Heartburn is a great song.

It doesn't describe my mood at all, but I've always loved this song. The melodramatic oldtimeyness of it. The simple but powerful piano. It's just one of those songs you could listen to for ages.

Somehow mom's The McGarrigle Hour CD got lost, and of course that's pretty much the only way to listen to it. I finally found it on Rhapsody, so I'm going to use all twenty-howevermany of my remaining free plays to listen to it as I hopefully at last start working on creating a form in html for class. Since the extension makes it due tomorrow morning. Augh. ><

ZOMG two posts in a week

I'm meeting with a nutritionist/alternative medicine woman (NOT named Quinn) late this afternoon to discuss some things. Got my fingers crossed this will be useful and informative in good ways. Class this morning went well enough. I spent all of class last week furiously taking notes between working on the budget I've discussed

I've been invited to a dressy martini party tomorrow night. I will have to wear old shoes, but the dress is a real showstopper. Woo hoo! And I've been looking for a reason to wear it. Have beautiful Tahitian pearls in vintage settings to go with it. Will look smashing. Will have a good time. Will miss the boy like whoa.

That gets me wondering if the two of us will ever go to elegant parties. The hosts of this shindig are big anime fans and gamers, so using them as an example he could be comfortable with the people. Alcohol's not his thing, but surely somewhere in the future of our shared brilliance we'll be invitees to something formal. Mmmmmm, Josh dressed up...

Honestly, I just keep having hazy ridiculous dreams about scenes like the party in A Beautiful Mind. I never said that. Disregard the "honestly" opening bit of that line. Alllll fraudity fraud fraud. I would never.

Time to go home. Need to get $ from the credit union for gas and flowers for hosts of tomorrow night's party. Then gas, then home, then meeting with this nutritionist-not-named-Quinn.

The Birthday

...Approaches.

Twenty three this year. I'm always surprised when it's time for a new birthday. Hopefully 2010 will be the year when it finally feels like it should be time for a new age. Twenty two was a major year, and lots of important, life-changing things happened. I don't feel like rehashing them all, but it was a lot. That's going to have to be good enough, sweet reader.

I'm so, so glad to be catching up at school. I'm still not too far from the mean of age, here, but I can't believe I ever allowed myself to work instead of going to school full time. I didn't even want to fund the lifestyle I was living! Arg. Moving on is sort of the point.

There's a lot going on around the time of my birthday this year... Josh is in town, this will be the last birthday in the forseeable future when Andrea will be in town, the first session of my library research class meets that day, there are ghost tours (what did I do that was so wrong as to merit this, Jeezy Creezy?), Heather's invited me over. On the one hand it's thrilling to have so much going on and I usually thrive in those environments. But on the other it's just too much. There's no way to get out of the ghost tours, sadly. But Josh has said he'll go with me to them that night. I just need to map everything out and decide what will be done, in what order.

Took care of some $$$ things today, continuing Friday's theme of being good with planning the finances. Rough but liberating. I feel peaceful and I'm sticking to paying for anything that isn't a recurring bill with cash. Have to keep myself out of trouble. The way I've calendar-ed things out is feasible and includes a little bit of leeway. The challenge now is sticking to it, and making sure there's income after unemployment goes away. Since ending unemployment by finding a job hasn't gone so well, I don't know about that. I worked out a reasonable amount for gas and a little bit for fun, made that a monthly amount, and then added the bill values I want to pay. Working that out into a weekly figure resulted in an amount that's not impossible. It'll take some doing to find the job, and beyond that I'm going to proceed humbly.

It was nice to learn that after a certain point, I'll be able to have substantially reduced all and eliminated most of my outstanding balances without killing myself. I wasn't thinking that was possible, and I didn't know what to do. I guess that's the oft-upside to facing your uncertainties. Won't always compute that nicely. But sometimes you'll learn what to do. Then you just have to do it.

So here I go.

Optimism and Progress

This week has been good. Better than decent. Monday at school was good (I ended up writing that French presentation the day it was due, and making a funny as hell powerpoint to go with it. Got an A! Learned no valuable lesson about not putting off schoolwork in favor of playing my DS whaaaaaatsoever). Wednesday at school was fantastic. And I don't want to say I expect it to be, but today's shaping up to be pretty nice as well.

I'm pleasantly surprised at the end of each day when things feel happy. It's not as though I'm miserable; things at home are going fantastically well, things are great with Josh, things are getting better with my best friend. My classes are fun and I'm doing well at school. Life in general is good. I'm not shocked, that's got the wrong connotation, but I am... Pleasantly surprised. Can't think of any other way to put it.

I think it must be the financial stress. Tuesday morning I sat down with my bills and calendar at the computer and just wrote everything down. I have these dates in my head, but I think it will reinforce things properly. And I know what $$$ must be in my account on each day, and I mapped out how much will be paid towards each bill when. When I need to go to the credit union to make a withdrawl from savings to pay for tuition. And I spoke with the tuition people, who were ten kinds of helpful and looked up the dates I needed.

CapitalOne looms, but thank god after two small retail balances I can focus on that and my recurring monthly bills-- phone and insurance. Phone, insurance, and credit card seem considerably more doable than what I'm ineffectively trying at the moment. My tax return is mostly going to tuition (jesus christo on a vespa, I will never fail a class again), but there's enough left over for a notcheap set of plane tickets to go to Massachusetts for Josh's graduation this summer.

That boy makes me so happy. This lasting giddiness is sweet. Things are honest and well rounded and healthy.

And things with Andrea seem to be getting repaired, which is important to me. I got an email from her yesterday that made me feel like things might be alright after all, and the uncertainty was stressing me more than I thought it ever would.

I think I'm growing a bit with regard to the oversensitivity. It's probably something I'll struggle with always, but what I'm trying is to think things through. To make myself take the time to do so, not just calculate whatwillhappenasfastasIcan. I get impatient when people don't speak quickly enough, but that's kind of an in to speak more slowly, and to pause to consider things deliberately before deciding what to say.

As for the being afraid of something popping out of the dark to get me, no progress whatsoever. But I have been sleeping well the past few nights. That's a hazy resolution I need to be more resolute about: going to sleep at a decent hour. I've been awful about that for months and I'm worried it might impact my health. And as I am admist the throng of uninsured Americans, keeping the health is important.

So things are good. I've identified a few problems that I already knew were problems, but having written them down makes me feel like I'm dealing with them better. And having a plan and a budget is doing wonders for my peace of mind.

Life goes on within you and without you.

I need to start planning my oral presentation for French that's due Monday. Need to clean out my car. Need to tackle the laundry monster(s) coagulating in the corner of my room. Needed to go to the bank, but that's off the list until Monday. Need to look over ghost tour stories, since we'll be busier tonight for certain.

Want to play Chrono Trigger. Want to transplant sunflower seedlings. Want to stay barefoot all day.

Have to be at the museum in a couple hours. If I can get my French presentation written before then, I can practice during the quiet time. And read over the history bits of the ghost tour. And possibly play Chrono Trigger, but I'm sure as soon as I get up against the next boss some nitwit from godknowswhere America is going to come in and ask all manner of legititmate but irritating questions. And I volunteered, so I'm there.

It'll work out. Eventually it'll be the end of the night, and I'll ignore all my good planning to get to bed at a decent hour. Is it really self sabotage if I'm the one calling the shots?

Yesterday

...Was Valentine's Day. St. Valentine's Day. I remember being so particular about that a few years ago. So it's one of several hundred thousand things I'm less uptight about now. Still got a long way to go until I'm a parrothead about life in general, but in some ways this is progress, and in some ways it feels like backwards movement. But this sounds dreary and really I'm in a very good mood, so moving on.

My boyfriend and I are doing the long distance thing. Have been since we got together, actually. So for the holiday we sent each other packages. He's a big fan of pizza so I sent him a Papa John's giftcard (he gets not fancy pizza there), some sweetarts (he promised good things if they were provided), a Weighted Companion Cube made of paper (so not at all weighted, but pretty damn cute), and his valentine.

That's something I'm just as particular about as I was a few years ago. I don't expect anyone to ever make one for me, but I want to make the ones I distribute. Thank god this wasn't the case when I was in grade school, because I was a crazy child about crafts and forever being driven further crazy when I didn't think they were perfect. This was more or less always the case, so you can imagine the hellishness making valentines for twenty + classmates would have entailed. Just selecting the one of four designs that best expressed my deeper than the deep blue sea affection for certain someones was exhausting. Anyway!

I used the Ogden Nash poem To My Valentine (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-my-valentine/), and brown ink on pieces of cream on burgundy paper. I fret over the aesthetic of a valentine about five hundred times as much as I might about a class worth of perforated professions of love. But all the lip biting was worth it; I'm very pleased with this one. Hopefully he is, too. The poem is funny on its own but has some shared significance between us.

Unlike the last time I mailed him something, this package got to him on time. Early for the holiday, actually. The package he sent got here this morning. He'd written a note I have turned all giggling happy nitwit over four or five or a dozen times, and enclosed some of his DS games with the things he'd gotten me for St. Valentine's Day. We both like sour candy, so we both sent and got some. He got me a book of e.e. cummings poetry and a little stuffed kangaroo because I "find cuteness in the oddest places." I'm certain it isn't odd to find this thing cute; it's freaking adorable.

The book was an exceptional choice for me. I love almost every poem I've ever read by cummings, and I don't think my boyfriend could care less about him or poetry. But he cares enough about me to have gone to the bookstore and gotten the book, and then worried I might have already had it. And I love him for all three of those actions. And more.

Ended the day by having drinks and a bit of food with Ghost Tour friends at The Frosty Mug. Stuffed olives and pear cider. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

What's striking me as really wonderful about today is that it wasn't sad at all. I miss my boyfriend a lot, and sometimes the want to be with him is enough to make me cry. But today was nice outside and internally, too. I still miss him and when I saw the note and book in particular I wanted him with me to smooch senseless, but I wasn't sad. And obviously presents does not generally = unhappy. I didn't know what to expect out of the day in that regard, though. And to have it turned out as pleasantly as it did... I feel lucky.

OMG the $$$!

A post in which I kvetch about money.

I've been with Wachovia for years. Five of 'em. No breaks in accounts, and at one point there were multiple accounts. I'm a big believer in brand loyalty and though I couldn't tell you why I've always thought the best thing was to find a bank and stay with them. I've had an account with the educator's credit union for ages.

But as nice as the people at every Wachovia branch are, the bank is hardballing me and I don't like it. I hate overdrafting. I hate hate hate hate it. It's embarassing, it's avoidable, it happens too often... It's bad. Like everyone else, I've been watching my pursestrings lately and trying to be careful. But for the past several cycles the bank has placed holds on funds in my account for several transactions at a time (legit! totally legit!). Unfortunately, they hold these funds, allow other transactions to go through, sometimes overdrafting, and then when the held funds are actually taken out of the account they overdraft the bejeezus out of me.

I'm never a pain when I call the bank to talk about this. I know a lot of the time it's my being irresponsible, and I keep hoping one of these days I'll turn over that leaf and start monitoring things. But charging four overdraft fees to my account (to the tune of $140) when one transaction actually overdrafted? Or when none of the transactions would have overdrafted if there hadn't been a fee because the funds were being held? WTF, bank?!

Doesn't help my mood AT ALL when your snarky little CSR talks down to me. There's difference between "your screen, Miss Jenkins, and the bank's screens." Firstly it's Jennelle, you twatwaffle, and it's right in front of you, and secondly, I've been several shades more decent than I know my friends or family would be. I don't want to believe that yelling and bitching is the only way to accomplish something, but that's what you're showing me.

Smangry. Scared. A fraction of my tuition comes out of the bank this month, and there are other important bills due, AND it's the boy's birthday. There is jussssst enough to cover tuition. I know I'm switching banks, but fear of the whole situation just makes me want to cry. Sooooo effective, that.