Insert transition...

But life isn't as simple as editing music videos. If nothing else in this whole experience, I've learned that nowhere on earth is home. You will always have to pick up and go- it's just a matter of how much junk you have to take with you, who you're leaving and who you're going to. It's not even the where, but the who... >sigh<
I will have fond memories of this past month spent here. I just felt like I was getting used to things and here I go again. I knew it when I signed up for it. But it's still a little jarring. I moved my futon and most of my stuff today. All I have left to pack are two bags and that's it. I also found a place I might live at- if I can pick up that second job. I need to call the agency ASAP. I don't want to, but I need to. I need those hours and that kind of money. I'm working tomorrow- I wasn't scheduled to, but they were desperate so it's 9-2 for me. Five hours. Then vespers around 6, meaning leaving here around 4.30... And Byzantine, so we'll be standing the whole time. And so forth and so on.
J-chan, in reference to your early comment/question, LI= Leadership Institute. They're running an FSO school Mon/Tues and I'm going to it... I dunno why in some respects. I mean, I'll probably get posted to some godforsaken place like Ghana... yurgh...
"But it'll be with a group!"
Yay....
I dunno. The only thing I could think of today at work is how overqualified I am for my current job. Where do some of my fellow graduates get their jobs from? The Heavenly Employment/Job Opportunities Center? NO. I know everyone makes their own opportunity. Not to say you don't thank God when you get it, but you work like it all depends on you and pray like it all depends on God.
I just don't want to come to Judgement Day and be asked to give a reckoning of time/talents wasted.
I'm soo tired.
I prayed for you all tonight at my holy hour- I prayed for my readership and for everyone who has prayed for me during this past month and a half of transit/strangeness/insanity.

I did it...

I dyed my hair tonight, with the gracious help of SuprNico, who proved to be even more Supr than usual in her assistance! She did a great job- I think. It's kind of hard to tell now while my hair's still a bit damp what it's going to do. And it wasn't her fault that we forgot to use the conditioner. So now my hair is a frizz-ball of blackish-reddish hue. Further updates as this situation develops.
Picked up a housing app. I have to be able to pay at least $600 a month. That's not happening. It just isn't. Don't know what I'm going to do now...
Tomorrow I move my futon into the Daleys' flat, as well as whatever other heavy items of my stuff I don't want to deal with on Saturday can be moved.
I'm tired. I don't want to move anything right now. I worked three hours OT today. Wish I was being paid time and a half for that, but oh well.
Sleep now.
Keep the prayers coming!

Closing

Working 'til closing at Subway really means working until everything is done. Thankfully it looks like I'm getting a permanent schedule change to daytime shift. I guess I'll miss some of the quirks of the nightcrew, but overall, I appreciate being able to walk to/from work during daylight hours. So the big crunch time is this weekend, what with moving somewhere and trying to work the schedule such that I can get to an LI school (FSO school). My dad is willing to pay for this. But not for a TEFL course. I see there is an issue of priority here...
Anyway...
I'm tired, I'm bitter, and I'm itinerant. I'm also a complainer. I just have to keep focusing on the fact that this is an imram. No one said it would be easy or comfortable, or fun. Just not boring. Ever.
Prayers please!

Just a short post...

basically just making a 'post of the day' sort of thing. I didn't work today because I thought I'd be starting night shift on the second job. That didn't actually end up working out. I called them and they said they need people on a day-by-day/case-by-case sort of basis. So I gave up a work day and traded a Friday for basically no reason whatsoever. And I can almost guarantee they'll want me to work tomorrow when I'm scheduled to work to close. Well they can stuff it. I don't care if they are paying $10/hr, if they won't start me soon or with a _consistent_ schedule, that's it.
I have a pounding headache. I called home today. That didn't go very well, but I got a chance to talk to my dad for the longest amount of time I've talked _just_ to him since graduation.
My head really hurts. I hope it's just dehydration.
I still need somewhere to live.

Anchor

So I had a Holy Hour today. It was nicer than usual, because the lady who shares it with me left about twenty minutes early and I had a private chat with Himself. And I thanked Him. I thanked Him for the experience as a whole, because obviously it means I'm supposed to learn something from it. I thanked Him for helping me keep on my pathetic little imrama-bound raft. I reiterated that if He didn't want me doing something, He was to stop me- otherwise I would proceed to the best of my ability. And that's what I'm doing.
Then I thought about anchors. One of Mary's titles is Anchor of Confidence. I didn't know that before today, but it's interesting. And as a melancholic temperament, the virtue I need to cultivate the most carefully, I think, is hope. So I'm trying to keep that in mind, even as I wonder where I'm going to live in five days...
Working the second shift at Subway tonight was an eye-opening experience. I learned that the night-shift manager is not exactly by the books, but she does seem very nice. She gave me some info about places in town that might be able to help me out- apparently Salvation Army helps with finding a place to live and there is some government sponsored housing where your rent payment is based on your income... We'll see how that goes. Hopefully something will work out with one of the families I want to live with.
And I still haven't called MG to tell her that I don't want to go to PA.
And I'm really, really tired.
Expect the posting schedule to change significantly as my schedule does likewise. And if after the 28th, I drop off the face of the earth briefly, say a little prayer- my raft may be in the middle of two large waves... What's that bit called again? A trough? Whatever. I'm really, really tired...

Last Shakespearean Sunday!

It was fun. But now I'm tired. Really, really tired. We had a good time altogether though, I think. The only non CC-girl present was THEJoe... Hehe. I kind of wish we had more guests, it was a little disappointing in that respect. But it was still fun. We did a sort of medley of scenes. I got to be Imogene from Cymbeline. That was fun- I got to nearly die from taking cat-poison and have hysterics upon waking up next to a beheaded corpse. Good times. Imogene's a fun character.
Then THEJoe, Avrilyn, K-ski and I all left to go to Confederate Cole's party. Much to our shock, we were the only guests there! Everyone else- except for the seminarian staying with his family- backed out at the last minute! So we had a good time and ate the refreshments provided. We would have played cricket but it rained so we spent a lot of time pouring over liturgical books and looking up stuff in Latin dictionaries. That was fun, but I still don't know what the Latin word for beer is...
We left early-ish, after seeing the cute little guinea hens they got recently- Bonny, Francis and Jude. They were about palm-sized, grey fluffy balls. Very, very cute. Apparently they eat ticks and this is the purpose for which they were bought. I just wonder how they'll get along with the dogs...
Well, I must cut this post shorter than I'd like to because I have to drive SuprNico to work first thing tomorrow morning. Thankfully I'm not working until four! W00t!
Again, I would like to apologise to my readership for my spaz session yesterday. I'm feeling much better today, though very, very tired.
So I bid you all goodnight!

Wedding comparisons, dress discussion and...

...resisting the urge to title this post 'I'm not okay, I promise'. It's late, I've had a lot of sugar in the past six hours and I'm feeling oddly emotionally fragile right now. The cautious (or maybe too incautious) optimism I had about getting this third shift factory job is quickly being replaced with "In nine days I have nowhere to live." That's not strictly true. I have an open invite for another two weeks anyway. 

But I talked to MG today and she all but convinced me to come to PA, live in her parents' rental flat and find a job locally- preferably on the same shift as her hubby so we could carpool.

Problem. I'm not fine with this. And I knew I wasn't fine with it, but I all but said I would, after I talked further to the HR people at her husband's work. I can't do this. I can't go to PA on the off-chance, and while I care very deeply about MG and her husband, I don't think I could live in proximity to them... I just _don't_. And I don't think I should go to PA. I don't have the money to get there and I honestly don't _want_ to go to PA. It wouldn't be as bad as moving back home, I don't think, but I wouldn't be comfortable. Maybe moving back home would be less uncomfortable. I honestly don't know. It's a mess. I don't want to think about it.

I just hate not having a plan, and having a lousy min. wage job, which is still infinitely better than no job at all. I just want things to work out somehow, yet I feel I've failed to put in sufficient effort. And then I think of the whole thing with my family- I'd like to ask everyone to say an extra prayer or two for my mom, she's having some important tests done this week but won't have the results back for another two weeks. It might be serious. Somehow I don't think that's quite hit me yet. I think it's a mental self-defence mechanism, the idea that if something's too big or too scary to contemplate when you're already stressed about a dozen other different things, your brain shelves it for later, no matter how serious or life-changing it may be. Your mind says "That's it, no stressing about this for now." But since you can't just make it go away, the thing that's bothering you comes out in other things- weird dreams, giddy emotional highs and lows..

Okay. Breathe. This is imram-going. This is not easy. All of life is a set of interconnected imrama. It doesn't have to make sense right now. It doesn't have to fit together the way you thought it should. It will very likely be hard, uncomfortable and never dull. But right now, even after I finally landed a job, I still have that need for something else to go right for me.

Maybe it's all an exercise in patience. I know I still need to get closer to God. Things just keep adding up to the point that it's either get closer or have a complete melt-down.

I apologise to my readership. This post thus far has been monumentally... weird and depressing. And highly personal. Maybe too personal. I don't know... I tried to do an lj-style cut on this post but it didn't work. I found out how to do something similar but it involved messing with the templates which is more than I can manage at this particular moment in time. 

Anyway. Onto less depressing stuff!

MarineWife and MarineJoe had a lovely wedding and reception. This was not marred in the least by T-Bro and I getting horribly lost on the way and having a mishap with the gift- remedied but at the very last minute in typical family style.It wasn't nearly as crowded as I thought it would be at either the church or the reception. The Mass was beautiful, MarineWife's dress was beautiful too! >squee!<>

So I compared weddings- MG's and MarineWife's. MarineWife wins, if not by a landslide then by a clear majority. I love both MG and MarineWife sort of as cousins of my own choosing, and I'm very happy for both of them- and having seen them both get married and having known them both, I predict a much smoother first year for MarineWife and MarineJoe. I could be wrong, but I'm willing to bet I'm right... we'll have to wait and see I suppose. Anyway, the reception was very nice. It was interesting to see the age range of the guests and how they approached the wedding as a whole- how many weddings they'd been to recently or altogether and their opinions on different things.

For instance, GS and I had a very long involved discussion that lasted us the entire car ride home (all ten- fifteen minutes?) about dresses, what the men should wear, how to run the reception, flowers, shoes, the works. GS had some really great ideas about the dresses too- for a guy he's very insightful about such things! I was pleasantly surprised and we had a great conversation. 

In unrelated news, I must say, little K-ski is growing up! She seems to be well aware of the fact that she'll be a senior next year- with all the duties and the privileges that entails. For such a retiring personality she can be surprisingly forceful at times! She'll be one to watch- look out world!;)

All right- that may not be all the news that's fit to print, but I'm tired and I need to sleep, the dancing has taken it out of me and if I don't want to sleep through the last Shakespearean Sunday, I should call it quits now.

Btw, please, dear readership (all five of you or however many) let me know if the stuff at the beginning of this post was too personal in your opinion, and best left to the pages of a diary. Your opinions do matter to me and I don't want to be hanging out the laundry as it were. That's not really the metaphor I want, but it'll have to do for now, I'm tired...