4/26/00
"But every morning when the light comes creeping in around my eyes, another future falls behind the one I had in mind..."
This is not going to be a good day. For starters, I did some wild-ass acrobatics in my sleep or something and my left neck and shoulder hurt so bad I can barely turn my head in that direction. And J & P, my resident chiropractic students, are out of town for the rest of the week. Aaargh! What am I supposed to do, I ask, if I have a chiropractic emergency? How dare they have a life!
Secondly, I decided that I have completely ignored my responsibilities for the last few weeks and it's catching up to me, so this morning I have attempted to get "back on track." Thus far I've only succeeded in getting myself caught on the track and I think a train is coming. First I tried to submit a renewal application for student aid so I can actually, you know, PAY for the classes I'll take this fall. "Please enter your PIN." PIN? What PIN? I vaguely remember getting a PIN in the mail sometime in November, but who the hell knows where that ended up? (Hint--the city landfill, most likely.) So "please request your PIN here." Okay. Now what? "For security purposes, PINs are only sent through the mail." Oh, for fucking out loud. My address, telephone number, social security number and date of birth are readily available over the internet for the person with $50 and time to kill, and you don't want to give out a PIN number to be used ONLY to apply for federal loans? I'm already about 30 grand in the hole, do you really think I'd notice if someone used my precious PIN to rack up a few thousand more? Furthermore, do you really think that at this point, I'd give a damn? I'm trying to graduate, here!
That being a lost cause, I returned again to the school's web site, trying desperately to find 15 final hours that I haven't already taken or don't suck or aren't offered during the day. HA! Someone told me that this school does a 4-year "cycle" of courses, which makes it virtually impossible to graduate on time. They weren't kidding! I'm so pissed I could actually dial up "It's Your Call." (I'm about to have a spell, quick, somebody let someone hear about it.)
And true to form, I have heard nothing about my sister and whether or not she's still impregnated. Typical of my family. I can only assume that this is a good thing, because they generally only fill me in when it's bad news. My brother could be elected senator, and I'd only hear about it if and when he got caught screwing his secretary.
I have work I should do today. Nothing pertinent, just filing and typing up a few "no, we don't want to hire you, quit bugging us" letters. And I should probably go to the campus computer lab tonight and really work on my paper in earnest. But I've gotten next to nothing as far as research goes. I decided to do the paper on actually managing an information systems department, because I can't bear to write papers on the ordinary (I won $100 last year for an essay titled "Girlfriends, Guns and Money") and mostly because I think that job would just suck so bad. But the only actual managers I know of are The Firm's former and present ones, and they ain't talkin', probably for fear of being sued. Fucking lawyers! They make my life hell!
Dammit. I just found out that the August intercession won't count as summer hours for financial aid purposes. Fuck me! SO if I fail CS106, I'll have to take 3 hours this summer to make up for it. Which means I'll have to take 6 hours this summer to qualify for financial aid because I don't have $400 to cover the cost of one class. Which wouldn't be so bad, because that would leave me with only 12 hours left, which would mean I could take the August intercession and only need 9 hours in the fall. Which could be cool. But I really didn't want to go this summer. Shit! I hate school!
Okay, I have to go work now. I'm sure I will rant and rave more as the day progresses. If you read this and happen to have a suggestion as to how I can graduate without spending any more FUCKING MONEY on that school, please, let me know.
(Later)
"Night after night, no questions asked and who cares, the cold wind of it all, every time, well, it's hard to be civil and it's real hard to be nice, but you did it, my love..."
It's about 7:00, I'm at the computer lab, obviously not writing my paper. The sky, like my mood, has started to cloud over. Megan's in a pissy mood for whatever reason (although she OF COURSE claims not to be) and I am just too damn tired to give a shit about school. I'm beginning to not even care if I fail this class. Come hell or high water, I WILL GRADUATE. I don't care who I have to screw to be sure of it.
I have volunteered, in a fit of straight-girlish-ness, to be a tour guide for tomorrow's "take your child to work" festivities. We're supposed to take them on a tour of the office. I plan to pay special homage to my favorite areas--the john, the vending machines, and the smoking area in the garage. It's not that I don't like children, it's just that my sense of humor is so not-childlike. I will have to make a special effort not to say "fuck" or "shit" or "your parents are asshole lawyers." Damn, that's going to be a challenge.
"When times go bad, when times go rough, won't you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff..."
I'm listening to the Fleetwood Mac tape that only works when it wants to--thank God tonight it wants to. It's one of those double-album tapes (Fleetwood Mac on one side and Rumors on the other) and everyone knows those are shitty. They get all wound too tight (like me--HA!) and then refuse to play without winding up around the innards of the tape player.
"Here you go again, you say you want your freedom, well who am I to keep you down?"
I'm beginning to get that feeling again that I can only describe as "dangerous." This is the way I used to feel just before I'd go on a wild drinking/fucking/moving to other states spree. I haven't done that, obviously, in a long time, even though I've got this feeling since I grew roots. Luckily Megan keeps me relatively grounded--is it because I love her or because I fear her? We have this joke that if we were to split up, her mother would show up with a moving truck and a list of shit she's (a) bought for us, (b) had made for us, and (c) thinks Megan can't live without.
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