It would seem that on a person’s birthday, people like to come out of the woodworks and say “I miss you” when they normally wouldn’t think of you if it weren’t your birthday. So, I have come to the conclusion that people are opportunistic assholes. Nothing new there. Also, my boyfriend kept asking me what it was like to be twenty-eight. All I could say was “twenty-six sucked balls, don’t want to go back to twenty-six”. Actually, I would not, for any amount of money, go back to age twelve, sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one, or twenty-six. Those are what I like to call “The Bullshit Years”.
We found out the hard way today that Drain-o does not actually dissolve hair. So, we’ve still gotta do something with the bathtub. It keeps getting harder and harder to get rid of bodies these days.
I’m finally at the age where I am completely put together now. No more awkwardness. My skin and hair look awesome. My brain works the way I want it to work, putting thoughts together at lightning speed and combining pieces of information efficiently. My life finally stopped sucking.My sense of style is enviable. And, my body is fast, strong, and can pretty much hold up to anything. Hooray!

And so ended both the easiest, yet needlessly stressful job I’ve ever had. With a handshake and a punch of the clock. My co-workers and managers tried to get one last “let’s make RaeRae our slave” weekend out of me, and for that reason I almost didn’t show up to my last night. But, my work ethic won out in the end, and all the cleaning I did seemed more final, more real. “This is the last time I’ll have to mop this floor” “This is the last time I’ll get a second-degree burn from this grill”. I think the weird part about it was that people kept asking me why I was leaving, and I said “I’m moving seven hundred miles away” and it was like I was speaking Greek. No one quits a shitty restaurant job. No one moves out of state. No one tries a brand new life.
Paring down my things has been kind of hard to do. Not because of so many things I want, but so many things I want to throw away, but that need to be stripped down first to become art supplies. Old textbooks. Notebooks. Pretty booze bottles. Clothing. Things that were dumpster-dived but that are too big to fit in the jeep. Being a found-art artist means that everything has potential. I have three boxes full of silk flowers that need to be cut down further. But, I will make this work. On the brightside, there’s little to no furniture, and four months ago we got rid of the bulk of our domestic trappings. So, now, the rest of everything goes in a few suitcases and trunks and fits in the back of the jeep. This all makes me feel like a gypsy, or a refugee. More like a gypsy, as I’m hitting the road by choice.

I think it’s really adorable that my boyfriend becomes conscious enough to momentarily stroke my arm while I’m looking up pictures on the internet, but not conscious enough to remember that he did it.

Do you think it might be necessary to someday stage a protest while writing witty things on nametags? Because I have a crazy assortment of things in a briefcase that will someday be useful for a protest, such as bandanas and random inspirational but not-specific-to-a-cause posters, but I also have nametag stickers. “Hello, my name is FED UP WITH ALL YOUR FASCIST BULLLSHIT!!!!!”

I took apart an old issue of Ellery Queen (a 1970′s mystery magazine) to see if there was any useful lines I could use in my writer’s sketchbook. None. Not a one. I forgot that mystery novels get straight to the point and don’t play too much with pretty words “Yeah, I shot him, and I would have gotten away with it…” I gotta wonder who the hell reads mystery novels for entertainment. I’d like to think that they either have a hard-on for detectives, or they’re possibly kind of sick fucks.

My job is over in three weeks. After three years, it is a time for celebration. Weird thing is, all the things that were keeping me working and caring about my job a month ago are gone. So it’s going to be really really really hard for me to actually work and not just say fuck you to my coworkers. I did okay tonight, but it was a short shift. It makes me wonder how the hell I kept it together this long.