I'm still alive, I promise

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YES, MY FAITHFUL MINIONS, I AM STILL ALIVE.

Seriously, I am, for reals. Stop worrying, it's okay. I PROMISE.

Also, I'd just like to apologize now in advance, because I have been spending an APPALLING amount of time on Tumblr, where I am part of several different fandoms and I have turned into a totally apeshit fangirl over the Winchester brothers (from Supernatural - oh god I love that show so hard, it makes me happy in the pants). So I've started to, uhm, talk like I'm on Tumblr. All the time. Which means I say things like “OH BABY YOUR FACE IT'S DOING THAT THING WHERE I JUST WANT TO KISS YOU” and the really stupid one, “I CAN'T EVEN. I HAVE LOST THE ABILITY TO CAN.”

Yeah. It's pretty bad. Some of my immediate family are staging an intervention as we speak.

ANYWAY.

I don't have internet at home. But the good news is, I DO have a job, and I DO have an apartment of my own! Isn't that astonishing? I know, you're all so very proud of me. Never thought I'd make it this far, right?

So I've been living on my own for a few months (with Daniel, of course), and then the week before Thanksgiving, a friend/coworker of mine, Fake Redhead, called me before work. Her boyfriend (now EX) is a monumental douchebag that announced at 3 AM after he got off work (via text, in true douchebag fashion) that he had been cheating on her and that she had to be moved out by that afternoon because he was moving the new girlfriend in.

I got this call at 6:30 AM. This was the SECOND time that she had called me at such an ungodly hour, the last time being when he had come home drunk and gotten physical with her and kicked her out, then taken off with her minivan and pulled the spark plug cables out of his so she couldn't take it. So I called in sick that day, drove out and helped her pull ALL of her crap out, kept a good portion of it (mostly books) in the back of my car for a couple of days (oh god the Rogue Five was THRILLED WITH THAT) and she stayed in a motel room. Of course, a few days later, he begged her to come home and she did, and they had seemed like they were doing really good for a while, even according to her, so this was pretty out of left field and completely unexpected.

Back to what I was saying. She had the minivan, he told her he would sign the title of it over to her, but she had to leave. She had nowhere to go. She moved to this area a couple years back WITH HIM, so she didn't have any real friends or anything like that, and she knew I had helped her before and she could probably call me for help again. I had told her I had been in a position very similar to hers on more than one occasion in the past, and I just can't stand by when a woman needs help and I can do something, because I have been there and needed the help myself.

She didn't have anywhere to go, so she's staying with me for a while. She's been here a couple weeks now, and here's the astonishing part: we get along FANTASTICALLY. I have had very, VERY few female friends in the past, as I'm sure most of you are aware, so having one that is very much like me in quite a few ways that I actually get along with is somewhat.... um.... boggling, to be perfectly honest. We have gone through a lot of the same mistreatments from men, suffered a lot of similar bad lucks. And, truth be told, even though my apartment is STUPID CHEAP (all things considered), the extra help with finances would be greatly appreciated. Where we both work, calling to conduct phone surveys (yes, you hate me, I know), when our respective projects run out of numbers, we get sent home early, and that's that. So there have been more than a few paychecks that have NOT been my promised 38 hours a week, and that shit hurts. But she is on a different team than me, so when I'm getting sent home by 11 AM every day for a week straight, she's working ALL day. It helps.

So, as it stands now, since we are doing so well cohabitating without murdering each other, come spring time (and tax time, whoo!), we will be looking into getting a bigger place, so she will actually have, you know, a BEDROOM, and not be sleeping on my couch. As well as more space for organization, because I don't have a lot of stuff, and she has a FUCK TON of stuff and I have zero storage space in my apartment. Approximately one-quarter of my living room is lost to the mountain of her belongings that we have no place to put.

Als+ o, I'm up to my eyeballs in pussy. I have my one little demon furball, Diesel, and Fake Redhead brought her three little nutters, Princess, Phoenix, and Dragon. Daniel is delighted, because he loves the kitties and Phoenix and Dragon, the two brothers, like to sleep with him at night. Princess, aka mama cat, pretty much stays hidden all the time, and Diesel... Diesel just kind of does her own thing. She lays in the middle of my TOTALLY BAD ASS tiger rug (which, in case you missed it, I fucking love) and blends in surprisingly well, considering she's a black-and-grey tabby and my rug is well... tiger-striped But the stripes help her blend, because I cannot tell you how many times I have tripped over or stepped on the little fuzzball. She's very soft, and very affectionate, and I love her. No replacement for my dearly beloved Ping, but he vanished last fall and has not been seen since, and considering he had over a dozen years on the planet under his belt, I'm not holding out hope that he's still alive at this point. Breaks my heart, but I know better than to have foolish hope anymore.

Ahhhh, fun times. Uhm. What else can I say here?

OH YEAH. My job. I hates it. It sucks with the fiery burning passion of a thousand suns, no lie. I call to conduct phone surveys, market research. So I'm the irritating twat that calls you and says “Hello, my name is Snarky, calling on behalf of Capital One Bank. May I speak to the person who recently visited the Capital One Branch for your business? We are conducting a satisfaction survey on the quality of service you received on a recent visit to Random Branch Name and your opinions are very important, so we would like to include you in this research study. Overall, how satisfied were you with the service you received on your most recent visit to Random Branch? Would you were completely satisfied, very, somewhat, not very, or not at all satisfied?” So on and so forth.

My job SUCKS. But it's (usually) pretty steady hours, easy pay, and I get to sit and read, or write, or crochet (because Fake Redhead has taught me how to crochet) or do whatever while I'm working, because we call a lot of numbers that get no answer or answering machine or anything, not to mention people who don't want to do the surveys or the answering machines we hit. Lots of free time, yo. And I've made some pretty cool friends, to boot. Fake Redhead, Older Cute Guy (that should be illegal, I swear to god!), Scratcher, the whole nine yards. They're pretty awesome. I just wish I had more free time in the evenings to socialize, but since Fake Redhead is here, she has volunteered to watch Daniel if I want to go out for whatever reason and do things without having to drag hyperactive toddler around. That's so nice of her. She's pretty fucking fantastic, if I do say so myself.

In addition to being just an awesome chick to be around, Fake Redhead has earned a special place in my mother's heart, working her devil magic like she is. I've started wearing make-up to work, and she's been having a BLAST playing with my hair and putting it into new hairstyles. Like, I shit you not, we had friends over last week having some drinks (because Daniel was at his dad's for the week of Thanksgiving, so we could cut loose with no worries), and she decided she was going to french braid my hair into pigtails.

YES. MAKE UP AND PIGTAILS AND CROCHETING. HER DEVIL MAGIC IS TURNING ME INTO A GIRL. And my mother has only been trying to do that since I was a wee small thing, and I never had any of it, so she's delighted. It's funny to watch, it really is.

But crocheting does give me an inexpensive hobby, in leiu of having internet, and something I can at home, at work, anytime I have free time and nothing to do. And it's productive! So I'm doing a blanket for Daniel, then I'm going to do a baby blanket for my lawyer friend who is pregnant. Fun times.

Ahhh, life. So what's up with ya'll?

PS - I know the captcha thing is irritating as all hell, but the new Blogger is seeming to have an issue, according to various other bloggers I love, with spam comments on overload, so the word verification stays.  Sorry kids.  I know it sucks, but I would prefer to not be swarmed with crap spam.  I still love you. <3 br="br">