The Waiting

I swear, some days it feels like I'm sitting in a field of daisies, plucking petals, and saying, "I got the job, I got the job not." And going absolutely insane doing so. Each interview gives me a chance to start contemplating a career path. And each rejection drags me back to square one, where I have absolutely no sense about what I should be doing with my life until a career in writing becomes feasible.

But at least I have another interview to prep for next week whilst I wait on the last one. You'd think one of these times someone would actually hire me, wouldn't you. The odds have got to start going in my favor after X many interviews, right? Please?

Mystery Caller

Today marks my twenty-sixth year of hanging around on this rock, and it's also the day Mark and I celebrate three and a half years of annoying each other being together. But enough about that, I want to talk about the phone call I got last night. I like to think of it as an early birthday present. Here's how the call went:
ME: Hello?
Caller: Using the slightly drunk and confused voice of your typical college puke Hi, is Abner there? [He might have said another name, it was fairly garbled.]
ME: Sorry, you've got the wrong number. Gets ready to hang up.
Caller: Wait. Who is this?
ME: Not who you were looking for. Gets ready to hang up again.
Caller: Well, you sound kinda hot.
ME: I'm married. Good-bye.

I wish I hadn't had a couple glasses of wine (Mark's early Halfiversary surprise), because then I would've been coherent enough to have had much more fun with this poor slob. I could've had said something like this, in my most seductive voice of course: "Well, you sound like a drunk twenty-year-old desperate for a one-night stand." And then I would've given him the number of the local escort service, which I actually know by heart since it was only one digit off of our old phone number (I think I've blogged about the fascinating calls we used to get due to that happy coincidence).

So I went into my 26th birthday receiving a quasi-compliment about the sexiness of my voice from a total stranger. Amusing and a little gratifying. Now off I go to pamper myself with a nice, long shower and a day of plotting for The Masque.

Juror #24601

If I know how my life tends to unfold, then I think I've just received proof that I will get this latest job for which I interviewed. I've been summoned to jury duty for the beginning of July - right in the middle of what will be my first few weeks at this new job should I get it. And since my life seems to be slavishly adhering to Murphy's Law of late, this means that I most certainly will get the job and then have to try and postpone the jury summons - only to get a new date which will present an even greater conflict that I can't forsee as of right now. This is par for the course: I've been sitting around the house with not a whole lot to do for the past two and a half months, but now that I'm getting really close to landing a job I get a jury summons. And the best twist of this Murphy's Law Moment is that I want to participate in jury duty. I've never experienced it before, I'm really curious, and it always makes me feel good to exercise a little civic responsibility once in a while. I'll probably postpone and then never get summoned again. That's what happened when I was in Arizona. They would always summon me for jury duty while I was at Notre Dame. I would postpone - or defer or whatever the heck Arizona calls it - for one of my summer or winter breaks and then never get summoned until I was back in school. Actually, now that I think about it, my life isn't as bound to Murphy's Law as I thought. No, that law is far too obvious. My life follows some other law that is steeped in a more subtle irony. Something like "The Law of God's Dry Wit".

The SEB is Back Again

Last week just outright sucked. I read, I played video games, and I tried very hard not to think a whole lot because Mark wasn't around to help pull me out of nasty thought-holes. It worked to varying degrees of success: everything from "hey at least it worked for fifteen minutes this time" to abyssmal failure. You'd think reuniting with Mark and some college buddies at a wedding would cheer me right up, wouldn't you? You'd be dead wrong.

First, the wedding was in Wisconsin. Long-time sufferers readers of this blog know very well how much I despise the Midwest. So that was a definite strike against the weekend. Second, I was within spitting distance of my brother (his new company is in Madison, but he's not there anymore as they shipped out to California for training yesterday) and of my mother's family. But I had no time to spend with them. Had I known that I was going to be unemployed and interview-less last week, I would've flown out with Mark at the beginning of the week and spent the time he was at the conference with relatives. And, finally, simply stating that I was a college buddy of the groom was enough to stamp a glaring "SEB" on my forehead.

What, you ask, does "SEB" stand for? Super Elitist Bitch. I have no idea what kind of stories this college buddy told, but I suppose it has more to do with the popular impression of Notre Dame students being trust-fund babies or something. This is the second time in my life - that I know of - that I've been very much mistakenly lumped in with well-off kids who dropped $100,000 getting their degrees and still had money left over for a very nice SUV and a convertible. The first time, it was an ex-boyfriend telling me I had no right to be upset about my parents' divorce because I was a Notre Dame senior and therefore in the top 2% most financially stabile people in the world. That he said this as part of his seven-page email detailing exactly why he had dumped my ass didn't help anything either. And this wedding marked the second time. Had I known it would've been a problem, I would've introduced myself in the following fashion: "Hi, I'm Kellie, a college buddy of the groom. Before you go making any assumptions, I was only able to attend Notre Dame because I got a fair amount of scholarships. And I suppose now's a good time to mention just how much money my parents shelled out for the experience and how much money I'm still shelling out for those four years of educational bliss."

It was just a weird night all together. There were only three college buds there, and one was a groomsmen. So that left me, Mark and the other college bud to fend for ourselves at a table with some random cousins of the groom. One of said random cousins, on hearing that we were the groom's college buddies, said, "Well, I didn't go to college, so what does that mean?" And then he spent the rest of the night butting into our conversations when he had a nice undercutting thing to say about us. As soon as we got up to get some drinks at the bar, the random cousins invited quite a group to take our seats. And it just sort of continued on from there. The crowning acheivement of the evening occurred when the groomsmen/college bud introduced me to the bridesmaid he'd been cavorting with all evening. No, strike that, she introduced herself. And this, I quote, is exactly how she went about it (be sure to read this with a so-there-you-wanna-make-somethin'-of-it attitude): "Hi, I'm M-----. I went to a cheap state school." I didn't dash out her name to protect her identity. I dashed it out because I can't remember it. I'll probably bump into her again and go, "Oh, hi, Cheap State School. You must remember me. I'm Super Elitist Bitch."