#but it just covers a few months of rent bc rent is so goddamn EXPENSIVE here 😭😭😭😭

[e77y]

I never updated on this but um. I applied and got rejected from all three 🥲 I really hope I get a graduate assistantship next semester. I need a JOB 🙏

Okay actually a couple library branches are hiring, but they’re all like 30 mins away from me. Which is fine but would be annoying daily in combination with my class schedule… BUT The requirements aren’t crazy (1 year customer service, which I TTTEEECCCHNICALLY have on paper) so I feel like I could totally apply despite having no library experience…. Should I

[assholemurphy]

it’s 7a. i have 5 assignments i have to do before mon, plus several others i should be doing to get ahead/back on track. i also need to clean up/take out all the trash in the house and (probs) do dishes (even tho they aren’t my responsibility). i also need to do a significant amount of organizing via planner/calendar/etc. i have all of my folders, planners, and other assorted school things spread out in a semi circle around me on the floor of the living room. i’m on my second monster. i woke up at like, 11:30p from my last nap (i slept from 9a-5:30p, then took a nap from 9p-11:30p, i think, idk, time is confusing and means nothing to me atm). i should be doing all of those assignments and things. i should have been doing them all day/night/time expanse. i have not and i am not. instead, i’m currently trying to convince myself to stop talking to myself and begin writing the next chap of tal. i’ve read enough of it to remind myself what’s happened and what should happen. now i just need to actually begin writing. i rly need to do my hw, but i’m just so goddamn distracted and out of sorts, so i’m hoping that by writing, i can trigger a little bit of productivity in myself and shit. writing is my self care, so i’m hoping that it’ll also help me out mentally and get me to a place where i can get some stuff done.

that is not to say i haven’t done anything. i’ve sent several emails, cleaned up my opened docs (bc there were so many it was bugging me), and finished one of my assignments (the shortest one), except for a tiny bit of info i need from the playwright, but i sent him an email (see: above). there’s a fuckton i need to do, but i’m rly, rly out of sorts rn.

my roommate has decided that since we fought (once) that we are ‘bad for each other’ and that she ‘wants to salvage what she can of our friendship’ and therefore, once our lease is up in 3 months, she wants to move out, or wants me to move out. idk which. but i’m so not happy. i could write novels abt how fucked up she is, and yet, i’m the problem bc i finally snapped at her and told her the goddamned truth. but fine, whatever. i just need to find a new roommate bc i can’t cover all the rent/bills, but see, i’ve got 3 friends. two are brothers and are NOT going to live with me. that would probs be bad. maybe not as bad as we all seem to think, bc i can stand them more than i can goldilocks atm, but still. they live on campus and like it. i cannot go back to living on campus. it’s too expensive for me and i don’t do well with all the rules. nope. i need my own place (with a roommate). so, that means i’ll have to advertise and shit and find some random human to live with me. gross af and not good for my anxiety. goldilocks probs has another potential roommate already. whatever. i’m not going to keep coddling her and walking on eggshells bc she’s too fragile to handle normal confrontation. she literally goes so far out of her way to avoid confrontation that she lets all of her frustration build up until she’s being passive aggressive abt everything and then she swears she isn’t being passive aggressive to me. but she is. i’ve got 3 months to convince her to chill the hell out and actually come to me with her problems before i have to find a new roommate. but... i’m not sure i want to. like i mentioned before, she’s a literal dark cloud sometimes and it drains me to be in the same apartment as her. she’s decided to stop being friends with pretty boy (she was never fond of rafiki, bc he calls her on her shit, i mean, he’s a bit mean abt it, but hes not wrong) so my friend group is falling apart. we (pb and i) knew this was going to happen and we put a timeline on it. two months ago he told her it’d be two months before she dropped him, and i gave her an extra 3 months before she dropped me. guess what’s happening? motherfucking prophecies. i’m getting tired of them, tbh.

so, i lay here, on the floor, papers and shit surrounding me, trying to find the will to get shit done, and all i can think is that, dammit, i wish i were drunk. or had rafiki/pb/both here. but it’s 7a and they’re probs asleep. i’ll see if they’ll come over tonight, but that means i need to accomplish some things before i go to sleep later (i’m aiming for like 1p, then wake up at like 9p). i also need food, but my ed is kicking my ass currently and i don’t want to. like, i cannot force myself to eat rn. i’ve done good for the past couple of months bc of my gallbladder issues (i don’t want to lose too much more weight and make it worse until i can get something done abt it) but it’s wearing on me and i can’t keep doing it. i was alright, mainly, until i started eating normally, then everything went downhill, like it always does. so, i think i’m gonna go back to counting cals and eating less, but i’m gonna do my damnedest to stay around 1200 so it’s not completely unhealthy (bc that’s the lowest you’re supposed to go, technically) but i’m worried it won’t be long before i’m eating <700 again. but, i was doing better mentally then. maybe it’s for the best? but ik i can’t function like this anymore. it’s wearing on me and i’m spiraling fast. i’m trying to pull myself out of it, but it’s like trying to escape an undercurrent in the middle of the ocean. it can be done, but it’s hard af and dangerous even after you’re safe. so, i’ve got to do something.

so, i’m gonna use the next few days to get caught up with work (at least caught up, hopefully ahead) and organized, then i’m going to work on balancing my mental health and figuring out a solution to my shit. but first, i’m gonna try to write as much of this next chap as i can. bc i rly want to get back in to writing and i think if i do, i’ll be happier and better able to face the world knowing i’ve got an escape again.

i’m also abt to make a to do list so i can keep track of what i need to do before i sleep today, if i can manage it

[pisati]

I don’t remember too much about my birthday last year, besides having to work and mom taking me out to the cat cafe and the brewery. but despite having a pandemic birthday it was actually pretty nice.

I finally got 3 days off in a row. I did tell my friend Cassidy that I’d help them take their stuff to the UPS store to ship it back to CA, but I honestly thought it would only take part of the day. I didn’t mind grabbing lunch and also staying for dinner, but I didn’t really want to have to be driving all over that part of the DC area all day. which was what happened. I didn’t end up getting home til 1am, and while I DID tell them I could help, it kind of felt like a wasted day. wasn’t really an off-day. BUT Cassidy did cover all my food, got me a lovely birthday cake, and gave me some coloring book-style postcards and a little stuffed brain cell. plus a literal fuckton of crafting supplies they didn’t feel like hauling back to CA. I asked how much they’d want for it; they did say I could just have it but seriously that haul has got to be worth at least $150. there were 6 bottles of resin/hardener and those ALONE have got to be worth $80 at a minimum. they said they’d just ask $40 and like... shit, sure. that’s a goddamn steal.

they also sold me their 4x4 ikea kallax shelf; I remember helping them put it together when they first moved to MD. we took it apart and I had my brother come over sunday to help me carry the pieces upstairs. then put it together entirely by myself, which... I probably shouldn’t have done? I made it work, but that shit is Heavy and also very difficult to put together on your own. even the manual says you should have two people. every muscle in my upper body is incredibly sore now, and I managed to bruise both arms in multiple places (not even doing anything seriously injurious, I’m just an overripe banana). but in making room for it in my living room I rearranged the couches, relocated all my yarn to the new shelf from my old craft shelves (and it took up 12/16 of the cubes 🙃), re-sorted and organized the remaining craft shelves, took the two 1x3 shelves up to the rats’ room (and now they’re being used as towel storage), and actually cleaned up my living room area. my dining room table is sewing-machine-free for the first time since march. I just moved it to the craft shelves, and now I actually have the room there for the machine to just sit. the accessories have their own shelf bin. 

mom wanted to do dinner sunday night instead of today, and I guess that was okay. but it didn’t leave me much down time since I spent all day cleaning and organizing. but it was nice anyway. I got home and mom had blown up some balloons, and she had RHCP playing all evening. I’d requested homemade mac & cheese rather than noodles & co this year, and she found a pretty good recipe. she also made a cinnamon sugar doughnut bundt cake, which was good, though maybe a little dry. but served with ice cream it was better. mom told me she had another piece today and it was more moist today somehow.

mom and my brother had ordered me a bunch of things off my crafting wishlist on amazon, and those had come in during the week. my brother ordered the animal keychain molds, a mica powder dye set, black/white alcohol inks, and a silicone mold kit. mom got me a coaster mold set, another resin/hardener set, and a bunch of the sandpaper with the different grits that I really needed. I was kind of surprised she’d ordered me more things, since she already got me the huge rat cage. and she even told me today I should be getting another coaster set tomorrow, this one with 4 of the same size; the other one she ordered had 4 or 5 round molds but they were all different sizes. I can still make coasters with them, but the biggest one is small-tray sized and the smallest one is like... coin-sized, honestly. it’s tiny. and I can only make one at a time, so a set of 4 of the same size would take 4 days at a bare minimum; longer than that possibly if I were doing layers that needed to cure first. so with a set of 4 I can whip up a whole set at once. 

mom’s boyfriend got me things too, which was super nice of him. they saved it for the dinner night, so I got to open it there. he got me a geode coaster mold, the set of animal butt shaker molds I put on my wishlist kind of as a joke, but also I thought they were silly and adorable. I’m so excited to make those little shakers. also got a set of 3 trinket box molds with molds for the lids, and a little bag of snake charms I’d added so I could use the charms for mold-making; I could make my own little snake charm earrings!

so yesterday was a long day. and then I slept like garbage and woke up early this morning, but I at least got a few things done before Charlotte came over. we planned on a lazy day but since I’d wanted to make yesterday my craft day and never got around to it, I wanted to do that today. Charlotte I guess didn’t have the same idea, but she’d brought her laptop so she could play this video game she and her brother and husband and so on had played together. we ordered five guys for lunch, which is always nice. she brought me homemade cinnamon sugar cupcakes, and gave me a hand mixer, a few bath bombs, and some face masks as a birthday gift. she was right, I really do need my own hand mixer, ha. 

I finally got to work on my silicone molds, and it was super messy. I didn’t realize how much worse it would be than resin. but I tried my best to mix it well. I’d accidentally bought a $25 kit at michael’s a few weeks ago, because I’d picked it up from a clearance section and wanted to price check but forgot and forgot it was in my basket when I checked out; didn’t even realize I’d bought it until I was already back in my car looking into the bag. oops. but I ended up using the whole thing. and I had planned to make a crochet hook mold, so I was excited to try it. mom gave me an old tennis ball can that I cut up, and I used hot glue to seal it and position the hooks. I felt SO bad that it used up almost all of the silicone kit my brother got me; that shit is NOT cheap. and I was terrified I didn’t stir it well enough or mix the parts well enough because that would’ve been such a waste. but I demolded it after the few hours’ cure time and it came out beautifully. I cut slits in it with an xacto knife, so that way I can at least coax the hooks out more easily when I go to demold. it did seem like kind of a waste of a lot of the silicone, since I didn’t use up all the space, but hopefully I can sell enough crochet hook sets that I can maybe buy myself more. I’m nervous about those pours, because they’re not going to be easy, but I’m also excited bc I have a gorgeous, usable mold, and I got a ton of resin for [almost] free that I can experiment with. 

after that I finally got around to some of the resin I’ve been meaning to do. my friend in PA requested some resin earrings; she’s bought so many masks off my etsy for herself and family that after this last order I offered her a resin or crochet thing at no charge. so I’ve got to do some moon earrings; too bad I don’t have more than one moon mold. also my brother babysat some kids the last few weeks of summer and he’d taken them out to gather wildflowers for me to put into resin, so I offered to make them little resin keychains. I got little transparent letter stickers, and I’m super glad they worked as well as they did; the transparent stickers don’t show their borders in the resin so it almost looks like the letters are printed in it. I decided to make letter keychains with each of their initials, and I spelled their names with stickers in the letters. for the girl’s keychain, I added some of the flowers. I’m not sure what to put in the boys’ keychains quite yet. I’m told they’re harry potter fans, so maybe I’ll do some kind of transparent blue with gold glitter or maybe star glitter or something. I also had leftover colored resin from the moon mold so I added them to the J for my mom. nothing like the scramble for appropriately-sized molds when you’ve got extra resin. I also made another set of cat earrings, and I’ll see how those end up. I tried a drop of gold alcohol ink, and hopefully the white helped it sink. otherwise I’ve just got some weird looking cat earrings. 

(update, they turned out weird. gold doesn’t sink :/)

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I wasn’t quite ready to go back to work today. I had a pretty good weekend, all said. don’t get me wrong, I enjoy what I do. but I feel like I need another gap year. I just want to stop existing for a while. stop having to go out and be around other people. having to talk to other people, all day almost every day. I’m tired. my brain is tired. my last gap year didn’t help with that, so I’m not sure how much good another one would do me. but I just... I need a damn break. 

I have another therapy appointment tomorrow. it may end up being my last one for a while. I already can’t really afford the copay, and I’m switching insurance to one she doesn’t take. my credit card bill this month is incredibly painful. not going to be too upset at not having to spend almost $100 a week to just ramble to someone I barely know. she’s pointed out a few things to me that I didn’t really notice I do, which is nice. but is it worth $400 a month? not right now. not when I’m about to lose my insurance and have to pay for my own. my rent is already half my pay, and now I’m going take a pay cut of somewhere around $100 a month for fucking health insurance. I hate this. I fucking hate the concept of health insurance. insurance in and of itself isn’t bad; property insurance is helpful. but having to pay money for other people to pay money for your healthcare? and you still have to hit a deductible somewhere in the thousands before insurance will even start covering your shit. and even then they can decline coverage or only cover parts of your expenses. literally what is the point

 back to worrying I guess. 

I’ve started a kind of ridiculous undertaking at work as a side project, now that I’m done scanning all the files that were up front. I printed out the list of all the clients in our system that had physical folders, and I’m going through the scanned records and making sure the active ones have new client paperwork and the hours disclosure attached. the head receptionist asked me to start with the ones my former coworker had scanned in, and there are a lot of disclosures missing. some are missing both. I don’t know if he just didn’t scan them or if they didn’t have them at all or what. but I’ve been putting alerts in charts so people know that they need to give the forms to the clients when they come in. we had one client get kind of mad that he’s been coming to us for 10-some years and didn’t want to fill out the paperwork again, even after we clarified it was for our records and for legal reasons. but whatever. 

I don’t know how many physical folders there were, but the list is very long. the folders go from 0 to somewhere in the 8000s I believe, but thankfully a lot are missing. missing as in possibly inactive, so there might only actually be 1000-2000 or so. but I’m going through every single one of them. I made myself a little system with highlighter colors: yellow means the client is active and they need something filled out (and I mark on the sheet what they need), purple means they’ve been seen within 3 years but more than 1 year ago, and they need to fill out something, pink mens inactive, and orange is kind of a catch-all for things like active clients who have recently moved (not sure whether to mark those as inactive). so far, since starting this a week or so ago, I’ve managed to get through 4 pages and a little bit on a 5th. many, many more to go.

the head vet wants to turn the back room into a little employee lounge area of some sort, but we want to get rid of those shelves first too. which means I have 2 big shelves of folders left before I’m officially done. thankfully the files in the back should *mostly* be clients that are inactive, but I still have to go through all of them to make sure. I know I’ve gone back there a number of times to find a folder for an active client because I wasn’t sure whose phone number was whose and I knew it would be in the record. 

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I’ve been writing this post over the last two nights but I keep falling asleep while I’m writing. I did a lot more resin stuff last night, so I ended up going to bed pretty late. I wanted to finish up those keychains but I’m bad at gauging how much resin I’ll need for things so I ended up with a lot of random extra pours. I’m excited about a few of them; I poured a few into the new molds I made so I’m looking forward to seeing how those turn out. 

not really sure where I was going with this. not really sure where I’m going in general. I’m just going. trying to keep up with work, trying to remember doctor appointments. trying to keep the rats happy and as healthy as I can get them, trying not to let the cat get on my nerves too much. trying to do crafts. trying to remember to talk to people, but I don’t know. I feel lonely sometimes but since I’ve been working so much I kind of just want to be alone. I don’t have the energy for conversations a lot of the time. 

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hm. maybe another post for therapy thoughts. I was asked to think about a few things.