One year old! Oh, my!

Happy Anniversary to my blog,
Happy Anniversary to my blog,
Happy Anniversary, dear Pretty...
Happy Anniversary to my blog!

The elusive Miss Skippy

She just doesn't like that flash-thingy.
"I said no pictures!" She's telling me. 

So, naturally, I blame my Mother.

Seeing as how I mostly use this blog for complaining, anyway, I may as well keep it going. This will not be a pretty post, no pun intended.
Life is just sucky, right now. I think the video game was "Space Invaders", where your little ship was at the bottom of the screen and could move from left to right, while space ships would come down in rows upon you while you shot at them. Usually you lost the game, because so many of those little ships would come at you, that you would dart frantically back and forth across the bottom of the screen, shooting your little pellets all the way, until the ships landed on you and squashed you like the little Atari bug you were.
So, 2005 wasn't exactly my best year, ever. Granted, it wasn't the best year for a lot of people. But 2006 isn't exactly shaping up to be a stellar one, either. I keep making choices and darting back and forth, losing money all the way. I'm not being very smart about things, and neither are my parents, to be perfectly blunt. I thought I was going to be able to help them, but it's kind of looking like we're all getting sucked into this vortex of hopelessness. I just can't help but wonder how this all ended up this way.
I've sort of had it up to here with my Mom. She like to blame a lot of things. She blames my Dad's massive heart attack in 1998 and being unable to work for a year for them having to move out of their house into a smaller, crappier one. She blames me for trying (and failing) to have an acting career in Los Angeles for seven years and constantly borrowing money from them so I could pay my bills. She blames her old boss for firing her from a job she held for over ten years for triggering her manic depression (to this day, she still has violent dreams about her). She blames her unwillingness to get up every day for the job she miraculously still has on her lack of proper perscription drugs, or on the weather if she has the proper drugs. And then (just like me, I'm so flattered!) she complains about not having enough money.
Tonight, I came home from training for the final night at a restaurant in an outlet mall in Ontario. This is a place I do not want to work, but I thought I did because it's a serving job. But I won't make money, there, because it's nothing but 10% tips or less, and I'm already $200 in the red and-- oh-- you know the drill. So I come home, and after my Dad goes to bed she lets me know two things: the company that sold Dad his car is appealing My parents' bancruptcy and wants to repossess his car, and Mom wishes they would just sell this house.
Naturally, this makes me livid. So, I first say that Dad can drive her Mustang to work and I can drive her to work, to which Mom scoffs and says,
"Then how will I get home?"
"Dad can pick you up." I say. More scoffing ensued.
Then I said, that under no circumstances, will it or should even remotely be considered that we will be selling this house. Because they are not renting an apartment and I am not living on the street. No. No. No.
Mom went into an "of course we won't, but we can't afford it" kind of mumble. She then went on to say that we're having a family discussion about money on Saturday, and strongly suggested without actually saying it that I needed to give them money (that money I don't actully have and probably won't have for another three months).
Things are bad, and they are going to be getting worse. Immediately speaking, I'm probably going to get my car repoed in about two weeks if a miracle doesn't happen, immediately. Constantly speaking, it is damn hard living with a bipolar person. I know I have bipolar friends, I know there is a very strong possibility that I am an undiagnosed bipolar person (I have been diagnosed with depression, but who hasn't?). But it is damn hard having a bipolar mother. Your mother is supposed to be strong. She is not supposed to decide each morning that she's giving up because the world is against her, and when things are falling apart around her and her family she shares none of the blame because we just don't understand her. There have been times when I have gone into my Mom's room at noon and told her to get up for the fifth time in three hours, only to be yelled at drowsily to not worry about her, and have her turn on her side right in front of me. Dad calls her each morning at nine, and she lies to him and says she's up (actually, she's stopped doing that so much, because I'm telling him so). It makes me physically angry. I've tried doing things like turning on her shower in an attempt to force her to get up and turn it off. But it just stays on for about an hour. I've turned the TV onto a reggae music station extremely loud, but she just yells at me and falls back to sleep. Sometimes the theatrics do work, but they get old, fast. Lately, I've been doing practically nothing, and gently waking her once or twice to let her know what time it is. Sometimes that works. Often times, it doesn't. I honestly don't know how she's keeping her job, when she hasn't shown up over half the time she's been working there.
I know I sound like a harsh person. I know I sound like a hard, unloving daughter who definitely doesn't know how to deal with people who are afflicted with such a horrible... affliction. But my only other option is to agree with her and say the world is, in fact, against her. And me, while we're at it. Hey, maybe I should curl up and sleep my life away, too. I'm sure the sand will become comfortable when we're out on the street, once we get used to it. I can't live like that, and I know at some point she's not going to want to live like that, either. There is a determined and sensible person inside my Mom and it's being clouded by an unconfident and despairing being that I wish I didn't recognize. I wish I could perform an excorcism and get rid of her depression, but I don't want to give myself any ideas. Mom would probably like me throwing water on her and yelling, "BE GONE, DEMON!" as much as the raggae version of "La Bamba".
So, to sum up: we're not getting any richer, we're all very unhappy and we're about to only have one car between the three of us.
Enjoy it while you can, ex-boyfriends and stupid girls I pissed off in high school. I guarantee you that this little Atari ship is doing everything she can to make sure it doesn't last too long.

I've conformed!

In case anyone's curious, I am now on myspace. That doesn't mean I won't ever post on here, again. Look, I'm posting, right now. Unfortunately, I am sleepy, and nothing spectacular is coming into my brain to write, so here is my myspace address: http://www.myspace.com/pisleogem

A Day Without a Pretty

Today is May Day. In renaissance Europe, May Day was a celebration of Spring, life and fertility. Young maidens would dance around a maypole, holding ribbons that started at the top and danced around until the ribbons braided to the bottom. In Central and South America, May Day is a worker's holiday to take the day off and do whatever you want. Essentially, it's Labor Day (Labour Day for our Canadian friends). And in the United States, it will now be known (at least for a little while) as the Day Without an Immigrant. And on this day when a mostly Mexican crowd goes out to try and prove they are neccessary for the country to function, I can take a moment to ponder my on-going quest... for employment.
I mean, seriously, what does a woman have to do to get a job in this sand trap?
Maybe it's my attitude?
Truth be told, I've actually worked in two places since the beginning of April. The first place was a place I've only dreamed of working at, before. I'll give you a hint: Disneyland. I went down there, after I'd learned they had a commuter assistance program, and was hired the same day. Orientation was great, and I got my name tag which was gold with "Class of 2006" underneath my full name (Pretty's just a nickname, my full name is Gorgeous ;P). For four glorious days, I worked parade control (I met Maynard, and he's nice. If you're even a hint of a Disney Geek, you know who I'm talking about) and trained on Star Tours. Let me just say that the height requirement is there for a reason. I actually got to go below into "the cage" and watch a Starspeeder in flight. When it's in settle mode (not in motion), the Starspeeder sits 10 feet above the ground and 4 stories below the ceiling. When the ride is in motion, it uses all of that space. Watching the Starspeeder like that was the most awesomest thing I have seen. So, if your child is shorter than 40 inches, or your grown friend unfortunately does not have enough of a torso to fit past the safety belt, then it really is in their best interest that they don't ride the ride. And trust me, they won't be able to. Making sure people who don't meet the hieght requirement stay off Star Tours is the number one responsibility of a Cast Member.
Unfortunately, the commuter assistance program they offered wasn't what I thought it was going to be, and I couldn't take part in it. So, a week after I got the job, I had to respectfully resign. Man, was I bummed. Quitting Disneyland was like breaking up with a boyfriend I didn't want to break up with. It honestly gave me the same feeling. I didn't help matters that most of my clothing, accessories, photos, and my computer have Disneyland plastered all over it.
But then I immediately landed a job, here, at a fusion restaurant in the hoity-toity area of the desert. It was terrible! The food and the atmosphere was wonderful, of course, but they are rapidly in the process of going out of business. On average, I made $25 a day for a week. Practically no one came in. And everything was done on paper(eeeww)! On Sunday, I went in and was the only server and busser. I couldn't keep up, because I had to do everything short of cooking and washing the dishes. Then at the end of the day, my manager pulled me aside and told me to forget the schedule for this week, because she completely forgot (uh-huh) that my week evaluation was up, and the managers would decide whether I was staying, and she would call me on Wednesday. So, I'm basically looking for a new job, which I'm completely okay with, because $25 a day won't pay my bills. And if they fire me, I can collect unemployment (woo-hoo) until I find a new job.
So, today I hit our restaurant row. I had a manager at the Scottish Place tell me not to apply at the cookie-cutter corporate restaurants, because it would look bad on my resume. Well, pride is all well and good, but right now my check balance is speaking a little bit louder than my ego. Actually, it's screaming at me and threatening me with pitch forks and torches (I mentally represent my check balance with medieval European peasants, what of it?). All I'm asking is $40 a shift in tips. That's hardly unreasonable. $40 a shift will pay my bills. A server can make that out here, no problem. I kept track of my sales-to-tips ratio at the fusion place (which they didn't like me doing, go figure), and people tip about the same out here as they do in L.A. I just need a place where I can make $40 a day, have a busser, and have a computer system.
Okay, that should cover me for a few days, at least.

Worst Garage Sale Ever!

Oh, my goodness. Okay, so we woke up at about 6:00am and started putting things out and cleaning things off. By about 7:00am, we had a few early birds. You know, you specifically put in your ad, in bold type, "No early birds". But people don't listen. They think, "everyone except me". But that was the least of our problems.

One of our neighbors came to check out our stuff and introduce herself. She lives on the corner, and we talked about how this town is stupid because they won't allow you to put up signs to advertise your sale unless it's on your property. Then she left, and for two hours nothing happened. No one came. Finally, Dad and I decided to put a sign on a box and sit it on the corner of the road with two big rocks in it. As we walked to the corner, we saw a whole bunch of cars at our neighbor's house, and she had stuff in her driveway! She was having a garage sale, too, but she never put an ad in the paper. She was sponging off of our ad! People saw the name of our street in the ad, and when they got to the corner they'd go to her sale and never even see ours! That slimey bitch...

So, I took action. I gunned it to the party supply store to buy balloons and crap. If we didn't have the prime location, then we would compensate with flashy decorations. Fortunately, I know my audience. In a mostly conservative, Republican town, what colors would be the most effective? Red, white and blue! I bought a dozen balloons, bunting, flags and streamers and stuck them all over the front of our yard and our cars. Sure enough, the people started coming. And some of them actually bought stuff, too.

We just barely made a profit, but we decided to look at this as a "rehearsal" garage sale to get a feel for the area. Because if we look at it as an actual garage sale, it was pitiful. Besides the cheating, no-good, under-handed neighbors, Mom fell down in the hallway as she was trying to grab something from another room. She tripped on a chair and gave herself a beautiful black eye. I'm just happy I took out the sharp wooden storage box we had in the hallway from the spot before her head landed there. I think this made her realize that we need to get rid of most of this stuff-- it's not only depressing to have no space, it's dangerous. Besides that, I got sunburnt, and the cats crapped all over the living room to show us their disgust at being left alone while we were right outside for seven hours. So, yeah. Not the greatest sale, ever, by any means.

At least there's June...

Pictures of Kitties and Sand

So guess who's computer can finally get online? Mine! As promised, here are the pictures of kitties and sand. To your left, the first picture is of Lucky. Who knew an A-Cup was the perfect fit for a cat's head? And can you blame him for wanting to use it as a pillow? It is padded, after all.
The next photo is of Lucy and Lucky, the constant cuddlers. They are the first cats of the household, and thus best buds.
The third picture is of Tiger, looking as paranoid as ever. She has claimed me as her pet human.
Fourth picture is of a lovely tree in our yard. That house actually belongs to a neighbor. You can just barely see sand beneath all of those weeds.
Much has happened in the time between posts, but I can't go through it all, now, as I am very sleepy. So, good night.
Before I go, a quick plug: to the right are my links to interesting sites. One of the sites is devoted to a band called Downtown Harvest. Their music is really fun and very good. Recently, they released an album, and if you click on the link, you can listen to it and buy it for $10.95. I reccommend buying it for yourself, then for friends, family and anyone else who needs to hear about being in Bob's Disco House ("B.O.B"). Night night!


 

My jeans are falling apart!

Well, my mom ordered a router and adapter, so I may have my computer up and running by this next week. So you know what that means: pictures of cats and sand!

So much sand...

It's been cloudy, quite often, as it has been in all of southern California. And it's been super windy here, too. But it's almost always super windy, here. And it simply isn't warm, yet. I wish I'd get hired somewhere, so I could make some money and by some amazing clothing, already. I finally got my security deposit, and it was about $200 less than I was expecting. Oh well, another thing to remind me of why I left L.A. (never enough money)

I dropped out of the play. I did this for several reasons. First off, I couldn't stand the play. Second, they wanted me to memorize many, many lines, and I know that I'm simply not ready for a role that large in such a short amount of time. Third, the owner of the restaurant flat out told me he needed me to wait tables for him on Wednesday, and then asked me if I could do it. Maybe it doesn't read as shifty as it sounded, but I hadn't filled out a W-2 with him, and my gut was telling me that this wouldn't be the only time something like this would happen. I could just picture, three months down the road, working for practically no money at the owner's beck and call and memorizing badly-written plays that I really didn't want imprinted on my brain. It struck me that that is not why I came out here. I took a different direction so that I could do what I wanted to do, not more of what other people wanted me to do (while I realize compromises need to be made sometimes, my goal is not to be a big pushover, anymore). So I'm demanding a better situation for myself. Even if it takes a while (because it's certainly taking longer than I expected it to-- I thought I'd be working by now), it's okay, because I'm in a situation where I have to worry as much.

Speaking of getting a job, that one restaurant I went to that said they'd probably hire me-- uh-- hasn't called, yet. I'm still confident they'll call me, because they said they were retrofitting their computers in a few weeks, and that's when they'd start training people. But still, if they haven't called by this weekend, I'm going to call them. And then, maybe (ugh!) I'll look for a job, again.

So that's what's happening over here. Don't forget, dear readers, to set your clocks forward on Saturday night.

It's not the house so much as the lifestyle...

Well, my computer's still not set up, so no pictures, yet. Don't fret, it'll happen. Because I know you're all just dying to see more pictures of the cats. And sand. So much sand...

Things are still moving slowly, here. But, you know, I think maybe that's just the way things work, here. It's nice, sometimes, but also really frustrating. Last week I did nothing but job hunt. It felt extremely unproductive. My first thought, naturally, was to look for a job as a waitress, since I have the most experience doing that. But since there are only so many nice restaurants out here, pretty much none of them are hiring. One nice one has had an ad in the paper for about three weeks. I actually applied twice over there (once with one manager, and once with another), and I haven't heard anything. I even went down the hill to Rancho Cucamonga, and everyone was extremely snotty. You know what I can't stand? I go to all the trouble to make a really nice resume and reference sheet, and no one wants one. Everywhere I went, the hostess would only accept an application, which usually asked for less information than I provided on my resume. My favorite part was when they told me when they accepted the applications, and I was still about an hour or so within the time limit for the day.

Then on Friday, my dad called me up and said their was an ad in the paper (because he takes it with him) for auditions for a mystery dinner theatre. I went to check it out, and I got a part. The owner gave my a copy of the show on DVD, so I could get an idea of what it's like. Here's my idea: it's horrible. Oh, my goodness, it's sooooo bad. It's about these hillbillies who are being hounded by an IRS agent who gets killed, and the dad is sexually abusing the daughter, but it's supposed to be funny because they're hillbillies, and all this crap. The writing is terrible. There is no back story. You just discover things as the show goes along (while that may sound appropriate for a mystery show, it's still lame). The cast is all right, but their morale is low, because it's such a lousy show and less people are seeing it. But it pays a dollar a head and I have no money, so let's put on a show!

I find it ironic that, while in L.A., I couldn't land an acting job to save my life, but I could get normal jobs pretty easy. But when I move back home, I can't find a normal job, but land an acting gig, right away.

I went to a rehearsal on Saturday, and only two people showed up on time besides me. Everyone else showed up an hour and a half, later. When the show went on, that night, I got to be a hostess.

Today is rehearsal, and they would like me to learn the lines for the detective and be show-ready by Friday. Now, I don't mean to be whiney, but the detective has 70% of the show's lines. It's been about six years since I've had to memorize a role with that many lines, and I don't know if I can pull that off in time.

Wait, it gets better.

Yesterday, I got a call from a nice restaurant that is only about a five-minute drive for me. I went in for an interview, filled out an application, and was told I'll more than likely be hired in a few days. This is great news, but now I may not be able to do the dinner theatre. That also wouldn't be so bad, but I haven't been in anything for about six years, like I said ( I don't count extra work as acting).

Well, we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I'm taking a break from the job hunt, today, and I'm going to learn some lines.

Here I am! Or... Welcome to the House of Confusion

This is just an update to let you all know that I have officially moved and I am fine. My computer's still not set up, yet, so there will be no photos in this update.
Time has just been going so slowly since I arrived. It is just so incredibly messy in this house, I often don't know where to begin. The garage is completely full, from ceiling to floor, with boxes and furniture that won't fit in the house. The biggest gripe I have is many of the boxes are actually empty, and my parents don't want me to throw them away.
About two or three years ago, my parents moved out of a huge 4BR/3BA house with a 3-car garage and a storage shed in the backyard, and into a 3BR/2BA house with a 2-car garage and practically no closet space. Dad doesn't want to throw anything away and Mom has all of these clothes. Most of the clothes still have tags on them and some are two or three sizes too small, for when she loses weight. Needless to say, nothing has really changed since they've lived out here. Sometimes they'll make a little progress and sort some things or move a mess of stuff from one room to another, but they won't actually get rid of anything. It's a very depressing situation, or as I like to call it (but not actually to them) "The House of Confusion".
Well, we are going to have a yard sale in April, even if it's a crappy one. Mom wants to have one big one, with lots of organization and advertising. But she won't actually do anything about it. Dad just wants to set some stuff out on the driveway with the hope that shoppers with garage sales running through their veins will be able to sniff us out. But neither has actually happened. Now we do things my way.
Last week I bought a storage unit (because I couldn't get to anything in the garage. I got tired just looking at it). Each day I take anywhere from 5 to 15 boxes over. Before I take them over, I open them, write down on a pad of paper what's in the box next to a number, close the boxes, and slap numbers onto them. Once I have labled as many boxes as I can (and my storage unit is filled), I will schedule a yard sale (find out what's legal in the city, ads, blah blah crap). When we have the sale in April, we will look at the list, decide what we want to sell this sale, and put it in the driveway. What doesn't sell gets donated at the end of the sale. Then we will have another one in June or July, and a final one in September.
Then we can have fun? Maybe. Then we focus on making the house liveable. You know I can't plug anything into the outlets in my room because they're falling apart or have paint in the holes? And I know I mentioned the lack of closet space. And the windows... don't even get me started on the windows. The fact that I'm covered in cat fur no matter what I do pales in comparison to how I feel about the windows. No, I'm thinking 2006 might not be a very fun year for me. I could be wrong. We'll see.
What I do know is I need a job. My old apartment isn't exactly being prompt with my security deposit, and my previous fundage is running low. I need to get a job where I make about $1200/mo and only work about 3-5 days a week, because I have a second job here at the HoC. And really, it's hard for me to get anything else done when I'm working 6 days a week.
So, that's how it is, right now. I still don't know when my computer will be up and running, but I'm sure it will be... by the summer.
Maybe.
It's confusing, here.