If only I had a moon ladder, my life would be complete

I want so much that sometimes it hurts almost. Almost. Ok, maybe a little more than almost. It's the pull of desire for something (even if you have absolutely no idea what it is that you want) that starts in the center of your chest and radiates outward. Out toward the thing, whatever it is: physical, emotional, a specific event, an accomplishment of some sort.

I have decided that I am living a life that is mostly devoid of magic. And I am not like other grown ups who can go around without magic and be perfectly content. I need magic. I crave it. It is what I am radiating towards.

The only thing is I don't know where to start my search for this magic. It makes me feel very small. Like someone is telling me that I can totally make it to the moon, only they don't tell you that you should probably get a spaceship beforehand (ladders that tall just don't exist, I checked).

Sometimes I think that finding the magic will have to do with where I live and how I choose to live there. I imagine a huge back yard with huge, old trees and giant flowering bushes and so much color (green and blue and pink and purple and white and and and) that you might think that your eyes will melt out of your head. And a house that smells like cooking and baking. Warm bread, fabulous meals, cookbooks with broken spines and stained pages from years of being used and loved.

But in order to find the magic house, I have to have money. And in order to have money, I have to have a job. And that, my friends, is where I get lost.

A job that is magical. Something that I am good at and that I love to do all the time. A job that, if I did have to work more than 40 hours at it during the week, wouldn't make me want to find a mountain and throw myself off the very top of it because I am so tired and so stressed I can't stand it.

I have friends who are doing what they love. Writing or designing or what-have-you-ing. They have always known what it was, and even if they didn't know it exactly at the time, they were pretty damn close. I am good at a lot of things. I have jobs that I enjoy (to a degree) but I still manage to have about 1 day a week where my brain literally turns into jello because of the stress in my life and oozes out of my ear holes. And it's draining my will to live.

On the phone with my mother the other day, she told me that "if this was the way [I] choose to life my life then [I] should probably just stop bitching about it and be content that [I] have a job at all." And yes, I agree. I should stop bitching. I should spend more time looking for a job where I can put my college degree to good use (or any use, for that matter), be happy and make some money so that I can find the magic house where I will be able to cook and bake forever and ever, Amen.

But I think about looking for a job and all I want to do is run back into the arms of my 3 (yes, 3) jobs and the 1 day a week of brain flavored stress-jello and hold on as tight as I can and never let go. Resumes make me turn into a blabbering idiot. Looking at Monster or Career Builder makes me wonder if I will ever find anything that makes me want to dance out of bed and into the office.

And yes, I realize that I might be romanticizing this job thing. Maybe there really is not one person in the world who actually dances into their office everyday. Maybe "magical jobs" are like "unicorns" and "dragons" and while they are fun to talk about or star in movies or read about, they don't really exist.

But the thing is, I don't know that I want to live in a world where being a grown up means that you have to wait until 5:00 on the weekdays to feel the magic. In fact, I take that back. I know I don't want to live in that world. In that world, the world where everyone waits until 5:00 to be happy, I will wither and die like a flower that doesn't get enough sunshine.

So I suppose I am putting this out there to see what comes to me. I would love to have words of comfort or maybe a career idea that is something super-fun that you heard of one time because your ex-boyfriend's, step mom's brother-in-law from Texas heard about from a friend one time (maybe). The list of magical jobs that I came up with is sort of small:

• Start my own preschool
• Flight attendant
  
• Character actor at Disneyland (I would like to be Ariel please. Or Belle. Well ... really any princess, really)

Thoughts?

I need your help!

Because I have suddenly become a person who cannot make a decision on my own, I have decided (progress!) to leave my next hair style up to you my readers (regression!). SO, tell me, what do you think?

Short hair ... or ... long-ish hair?

It's been almost a year since my last hair cut (I know some of you may have gagged at that statement, I'm sorry) and I need one desperately. But I can't decide if I want to just get a trim or cut off what I have and go back to having shorty-short hair.

I won't make an appointment until someone tells me what to do. Which means that if not having a hair cut for (almost) a full calendar year makes you throw up in your mouth a little, you should probably leave a comment to end the cruel and unusually torture I have inflicted upon my hair.

The Past, The Future and California

I grew up in Reno. I moved to Kansas in 1996 because my parents felt the need to be closer to family (in Illinois and Ohio) but not too close so we didn't have to spend any more time with them than we wanted too.

I have always had a special place in my heart for the west. I love the dessert, the dryness (even if it also comes with tons and tons of nose bleeds. OMG.). I have so many happy memories of being little in west. I hear that the place where I lived as a kid is totally built up now and it hardly looks the same. And I know that the people who live in my old house park their broke-ass trucks on the lawn (thank you Google Street View) so I can't help but feel like the image I have in my head and the place I would be going to if I went back would be radically different.

But for some reason I still feel drawn to go back. Maybe not to Reno, but out west - California specifically. And I have to say that I can't help but think that the universe is trying to tell me something because I know more people in California than I do here (almost). BFF Hilda is there, so is my high school BFF Newspaper Bitch. And another friend (who currently doesn't have a bloggy nickname) just got a job out there.

It's a conspiracy I tell you.

It's hard knowing so many people that are spread out so far across the country. It makes me feel old, and I am far too young to feel old.

I don't really know the point of this post other than to talk about how much I wish I could move out there where two of my best friends are living (seriously, what are the odds??) and, to sound like a 16 year old, live the life I would like to be living.

Honestly though, it all depends on how my Children's Mercy thing pans out. I had my interview, it went well (the question I messed up: tell us 2 of your strengths and weaknesses. My weaknesses answer: I'm a nervous talker and I'm sort of shy. *face palm*), I will know whether or not I got in on or before October 22. Please keep your fingers crossed for me. This Child Life business sounds like it's my calling.

Curious ...

Well, I've been calling Boyfriend's phone to see if it's on or not. Since you can't have them on during the flight it would make sense that it would go straight to voice mail. But I just called and it RANG, he didn't answer, but it RANG.

What does this mean?!

Narrowing it down ...

So the only other flight coming into O'Hare from Frankfurt Germany is supposed to land at 5:13 pm. So Boyfriend has to be on it, doesn't he? One would hope. Of course, there's always the chance that he got the times way wrong and won't be flying in until like, midnight tonight.

If this is the case ... I am going to completely fall apart. I am going to be super annoyed with him for not just asking his mother when they were supposed to come back and super excited to see him all at the same time. Then top that off with the jitters I've got and will have until he calls me from Chicago. I'm going to be a mess when he gets off the plane ... a mess.

Then I took the time to look up the departures from O'Hare to Kansas City and the last one, that was listed on this website, leaves at 5:45. It could be a close connection ... which means that if this is Boyfriend's connecting flight he'll be back in town at a decent hour and not midnight. But again, there is always the chance that there are flights that haven't been listed yet. I'll keep checking back, as I'm sure you're just sitting there with bated breath wondering when in the hell is Super Careo's boyfriend actually coming home.

Stay tuned. I will update again probably around 5:13 because posting about all of this is actually calming me down a little and letting me get some work done.

Oh Work-ey Work

Well, as I continue to work on my financial future and my blog I've realized that the time has come to talk to my boss about my benefits. More specifically, if I have them or not. From what I've been told, I get benefits when I am a salaried person, and a 401(k) after I've been full time for 6 months. I really need to ask Matt if I get any benefits, I'm officially no longer on my parent's insurance policy, and so I would like to know that should the shit hit the fan, I would have at least a little bit of coverage. But, I'm scared to do it. I'm a big wimp. I feel that it would be something altogether different if I had to go ask an HR person. I just hate asking Matt for more stuff. *le sigh*

I thought I would let you know that the reason I decided to put this little ditty in my real life blog rather than mater of my money is because it was more about my concern over asking for said benefits. Or something like that.

Other than that life has been good. I went home early yesterday because I got really dizzy every time I looked at the computer. Which causes a slight problem seeing as how that's what I do for a living presently.

That was not nearly as much fun as it might seem to be. It was a lot like getting the bed-spins only without the fun drinking part before hand. And I didn't throw up as a result. And I made back to my parent's house without crashing my car. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is pretty damn good.

Boyfriend comes home in a week! I can't wait to see him ... he's already been gone for 10 days. It feels like forever.

Also - I was quite productive today during my lunch ... the dogs have grooming appointments for Saturday morning, I'm getting my hair cut that afternoon, and I might even get to go to the farmer's market that morning! I also plan to spend a great deal of my day and Sunday cleaning and packing in L-town for the purpose of moving out of my crappy house. How happy is my little world right now? Very.

Things I would like to do

I spend a lot of time reading blogs and when I do my head gets filled with so many ideas of things that I want to do or create. I thought I might post a few here as a way to get them down on ... "webpage" and out of my head.

*plant a garden
*own a chicken (I hear that fresh eggs cannot be beat in taste)
*make beds for the puppies that are stuffed with old plastic bags instead of polyester fluff
*learn how to sew really well ... maybe even make some of my own clothes?
*start to recycle more
*write a book (about what I have no idea)
*save a ton of money and pay down all my debts (which is something I'm taking steps to accomplish already. Check out my financial blog here)
*spend more quality time with my dogs and really invest some time in training them

This is only a small list ... I could go on FOREVER if I wanted to. There is so much that I want to do ... and you know what? I think I'm going to do it.