Going to put in an application at another vet's on Monday. Haven't heard from the first one yet. This second one is an afternoon and Saturday morning's gig, which would effectively eliminate the school job, but would pay more than twice what I made doing that, even if all they pay is minimum wage, and I think they may offer more. Considering minimum wage in this state is more than what I made working at the Box Office after three raises, this sounds incredibly wealthy to me.
Do the math, though and it doesn't even begin to cover our rent. Heck, around here it wouldn't even cover your average one bedroom apartment rent, well, not if you thought you needed to pay for electricity and water and food.
The Boy's assistantship almost doubles this year, it's a 40% rather than a 25%, and since they rarely give 50%, that's not bad. Our rent also went down by 25 bucks a month, which is amazing, we're probably the only place in town with rent going down. However, my not being in school anymore means that I have to start paying my loans back. Woo-hoo.
This is pretty much exactly where I didn't want to be last year before we moved. In a way, I'm glad that I had last year. Now I know what planet the department is coming from when TB comes home and complains about it, but I wish the loans I took out last year weren't almost as much as the total I took out all four years of undergraduate.
I'm considering filling something out for the university library, but that's a civil service job, and everyone I've talked to seems to imply that if you don't already know how that works, there's no hope for you.
In unrelated news, the subject of "blogs" came up while TB's relations were here. "Why would you do one of those?" SHE asked. (I've decided that's the single best way to indicate her- it's shorter.) "Why would you want to tell the whole world what's private?"
Since it's none of their business that I have one (though it's really three if you count the rarely updated LJ and the non-specific MySpace), all I had to say was that many people do it to share their opinions and interests. Most of this here isn't really private; incriminating when it comes to TB's family, probably, but it's to the point where I'd say it myself if driven to it.
Anyway, the idea that people would have things that don't need to be said to anyone in particular, but aren't really suited to remain nowhere, made absolutely no sense to any of them. Pretty much unless it has monetary gain involved somewhere, or SHE doesn't do it already, it's pointless.
This is related to the fact that I got told off for not discussing what I did. "You won't tell us what you do, we can't get details like we can with TB." There's really nothing to tell them, because they truly don't understand. Well, that's not fair to TB's father, who has more than a couple brain cells to rub together, but it's no use trying to talk to him if SHE's in the room.
SHE once asked how anyone came up with unique ideas. I suppose I made the wrong answer right away when I said that no idea is unique. Sadly, the only book that SHE seems to have read was The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. I guess she somehow missed all the Biblical allegory, because that was her example of a truly original work. Sigh.
I never believed that such people existed; the people who appear in every LM Montgomery book who have no concept of imagination or creative thought. I thought it was a type of person that died out in the post Victorian era, or only existed in Canada, or something. I had never encountered such a person; everyone I knew understood that our worlds were filled with the magical, the unexplainable, and that most of it was of our own creation.
For me, a lot of writing only involves committing that world to paper. Fictional writing, anyway. This writing here is just daily brain spew, makes me feel like I'm saying something. Keeps me writing, lets me analyse things so, like Edward Albee, they will leave me alone. If I don't discuss some of the Deathly Hallows spoilers soon I'm going to have to go write them down somewhere, because they're itching to be discussed.
When I was a kid, I had a tendency towards monologuing. Well, I guess tendency is an understatement: I talked to myself all the time, and when I didn't talk to myself, I was narrating whatever I was doing. I think it comes from the fact that I was never allowed to take toys outside with me, so playing outside involved wandering around the yard and describing whatever I was imagining. Either that or it came from the sheer amount of books on tape that I had.
Along about Kindergarten, this turned into writing, and I've been doing it ever since. How do I explain this to someone to whom imagination doesn't even begin to make sense. Nephew #4 lives in a world populated by him, the all purpose super hero. He's four, he's maybe a little more involved in his world than other little kids are, but he gets a lot of encouragement in it because his father thinks it's the coolest thing ever. SHE thinks he's weird and has decided she doesn't like him- none of the rest of those boys were like that.
To be fair, they're not, the oldest two are terribly practical. Their imagination stretches only to pre-set limits, and anything beyond that is too crazy. Yellow Submarine and Monty Python and the Holy Grail were too irreverent for them. Nephew #2 spent most of Grail asking why they were buying a shrubbery. Because it's funny. But no one would ever ask anyone to buy them a shrubbery, they can get their own. Nephew #1 wanted to know what kind of drugs the Submarine animators were on. Well, probably heavy ones, but you still have to admit that some of this stuff is pretty cool, right? No, it's stupid, it doesn't make any sense.
I almost argued with them that X-Men doesn't make any sense either, but my knowledge of the Marvel universe isn't what it should be and they could argue circles around me.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. How can I describe the vivid world I live in to someone who is obviously happy enough with the one they've never thought to improve upon with possibilities? That's what writing is, that's what I want to do for a living. How do I explain that to someone who doesn't understand?
The other reason, of course, is that getting as close to my writing as her questions would go isn't even the sort of thing I'm prepared to talk about to anyone. As ridiculously specific as she gets with her questions to The Boy sometimes, I know anything she'd have to ask me would come down to "Where did that specific idea come from?" Even if I know, I don't generally want to answer that question.
I don't really know what TB thinks about my writing. I think it's a part of me that he doesn't know much about, and doesn't want to know much about. I think in a lot of ways, I prefer that to someone who was very interested in it, because then I'd have someone with an expectation around all the time. Still, I think in some ways it's just a part of my "weirdness" that he accepts, but doesn't really want any part of.
"But [Anne] had long ago learned that when she wandered into the realm of fancy she must go alone. The way to it was by an enchanted path where not even her dearest might follow her." (Anne of the Island) Funny how she worked that out at 16, and I still can't be sure of it.