Okay, first of all, stop reading this right now. Go over and bask in some (probably temporary) Pamie-ness right this minute. Go. It’s romance, baby.
Okay, don’t you feel better now? You and Winona Ryder both.
So, actually, I don’t have a ton to say about Valentine’s Day. I will, as tradition demands, be spending the day pretty much alone, as my sweetie has a date with another man this evening. They’re calling it a “business meeting,” and all I have to say about that is: whatever, Loverboy.
A couple of things are on my mind today, in non-holiday news. The first is, I’ll be losing my job in about a month or so. I’m a temporary employee at the U, and there’s a rule that says you can only work so many hours per year, and I’ve just about worked them all. So I’m probably going to have to leave around my birthday. Given the way I’ve been feeling about my birthday, this is a not-entirely-unwelcome development. I’m going to miss getting paid for stupid work, of course, and I haven’t been able to find another job since I graduated in, oh, JUNE (else I wouldn’t be doing this in the first place), but I certainly won’t miss working with my boss. Let me shed some light: yesterday she called me out of my office (where I was printing, one page at a time, a 200-page document because she didn’t want to buy it in book form) to remove some staples from three articles. Three papers, each with one staple in the traditional upper left corner. She helpfully took the staple remover in hand and mimed removing a staple, then handed it back to me and watched closely as I followed her example. Yes. It’s true. What’s that, you want to know if this took place in public? Why yes, yes it did. It’s gotten so that the very friendly mailroom staff have taken to shutting their office door when they see me coming in with her, because they don’t want me to be embarrased by their looking at me in horror when she does something like this. Let me repeat: Yelled through my office window to come to the mailroom, explained that she needed some staples removed, mimed removing the staples, watched me remove those staples. What do you do? Carl has (very wisely) counselled me to just keep my head down and finish up and get my last couple of checks and just get out without a fuss. That’s the plan so far.
The hitch in this plan is that I have, of course, no other job lined up. I’m trying, yall, I’m trying so hard to get another job and it’s sooooooooooo not happening for me. So not happening. So that’s kind of a problem. More than kind of a problem, if I must be completely candid.
The bright spot in all this, though, is that today was the first part of a new gig I started, which, though it doesn’t pay, ought to give me some much-needed experience. It’s at a little agency in Seattle that does a low-income therapy clinic, and they’ll do some of the supervision I need to become a licensed social worker. So that’s pretty exciting for me, although I am more than a little nervous. I didn’t do much today, just set up my voice mail and met the folks in the reception area, stuff like that. It’s a GORGEOUS day today and I have to say it was nice to go outside for a little while, before I came home and went immediately to the basement of Carl’s house to write this. Usually I get home just as it’s getting dark before I come to Carl’s basement to work on the computer. So it was a nice change.
It’s just funny to think about being a therapist again, you know? I just couldn’t believe it last year when I was doing my practicum…like, I had clients, and they would talk to me about their problems, and this was therapy. For real. I felt like such a kid and you know, not at all illegitimate in any way. It was a relief to end that year because it was so exhausting to constantly comport myself As A Therapist…it felt really unnatural. I am happy to report that this new place seems a little more laid back, so I’m hoping that I’ll feel a little more like me. I also really like my new supervisor so far, which is a welcome change.
So, let’s see, job, lack of a job…what else did I want to talk about? Oh yes! Well, guess whose anniversary it is today? Anna’s and Rob’s! That’s right, married three years, can you believe it? I was the maid of honor in both their weddings…they had one for their family and one for their friends. Their first wedding was in Texas and it involved a priest wearing a big belt buckle and the church that Anna’s parents were married in as well as life-size straw dolls of the bride and groom and a killer croquet game. The friends wedding was considerably different. The table decorations involved barbed wire and black lace for some reason, as well as a super fun dance party and the Star Wars Theme as the processional. That’s pretty hard to beat.
It was cool to see them get married because I had known them when their love was but a secret, and because I hung out with Anna pretty much constantly for two years, and because they were best friends with Carl and it was through getting to know Anna that I met Carl and developed my aforementioned Crush With The White-Hot Intensity of a Thousand Suns on him (which still exists, for those of you wondering). I thought at the time that it was an amazingly grown-up thing for them to do, getting married…I was a little freaked out by it at the time, actually, since it was just the beginning of my Parade Of Friends Getting Married that went strong for a couple of years there but now seems to be dying down.
The coolest thing about them? They have never got into the whole We’re Married Adults Now thing that some people get into when they become married adults. Like, they didn’t become these weird married people that I didn’t recognize. Sure, they wear rings, but it’s not like…I can’t explain it. It’s really nice to be around them. It just is. Oh, and one time on Valentine’s Day in like, 1995 or something, Anna and I bought Rob and Carl these two little stuffed bears, as we were clearly insane, and we made the bears do a little dance and sing a little song, and Rob and Carl swooned with love for us and swept us away on crystal horsedrawn coaches and took us away to a castle by the sea and then cooked us a nice dinner. Both those bears are still around, yall. The power of the little bear is deep and wide.
So Happy Anniversary Rob and Anna. Good job getting married three years ago!
In other mushy love news, I would just like to publicly state that just because I’ve been with Carl for however long we’ve been together does not mean that I depart from my cherished position, held by many of my non-existent readers I’m sure, that Valentine’s Day Is Stupid. However, I would like to say here that I got the best Valentine’s Day card EVER from my [SPN] and that I retaliated with some, I have to say, really gorgeous tulips. Just to show him who’s boss. I just felt you should know that. I got it bad for this boy, yall, and that ain’t good…it’s BETTER than good.