I hate those blind moments of panic when you haven’t really been keeping track of your bank account even though you know you’re supposed to, and then one Saturday morning you decide to check it and, with no hope of a paycheck in sight until the end of next month, you find the balance is frighteningly, horrifyingly low.

Thankfully I have some money, and other means to support myself for the next few weeks. I suppose it looks like I will be skipping some meals, staying in, and not enjoying the summertime as fully as I’d like to though, until I’m paid again. Oh well.

Today was the end of my first week at work. While it feels good to be back again, a productive member of society, I have to admit this week has been long and I’m exhausted.  I’ve had bad dreams the last few nights and have not slept well.

I really do enjoy my new job. It is not so terribly difficult that I am completely lost, but neither is it easy. For a change I can be completely occupied the entire day instead of sitting around for five of those hours pretending to work. I have learned more about several common programs than I learned in all four years of college, and am learning more about others at a frighteningly fast rate.

Today I watched a thunderstorm roll over east Atlanta. It was tranquil.
Tonight I’m just happy to do nothing (well, I am watching Batman Begins in preparation for The Dark Knight this summer. I really cannot wait). I have a slight headache and feel weary all over, but I really love this movie. So much (and Hans Zimmer!!!! Swoon!).

Well, this weekend is a good weekend for movies. Wall-E and Wanted are out, two movies I’ve been dying to see. I’m depositing the last of my checks from my old job (plus a bonus one!), cleaning out my car, and generally relaxing and unwinding.

It’s almost July! About two and a half weeks until my birthday!!

Things I love about my new job:
- the sunlight that streams through my window in the morning
- the courtyard outside the building
- working
- that I get to learn the intricacies of Illustrator at an accelerated rate
- that I’m doing work relevant to my field
- my office

Things I could do without:
- evening traffic
- not being able to go to my favorite gym class
- not having money…and probably having to wait for the next paycheck a long time

Life is treating me fairly well right now. Tonight I even went to the gym, late. I don’t typically like working out late because the classes aren’t as good and because this happens: I stay up late and am hyperactive long into the night. Then I’m tired in the morning. This will inevitably be the case for tomorrow, since it is already 11:30 and my movie is not over yet. I don’t feel very tired though, just happy and content.

These things make me happy too: walking around Publix. 59 cent two liter sodas. The mini garlic grater, which I will buy. Beer. Soy milk. Night time. Snuggling in my bed.

A picture of my incredibly-difficult-to-photograph dwarf puffer.

Compare the above picture, taken in June 2008 of the same puffer as the below picture:

As you can see, the poor puffer was much smaller when I first got him, nearly just a sack of skin and bones. While I still don’t really know what he eats (today he turned his nose up visibly at a nice, fresh, frozen block of blood worms, which the guppies promptly gorged themselves on) except for pest snails–a frightening and terribly entertaining ordeal to observe–obviously his diet has improved from whatever it was he ate or didn’t eat at the pet store.

He still remains rather unfriendly, easily bored, and restless. Possibly quite annoyed with his tankmates, which include a large, dumb, but harmless pleco, and two guppies, a male and a female. I’d had more guppies but the babies are separated right now, and the other female died. Oh well.

That’s the last remaining male guppy bred several months ago. His predecessors have all passed away. I believe he is the father of the current batch of guppy babies I have sitting in a coffee pot, but they are much too small right now to even tell sex, let alone coloring.

At the moment, as you can see, they are still tiny. The puffer would snap all of them up in a day or two (and so would the two guppy adults, probably). Right now they’re still only about a half an inch long, and will have to grow much bigger (probably another month or two) before I can plop them back in the main tank.

And, because I felt bad leaving him out, here’s my oldest and biggest goldfish. The other two are camera shy, but I managed to catch this guy off-guard when I moved him into my 5-gallon hex tank randomly one day.

Dear Screamer,

While I realize how wonderful it is that you can bench press 405 lbs three times in succession, I would like to request that you keep your inappropriate grunting and orgasm-like moans to yourself. I find that this noise and spectacle make it difficult for me to maintain proper form and balance during my own exercises, less than ten feet away.

This is not stated in the rules anywhere, and I know you do indeed derive great pleasure from the pulsating veins in your temples, the solid metallic bar between your hands, and the ripping sensation your pectoral muscles undergo when your lackey heaves the weight up off the supports for you. And I know it must be heavenly, the way that same metal bar bounces off your heaving chest, back into the air with so little effort at all, only to rest once more when you realize you cannot feel your arms anymore because you’re just that awesome.

For the rest of us meager beings who lay out on a flat bench, do our reps slowly, and sweat just as much but vocally express so little, I know that we must seem amateur. I apologize on behalf of the rest of the gym for giggling when we saw your terrible and bloated face sprinkling drops of sweat onto the floor when you squeezed into that strange rubber half-shirt you have. I am sure it serves some purpose. And I apologize for rolling my eyes when you continued to grunt, scream, and moan, for I realize it is terribly difficult lifting that amount of weight. I too, overcompensate for my physical and emotional shortcomings by impressing others with my female biceps, my massive 10-rep, 3-set regimen with my 5 lbs weights. I understand completely. I suppose I simply lack the courage it takes to let my hair come undone from its ponytail, to let the sweat that forms on my brow roll down and shower the floor for other people to slip in, to express my deep satisfaction with a long, sultry oooooohhhhhh yes! Yes! Yes!

But for now, I hope you understand. I would not want to interfere with the burgeoning of a Hulk-like creature, the one you are certainly striving to become.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Katherine

PS: I was walking behind you today and noticed that the gym smelled of spearmint BreathSavers. This instantly brought me back to my freshman year in college, when I was attempting to befriend Dunbar, another gym rat of less status than you, and wooed him with continual offerings of these delectable mints.

For a moment I felt happy, like I was much younger and just beginning on my own path of fitness, or back in Intro to Biology when I hand them over after he punched me for one.

And then I realized it was your pungent Icy/Hot or Arnica gel. And that you had rubbed it all over your body, but not all the way. It was streaked across your shoulders like sunscreen, although we were indoors. The smell became so strong my eyes watered.

Perhaps next time you may be so kind as to use an ice pack for your aching muscles? Or a Vicodin? I’m sure you will understand.

Dear colony of Periplaneta americana that lives in this building,

I officially give up. You may have this apartment beginning on September 1, 2008. My roommate and I will be out by then.

Please note that there is a perpetual smell of paint, that sometimes when you turn on the exhaust fan over the stove the circuit trips and turns off power to half the apartment, and that the apartment comes with annoying, unfriendly, and possibly illegal neighbors.

But then again, you are roaches, and you probably don’t care that they’re that way. In fact the more fiestas they throw and the messier they are, the better, right? And if they annoy you then you can have all of your distant relations over to annoy them.

I wish you every happiness in this place. Hopefully it will suit you better in the coming months than it has us. Don’t worry; it is a nice place. We must simply move on, see?

Sincerely,

Katherine

I sure hope the week gets better after today. I think we all need it.
And oh my gosh, I can’t seem to break out of this terseness. Not for any lack of material to write about, for there are pages and pages that could be written about the last few days. I can’t seem to put it down into words correctly when I’ve tried these last few times though. Sorry.

So until I can, more terseness, and possibly lists like the following:

- Interview was so-so. Much like it was last time. Do they like me? Are they made nervous by me? She reminds me of just one of my professors, but I told her if this works out it would open the possibility of moving into Decatur. Gah! I just want to know!
- Reserved seats for myself for Thursday through Tuesday. Hopefully I will get first class both trips, but I cannot be certain of that.
- Hopefully I will have some kind of ride to and from the airport by tomorrow as well, although now as things stand I am not sure of that either.
- The boy was in an accident earlier today and while he is fine, his pride and car are not. I feel particularly useless in this situation. Accidents happen to everyone, so how can I get him to see this and realize that the best of us are humbled by these things?
- Thunderstorms this afternoon. Finally.
- Dream last night was about my brothers living with me, and apartment hunting. Also some kind of war was happening in the background. The world was then ending and I counseled my friends not to lose hope or be sad. I told them, be angry, vengeful, or unsettled, but don’t take time to be sad. You won’t be of any use to us if you’re sad!
- My baby fish stare at me when I walk by. This is only made more comical by my big dumb goldfish (three of them) who constantly act as though they’re starving (it’s quite the opposite). Sometimes the three of them line up together in the bigger tank behind my holding …cup… (for the babies) and look at me, then mouth in unison.  Or sometimes the biggest goldfish, the one I’ve had the longest, floats up to the glass sideways and just stares until he realizes who it is, and then he’ll mouth for food.
- I love music.
- Julie’s class at the gym makes me happy too. And knowing that Marion often thinks my form is good enough to point out during class. No, I’m not brown-nosing. Geez.

Today was generally not a good day. I’m exhausted.

Blew a tire on 85 somewhere. Got it changed (which made me feel like an empowered woman, although it took a hell of a lot of cursing, sweating, and kicking things around the parking lot I’d pulled into before I felt that way), but had to get a new tire somewhere in Marietta. Thankfully, my Toyota has a full-sized spare, and so I drove on it the rest of the day with the new tire in the trunk, no problem.

Got some clothes for tomorrow’s interview. Hemmed the pants myself. They are hanging just inside my closet, ready to go.

Wish me luck for tomorrow.

Make breakfast, watch movies. Drive to Decatur in traffic, drive back. Play with the Casio’s features while waiting for flat pizza, and sweat in the afternoon sunlight. Watch a movie (”The Strangers”). Drive back. Watch some more movies, kiss, make dinner. Salmon with chives and goat cheese, rolls, and salad. Sparkling grape juice, simply because I’ve felt somewhat alcoholic recently. Stay up late talking and lounging about.

In the morning, wake early and pretty much do the same thing. Drive downtown to grab cloves, and then drive back. Wait out the afternoon heat with movies and Sprite Zero and garlic crackers with soft cheese. Go to class and sweat, laugh. Go home, shower together in the warm and already humid bathroom. Laugh some more, and order pizza (which arrives in fifteen minutes!) and watch more movies with beer. We step outside to smoke for a bit, a habit that I have long since broken but enjoy once in a blue moon for the sheer familiarity and comfort of it. Once in a while it is just nice and different to indulge and to be with someone who does not judge, but even experiments too, unafraid of new things. Around eleven at night a stranger knocks on the door. It startles us out of sleep and we spend some time looking out the windows and pacing the apartment warily before returning to rest.

The next day, a doctor’s appointment for me (clean bill of health!) and then relaxing for the morning and through the evening. Grabbing more cloves for later, eating sweet potato pie from Fat Matt’s, and lounging the rest of the day until it is late and time to go.

I wish he didn’t have to go. But it’s Tuesday, and he needs to.

If I had secured employment, I should enjoy this little break much more than I am. But I had a wonderful weekend. Can scarcely believe it is happening, and working so well too, despite the circumstances. And I took a deep breath and admitted what was really going on to my aunt last week (finally), who has kept asking me the last three months whether I am dating anyone. So I said yes, and told her who. And she seemed quietly pleased. Odd, because my immediate family seems to want to see us together too–they insisted that he come over for the ‘family’ barbecue a couple weeks ago and asked if he would be joining us for a dinner the next day–and so I am thinking this is what has been waiting to happen all this time.

And as far as I go, it was about time I started paying attention to the path my life was trying to lead me down instead of blatantly ignoring it. It’s felt good, so far, as far as my hedonistic weekend went and in general. I can be all right feeling a bit unsettled in terms of my career for the moment, as long as this inner contentment stays with me.

Well, that was certainly an amazing pair of lost weekends.

You know, the kind where all the day sort of blur together into a long reel of moments. Long days, and pleasant nights.

PS: I have a clean bill of health on all counts. And apparently the rigorous cardio regimen I’ve been following since I got to Atlanta has worked. Along with the better diet, staying away from cereal, and blah blah blah. Whatever. The cardio is still awesome. And so is being healthy!