Olive Garden coma

My bright idea today was to not eat all day and then gorge on Olive Garden because I’m broke and my dad took my whole family out to dinner for my sister’s birthday. I decided that since I’m so broke and never get food anymore I should eat as much as I could. Now I feel like I’m going to barf. So that’s good.

This weekend went way too fast. I came down to Tacoma to stay at my parents house (thought I have yet to actually sleep here) and it’s been pretty much non-stop since I got here. I love Tacoma though. I don’t care what anyone says about it being ghetto. It’s great. And it’s home. Unfortunately I got so comfortable and happy that I completely forgot to call in to work to tell them I got my shift covered and now I’m most likely on their shit list. So, that’ll be fun to deal with tomorrow. Ugh, don’t even get me started about jobs. I can’t even talk about it without getting mad. I know people on unemployment who are making more money than me. Lots more.

Grocery shopping tomorrow, on the bright side. Free food and maybe boots if i bat my eyes enough. Yay!

She don’t wanna man. She just wants to dance.

I live with a couple. That’s fine. I mean it sucks but it’s fine. Except now my other “single” roommate is all of a sudden not so single and has some girl visiting for like weeks on end. WEEKS. They’re all shut off from the world and antisocial now. And now whenever I come home it’s couple, couple, Amanda. Like duck, duck, goose. I’m the goose. Oh, and we have one bathroom.

So all this couple-y bullshit floating around me lately has pushed some buttons and triggered some thoughts about why I’m single. People ask why I’m always single (because that’s a completely reasonable question, but that’s beside the point). Why I’m not trying hard enough. Why I don’t just walk up to some shmeggegie and make him like me. I hate those questions. As if I knew why I was single. I have no idea. People always say it’s some subconscious thing where I actually don’t want a relationship. I think it’s probably some combination of that and my angry eyes and unapproachable demeanor. I used to pine over it and be all “Oh man I wish I had a boyfriend. Man. This sucks. Jeez.” So instead, today at work while I was dancing to bad remixes of Black Eyed Peas and folding the same shirt 17 times, I made a list in my head of all the rad things that I get by being single. I figure instead of being all “Oh woe is me” there has to be some good in it. Plus, my internship has made me REALLY good at lists, since that’s all I do.

Here’s the list, in no particular order:

1. I don’t have to tell anyone what I’m doing at any given time. I do what I want, when I want. It doesn’t matter if I don’t answer the phone or texts or fall off a cliff.

2. I get the whole bed to myself. I could sleep like a starfish and it wouldn’t matter. And I do.

3. I get to flirt with anyone and everyone I want to. Including the guys who come into work. Including the ones whose girlfriends won’t leave them alone for four seconds. This makes me grateful to be single. No one wants a shadow. Including me.

4. I don’t bore my single friends with annoying boyfriend stories.

5. “Babe” and “baby” are not in my vocabulary. There’s nothing worse than those freaks who wander around in public yelling “BABE. BABE. BABY. HEY….BABE. BABE.” Barf.

6. If I want to dress like a slut no one can tell me not to. Not that I do this, but it’s always a possibility.

7. I have friends. Pretty great ones. Who like me. I’m the shit. Why? Because I know how to party still. Once you get all involved you forget how to party.

Those are the ones I could come up with before realizing me making said list is probably slightly pathetic. But what’s a single girl in a big city supposed to do when people ask why she’s single? Everyone’s like, “There’s guys everywhere!” No. There are douches, jerks, assholes, uglies, crazies, borings and oldies everywhere. Yes, I’m crazy picky. I’m also 21 years old and want to have a good time. Now, if I found someone else who was in the same boat…we’d be in business. But that’d probably get messy.

So that’s it. That’s my rant about life right now. I’m tired of hearing sex in my house all the time and being perma-fifth wheel, and it’s driven me to post this to try to feel better. I think it came off more whiny than anything, but it’s my blog and I do what I want.

Oh, and I don’t even like cats.

Laundry avoidance.

I really suck at keeping up with this blog thing. In college I blogged at least once or twice a week because I was always sitting at a computer killing time working. Now I do things like stand on my feet for 12 hours answering stupid questions and sucking up.

I ended up getting a job in retail. Unfortunately I think I’m good at it. So now I’m working at EMP and at Express and making almost no money because I’m interning fo’ free at Barokas PR on top of the both of those jobs. I’m working about 45 hours a week but getting paid for less than 30. Minimum wage. Being paid minimum wage in Seattle after getting a bachelor’s degree is insulting.

It does, however, feel amazing to be interning again. I just wish there was more writing involved. I make a lot of lists. I dream about Excel spreadsheets. I had to e-mail something out the other day that had four exclamation points in it. FOUR. I almost passed out. I guess that’s PR. Everyone’s REALLY REALLY excited and likes to use CAPS LOCK and WOOOO EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!! I have to remember I’m not a journalist anymore. I’m not sure I was ever a very good one to begin with, though, so maybe it’s good that I’m doing PR. You know when you look back at stuff you’ve written and it sounds juvenile and stupid? Coulda, shoulda, woulda.

Anyway, the plan is if things don’t come together by February or so, I’m moving back home and starting from square one again. It’s silly to scrape by, pay Seattle rent and owe people money all the time when I could just be living for free, saving up money and applying for jobs everywhere at my parents house. Even though living with my parents is typically a huge disaster. At least they feed me.

Plus, living in Seattle isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. People aren’t nice. They’re not mean, either, but they’re not nice. Seattleites keep to themselves and tend to ignore the newbies. Seattleites also think they’re superior to everyone around them, including other Seattleites. Or they’re hipsters and smoke a lot of cigarettes, drink a lot of coffee and are vegan. Or they’re homeless. And I don’t have anything against homeless people, except those wandering the streets screaming crazy shit and then expecting change. The creepy-homeless-guy thing is starting to get old.

Anyway the point is, there’s no happy medium between stuck-up Seattleite/hipster-douche and homeless person. If there is, I haven’t found one. I’m thinking I need to move.

Oh, and everyone shits on Cougs. And that pisses me off. And Huskies don’t know how to party. Which also pisses me off.

Anyway, to end this on some sort of high note that I can try to scrape out of the bottom of my soul…

I get to go visit my loves in Tacoma this weekend. And see my mommy. You’re never too old to be excited to see your mommy.

Blog Lull

I contemplated deleting this whole blog just now. I’m not sure how professional it is. Then I remembered I work at a museum as a slave visitor services representative and I’m interviewing on Friday for an evening position as a second job at a noodle bar. Professional, shmomessional.

Oh yeah, noodle bar. Unfortunately I can barely pay my rent right now — such is life.

On the bright side, I moved into a quite cute new house in the U-District (barf, huskies everywhere) with two guys and a girl whom I enjoy a lot. It’s way nicer than my last house and is actually clean most of the time. It’s awesome. I might be in over my head, but who cares I suppose. Right now, Andrew (roommate) is making gnocchi. Yeah, apparently you can make that at home. He made bread yesterday. From scratch. I know. I shall call him Suzie.

I want to write. At this point I don’t care if I get paid for it.

I miss you, Evergreen. And Rikki King. And various staffers bellowing “ADP” across the halls. I miss really, really belonging somewhere, actually.

SAP.

I’m going to need a crane to get me out of this rut.

In high school I chugged along, overachieving and being involved in an innappropriate number of activities, stretching myself so thin sometimes I look back and wonder how I even woke up in the morning. I was doing it so I could get into a good college and do big exciting things. I used to dream of going to the east coast or some other big-wig college, however I ended up at WSU in the end. Finances got in the way as they do for so many kids. But I made the best of it, and I worked (and played) hard. I graduated. I have a college degree. I consider myself a pretty bright person with a good amount of common sense and a drive to do something big. And yet, I’m stuck. 

How this even makes sense confuses me. Everyone keeps telling me to give it time and things will come through but I feel like I’ve been trying so hard to make something out of myself to no avail. My internship’s over. Now I work at a museum, selling tickets to people who have better jobs than me but less brains. People who treat me like I’m some absent-minded college kid who has no direction in life. People who ask me questions like, “So, where’s Grey’s Anatomy filmed?” and then expect me to take them seriously. I’ve taken about a hundred steps back and I don’t know where to go from here. It’s so frustrating.

Now, my lease is up at my house in 3 weeks and I have no idea where I’m going to go. I can’t find a place I can afford on the mediocre paychecks I get, but going back to my parents house makes me feel like I messed up.

The moral of this story? Don’t ever graduate. Just stay in college forever. Sure, homework blows and some professors are sad excuses for teachers, but at least there you feel like you’re doing something more than living paycheck to paycheck for nothing more than to pay your bills and do it all over again.

</pity party>

Skinny jeans and organic food

Thursday was the last day of my first public relations internship, and I have to say … I’m a little sad.

No, I wasn’t getting paid. No, I never saw my name on anything I wrote. And no, I didn’t even get gas money when I had to run errands.

But it was a really rad experience, summed up by the really rad recommendation my boss wrote for me. All that crap you put up with as an unpaid intern is completely worth it to hear you’re a great writer and a bright person. Totally. Worth. It.  

Now, if I could just get the billion other agencies I’ve applied to to realize how awesome and fabulous I am. I have barely even gotten so much as a “Hey. Sorry, no.” back from anyone. I don’t think it has anything to do with the economy, I think it has to do with my luck blowing.

Honestly, I have no idea what I want to even be when I grow up. I do know, however, that I REALLY want this super cute townhouse I found on Crown Hill for $500 a month and if I don’t find a job in the next week it’s going to get snatched up. Regardless. I’d basically be happy just to be making enough money so I can pay my bills on time and stop getting phone calls from collections.

Yay, college graduate.

On the bright side, my poorness has forced me to ride the bus and eat a lot of veggies. I can’t seem to give up that Dr. Pepper addiction, though. Sorry, teeth. I’ve also managed to purchase two pairs of skinny jeans, the most organic food I’ve ever even thought about buying in my life and haven’t listened to the radio in weeks. I also dyed my hair dark brown and now wear a hoop in my nose, because my stud kept falling out.

Living in Seattle is morphing me, slowly but surely, into a Seattleite. Which I’m not incredibly stoked about, as Rikki King would be dissapointed in me. I believe when I left school she told me, “You better not go to Seattle and get all hipster.”

I don’t think I’m a hipster, Rikki. Not yet. Though the black skinny jeans aren’t doing me any favors.

I do love Seattle though. Sometimes I need breaks and have to go down to Tacoma just for a breather, but I really love it here. I’d love it even more if my kitchen was always clean and I could remember to defrost chicken in the morning before work, but that’s another story.

alright kids, fun’s over.

So I just realized we’re nearing the middle of July. That means my intership ends in three weeks. Which means my lease is up in six. Which means I have NO CLUE what I’m doing next. I need a real person job. Everytime I say that at work people get mad. Whatever.

On the bright side, I’ve finally managed to semi figure out the bus system here. Which really isn’t that difficult as long as you’re not galavanting around aimlessly. But I’m proud of myself nonetheless. Hopefully I won’t have to go back home to the padres after all this hard work.

Show tonight in Ballard. Work all weekend. Ah, the price you pay.

80 degree weather makes me miss Pullman

Some people just know me.

 

Exhibit A:  “you know i visited this site today intent on writing a strongly worded comment about how “im ADP and im like 21 now and living in seattle and everything is so glamorous. oh, an internet you say? does it come in pink or booze? cause otherwise, TTYN!”

nvm

glad ur back

i always knew bitch was solid”

Courtesy of Rikki King. Who I miss dearly. Among all the other Evergreeners. I could really go for a solid ‘Greener shin dig right about now. Nothing like a Thursday night, a couple 30 bombs and a group of overworked and underappreciated college students.

Speaking of overworked and underappreciated … I went to a prospective intern meeting at Edelman PR today in Belltown, which blew my mind. Um, hi, hire me. Now. So I can quit my stupid, pointless job at EMP selling tickets and being spoken to like I’m 12.

Sidenote: I already had to get a new ID. I dropped my orginal temp in a puddle of…mysterious liquid…and ripped it almost in half. Granted, that didn’t stop me from still going out on Monday night and letting the bartender attempt to tape it back together. The DMV is a terrible place. The bar isn’t.

Anywho, 3 more weeks-ish of my internship and then I have to figure out wtf I’m doing next. Maybe I’ll move to Kansas or something really random.

Nah. I won’t. I’m way too awesome for Kansas.

shame on me.

I haven’t blogged in a LONG TIME. My bad. I’ve been so busy I kinda would almost rather live in a box on the side of the street than work as much as I do.

That’s a lie. I love money. And I’m moving to Seattle on Saturday to a really cute house with seven girls — haha yeah I know.

But working has been out of control. I work in the museum 4 days a week, averaging about 30 to 35 hours, then intern 2 days a week for another 12ish. It’s a lot. I have Wednesdays off.

Just Wednesday.

But alas, I am now 21 and legal to consume alcohol. In public. That makes me quite dangerous. My birthday was full of good clean fun a shit show. Since everyone insisted I’d be passed out and puking by midnight, I decided to show them what’s up and drink til last call, not puke and make it back to my own bed.

That’s what I learned to do in college, baby. I keep it classy.

But man, let me tell you, free drinks + Amanda = one crazzyyy night.

Anyway, I’m going to make an effort to blog more. I miss writing. And newspapering. A LOT.

boo. hiss.

BLEH.

That’s about what I think in general about pretty much everything.

Mature. I know.