gratitude

A Scamp and the Holidays

Posted on by erranteditor

Thanksgiving is fast approaching. This is the first time I have ever had to be in class on my favorite holiday, and it will be the first time that I am not celebrating with my family. I have been invited to have an “American Thanksgiving” with some of the people who live in a dorm near the education building, and as tempting as the idea of real food is, I will only know maybe two or three people who are going. I’m not sure I really want to spend the evening with a bunch of strangers when all I really want to do is spend it with my family. The girls in my program, whom I would have loved to spend the day with, are doing Thanksgiving on Friday, and I had already made plans, so unfortunately I will miss that. I know that will be a lot of fun though as many of those girls have never celebrated Thanksgiving before.  I may spend the evening making outlines for my papers and pushing through on the work that has to get done before I go home. By Thursday the countdown will be down to 6 days, so I can just delay my celebration and see everyone when I get back.

I am minorly stressed about the upcoming holidays though. Having no job, and a loan payment to make every month, makes my prospects for Christmas and Hanukkah presents seem slim. I know that no one expects me to bring presents and all that, but I still feel bad that I won’t really be contributing to the holidays. I know that my momma will float me the cash until I am back on my feet, but I feel guilty about leaning her to take care of me. I’m 25, I should be taking care of myself by now.

All in all though, I am a looking forward to going home and having a bit of a break from the dorm. We got our official notice of charges today for the damage that was done to the place. We will get another bill next month, and probably one after that. The RAs, the warden, everyone knows who did it. They even have Facebook pictures to prove it. When they confronted the guy in the pictures, he gave up the people involved, and even offered to split the cost of the damage with the people who destroyed the place, but when the rest of the merry men were confronted, they denied all involvement, and because they need the culprits to confess their crimes before they can charge them, there now 5 charges on my account. Lucky me.

Maybe if I play that awful Thanksgiving song on repeat on their floor all night I will feel better about the charges…..

Tramp Scamp

Posted on by erranteditor

There is a running joke in my life that I am a stripper. It started years ago when I became a librarian. People used to joke that if that career didn’t work out, then I could always become a stripper. People love stripper librarians. The joke resurfaced years later when my 90 year old Jewish neighbor asked me if I was a stripper when she saw me come home from my morning job and after seeing me leave the night before for my night job. My mother always said that she would support any career choice that I made as long as I didn’t become a crack whore, and I have to say, now that I am trying to find the money to pay for school, stripping doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Of course, I am a 25 year old nerdy Jewish girl with no rhythm. Now, there might be a market for that in Scotland, but I highly doubt it. I also know that there is no way that I can find my inner dance goddess between now and then. In the meantime, it looks like I will be hinting down student loans. At this point, I have settled into the idea of a loan. A loan will be paid back. I found out the other day that I got accepted into Cal State Fullerton’s Ed.D program. If I can delay that for a year, then I can get back into teaching and work towards being able to pay the loan off. Of course, I may need another loan to finance that career choice, but at this point, what is a little more debt?

There is another reason I could never become a stripper (not that I would ever seriously would). I fell in love and I know he would not approve of that career choice. While he has no idea I am in love with him, and I have no idea what will happen in the next few months, I know that there is no way I would do something to compromise what I have with him. Being in love terrifies me. I have no idea how he feels about me. I know that he cares about me, and that he likes me, but I don’t know if he is on the love boat, and frankly, I am too scared to ask. We are a clusterfuck of bad ideas and yet, he is the positive magnet to my negative one. I would never ask him to move, he would never ask me to stay, but I can’t help but wonder if he will change his mind about not doing a distance relationship. He changed his mind about giving me a second chance, so really anything is possible, but I do not want to get my hopes up.

In the meantime, I am going to try to stop putting off my visa application and the other scholarship applications, and I am going to pretend that I am not running out of time to be around the people I care about.