celebrate their anniversay we (my parents, my sister and I and my dad's parents) went to a baseball game down the street of the minor-league team that holds a giant fireworks display afterward. When they shut off all the lights and started sending off fireworks and playing Tom Petty, I had to keep myself from crying. It was a good last night, but it just filled me with that sadness again.

It's the same way I felt when I was hugging people good-bye on Thursday night, after the ceremony that morning at the Air Force Memorial and the reception outside D.C. and the grill-and-beer party at the house that night. I hugged people in the cul-de-sac where they parked, in the dark, grateful because they couldn't see me tearing up a bit. I'm sort of proud I didn't cry at all this trip, but I came very close, and tomorrow is the plane ride home. I've been known to sob in the stalls of airport bathrooms before.

The Late Pony

In case you didn't know, my father retired from the Air Force (27 and a half years, whew) this week, so I'm at the homestead in Virginia for five days, reveling in food, friends, family, television, and weather that's in the 80s. I'll write another post, maybe tomorrow, explaining all of that, but I just wanted to try to quickly sum up tonight, since I haven't seen a situation this absurd in a while.

My parents saw this artist about a year ago who makes life-sized pony statues out of horse shoes, welding them together, marvelous stuff. They really wanted one and saw retirement coming, and a house with a yard someplace, so they had the artist make one for them and paid it off over the year, so it could be delivered this summer before they move. Now we know the statue will end up in Texas, but the big problem was getting it delivered here.

The artist arranged to have a private shipping company--a guy and his 18-wheeler--pick it up from Florida, the artist's home base, and have it dropped here in Virginia, just south of D.C. Projected delivery was last weekend, the last weekend in June, and it never came . . . the delivery guy's voicemail was full and he never picked up the phone . . . it never showed . . . my mom was so excited and so anxious . . . it was tense. She was convinced the delivery guys had stolen it, like everyone wants a giant metal horse.

Yesterday we got a call that it would be delivered around two this afternoon, this afternoon being Friday, July 3. Then around 11 a.m. we get a call saying, no, wait, probably around five. Around seven we get a call saying, "Can we deliver it at 1 a.m.?" Of course my parents say yes, since they just want the damn thing over with, and so the guy said he'd call when he's an hour away.

I guess I should explain my parents and their normal schedule. They're usually in bed (and asleep) by 9:30 p.m. and up by 4:30 a.m. Midnight came, and we expected a call any minute, and then around 12:20 a.m. there was a call from the delivery guy saying he was in Richmond, which is about 90 miles south of us. We sit, we wait, my mom and I watch TV shows and keep ourselves up, my dad snoozes with the cat. I'm ticked as hell, because I just can't understand who the hell delivers something at 1 a.m., much less any later than that. What kind of fucking business is this? This is not a crate of Uzis and Columbia's finest.

Finally 3 a.m. rolls around--it should have been plenty of time for the guy to drive from Richmond--and my mother calls them to say, You know what, leave it in the front lawn, we're going to bed. He says, But we're exiting the highway now.

So we wait, the delivery guy arrives with his giant rumbling truck in our cul-de-sac, and my dad and mom and I go out to meet them. (A side note: This may be the only time my sister has ever gone to bed before the three of us.) They're super nice, never give an explanation, but unload the thing, unwrap it in our garage, and we give them some sandwiches and sodas and tell them to have a good night.

It's not much of a story, I'll admit, it's just so freaking strange. A horse statue dropped at our house in the middle of the night, a mere hour or so before my parents (and other working people in this area) get up? It's a Friday night/Saturday wee morning, so it's not like we have anything to do, but seriously? Like I said, I don't know what kind of business that is.

Now I'm freaking exhausted, since it's going on 3 a.m. Central time (10 more minutes and it's 4 a.m. here), and that's pretty late for me. I'm a grown-up now, I guess, and I like to be asleep by about 2 a.m. on weekends. Geez.

At least the statue is pretty cute.

Kind Of Like Jail

Last night I was in my fridge, rummaging for dinner, when I was struck by how bare the fridge looked after sharing one with two other people for the past four years or so, both here and in Boston. It was shameful. I love living alone, I have to admit--it gives me a chance to indulge all my weird tics. For example, these are the contents of my fridge:

Four bottles of beer

One bottle of riesling

Two big bottles of Diet Coke

Milk

Tub of ground coffee

Tub of margarine

Tub of sour cream (although I don't eat it, Dan does)

Bottle of basil pesto

Bottle of tomato pesto

Bottle of salsa

Bottle of spaghetti sauce

A few kiwis

A few handfuls of tortellini

Bowlard-boiled eggs

Wedge of Gouda

Container of goat cheese

Slices of American cheese

Pack of shredded mild cheddar

Wedge of sharp cheddar

Round of Camembert

I know, I know, that's a ton of cheese. I get it. But it's because cheese is awesome, and I live near Central Market.

But anyway, living alone just exaggerates one's tendencies, I think, and it makes me think about what happens to someone's personality if they were in prison, living in an isolated cell or something. (That's a stretch, I know. But you can't argue that being alone makes a person kind of goofy.)

There are other things about being alone that I like. I don't have to share the TV with anyone--mostly because I don't have a TV, but if I did, I could watch what I wanted. I don't have to worry about all the dishes being dirty once I'm halfway cooking dinner, and so I don't have to eat out of Tupperware or something stupid because all the plates are in the sink. I can spread all my assorted crap (hair bands, makeup, brushes, sticks of deodorant, etc) out over the whole bathroom counter. I can make sure no one ever, ever leaves dirty dishes in the living room.

(Yeah, there's always the classic example of walking around in your underwear or naked if you want to, but I always leave the blinds open on the windows partway so Fenway can sit on the sill and watch the birds, so I don't do that.)

Westward Migration

My dad officially retires from the Air Force after a 27-year (I think) career as an officer, primarily as a pilot, on July 2. Then it appears my mom and my dad will be packing up their stuff from the DC suburbs and coming to the ridiculously hot sprawl of North Texas. Holla!

Dad got a job offer from L3 Communications, based in Greenville, which is north of Dallas, and he's finishing negotiations and details right now, but it looks like he and Mom are poised to come back here later this summer. I never lived in this area prior to going to TCU, and my parents haven't lived up here either (although both spent a good amount of their growing-up years near San Antonio, which is where most of the extended family is). I'm really looking forward to having them nearby but not too close--I think they'll be a bit more than an hour away, which is just dandy by me.

In Fort Worth, everything with the apartment has more or less settled down. The AC is still going strong, the roof doesn't leak anymore (which is great, because some recent thunderstorms have been brutal), and they retreated the floors with stuff for the smell. It only kinda helped. I bought some cat urine neutralizing stuff from Petsmart, but that only kinda helped too. Dan and I even cleaned behind and under the fridge (soooooo gross) and I scrubbed down the kitchen. Eh. I just live in a kind of funky smelling apartment, I guess. There's worse things, like the fire ant fiasco at the last place. Fire ants that crawl up the wall and into your bed? So not cool.

I fly home in two weeks for the retirement ceremony/celebrations, and I'm looking forward to that. I'm also looking forward to getting shoes back on the pony so he can be worked again--Topper's been doing well, but I want the po worked back up and fit so I can lease him out and not deal with all this stress over juggling two horses and a full-time job.

One thing I'm not really looking forward to is the insane summer heat, which is already coming on strong. It's supposed to be 98 for a few days this week, and next week too, and I'm afraid it's only going to get hotter from there. When the coolest days are in the low 90s, there's something wrong. Who knows, my parents may move here and I may move away searching for a better climate. I figure no matter where I go, I have a fair shot of getting a journalism job with chances of getting laid off. If I can't have job security, then I need to not have a place where you need to run an AC unit or risk heat stroke and death.

Anyone in Oregon looking for a roommate?

The Absurdity Of Moving

So far back into the archives of this blog are posts about my move to Boston, my move back from Boston for a summer internship, the move back to Boston again and then back to Fort Worth in the middle of the winter, Dan and I leaving Beantown when there was snow on the ground and the weather was mild once we got into Arkansas.

Today is the recounting of the most recent move, which was from South Fort Worth, near Benbrook, to what I guess would be called West Fort Worth, or about seven miles or so from downtown, just off I-30.

The NYT today ran an article about decorating a place on a shoestring budget that was cool, design-wise, but absurd, dollar-wise. In the story, this couple redid a flat for about $10,300, which made me break out the Only Partially Ironically Used Text Speak in my head. ORLY, NYT? Ten grand is a shoestring budget? Are you fucking kidding me?

Man, if I had that kind of money, I could just get it all in one dollar bills, buy a staple gun, and just wallpaper the apartment in MONEY. Then, when I needed a soda, I'd just pry one off the wall in a place no one would see it, like from behind the microwave in the kitchen.

The move itself wasn't too bad--I took a half day, borrowed the McGraw family truck, and loaded up most of my shit on my own, all Grapes of Wrath style, and drove it to the new place, where I started unpacking it all. Dan came by, helped me unload that, then his friend Jimmy came by. Dan took us all to dinner at a fairly generic by nearby Mexican place, The Original, and thanks to a catering miscount, I walked out with an extra free half of a roasted chicken. Sweet. Food.

Jimmy in his little Toyota accompanied Dan and I and the McGraw truck back to the old apartment, we wrangled up the rest of the stuff and Fenway, and then unloaded everything. I went to turn the AC on, went to buy ice (no ice maker, no ice trays, but really no big deal), and when we went to bed it was late and I couldn't really sleep. My cat took up residence under the bed, because the entire apartmend reeked of cat urine from the last owner--I mean, grody, gross, horrible smell, despite the new carpet. I ended up sleeping on the floor because I was so hot, I was so wound up, I was so sore and was sure my arms might fall off if I rolled over. The next day Dan and I walked across the street to get donuts at Dale's #9, the cable guy came, got that all hooked up, and as the temperature got warmer outside, we realized it wasn't cooling off inside. The AC was broken. The property manager said they couldn't get it fixed until Tuesday because it was Memorial Day weekend. Also said the smell would be addressed later. There was a lot of cursing. My parents told me to go to Wal-Mart and buy some fans with their credit card.

Sunday, it thunderstormed, the ceiling in the bedroom started leaking. Then I lost it and started crying for inexplicable reasons and freaking the fuck out of Dan. We tried scrubbing the kitchen to try to get rid of some of the smell.

Monday, it was fucking hot and I scrubbed walls, thinking maybe I could dent the smell. I stayed in the bedroom most of the day, though, with the fans on, the lights off, and the windows cracked enough to give light for me to read. Fenway moved from under the bed to hiding in the back of the closet. I always had a hunch he was one of teh geighs.

Tuesday, got the AC fixed and was finally able to sleep well for the first time since I moved in. Tuesday night, it thunderstormed again, and my trash can set up under the leak was filled up more.

It's been an eventful move, I guess. I love where my apartment is, I think it's cute and just the right size, but it smells bad and the ceiling leaks. I'm frustrated and smitten all at once, and I can't wait to get more art up on the walls (once I get paid) to help out with the design aspect, which is something I'm all obsessed about, even if I'm no good at it.

Yesterday I also turned in my keys to the old apartment, so I'm officially cut from that, thank goodness. Now I'm just hoping my ceiling doesn't cave in and I don't (God forbid) become used to the smell, because how gross would that be? It's so bad but you get used to it. But then, I guess the woman who lived there before me was used to it. I'm glad to know there's at least one person out there who's definitely crazier than I am.

Beer, Beans And Tuna

I find myself running out of names for blog posts, which is probably why it's a good thing I'm not a copywriter or an editor trying to come up with headlines. In a last-ditch effort to be original, I named this one after my dinner: Shiner 99 beer, tuna and white bean bruschetta.

On a side note, how long can bottled beer be stored before it goes skunky? I really liked last year's 99, so I bought five six-packs or so, but I rarely drink at home. I've been keeping them at the back of my closet, along with my skeletons and my sister's gay cat, and they're still good but now I'm afraid I need to drink them all within the next six months or they'll be gross.

Anyway. Today we finished a health care focus at the Big BP, and it was also Dan's first day at his new job. The health care issues, as anyone who listens to me bitch knows, are a pain in my ass, and today's was especially bad because I had this monster story that defied logic and didn't fit anywhere. All morning I was freaking starving, so I kept snacking, and then all afternoon I had a headache. I took three extra-strength Tylenol from my desk stash, I'm drinking beer now, and if it doesn't go away but the time I go to bed, I'll pilfer the leftover painkillers from old prescriptions. (I guess another question would be how long those prescriptions stay good. The last thing I need is to end up sick because I took funky Vicodin or something.)

Journalism continues to be a bitch. To distract myself, I'm checking out and reading a lot of fiction from the library and entertaining my fantasies of becoming an author, and I'm also hoarding measuring cups and kitchen towels, preparing for the move. (One week! Today I even arranged to have Charter come set up my internet the day after I move in, so I'm feeling proud of myself. Now, if I can only get electricity.)

I think things are ending on a relatively good note with my sister, too, which is nice. Our relationship has been all over the place since she graduated college and then threw all her ambitions to the wind, and yesterday we had a good, civil, friendly talk. It sounds like she'll be moving only about a quarter mile from where I'll be living, so that will be nice. I shouldn't keep tabs on her, but I kinda do. It's an older sister thing. I just feel like if I don't, no one else in the can, so she could drift away and there'd be nothing anyone else could do.

Hm. I'm realizing that I don't really have much to say today. Not that I ever have much to say--even when I'm on my soapbox, my rants probably don't matter to more than, say, five people on the planet at any given time. But that's cool. Beer makes me all talky, so I'm taking it out on the interwebs. Unfortunate. Next week, though, when I'm in the midst of moving, I'm sure I'll have plenty to write about. I've moved enough times to know that every move is a pain in the ass, even the little ones across town.

Cleo Shows Me The Future . . .

. . . and it's a future that holds a lot more griping about money. I wouldn't be a journalist if I weren't griping about my paycheck, right?

So no, I still don't have any faith in journalism. I love it, sure, but at the same time I don't trust it. It's what I imagine loving Godzilla is like. Or a serial killer. Whatever. The good news is Dan got pretty quickly picked up by a local news station, and he's just waiting on new equipment to get in before he starts that job. The bad news is my paper's parent company said everyone has to take another 5 unpaid days between now and the end of August. (For those keeping track, yes, we just finished taking 5 unpaid days. Now we get to start all over.)

This is why decent journalists leave the profession--because they can't pay their fucking rent.

That's my biggest concern. The past few weeks I've been getting things in line for a new one-bedroom apartment, and I signed the lease last week. It's fairly cheap, all things considered, but before I signed I talked to our publisher about whether we were getting full paychecks back. (Most of us opted to have one unpaid day per pay period, which lessens the financial blow, and also results in a 10% decrease per paycheck, which is just enough to be a pain in the ass and result in some imaginative money shuffling.)

Our publisher said he hadn't heard anything--this was a few weeks ago--and then today I was covering an event and a fellow reporter texted me about the announcement. I appreciate the text. It means I got to have a panic attack in my car driving back to work instead of at my desk.

It's going to be really tight to pay rent, pay bills, pay gas, pay student loans and eat. Reeeeaally tight. So tight it may be cheaper just to get an eating disorder, although I don't know if treatment is covered on our shitty health insurance. I'm desperately crossing my fingers one of the adjunct journalism teaching jobs I applied for comes through--being an adjunct doesn't pay much, but I think it would cover what I'll be not making through this furlough.

(Every journalist knows, a furlough is just a fancy way of doing a paycut. Fucking A.)

The event I was covering this morning was a job fair sort of deal, with staffing organizations and employers networking to get their clients all lined up. I should have been paying more attention, because I feel like the next step is layoffs.

Double fuck.

Journalism, you suck.

Fuck That Shit

I think Birnam may be right. What better to hold on to than anger and an easy three-word motto? It's easily repeated in journalism company, because we all curse way too much, and it's a convenient number of letters that would look good tattooed on anyone.

I'm still sort of reeling. It's very surreal. Dan's sister has been home through all this--she was stopping by Fort Worth before several months of backpacking through South America--and she left early this morning. Today is my last day of work for the week, so Dan and I will be able to hang out all weekend. Tonight a bunch of people who got laid off and some who still have jobs are meeting up at a bar in Dallas, and while Dan's refrained from drowning his sorrows thus far, I think tonight will be the night to get blitzed.

Easter is this weekend, too. Dan was supposed to work on Easter, but now it looks like we'll have the day together. I'm just hoping it will be quiet. It was exceedingly awkward spending Tuesday night with Dan's family. There'd been plans for about a week for the family to go out to dinner that night, since his sister was home, and I'd initially declined because I planned to go out and ride. After everything that happened, though, I couldn't say I had to pass on seeing Dan, so I went out there. I'm not sure I'm up for doing that whole awkward thing again on Sunday.

In the mean time, I'm just bracing myself for a frustrating next few months. My life is still fine; I still have a job, I don't think I'm in danger of losing it, but I expect it will be difficult to be the only working journalist in what has always been a relationship between two working journalists.

I did tell Dan that if he went into PR, though, I'd do it. That way we can both be sell-outs.

Unemployed

This morning Dan got laid off by the Dallas Morning News.

We both knew today would be cuts, but we both thought he'd be safe. He is (was, I guess) a mobile journalist, doing photos, video and stories for the web and the paper, and he makes about half of what a lot of other reporters make.

But he got laid off, along with many, many other reporters, photographers and web people. He was the last person hired, so that may have been a red flag, but not a single editor got laid off. Not a single one, and yet those who generate content were axed.

Obviously, I've been on an emotional roller coaster today, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect my job today. I was having a hard time concentrating, I was forgetting things, I just didn't give a shit. I can only imagine Dan had it worse than me. I know we have it a lot better than a lot of those who lost their jobs--those who are married and have mortgages and kids or whatnot. There's enough freelance work out there to give him something to do, and he's already sending out his resume and pulling together clips, but this is going to be a huge, shocking transition. It's going to take a while for him to settle into the reality of this, I think, and it's going to take me a while to process it as well.

With the DMN making irrational business decisions and the Star-Telegram pulling shit like this in some misguided attempt to keep afloat, I can only say that I have utterly and completely lost my faith in the newspaper industry.

And as a reporter, that's a fucking awful feeling.

Look At The Momentum Here

I'd just like to point out it's been a week and I'm posting again. This is a good sign, right? Yeah? Like a consumer confidence index, hopefully this points toward more frequent posts in the future. We'll see.

Last night my sister told me she wanted to buy a bike and she wanted my opinion and I crushed her little romantic dreams of merrily pedaling through Fort Worth with a basket of flowers above her fender. I know this bike mechanic who calls them "circus bear bikes," because your posture is very upright and almost silly looking. I told her this. And then I suddenly realized that after years and years of hanging out with Dan and his bikes, I'd become elitist.

Tonight I have to convince myself to go out to the barn. I haven't been out since last Saturday--it's bad. I've been really on top of it, taking care of Topper and the Pony, but lately I'm just tired. I'm tired of driving out there, dealing with all this damn hair as they shed, tacking and riding both of them and driving home hungry and tired and dirty at 8:30 p.m. after having been at work all day. It's a bit of a burnout, I guess. (I'm having a lot of tired/lazy/blah problems, aren't I?)

I didn't go out on Tuesday like I usually do--I went for a long run at the Clear Forks Park and got a new library card and spent the evening reading instead. It was nice. And I know I'll be fine at the barn once I get there. I'm always happy once I get there. It's just the thought of everything that's daunting. Plus, I've got to get out today to drop the check for board for April.

Tomorrow is payday. All I really want to do is buy pots and pans. I signed my 60-day notice with the apartment complex yesterday (and had to deal with the front office people ask me to stay: "Are you sure you don't want to move into a one bedroom?" Fuck that shit, man.), and so I keep thinking of my own place. Is it strange that I'm 26 and have never lived in my own place? I don't know. My mother called me the other day and asked if I reconsidered staying with my sister, and I almost told my mother to "fuck that" but I didn't. I just said no way, no how. I tell my mom my sister is loud and rude and dirty and a bitch, and evidently my sister says the same things about me. But I'm not leaving every single effing thing in the kitchen dirty in the sink for a week after cooking elaborate meals with my boyfriend at midnight. That's probably why I'm so obsessed with my own kitchen stuff.

Yesterday I bought a few kitchen knives and it felt so good.

Twits Of A Twit

Ok, I've fiddled for a bit and had to update my template. . . but anyway, I did join Twitter in another attempt to fill my life with uselessness.

You can join me as we waste seconds that all add up to hours of our lives frittered away.

(Frittered? Is that right? Like frittering? Whatever.)

Crap

It's been almost a month since I last updated. Can you believe that? That means I suck at blogging lately, that's what it means. My other blog has completely fallen by the wayside too, which is sad, but I'll hopefully get it back on track at some point. I need to start small, though, so I'm going to see if I can get back into this one with some reliability.

First of all, Topper is not completely crippled. I know I left that last post on a bad note, but I was just so worked up about the whole thing that I had to vent somewhere. (Besides venting to Dan, who was probably kind of confused about what to do, dealing with me crying and worrying about my horse.) Topper has splints, which are microfractures, in each of his back legs, which is what causes the bumps and swelling around the bone. The vet (let me just go ahead and make it public: I have a little crush on our equine vet, and part of it is probably that he thinks Topper is awesome) came out and got both Rio and Topper updated on shots and said I should give Topper about six weeks off, only walking.

Since then, Topper and I have gone out once or twice a week for a ride that involves just walking. Not terribly exciting, but sometimes it's nice to have no pressure for him to behave and to have a good workout. We walk around, spent a half hour relaxing, and it helps him from climbing up the walls the way he has on previous DL stints. Then I take him in and tack the pony and take him out for a long, good ride, which is gratifying--Rio is fun and a little bit challenging without being frustrating. The only reason he's challenging is because he hasn't been worked a lot for years, and I haven't riden him with any frequency in years, but we have fun and we're jumping and that makes me happy. I can see a physical difference in him: He's not overweight anymore, he's building muscle and stamina, he's remembering things like how to do his lines and pick up leads after jumps.

Again, I've been thinking about why I haven't been blogging lately and I'm not sure I have a good reason. Obviously, things are busy. Monday is my quiet day--I go to work, work out or go running, do grocery shopping and spend the evening watching TV. (Hello, new Gossip Girl episodes!) Tuesday and Thursday I do work, go running, go to the barn, ride both the horses and don't get home until about 9 p.m. Wednesday I drive to Dallas to spend the evening with Dan after work and then have to drive back to Fort Worth. Friday usually involves the barn or driving to Dallas, and weekends are filled with horses and friends.

That's not a complete excuse, though. Even at work, things have been incredibly busy. It's no secret I've blogged at work during the day--a lot of my job is waiting, waiting on PR people to call me back, waiting on interviews, waiting on all sorts of things, so I would fill it in with blogging (along with reading blogs, reading news, researching obscure topics, etc etc).

The other thing was I've been in a general funk for a while now. I don't know why, and it's not a huge funk or anything, it's just something has felt off and I think it's just a reaction to stress. There are some personal things that have been getting me worked up lately, and thankfully the anchors in my life have been steady (like Dan and my parents). If I had problems in those realms, I'd be screwed.

So. Hm. I'm sure no one's really that interested in all this ruminating bullshit, but I figured I'd go ahead and throw it out there before I attempt to do some normal posts again. I don't know if I'll get the chance to blog again before Friday or so, but we have an after-work event on Thursday and so maybe there will be some tipsy blogging after some free drinks. We all know I'm pretty much a light-weight.