Busy day... I'm scared to eat.

When I woke up today, I noticed how lovely it looked through the open blinds. The trees are really beginning to turn, the sky was wonderfully overcast and at some point there had even been a little rain. I covet rainy overcast days in autumn. I thought it's going to be a nice day. Then I saw the doom clock snickering that it was after 3 in the afternoon. That's not so bad since I didn't get to be until about 6 am but still, I was out of bed lickity split.

Why was I up until 6am? Because we had to wait for Sko's check to hit the bank at 2am then we went to Wal-Mart to get some very, desperately needed groceries. I don't think we even got home until after 4. Then there was the putting away of the food, I had to dig the xmas tree and few decorations we had out of the storage closet and suddenly the sun was up.

So, back to today. I've been a busy bee, filling out applications, cleaning the kitchen, gathering up the dirty laundry and trash, and I've even got a roast in the crock pot. Earlier I put up my xmas tree and decorated it. Management can't bitch about my tree being up inside and if they do, I'll give them a piece of my mind. They've really pissed me off lately and lied to us a couple of times.

Anyway, I just recently sat down to start working on my NaNoWriMo novel and realized that the reason I felt so icky was because I haven't really eaten anything today. But when I get up to go get something, since we actually have food again, I get scared and back away from the fridge and cupboard. It's like I'm terrified to touch the food or something. But I'm cooking a roast for dinner and tomorrow I planned on making stew or bierocks. I have to wonder if subconsciously my brain is telling me not to touch the food in case we hit a rough patch again and there isn't any but some of that stuff you can only store and save for so long.

The good news with NaNoWriMo is that as of 11:30pm last night I updated my word count and am sitting at 28,795 words, that over half way to the goal and I've been writing a little today. So hopefully, if I am lucky, I can get at least another two thousand written by 11:30 tonight and be that much closer to the goal.

Almost half way finished.

Yesterday, against my better judgment, I spent the whole day writing for NaNoWriMo. That's National Novel Writer's Month for those imaginary people I think might actually read my blog and don't know. Anyway, it was against my better judgment because I am unemployed, should be looking for a job, or preforming some kind of house keeping duties somewhere as penance for being unemployed. Also because the more I get written the more my significant other is upset by it and no matter what she and my father say about how cool it would be if I could actually finish and publish a book, they would much rather I write as a hobby and be working part time. But there in lies the problem of no one is hiring and if they so manage to actually take a look at my application, once they see me in person, they take one look at my fat, Plain Jane physical appearance, and give me the run around.

Ugh, okay, now that that's out of my system. You now know that I spent the whole day writing. I wrote over 6,000 words and in those words, I managed to write a pretty decent chunk of story. After looking it over there is little that I would change, maybe flower up the wording a little more, but otherwise, I really liked it and I like the new avenues opening up with the story. And after all was said and done for the day and I had written to the point that I either needed to keep writing or take a break, I totaled up my word count and found that I am almost half way to 50,000 words. 50,000 words is, I guess, the considered amount for a novel. I'm sitting at 22,636 words as of 11 pm last night.

Don't think I will get 6,000 words written today but I am hoping to get at least 5,000.

Not a good start to the week.

Last night my Grandparents gave me some money. I gave ten of it to Skoora for gas right away and quickly hid the rest. I ended up telling Skoora about what I hid a few hours later and perused Amazon to find a few little xmas presents for her since I don't know if I will have a job by then would have the money available to get her something nice. I found three inexpensive things and added them to my cart and this morning placed the order.

We went to the bank to deposit the money and used a little of the rest to get lunch. I know I should have saved the money for food but Grandma also sent me home with some food so I could make dinners for us this week, just enough to get us through until Skoora gets paid. Skoora got really mad at me. She said she felt horrible because I don't have a job and still manage to find ways to get her presents and she has a job and can't seem to manage to get me anything and that I should have used the money for food. That made me feel terrible.

Yes, my intentions were good but also, for the last couple of years I haven't been able to really get her anything so personal and perfect for her, or anything I knew she would really want. Which was why I attacked her wish list on Amazon. I had to sit back and watch as her family and friends all got her things that said they knew her really well and she would really enjoy. It's silly and pathetic but just once I wanted to really get her a few little good xmas presents, things she's been wanting and more to say that I appreciate everything she's being doing for me. So when she got mad at me, I felt like it was all ruined and my efforts meaningless.

After we fought she said she wasn't mad but I almost want to cancel the order. She feels bad because she wasn't able to get me anything for our anniversary and I did. But I explained that her anniversary and a birthday gifts were purchased way in advance and while I was still working so she shouldn't feel bad about those and she shouldn't feel bad about xmas. She has no idea how horrible I feel not being able to find a job or the fear I had of not being able to get her something nice for xmas. She has no idea how excited and relieved I felt to have a little bit of money that I could use for her to make sure she had something and how important I felt it was that she have a good xmas especially after hearing that her parents wouldn't be coming. And her parents aren't coming due to other family members and their bullshit. They are postponing their trip until after xmas which I feel is wrong and feel that Skoora shouldn't have to be made to suffer for the deeds of others.

So in the end, my excitement and comfort in getting a few little xmas gifts for Skoora has been ground into nothing. I'm not going to cancel the order so she will still get them but I don't feel like they will mean much. Also, I can't find my medicine anywhere, which isn't helping, and I kind of just want to go back to bed. I am really starting to hate xmas and my favorite holiday, Halloween, it was as if it never happened, so what holiday spirit or joy is left for me this year?

Visiting Grandma

I decided to join my parents on the Sunday night trip to Grandma's. I haven't really be over to visit my grandparents in a while.

So here I am sitting next to a space heater, in the Family room working on my NaNo project, half watching the military channel with my Grandfather, who is a Veteran. I think this is the first time I have seen him stay on a channel for more than five minutes at a time. He typically changes channels after about five minutes. That's hopeful considering Grandpa's Alzheimer's is getting worse by the day.

Speaking of Grandpa and his Alzheimer's disease, today hasn't been the best of days. He didn't remember that Grandma had sold the RV to the church pastor and so when my Dad and I began helping grandma clean it out today, he grew upset. That's was easy and it was worse when Grandma tried her best not to cry over having to sell the RV. But they are getting older (they are both in their 80s) and can't do all that they want to with it and it's become more of a hassle than they can handle.

But after the RV clean out, we had dinner. Which brings me to the next part of the evening. My mother is asleep at the dinning room table after having taken her medicine for migraine and what ever else it is she needs to take. My Dad is sleeping a few feet from with with the dog on his lap, probably due to a mixture of food coma and exhaustion. I am waiting for my Grandma to come in so I can show her my NaNo project because I think she might actually like it. It has also been a long time since Grandma has read anything I have written. Of course this isn't the best stuff and it's only a rough draft so I'm actually wondering if I should just keep it to myself instead of actually showing her. I told her a little about it and she seemed annoyed that there are vampires in my story. *Sigh*

It used to be that when we came to visit my grandparents, we'd eat and then sit around talking. It seems that over the years a visit to grandma's now consists of helping grandma around the house a little bit, eating, and then sleeping. Nothing is what it used to be and just seems pathetic and depressing. I don't know why my Grandma wants us to come over anymore.

I think I want a cigarette but I quit smoking and part of me wants to delve into the liquor friends have left at my house for safe keeping and get really drunk. However I don't really even drink. In short I think I am depressed and looking for something, anything almost, to take the sting out of all the disappointment and not so efficiently caged frustration and anger that keeps building inside. My coping devices are losing their potency and of course they would with lack of support from family and friends despite my efforts to read and offer advice. Recently I quit offering advice to friends, especially when they make idiotic decisions that I know will end badly, knowing that if I say something it will only piss them off no matter how courteous and gentle, tactful I say it.

*sigh* I'm done muttering venting for the evening and need to get back to work if I want to get anything done at all.

The Hang Up

My car was recently paid off. Yay!!!! Right? For that part maybe or maybe my car has a soul and knew so it decided to break down. Turns out it took over one thousand dollars just to get it running and I still have a leak in the radiator, need to replace my shocks, and several other things that will probably cost me another thousand.

Well I’m currently unemployed so I didn’t have the money to fix it on my own and Skoora’s car is out for the count so that left us with no car. On top of that the breaks in my father’s truck are going out. So Dad had to call Grandma for a loan to help us out. My mother jumped all over that and has been using that against me, holding it over my head, to get me to do whatever it is that she wants. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no problems doing the dishes, the laundry, taking out the trash, those sorts of things to help out in return for them helping me out. And I have been doing that, without complaint.

Also, I didn’t complain last night when she said that she wanted to hang out with me. She had the TV going, was talking to me, and I let her use my computer to look at gemstones on her jewelry site and LOLCats, even though all I wanted to do was work on my National Novel Writer’s Month project. I lost four hours of writing time and in four hours I can average between 3000 and 4000 words, even with little interruptions. But Mom wanted to hang out so, I was game.

However, what I do have a problem with is my mom saying that she wants to hang out with me only instead of actually hanging out with me; she chewed me out for three hours. She chewed me out about where to apply for jobs and why I haven’t applied at certain places. Then she chewed me out about the chores and laundry never mind that her laundry is basically caught up (unless she’s got more hidden away that I don’t know about) and the dishes had just been done the day before. So to get her off my case, I went to sleep.

What really depresses me is A) that I had to go to sleep to get a break and B) that she doesn’t understand the importance and significance of National Novel Writer’s Month or why I am participating. Worse, she can’t even respect me enough to let me write while I am at her house. She’s always got to have me doing something. If it isn’t some house work, its letting the dog out every five minutes, making dinner, or getting her soda, or running an errand. Like I aforementioned, these are things I don’t mind doing.

What brings me to why I’m even blogging in the first place about it is that my mother just hung up on me not too long ago. Apparently she’d pissed because I didn’t stick around to sweep and mop her floors today. I’m sorry, today is Amanda’s day off, I haven’t really spent any time at home, and I need a freaking break as well as some UNINTERUPTED writing time. Well that just wasn’t acceptable to her. So we fought about it and I told her that I would do it on Monday while Amanda was at work. So she changed her story and said she never asked me to sweep and mop her floors, that she only asked me to ‘help’ her sweep and mop because she can’t move the furniture.

Haha, yeah right. If I waited on her to do that, I’d be waiting all freaking week, be over there every day of the week, and it would never get done because there would always be some reason why she couldn’t get out of bed. So I told her, no, I would do it on my own on Monday. She of course had to tell me that it wouldn’t be done right if she didn’t do it. And we argued some more and in the end she assumed that I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to ‘help’ her and hung up on me.

Guess what, because she hung up on me, I’m definitely not going to do it. And because I was so furious with her, I called m Grandmother and told her that I wouldn’t be coming for a visit tomorrow because I didn’t want to see my mom. Grandma understands, thankfully and said there would be other days to visit.

Point of fact: My mother doesn’t want a daughter, she wants a maid. Also, she’s a Chiwawa with Lock Jaw. She never shuts up and she never lets go of anything once she sinks her teeth into it.

So this week, I’ll be going over to do my laundry, I’ll do the chores I normally do to help out and if she mentioned the floors to me again, I’m telling her to get Dad to help her, she lost my help when she hung up on me.

All in all, this is pretty pathetic and she pissed me off so bad I was crying and now have a headache, not to mention that I can’t seem to settle down enough to actually write anything more than a blog post.

I need to vent because I'm going nuts.

I'm still looking for a job. That task hasn't been easy nor has it been fruitful and frankly it looks pretty bleak. But that hasn't stopped me from looking. I've even applied at Suite 101 just so I could have a little money coming in to help. It's been well over a week and while their website says application are reviewed within 24hrs, my application status is still blank. So I pretty much gave up on them.

On top of that and all the bills that we are struggling pay, I dropped my cell phone in the toilet, thought it was dried out enough, put it back together and promptly fried it. So I am borrowing my mother's cell phone but put my sim card in it. The only problem with that is that my sim card doesn't want to give up the phone book numbers I have plugged into it therefore I don't know who is calling when they call. And since I am getting calls from collections for my hospital bills... I'm never sure who it is that is calling.

Stressful as all of that was, we had to borrow money from Sko's parents to help us so we can at least get enough groceries to survive on. My parent's paid off the rest of my car and lo and behold it decided to start acting up. Sko's car still isn't fixed so we've been running on one car and barely been able to afford the gas to put in it to keep it going. So when she called me told me that it was smoking and smelled like it was burning and a couple of other things and she didn't think it was safe to drive it home and now I have to get my parents to let me borrow their truck to go get her... *Screams and banks head on desk*

Oh and the beauty of it all is that both my parents are telling me to calm down. How the hell am I supposed to calm down when I've been panicking every day, felt so horrible and useless, don't even know what to do anymore, and feel so guilty terrible that they have had to help me so much and Sko's parents have been helping too and it's just... I mean I don't even know what to do anymore and I'm about to go crazy with all of these emotions flying around and switching back and forth. They just want me to be all calm and collected about everything, like this isn't a big deal. It IS a big deal because it's more money that I know they don't have that they will have to shell out to help me again.

Worse, I was going to try and do NaNoWrMo next month and I don't even think that I'll be able to settle down and clear my head enough to produce anything.

The whole reason I quit working at OLC was so I didn't have to live in a constant state of fear and panic and dread. But it's almost as if I didn't quit, just different circumstances and environment.

There, I vented.

Being a fat girl isn't easy in the job market.

You might be wondering why there is a painting of a woman above. There is a point.

Today started out much like any day. I went through my somewhat haphazard routine of dressing, fussing with my hair, feeding the cats, deciding whether or not I would put on make up, and picking up the house. Normally I wouldn't be in a rush but today I had things to do, one of which was to drive over to the nearest Walgreen's and complete the next step in my application process. So, after about a hour, I was ready to go.

When I arrived, I was taken to a back office by one of the ladies in the photo department. She got the computer nice and ready for me and let me be to take the skill assessment. Aside from missing the first question and feeling like an idiot for it, the assessment was straight forward and quick. Next step on the directions for me to follow was to find a store manager.

The store manager was found in record time and he seemed like a nice enough guy except for the tell tale sign that I knew I would never be hired there. Every time I go into a place for an interview or check on an application I watch the managers. In my experience if they do the "elevator eyes" and give me some brush off quick answer, I know I will not be considered. This man did exactly that. He looked me over up and down, said they hired on a need basis and walked away. For my part of it, I left the store in a hurry to take a deep breath in my car before I screamed.

In the near ten years I have been in and out of the work force, I haven't had as much trouble finding a job as I have in the last few years. Sure the bad economy plays a part and the fact that it's the employer's market adds to the problem but there is another reason. I am an overweight female. It doesn't matter how nice I dress, if I wear make up or fix my hair, the first thing an employer is looking at are not my qualifications, job history, ect... They see my weight and my gender.

Point of fact, a few years ago I was hired at a deli chain at $5.50 an hour. Two months later my cousin, who is skinnier, more attractive (despite her rat face), and has a larger chest was hired on at $6.00. She had less work history and was a high school drop out. While working for this company I subjected to harassment from one of the managers about my weight, how he was "going to whip me into shape" and how I was "slower" than the rest of the workers. Upset by the constant harassment and learning that another manager had to fight him for the raises I was due from passing my certifications, I quit. I worked just as hard if not harder than the rest of the employees. I was trained in several positions and did each one every shift I worked.

Now not all managers are like that and not all of them give me the elevator eyes. I have met some really nice managers who might look me over, but actually engage in conversation, try to get a feel for who I am, what I am like and what not even if it's just for a few minutes, and those managers always promise to look over my application and get back to me. Sometimes they do sometimes they don't, either way, they gave me the time of day.

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog about how society has changed in its view of women. During the Renaissance or middle ages having a fat wife or daughter(s) was a good thing. It meant the man was providing for his family and was wealthy enough to do so. It was a status symbol and fat women were thought as beautiful. Where as today, fat women are generally viewed as pigs and ugly. Skinny, thin, toned, or athletic women are prized and sought after. Thin women get ahead in society, they have a better chance at getting a job, finding a man, and being treated better.

Personally I don't think it should matter whether or not you are fat or thin but it does. Especially now with the 'being healthy' or 'being thin is beautiful' craze is going on. But does anyone ever stop to look at what people, especially women are doing to themselves to achieve this ideal look? People are hurting themselves, emotionally, mentally, and physically and worse they are miserably scrambling to meet society's standards.

I admit, I am one of those miserable fat females who wishes even for a second that the issue of which color of dress or which dress to wear on a date was the most pressing part of an evening out. Shopping for clothing is a nightmare. Trying clothes on is disappointing because you see something you really like but it won't fit right or its too small and there isn't a size bigger. Or worse, they just don't have anything in your size and anything you do try on is far too tight for any sense of modesty and propriety.

Sure there are diets out there, crash diets, pills,medical procedures, books but none of them really work. Mostly because people are more miserable on the diets, pills, and diet guide books than they were when they were eating what they wanted and they all cost exorbitant amounts of money. If you're poor, you just can't afford that stuff much less to eat "healthy". When you're poor you have to plan and make food that lasts.

Now in my case, yes, I am poor. My house hold would rank on the poverty level. So that means that I have a limited amount of grocery spending money. I don't get food stamps or assistance. However, I do my best to make well rounded meals, I've tried cutting out sweet and starches, things that are known to keep people fat. I eat a lot of vegetables and fruit and meat. Still I find myself fat and not losing. In fact in the last few weeks I've gained weight, which is interesting since I haven't really had a lot available to eat.

Have I tried exercise, you bet. I have a nice pond that I walk around occasionally, when I feel up to it and my allergies aren't bothering me too much to do so. I was swimming nearly every day in the indoor pool at my apartment complex. However they seemed to have closed the pools since the school year stared. Also, I have a set of stairs that I go up and down several times a day. But I can't afford to get a membership at a health club. I can't afford the YMCA. So what am I supposed to do and why can't people understand that?

More importantly, why can't people look beyond themselves, look beyond what society deems "beautiful", and look beyond how a person looks and give them a chance.