Eh, whatever.

The past few months have been tumultuous. Things were okay and then they were not okay and then they went back to being sort of okay, followed by a brief bit of not okay, and then okay. Being an adult is super majorly difficult at times but not always though sometimes usually. Eh, at least I have my health, right? But because I am a paranoid person I am getting my annual check up three months early just to make sure that "at least I have my health". Even though when I said "at least I have my health" I knocked on wood to prevent jinxes, I still think a blood test is more assuring. Well, since the last post all this happened:

Yes, a lot of stuff went down. These visual representations might seem confusing, but hopefully you will be able to interpret them correctly:

"Was she stabbed by a centipede-dragon? If she is so scared of centipedes turning on her why would she leave swords around the house?  Is that a turd? Gross. Was her tooth really anthropomorphized? Why is it so sad? Does she have an indifferent phaseolus lunatus with a face and arms? If so, shouldn't that be in a Ripley's museum for the rest of the world to enjoy? Did she throw-up turtle? God, this girl has digestion issues. If she has stomach problems she really shouldn't have gotten that cotton candy machine."

Yes! Yes to all of it! As for the why questions: "Eh."

Despite all of my really awesome and questionable adventures with violent ten feet tall centipedes, turtle vomit, and legumes these past few months, the greatest one of all is probably grad school (shut up, I am not lame). I seriously love graduate school and my new friends. Look, we even go out together now:

Just look at how my face is contorted to express happiness! In addition to all of these wonderful people, I befriended my neighbor. Prior to the big centipede incident all I knew was that she and I both replace real people with TV after work/school. As you can guess, that is not enough material to build a friendship. Real friends have more stuff in common. Real friends watch TV together. Well, one day I had an emergency. I came home to find that a centipede had broken into my apartment. When I heard her keys jangling I threw open my door and screamed for help. My heroic neighbor valiantly marched over with a bottle of bleach and destroyed the monster. At that moment we went from being adjacent TV murmurs to face-to-face people friends. Actually, I have not seen her since the centipede incident but I am sure that if I ever wanted to I can ask her to join me for dinner. I can defrost fish sticks and personal pizzas like nobody's business.

Work physically hurts, but I am okay with that.

Work has been going well. While waking up at 6:30am seems like a sick and inhumane form of corporal punishment, I learned how to deal with it... oh, how humans can learn to adjust to almost anything! What keeps me going is the fact that in 6 months I will be back in school. Until then:

I will be bitten.

I will be scratched... scratched so bad that strangers stop me on the street to ask what happened (yes, this happened).

It is fortunate that the feistiest child is also the most good-looking and likable.

I have told a few of my co-workers that I will be leaving in half a year. I did not intend to tell anyone at work, but I am bad at lying and we have an alliance now. During lunch, the day after I had called in sick to go to a graduate program's meet-and-greet, a co-worker asked me how things were yesterday and where I was. My answer was vague, which made him ask further if I was trying to be secretive. I did not want him to think that I was absent because of something embarrassing like... diarrhea (my bowel movements are healthy), so I told him the truth--eh, screw it, he's in school himself. As I am slowly observing, there is a high turn-over among teachers at this school, so my eventual resignation will be statistically consistent and inoffensive.

Looking back to September-now, back to the stress that I was undergoing while researching, GRE-preping, Statement of Purpose-writing,  application response-waiting (hurrah www.thegradcafe.com which made the wait both tougher and easier), I feel accomplished, which is not something that I can say very often... because I am so flippin' modest and stuff. It was hard work! It took three application seasons to get me into grad school! Hell, I had to go through a master's program to get into grad school! Yes, that translates to: going to grad school to go to grad school. And now, all of it is done and I am finally going to go to school. I am pretty happy and grateful.

What could only make me happier now is... going to Mars 2112 (a Mars-themed restaurant) with Jessica... Oh, wait, that is what I am doing tonight! Wohoo!

I RISE FROM THE ASHES LIKE A PHOENIX!

I was feeling rather dejected for a few days. I worried that I was not going to get into graduate school--like many others at this time. I thought I was going to trudge through life going from Duane Reades to Duane Reades pleading for a managerial position. I thought I was going to end up in the underground mole-people alliance; only going above ground to beg for food and money--I would sit in front of supermarkets holding a sign that reads "war veteran" scribbled on the back of my diploma. I feared that I would one day be found dead outside of a Dairy Queen with my stiffened arms clutching a opossum corpse that, in my living days, I referred to as "my Sophie's Choice" (I only had room for one opossum in my underground mole-people living corner). After finding my body, someone in the crowd (because people like to see this kind of stuff) would lift up his arms and scream, "HAD SHE NOT BEEN REJECTED FROM GRADUATE SCHOOL THIS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED! OH THE HUMANITY!!!"

Yes, I have been wallowing in self-pity. A LOT. I did not not see myself as some kind of:

Well, yesterday morning, I woke up and realized that Sallie Mae still required two more documents before I could get my loans adjusted (screw you, Sallie Mae!) and that I had been waitlisted for Indiana University (Well, flip-you, Indiana, you are located in Indiana!). Frustrated, I walked down to Pisticci's for brunch with Jessie, Kyle, and Josh, grousing about my misfortunes quietly to myself. I was pretty pathetic--yes, I know.

After brunch, we all returned to the apartment to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and play Scrabble. Pissed that I was so close to winning until Josh used all of his letters and took the points that everyone had in his/her remaining hand (I had a flippin' Q and a bunch others), I checked my email while the others finished the movie and sipped spiked hot chocolate. 

... (suspense building) ...

And there it was...

Just sitting in my inbox with such nonchalance...

I RISE LIKE A PHOENIX FROM MY ASHES!!! I got my first acceptance from one of my top choice schools (of 12 applied). Full fellowship and funding. Yay, me.

Megabus, Micro-toilet, Medio-disappointment

On the Megabus ride back to New York after a fun-filled weekend with friends in Boston, I watched National Geographics: Nazi Super Ship on my laptop. The documentary was about the Bismark... Bismark? Bizmark? Biz Markie? Anyhow, it was not that interesting and I really had to pee. I usually try to avoid using bus and airplane bathrooms, but this time, I had to go like nobody's business. Those two coffees I had prior really wanted out. Freak man, bus bathrooms are half the size of airplane bathrooms! There was barely enough space for me to wiggle my jeans down. I have not had this little stall space since I was at that American bar in Mexico.

I got it to work.
Once I settled back in my seat, I checked my email (the free WiFi hardly makes up for the toilet situation) and found out I did not get the job I interviewed for on Thursday. Graduating with a fancy/expensive masters from an Ivy has failed to get me a job that pays $15 an hour. So, here I am, my hands stinking of hand sanitizer, trying to scribble images with MS Paint to pass the time.
If I do not get any good graduate school news this week I will most definitely go bonkers.

Applications are done... now I wait in agony.

It has been one painfully long process, but my graduate applications are done. I am waiting. I should hear back between February and late March/early April. In the meantime, I will be looking for a job.
I might not get into graduate school this year. If I do not... I will march into a Duane Reade and ask for a job application, go home, hold my fists up to the heavens, and yell, "WHYYYYYY?!" Then, after sobering up, I will go on Monster, Craig's List, and LionShare to look for something in market research or something with the word research in it because I know I can do stuff of that variety. Anyway, my stomach feels like crazytown because of either the breakfast meatball sub or the orange juice.

I don't want to end up working at Duane Reade and admitting to my mother that she was right about how I should have gone into pharmaceuticals , or married a doctor with a nice Mercedes, or business man with a fuckin' private jet like Bill Gates

I am applying to grad schools this winter, as I have written about and alluded to a billion times.
Recently, I lost the taxidermy workshop I was organizing, I was rejected from the Seattle art gallery because the hipsters think my works are priced too high (I say, not high enough!), I stopped going to ballet, my nose is peeling all the time, and I am slightly behind in my research paper... Well, at least I have not been officially rejected from the smaller publishers... my agent tells me it should take awhile before we hear back from the smaller guys... And, I have my health, which is great--except I have developed a fear of eating hard-candy alone (I could choke and die with no one around to try to save me or listen to my last words, "arg, argh, always check the stove before you leave the house, arg, arg!").

Things feel like garbage even though I know these things are not THAT bad--and in fact, compared to other people's situations, my life is baller.
Very much a part of my quarter-life crisis, (1) I am finally realizing that one day I am going to die... and while there was a time in which death felt eons away, I have already gone through a quarter of my life--and that is generously assuming that I am going to live up to 96, which we know is not going to happen because of my diet of corn syrup and wine--it's probably going to be diabetes or liver failure around 65, right before retirement (2) I don't want to be mediocre, but I am realizing that a lot of people are mediocre. I am not going to be a Beyonce or an Ellen or an Oprah or a Boyle.
After all of my reality checks, I just want to go to graduate school, get my Ph.D. in sociology, work as a researcher/professor at a second tier university, publish some of my fiction, and skin road kill on my spare time.
This is where I am today:

I don't want to end up managing a flippin' Duane Reade.

I thought I was going to tell a cute story and specify all the things I hate about Duane Reade, but I spent too much effort on the picture above, so I'm just going to go make more popcorn and end this post.
The main point is, I want to get into grad school and if I do not get into a school this year I am going to barf.