Confessions of A Working Girl

One more day and then the first week of classes will be over. Which is good, since I’m exhausted! It doesn’t help that, since coming back to school, I haven’t had a whole night’s sleep. For some reason, I’ve been waking up one or more times in the middle of the night. It’s really annoying, and I can’t figure out why!

Just from the first meeting with all the classes, I have the feeling that I will work harder this semester than any semester so far. My schedule is like so:

Monday: classes from 10-1 workstudy 3-8

Tuesday: class 11-12:15 workstudy 2-4

Wednesday: classes 10-1 workstudy 2-4 class 7-9:30

Thursday: class 11-12:15 school newspaper meeting 12:30-1:00 class 6:30-?

Friday: classes 10-1 workstudy 2-6

Well, the workstudy on Tuesdays and Wednesdays is slightly longer than I said due to travel time. And between all this I need to schedule in field experience for criminal justice. It’s possible that I’ll try to do some of my field experience during February and/or April vacation. I suppose if it really gets hard I could cut back on workstudy hours. But I don’t want to…since I’m going abroad next year, I need money! And as much as my parents may want to help, I know for a fact that they cannot afford to. As it is, they’ve already done more than enough by letting me pay them back for car insurance when I’m able instead of demanding the money every month.

The only other school news I have at the moment is that I found out that I spent $80 on the wrong book! When I’d emailed the teacher for that class at the end of next semester, she had told me the name of one book (the one I bought for $80) but when we got the syllabus the first day of class, a totally different book was listed! The teacher must have gotten confused. Ah well. I found the correct book for $15. I’m going to keep the other book because it is a class that I’m going to take in two years. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to take the class anyway. Hopefully they’ll use the same book. If not, I will at least have gained another valuable resource for information on criminal justice.

Today, my dad called. Apparently my Grandpa M is in the hospital! I was stunned. According to my dad, it started when my grandpa fell down on Christmas. Everyone thought it was nothing. But recently I guess there’ve been problems, so yesterday my dad drove over to my grandparents house so that my grandfather could go to a doctor’s appointment. The doctor sent him immediately to the emergency room. It turns out there was some bleeding in his brain…and he needs some colon thing…colonoscopy?  And his blood count was too low–low by like half!

So obviously they kept him in the hospital. They gave him more blood and he seemed to perk up. When my dad and grandma left him last night, he seemed fine. But then today, when they went to the hospital again, my grandpa didn’t seem to know where he is. He seems to think that he’s at a friend’s house….and he yelled at my dad and my Aunt M (my dad’s sister)  about leaving him without his pants and his wallet. I don’t know about the wallet, but my dad said that his pants were in the room, on the window seat. My dad said that being with my grandpa today was like being in the twilight zone. Apparently, my grandfather alternated between that confused anger, and trips down memory lane.

I was told that he’s going to have the colon-whatsis operation tomorrow, and he should be fine and out of the hospital by monday. The hospital people don’t seem concerned with his confusion, they think its ICU-itis, or something like that.

About now is the time that I slightly regret going to a school so far away from my family. Although, in this case, there’s nothing I could do, even if I was there. My Grandma seems to be taking this at least semi-calmly. When I called her, she was of the opinion that they’ll fix up my grandpa and he’ll be fine in no time.

So between classes, workstudy and scheduling field experience, I’ll be praying….

…oh, and I have Girl Scouts on Saturday.

1 Comment » Mrs. A.:

January 23rd, 2010 @ 10:11 am Your grandfather is in our prayers. Keep us updated about his status. Eat any Girl Scout cookies lately?

Well, actually, at the moment, all I’m thinking of are textbooks, but in general, prices are going higher and it seems ridiculous. For example, now, regular fiction books are generally 7 or 8 dollars if you buy them new!

But at the moment my main complaint is about textbooks. Today I spent $154.23 on textbooks. It took over an hour of searching online and comparison shopping to get the prices that low. Total, I needed six textbooks. Two of them I managed to find on the paperbackswap site, so they only ended up being a little under three dollars each. The other textbooks weren’t as easy to find.

At one point I had eight or nine tabs open on my browser so that I could compare prices! I ended up buying the books from a few different sites. One book I found on ebay. I’ve used ebay before, so I wasn’t worried about that one. The other sites I bought from however, were sites that I had never used before.

One of them was Alibris or something like that. I got two of my books from there. The other site I’d at least heard of: it was Abe Books. They have decent prices for used regular books too. And it seemed that if you were not in any hurry to get the books, you could get free shipping, which is awesome.

On another topic: today I went with my dad to pick up Jin from his girlfriend’s house. (Why she can’t give him a ride once in a while I don’t understand). He was supposed to meet us at the nearby stop and shop at 12:30. We got there late…and Jin wasn’t there yet. I texted him after he ignored dad trying to call him, and he texted “We haven’t left yet.” He and his girlfriend didn’t end up getting there until 12:52!

Because of that twenty minutes–and the twenty minutes we had to spend in line at wal-mart, I missed getting to see Ki today. I was going to return her books…and she was going to lend me more to read. ^_^

Ah well. The way it worked out was that now, I’m going to meet her at 3 tomorrow, when she finishes work. Maybe I’ll get to go over her house! That’s always fun, and we talk for hours.

Oh, and I have to remember that Coche needs an oil change before I go back to school on the 18th…

1 Comment » Michelle:

January 29th, 2010 @ 3:04 pm I completely agree! I go to the same college you do, not sure if I mentioned that in any of the comments I wrote. We’re FB friends too. My mom introduced us at a Girl Scout event.

In my experience with Alibris their shipping is really expensive, but Abe Books has seemed pretty good. Chegg.com and Bookrenter.com are great for renting textbooks cheap.

Tonight, after dinner and presents, my dad and I brought my nana back to the nursing home type place where she now lives. It’s kind of sad to think that she’s getting old…but I’m afraid that it’s pretty obvious. My other set of grandparents, while older than my nana, are a lot more active, and don’t seem quite as old…even though, at this point, I think my grandfather is 86!

On the drive back, my dad and I were talking about it, and I remembered reading somewhere that older people often fare better if their significant other is also still around. My dad’s parents (my grandparents) are still both alive. But out of my mom’s parents, at this point, there’s only my nana. Her husband, my grandfather (let’s call him Grandpa J) died…wow, close to nine years ago!

It was 2001, and I was in the fifth grade. At the time (and up until tonight, in fact) all I knew was that I came home from school one day…June 14, and saw that my parents had odd expressions on their faces. They didn’t tell us what had happened until the three of us that went to school had all come home. (For my family: I was 11, Jin was 9, Ido was 8, I think,  Yoi was 7, Kana was almost 4 and Tomo was one and a half.) Well maybe there were four of us in school then…but I remember that mom gathered all three of us into her arms and said that Grandpa J had died. I couldn’t say what my brothers felt…all I remember feeling was, at first, total shock. That shock lasted until after we had gone to pick Yoi and Kana from a “playdate” at a friend’s house. We walked into their yard and Ido announced “Grandpa’s dead.” But he didn’t say it very loudly, so I’m not quite sure who besides me heard that statement.

My understanding of Grandpa J’s death then, was that he’d had a heart attack and died. It was his second heart attack–he had had one a few months before I had been born, and the doctors had told him that he had only maybe a year to live. He had outlived their estimate by about a decade…then the second heart attack was too much.  I’d always known that the heart attacks had probably been brought on by the fact that, at one point, Grandpa J had been a heavy smoker. But before I was born, he had quit, cold turkey. I remember being proud of the fact that he was one of the few people that could suddenly quit one day and never look back.

Tonight, my dad mentioned some new information. Grandpa J had been sick for at least a week before he had his heart attack. I had never known that. I had thought that the attack had happened suddenly, coming from no where. But no. It seems he had been sick…and if he had lived, it would have most likely only been for another couple of months and those months would have been pain filled. I also hadn’t known that on the very day he died, he was supposed to go in for tests to see if he had cancer or something. While interesting, and most definitely information that I want to know, it changes nothing–none of my memories, that is.

After Grandpa J died, almost the next week! One of my cousins got married. They had decided not to call the wedding off, because, at that point, it was best to just go on. They probably regret that he was not able to be there. I have regrets about Grandpa J too. I regret that he wasn’t able to see me go into 6th grade, which, by all accounts, was his favorite grade (he was a former teacher) I also regret not being able to ask him about 9/11. I wonder what he would think, since he was in the navy in World War II. I regret that I was only able to know him for such a short time. I regret that he never got to meet Dori, who wasn’t born until almost a year after his death. More than the regrets though, I try to focus on the memories.

I remember one time, after school, Grandpa J was babysitting Jin and me. He made us toast for snack. I wanted more, but when he went to make more, he decided that the toast hadn’t been dark enough to begin with. So he turned it up a little. And my mom had left papers on top of the toaster. The papers went up in flames. I remember Grandpa J stomping on those papers that he had pulled to the floor. He had also pulled the–now black–toast from the toaster and put it into the sink. Once the flames on the papers–and in the sink–were out, I went over to the sink and looked in at the toast. And Grandpa J asked something along the lines of “Do you still want it?”

One thing that was a direct result of that is that ever since then, we have had a fire extinguisher in our kitchen.

I remember another time, Jin and I were in the backseat and Grandpa J and Nana were driving us to their house, after Grandpa J had run into the store to get a snack–which we weren’t allowed to see yet. I remember that Grandpa J told us that if we guessed what the snack was, we couldn’t have any. But Jin guessed–ice cream sandwhiches–and he was allowed to have some anyway.

The thing I remember the most, was that Grandpa J was always threatening us with knuckle sandwiches. When we said something a little odd, or a little rude, he’d always make a fist and tease “Do you want a knuckle sandwich?”  But if we were more than a little rude, or if we outright would not listen, he’d get stern, and we would know that if we did not start listening, we would get in trouble. And he was stern in a different way than mom and dad were.

I remember one time, Nana, Grandpa J and I went to IHOP. I think what I did was something as little as not wanting to put my coat on as I got out of the car before we went into the building. But I think Nana had told me to. When I didn’t, she kind of shrugged it off, and started to go into the building. But Grandpa J got stern and gave me a little bit of a talking to. I don’t remember anything of what he said, but I remember that when he was done, I felt bad about not listening.

(Maybe that’s where my dad gets it–my dad too is very good at making you feel bad–bad here being partially defined as “guilty” when you don’t listen or don’t try hard enough)

I have other memories of Grandpa J, but these are the most defined, the clearest. The others are much blurrier, and I don’t remember nearly as many details.

A while after Grandpa J died, I dreamed that I was in his and Nana’s house. Everyone was bustling around, getting ready for some holiday celebration or something, moving food from the kitchen to the dining room. Grandpa J ‘appeared’ and stepped forward. “Don’t cry” he told me–so of course I suddenly was. Or had I been crying to begin with? That part is no longer clear…what is clear is the memory of being surprised at hearing his voice again, even though I think the only words he said to me then were the two–”Don’t cry.”

And then…I wrote a poem. I mixed the timeline about the dream, but I feel that the poem does justice to the attempt to describe a now gone loved one:

Once a night long ago,

I dreamed of you; tell me why?

How was I to know

the next day you would die?

I know you’re safe in heaven

but I can’t help but miss

the way you used to talk,

the way you used to walk,

the way you would threaten with a “knuckle sandwhich”

There’s no one quite like you

and I know there’ll never be

But I can’t help but miss

the way you used to 

talk

and laugh

with me.

 Looking back now, I think that’s a pretty good poem. I know there are probably better poems out there written by better poets…but hey, those poets didn’t know my Grandpa J. Besides, I was eleven years old when I wrote that poem…maybe twelve.

So I suppose, on this Christmas Day Eve, what I want to say is remember the people you’ve lost. Remember, even if it hurts a little, the people that you’ve shared this holiday with in the past. They still love you as much as you love them. And I bet they think of us just as often as we think of them.

And remember the people you spend the holiday with now. Don’t waste that time…every moment is precious.

Note in response to dad’s comment: I like my spelling better!

1 Comment » Dad:

December 28th, 2009 @ 5:13 pm It is a pretty good poem, except for the fact you spelled sandwich wrong…

(Am I really only at confession 2?)

Confession #2: Being an adult is hard.

When you’re little, you never really think about it. Your parents–and every other adult you know—is all powerful, and they can do everything. As you start getting older, you realize that they can’t do everything, but that’s ok. Then, once you’re on your own (or at least, away from home, at college), you realize, hey. Being an adult is hard.

At the moment, several things that are plaguing me have brought me to this conclusion. Let me list them…

1. Money troubles.

Nobody has enough money, but usually we can manage to get by. Growing up, I watched my  parents struggle for money sometimes (the fact that there are 7 of us kids doesn’t help.) So I wanted to become money conscious, so I wouldn’t have to worry. That so did not work. At the moment, I owe several thousand dollars in loans because of school, I will owe more than that once I’ve finished with school. That’s part one. Part two is that I owe my parents almost $700 in car insurance money. Part three is that I currently have a balance on my credit card. And the amount in my bank account? Roughly, about $300. Conclusion: Handling money is hard.

2. Insurance

When I turned 19, the insurance that I had kicked me off. When my dad lost his job, the other insurance I had disappeared. Insurance-less, I had to find a new insurance; because I was over 18, they wouldn’t let my mom do any of it for me.  At the moment, I’m finally covered under one insurance—at least, I think I am. And if I am, it’s going to be a total problem because it doesn’t sound like my doctor or my allergist take that insurance. Which brings me to

3. Doctors

I’m probably being all whiny and stuff when I say that I don’t want to change doctors. But I really really really don’t. Among other reasons, this is the doctor that I’ve had ever since before I was born. And now because of a stupid insurance issue I have to change? …I suppose I would have had to change doctors sooner or later anyway, since this particular doctor is a pediatrician, but still. I’ve been going there for 19 years! That’s a long time…especially since that time is my whole entire life!

Overall conclusion: being an adult is tough. Not just hard, but tough, difficult, sometimes nearly impossible! Everyone else manages, so I suppose I will as well…

…eventually. For the moment I am panic-stricken running around trying to figure out what the hell happened that is suddenly making my life so difficult.  what the heck I can do fix all of my current problems.

Since nothing immediately comes to mind, I probably need to think about it some more.  And possibly clean my room, dig my car out of the snow, watch Columbo. Oh, speaking of cars…Diby has officially been sold. T_T Now, I think that Coche is officially my car–that’s the car that was my dad’s.

1 Comment » Alexis:

December 21st, 2009 @ 1:14 pm Being an adult sucks, like totally. But whoever you are, I love your writing style. Totally should be an author or something. Good luck with the money troubles and the insurance.

Ok, I admit, the essay should have been done before now, since it’s due in…thirteen hours. But as usual I left it to last minute…

Arra, Sai and I agreed that we’d meet at 6 for dinner. Usually, Tuesday nights, we eat, then play pool, then I go to tai kwon do. Today, Arra and I ate dinner, and wondered where Sai was. She came in just as we had finished. One of her eyes was red, and she said that she wanted me to drive her to the hospital.

Her vision was blurry, she said, and it felt like there was something in her eye. The school nurse had suggested that she go to the hospital, and as she couldn’t drive with her vision blurry…

I’d never been to this hospital before, and neither had Sai. We had to follow the little blue signs with the H and the –> on them. When we got there, it took a few minutes to figure out which entrance to use…then we were told that where we needed to go was the Emergency Room, all the way on the other side of the building!

We went there, Sai signed in, and we sat down. I noticed that the time then was about 6:45. On the tv was playing the christmas carol where Scrooge McDuck plays Scrooge. At 7:30, a nurse called Sai.

On the tv, next came a Winnie-the-Pooh Christmas episode.  Sai came back. The nurse didn’t call her again until….eight something, I think, in the middle of ‘The year without Santa Claus.’ Then on tv was the so called sequel to the year without santa claus.The animation was different, and the voices were different. I liked that they put the Heat Miser/Snow Miser song in again, but that was about it.

Sai came out, ready to leave, at 9:45. Her eye felt better, and the doctor had given her a tiny tube of creme or something to put on it. We got back to the school around…10:20ish, I think. I sat with Sai while she ate her dinner, then came back to my room. Vivian was just getting ready to go to sleep (she has an 8 o clock class tomorrow) so I came out to the suite to write that essay.

My computer has 75% power left, so I better get going. Later, I’ll write about the conversation I had with the woman who was in the emergency room because her 6 year old daughter had a cough and a 104 degree fever.

It’s starting to get cold out! Finally! Up until yesterday, it didn’t feel like winter since it was still relatively warm. Then, yesterday was sorta cold, and today’s even colder! It actually snowed for about 5 minutes before stopping.

I dislike the cold that the snow brings, but I do like the snow a bit. Just so long as nobody tries to throw a snowball at me!

I wanted to see Ki as long as I was home for a couple of days. But it’s not going to happen.

Thanksgiving yesterday was hectic. A little after we ate dinner (but before dessert) I got a headache. That was bad enough. Then my stomach started hurting. I don’t know why…all I know is that it ended up in me being sick last night and not really wanting to do anything today. Well, I wanted to see Ki.

But if I am sick, I don’t want her to catch it. And even if it was only a one time thing, I feel kinda lethargic today. I probably should have gone to meet her anyway…I find I miss her when I’m at school. I wonder then, how much I’ll miss her next year if I’m not even going to be in the country.

And that’s another thing. I better not get sick next year. It’s horrible being sick, and when you are, you just want to be somewhere familiar. Next year, I won’t be. Maybe I better stop thinking about it…I’ll make myself nervous.

…well, back to lethargically laying around. And wishing I’d gone to meet Ki.

My 12 o clock class was canceled today. Which in some ways is a pain, since I still have 1 and 2 o clock classes. So I’m sitting here and I’m bored. I don’t really want to start something, because then I’ll be annoyed that I don’t have enough time to finish.

There’s really no excuse for being bored since I probably have a lot to do…including an essay that’s due on Wednesday…but boredom is not ‘not having anything to do’. Boredom is ‘not feeling like doing anything that you could do.’

Anyway…the Touchstones teacher decided that we’re going to read Hamlet next. I read Hamlet in…uh…10th grade, I think. But my copy of it is at my house, not here at school. I didn’t want to buy another copy since I already have one, possibly two. (I got Oliver Twist though, I didn’t have that yet. And it was a copy from 1941! )I was going to check the school library for it, and I probably still will, but Vivian has a copy. And she has threatened that if anything happens to that copy…

First, let me say that this is not (entirely) about the people who run the country. It is more about the first people in the title, the people that are in charge of the visitor’s center.

My dad has worked at the Route 25 visitor’s center in Massachusetts for over ten years. Today, today! They told him that the visitor’s center will be closed as of Saturday night, October 31st. They gave him two days notice. Two! Isn’t the law two weeks or something like that? If there’s not a law about there being two weeks notice for firing someone there should be. And everyone that my dad talked to today is startled and appalled by the fact that the visitor’s center is closing.

My dad pointed out that the members of the chamber also have a right to be mad, since they are paying the chamber money to distribute their brochures for a year. 12 months. And now, that same amount of money will be paying for maybe 6 months…and that’s only if they do open again in April like they told my dad.

I’m a little mad because I have a summer job there. But I’m mostly mad on my dad’s behalf. He’s been the manager of that visitor’s center for most of the ten years that he’s been there. And yet today, when his boss was laying him off, she had with her the person that they hired a little over a year ago.

Maybe I had better back up and explain a little. The Route 25 Visitor’s Center is owned by Mass Highway, but is staffed by the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. Or at this point, it was staffed by the Chamber. In any case, the Chamber is always complaining about money. So last winter, they decided to single staff the visitor’s center. The visitor’s center is in the middle of a freaking highway. How safe is it to single staff? Especially when the visitor’s center gets…oh I don’t know, at minimum 200,000 visitors a year? (Usually there’s more than that, but when doing the math I picked the lowest numbers possible to illustrate my point.)

Anyway, so a little while before they decided to single staff during the winter, the new girl was hired. Let’s call her Susan. Her job was to be my dad’s boss, but she had no power. So basically, what would happen is that my dad would have to ask her permission for something, then Susan would have to ask her boss, the chief executive officer, whether or not my dad could do something so simple as buy more coffee. (We sell sold coffee to the visitors–good New England Coffee) So basically, Susan didn’t really do anything. I’ll admit, there is the slight possibility that she does more good where me and my dad do not hear of it.

Susan, by the way, is the person that was with the boss when my dad was getting layed off. God, that sounds horrid. Oh, and what my dad considered the best part? Apparently, while firing him, the boss invited my dad to the Chamber Christmas Party. Wasn’t that just so nice of them? Not! Sheesh, what the heck were they thinking?!

Now that I’ve worked off some of my aggravation, back to my worries (or rather, on to my worries since I don’t think I mentioned them yet)… my health care was already messed up since I’d turned 19…now that my dad won’t have a job, he said that that effects me more. That’s the only thing that I’m worried about that concerns me. Well, that’s not quite true. I want to go abroad next year, but the way things are, I may have to think about it. If my family’s situation does not change, then I’d spend the whole time in Europe worrying. So I’m also worried that I’ll have to cancel, or postpone my trip.

The rest of my worries are for my parents and siblings. Jin and I are both away at college, so that’s a stress on my parents. But even more stressful I think, is that they still have 5 mouths to feed beside their own. I know that money was getting tight even as my dad worked as much as he could (I do have two brothers in high school after all–they eat a lot!) So I worry about what it will be like now, if he’s not working.

And that’s another problem in and of itself–there are practically no jobs. I can’t even find a workstudy job on the campus of my college!   If this does not change, I may have to do the dreaded phone-a-thon again. I hated that job, I hate it! But especially if my dad can’t find a job, I’ll take it. I’ll hate it the whole time I’m doing it, but if they offer, I may take it.  If, of course, is the big question, since I doubt that they are unlike the rest of the campus and not inundated with job applications.

So I’m worrying about my parents, all 6 of my siblings, the car payments, the school loans, can I find a job? can my dad find a job?…I know I’m not the only one who’s been worrying about this stuff, especially recently. But it is different for each person. My heart goes out to all the people in my situation, and all the people who are worse off. Because on the whole, at the moment, I’m still very lucky.

It hasn’t been a problem up to now. But all of a sudden, a few of my suitemates are playing music at blasting levels. And now some of them and their friends are smoking on the balcony. A. That’s against the rules. and B. I’m sorta allergic to cigarette smoke. At the very least, it triggers the rest of my allergies, makes it so I can hardly breathe, and I hate the smell.

I can feel the tightening in my chest due to the smoke and my eyes burn a little…I’m wondering if I can get an official doctor’s note or something so that they can’t get mad at me when I tell them not to smoke. That’s the reason I haven’t said anything yet, by the way…I’m certain it will come out sounding pretentious and stuck up–partially because I don’t think I would be able to avoid adding “Plus, it’s against the rules to smoke on the balcony.”

The music started last night. Until past 11 something it was pounding so loud that I wouldn’t have been able to get to sleep if I tried. Plus, Vivien just said that one of them was sleeping with a guy up till like 2 am. I didn’t even want to ask how she knew that, but her exact words were “Be glad that you were asleep!”

I’m flat out astounded and disappointed in my suitemates, though I don’t know why I expected better. I suppose it’s because I always make sure that my music isn’t loud enough to bother anyone. And if it is, I immediately turn it down. And I don’t smoke, for the reasons stated above.

With their music that loud though, I can’t really listen to my own music, or watch a movie, or practice violin, or piano or recorder…

One of them just turned the music down, but that’s only ’cause she called someone on the phone.

If this keeps up, it’s going to be a very long rest of the year. Very long…I’ll be deaf and unable to breathe.

(And just for the record, it’s not all of my suitemates that are a problem. Vivien’s not a problem, and two or three of the others I have no problem with. It seems to be mostly the two in the room next to Vivien’s and mine and one of the ones in the room across from ours. The other three I don’t really see all that often, and when I do they seem to be quiet and polite.)