On West Egg

GUESS WHAT, Y'ALL.

No really, guess.




Have you guessed yet? No? I guess I'll give you more time.




Oh, well now that's not terribly kind. But I guess it counts as a guess.

Well you're wrong. IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! I am now a quarter of a century old. It was a pretty uneventful day, though. I worked both my jobs, which didn't really leave time to do anything much else (I've been working part time at a college bookstore during their rush on top of full-time at my regular workplace, btw).

Oh, and I work eight hours tomorrow.

BUT THEN TWO DAYS COMPLETELY OFF FUCK YEAH. :DD

In other news, I have moved across town from the two-bedroom apartment I'd been in to a room in a townhouse that I moved into July 30th and has only juuust stabilized as far as residents overall go. (OMG SOON THE KITCHEN CABINETS WILL MAKE SENSE AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS.)

So, my rent is up but it includes cable and heat and electric and internet and water and and and, so my bills are actually down. Working 40 hours a week (up from the 38 I had before getting the new position mid-July) has given a slight-but-noticeable increase to my income, and when I officially get the position in payroll, I'll be getting about $1.50/hr more, plus benefits.

OH HEY I FINISHED THAT PAPERWORK TODAY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME.

Also, last week the super uncompetent manager got fired, and while the new one is young and over ambitious and kind of on the fast-track to burnout (AND TOTALLY NOT KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT VENDORS AT ALL OMG, though he does at least outwardly acknowledge that I know what I'm talking about and if I say "don't do that again because" he probably won't do it again), his lofty goals are at least good goals, and he's still probably going to be better than the old one after burning out.

OH AND HEY. After like one-and-a-quarter years I have finally stopped being and Ohio licensed driver and got my PA one, and transferred the title and got a new insurance policy and everything.(Oh and I registered to vote, which I have been FAILBOT at for a while. Uh.)

I live here. With growing savings.

And I can probably go off food stamps soon! (Should, even. THAT IS MY GOAL FOR NEXT WEEK.)

(I set goals and follow through now. Soon there may even be lists. Because I'm a MOTHERFUCKING ADULT WTF.)

Oh hey, two days off. Maybe I'll finally get caught up on my currently releasing toku (well, the old stuff. I watch the weeklies and will miss OOO dreadfully) so that I can get back to the completed series I was in the middle of and last watched/live-tweeted at least like two months ago?

Or I could finish PONIES. They are starting up again soon...

(Also at some point over those days I intend to finish the scene where [redacted] from the ridiculous powerless HS AU Samurai fic I haven't worked on at all since starting. Maybe this time I won't get distracted by the internet.)

Sorry, you guys I just have SO MUCH to catch you up on.

...OH YEAH. I got (hopefully the last time ever) texted out of nowhere by Awful Ex about how he's so glad I'm still in this town and how he hopes I succeed at life and blah blah blah "I'm still in love with you."

I have two exes. How many "I'm still in love with you" messages have I gotten? TWO. WHAT THE HELL. :| At least Awful didn't wait THREE YEARS to send that one.

Also, he says he's deleted my number but AHAHAHAH EXPECTING HIM NOT TO LIE.

Oh, and he tried a "remember me by the good times" thing except the "good times" he chose were A)after he broke up with me B)a thing he was doing on his own that just happened in the same room I was in sometimes, and C)was a series he was marathoning six seasons of with the tv set loud enough that I couldn't sleep well. GOOD TIMES, MAN.

And then he misspelled my name. (And, correcting for spelling, used my birth name and not the one I go by, which is just a dick move.) (For those wondering, he didn't misgender me, I just... don't go by my birth name much anymore. It was still totally disrespectful and dismissive of my wishes, but there wasn't dysphoria or anything triggery. Just what would have been major annoyance if I had any fucks to give about him anymore.)

I think that's everything but IDK.

tl;dr: Life has been steadily improving. With health care in three months! \o/

I intend to expand on this later but the short form is that after all the shit I've been through since moving to PA, life is now going pretty AWESOME.

Possibly the awesomest it's been since I was living in Oxford, which was 2008.

Major stuff, short version: Job, breakup, paycut for ex=found a third roommate.

Major stuff, long version: Got a job working nights at the grocery that's like 5 minutes' walk from the apartment. Spent two day shifts learning cashier since they want all of their night people knowing how just in case, which was good because after about a week and a half of night shifts, one of the night cashiers got himself fired for laziness. Before that I was working as a stocker, which left me way sore after the first shift because EIGHT HOURS OF MOVING BOXES, but since then I've been fine. Night cashier is SO GODDAMN BORING, though. And I'm not allowed to read or have music while cashiering either. I get to music while stocking, though. And I make a dollar more per hour for any hours that are on a Sunday. I have no clue why, but it's nice.

CJ and I kind of unintentionally used each other to get out of Sandusky and once that happened I guess we unconsciously stopped working so hard to work out issues? I'm not sure, but after patching things up before that last post, things just got BAD. So we broke up like threeish weeks ago, I got the spare room and we moved the cats in with CJ. It worked fairly well.

Then like a week and a half later he and the head baker at the place that was the whole reason we moved here had personality conflicts enough that the owner was all "seriously you guys can't work together" so now CJ is a cake decorator at the same grocery store I work at. He's gone from salaried + benefits to hourly and none, so rent became OMG MOST OF WHAT WE MAKE, so we decided that a roommate was in our best interests.

The upshot: rent is manageable again, I've seen the guy like three times, once was when we met with him to see if we'd all work as roommates, and I'm sharing a room with my ex. This is... interesting.

But hey, the town is fucking awesome, I'm slowly saving up some money, and I just signed up for ranger_bingo over on Dreamwidth, so I'll have a boatload of prompts up and will hopefully get in the habit of writing once I get the card.