Ablogagies

Dear blog,

I am so sorry to have been ignoring you. I feel so bad. I cannot even look into your big bloggy eyes anymore.  Oh, come on. Quit looking at me like that! I've just been under an avalanche of work and had an earthquake of life changes, that's all. Mommy still loves you!

Funny how, when nothing's going on, I have plenty of time to tell you all about it. You know I'm having real adventures when you hear absolutely nothing from me.

Well, the good news is, I look forward to reviving you soon. This time, I hope to strike the right balance of leisure and adventure.

I love you.



Quit looking at me like that.

-Anna

So f&%#!ing busy

Dear Spill,

I am so sorry to have been ignoring you. I have been pouring every single iota of human effort into staying alive, making deadlines at my new job (yes, it's going great, thanks), not allowing the ol' account to dip into the red zone as I wait for that first full paycheck, moving in (pictures soon, I promise!) and passing World Politics and (boredom central) Microeconomics. It seems like every day there's some new crisis to be averted, something I forgot at work, a new bill to pay, a debt I didn't know I had, a call I forgot to return.

I can't wait to be finished with school. It is such a drag, and all it does is get in the way. Oh, and a certain someone is coming from Germany for a month but I don't have any time, so I guess he'll have to entertain himself until Thanksgiving break.

Even with all of this, I am SO, SO grateful for my beautiful apartment, so happy to have my Arts Editor job, and even though I am really poor now I am so extremely glad I went to Germany for a year, if only to have danced until morning properly, met Mirjam and Erich and Micha, read Kafka in the original language, to have lived in a house with a Klingel, reveled in the joys of public transport, divided my waste into like 15 different receptacles, experienced the madness, the agony, and the ecstasy that is World Cup fever, and shocked the socks off a lot of middle-aged women in the German Hygiene Museum by saying I got up at 9 most mornings.

But yeah, sorry I'm so out of touch these days. Here, keep yourself busy with a New Times. 

Love,

Anna

Housed, for real this time

I have good news to impart: I got that apartment! What apartment? You know, that one, the dream one, the one! (I don't tell you guys about things I am hoping for anymore until after they're finalized, otherwise things get jinxed and nothing works out and my blog becomes a sort of memorial to my failures.) I can't tell you exactly where the new apartment is because it's so ridiculously public, being right above a shop downtown.

...Just know that when you're strolling through the city center, I am above you, watching, wondering why it doesn't occur to anyone to look up. When you are going out for a cup of coffee I am soaking in the tub several feet above and to the left of you. And when you are bar-hopping, your drunken cries will shape the plot of my dreams. That's all!

And it's gorgeous too. Don't think I mentioned that. Pics to come. Obviously!

Eviction party!

Back to square one!! Anyone want to rent to a hard-working, book-reading, fridge-cleaning, VCR-rewinding, gin-drinking writer/insomniac/German enthusiast with excellently bad taste? Here I am.

Yep, it's official. I was just nicely asked to leave, to accommodate landlady's niece with boyfriend "drama." So much for putting down roots, so much for decorating, cleaning the fridge, acquiring household investment pieces, so much for picking out succulents. So much for the effort that went into looking for a home, the endless meeting of people and being nice, so much for moving my cheap folding furniture in a Radio Flyer wagon and having everyone honk at me. I'm back on the mean streets. So if you have a hot housing tip, let me know.

P.S. !!!***Act now and I will throw in some FREE espresso snobbery at no extra charge***!!! AMAZING OFFER WON'T LAST CALL NOW

...Or have I been reading too many Craigslist postings lately?

Eviction waffles

Did I really type the words "now that I am on top of everything...?" Was that really yesterday? Well, I obviously was missing some information, such as:

Thing 1

My roommate's sister is having boyfriend drama, therefore I might get evicted. WHAT? Well, my roommate Essie's sister Ginny used to live in the room I currently rent. (She's the one who left the pile-o-shit in front of my entrance.) She moved out to live with her boyfriend. Things aren't going too well with the bf, so now she wants to move back in. Key piece of info: Essie and Ginny's aunt is our landlady. To make things worse, my stay in this room is made bearable only by the fact that the room is slated to receive a professional makeover this Friday. But now that I am on eviction standby, I have been advised not to make any changes to the room.

To complicate things further, I have friends coming into town from Washington, D.C. the weekend after scheduled room makeover. I was counting on having a nice, inviting place by then, but it looks like it's just going to stay the stinkhole room that it is, with the rank ashtray-smelling carpet laid over cement and the giant holes/stains gracing the walls.

Not to mention I just cleaned the fridge, swept, mopped, vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom, dusted, made the windows see-through again, took the towels to the laund-o, scraped the caked-on food from the stove top and scrubbed the soap scum and rust from the shower. (I did all of this before school in the morning or after work at night.) Just trying to pitch in. What was the damn point in that then?

To make matters worse, I received this alarming information via text message as I was on my way to class and my battery was dying, so there was no way to call Essie and actually talk about it.  I was intending to just speak to her at the house before work but then...

Thing 2


When I stopped off at work on the way home from school to get some coffee, I was informed that my coworker for the night (currently in Australia) didn't get his last shift covered. There was no one to work the shift with me. It was starting in an hour and I was working it...alone. What's worse, it wasn't just any shift which I might have been able to handle; it was Waffle Night, which is by far the most demanding and, in my opinion, needs three workers at least. I spent my free hour making calls from the work phone and trying to get someone to help me. I got a lot of "Ohh, I can do 7 to 9.30..." but no one would work the full shift with me at such short notice. Guess who filled in? My sister, Heather!

Did I mention my sister just got hired at Linnaea's?? I mean literally just got hired days before? She had not done any training but since she and I have been working in coffee shops together since the dawn of time, we figured we would wing it, and we did. 

By the way, usually trainees start by doing a half shift at a slow time, like Sunday afternoon, and someone takes them by the hand and guides them through everything and makes it nice for them, saying, "Now this is called 'espresso.'"

Well, that's not exactly the initiation Heather got. Linnaea's on Waffle Night is scary. However, we pulled through, served a million damn customized waffles, and were out of there before 1 a.m., which is better than the trained employees sometimes do. 

There was no time for dinner that night and since my sister is allergic to wheat and couldn't even nibble on waffles, I felt awful and took her to Mexican afterwards.

So then it was after 1 a.m. when I got home, so no chance to have a chat with the roomies tonight re: looming threat of eviction. Tomorrow maybe, if I get a free moment. I am scheduled to work tomorrow with nobody again, so that will be an adventure.

Only sustaining thoughts:

1. 5 more shifts until no more shift work. And no more food service. Ever. I LOVE Linnaea's but...
2. San Louie liked my child leash article; Ashley said it was "genius" and she "couldn't be more honored" to print it in her magazine. That was nice.