I know, I know, poor form for even a piss-poor blogger such as myself, but I just had to kill that "VaGInal" sex post. That guy was starting to get on my nerves. Every time I clicked to my blog (all of my favorite links are here...), there he was, staring me in the face, very possibly not kidding. I am officially sorry that I subjected all three of you, my dear readers, to that. I don't know what I ever saw in him. In my defense, I was drunk at the time.

So, the state of things. I'm unemployed but again actively looking--something about being unemployed for a month or more that I hadn't considered is the amount of inertia you've got to overcome, just to get yourself off the couch and out the door. Hunting for a job is depressing and overwhelming, and in many cases having a job isn't much better (such has been my experience), so when you find yourself in that strange twilight period between what is sure (for the foreseeable future) to be crappy, low-wage and borderline degrading employment, it's hard to stay motivated. The other big problem for me these past two months has been the collapse of my most recent educational venture. First, it turned out that Gainesville State wanted me to pay out of state tuition, to the tune of $1,400 per 4 credit class, not including my book costs. That was galling, to say the least. If I'm going to be trying to come up with that kind of money to go to school, I want to be doing it in Boulder or Portland, not fucking Gainesville! It seems like outright highway robbery to be charged that much for a couple of damn chemistry courses in MY HOME STATE. Grrrr.

Then, even better, my father chose to unilaterally renegotiate the school payment agreement that he and my mother had come to several years ago. When I say "unilaterally renegotiate," I mean he decided entirely on his own that he wasn't going to pay the percentage of the total that they'd both agreed to (based on their respective incomes...my father, despite his tough times of late, still makes a lot more than my mother and perpetually laid-off stepfather combined). He didn't discuss this with anyone but me, and our little talk was mostly yelling. This came at a bad time for W and I financially as we had literally no finances to speak of, having just spent our savings moving across the country. Which, yeah, what a totally great idea that was. I'm more adjusted to it now that I was, but jeez, people, the next time I have some brilliant idea like that will somebody please just fucking shoot me in the foot and be done with it.

When I mentioned moving to GA to spend some time with family and pay in-state tuition at GA nursing school prices, I mentioned it based on the assumption that since my father owned a house that was sitting empty and attracting the unfavorable attentions of local miscreants, he would be more than amenable to our moving in and helping him look after the house. It was not exactly understood to be a "landlord" sort of deal. However, since it turns out that my father benefits significantly if he claims to be renting the house on his taxes, that is what our situation has become. Except that we have no money, and wages in Gainesville are a LOT lower than they are in Portland (surprise!). But I digress...

Anyhow, while I was trying to scrape together the money to make up the difference in my (exorbitant!) tuition cost, Gainesville State dropped me from my class without ever notifying me of this fact. They never even sent a second bill. Thus, I did not learn that I was no longer in the class until I happened to be looking at my records for an unrelated reason. My teacher had happily continued grading my tests and homework for months following my ejection. It was awesome. You would not believe how intensely I stressed about those Chemistry exams. And I actually DID WELL!! This whole exercise has probably shortened my life by several miserable years.

Ultimately I didn't have the money to be paying GSC to screw me over anyway, so I just took my knocks and didn't try to get reinstated in the class. I know, I'm a loser. Additionally, the only school that I was planning to apply to that required a year of chemistry was Brenau University, which was probably stupid. Even if I could actually get in, Brenau is an expensive private women's college, and for W and I to accumulate more debt so that I can get an RN-BSN (from, admittedly, a very well-respected school) in addition to my BS, seemed foolish. Taking on huge amounts of debt in order to become a doctor or a lawyer makes sense, because in those occupations you're very likely to make enough money in your first few years to significantly pay down those debts. Nursing is an excellent career, but most people don't get rich.

Apparently, being "in school" or "having a direction" is a big part of my identity, so sitting around in Gainesville and doing CNA stuff with all the other people who aren't in school and don't have the ability to make plans beyond paying their bills was disorienting, to say the least. It was real life. And I'm here to tell you, reality fucking sucks. Too much reality can even be actively bad for you.

So! I'm going back to school this summer, to Lanier Tech, as an in-state student. The cost? Well, it's much, much cheaper. Cheap enough that I can actually pay for it myself, if W gets enough financial aid to cover his classes. $35 per credit. And honestly, getting my RN from a technical school (like Athens Tech, where I also applied and have been accepted) and then taking the extra classes to turn that into a BSN while I'm working sounds pretty good to me. They have an LPN program at Lanier that I can apply to in winter, and while I know that doing the leg work to get into an RN program is what I really want to do, at this point I'm getting a little desperate just to GET STARTED, fucking DOING SOMETHING, NURSING, at whatever professional level I can.

It is time to get on the road here!

In other news, I've started a vegetable garden in the backyard. I wondered why no one had ever tried this before, and as soon as I started digging my initial bed, I found out. Underneath the entire yard is a LAYER OF SOLID ROCK. It appears to be some kind of mica, shale, and fucking-dastardly-alien-lava thing. Let me tell you, this shit is tough. I screamed and cried and planned to blow up the back yard with minor quantities of explosives. The garage was going to be unfortunate collateral damage, but seriously, fuck that garage. It's not even really a garage, it's just a carport. It doesn't even have a door. I wanted my mother to help me rent a jackhammer, but she wasn't down.

I eventually, after much whining and the enlisting of my reluctant husband in the project, managed to get the bed dug and put in a couple of blueberry bushes (did you know that when you plant blueberries you've got to put in two different types, so that they can cross-pollinate? True fact!). Now I'm trying to plant a couple of fig saplings and some cantaloupe mounds, which requires more digging, which makes me want to attack and viciously maim something. Something large, something that thinks too highly of itself. Errrrr...

Right now, the main bed contains only pepper plants (Bonnie Green Bell, Macaroni, and Banana Peppers), which are doing splendidly. This will probably sound ridiculous, but I never knew that plants moved so much. When I go out in the morning to tie up the dog and check on them, the peppers looks so cute. Before the sun hits, they stretch their little green leaves up toward the sky, almost like they're reaching for it. Actually, they look like little plant version of this. Which, OMFG, how cute is that? I almost died from the cuteness, for reals. Later, as it gets hotter and they start getting direct sun their leaves drop and they seem to settle in for the day. It's sweet. I'm getting a bit attached to these peppers, to tell you the truth. I hope they make it.

The rest of the bed is supposed to have beans in it, but I haven't gotten around to planting them yet because I am very pessimistic that seeds will actually sprout. I know it's silly, but sprouting seeds always mysteriously eluded me during those plant projects in school. Give me a plant and I can occasionally keep it alive, but seeds? Uh-unh. So, although I have what appear to be perfectly serviceable seeds, I keep looking for sprouted bean plants to transplant. I think that part of my problem with seeds is waiting. I only put the cucumber and cantaloupe seeds in the ground a few days ago, but I'm already sure that they're dead. I'm not an optimistic farmer.

Also, I forgot (since I started this project when it was still cool) that GA gets fucking HOT in the summer. Yesterday I got a nasty sunburn right on top of the new tattoo, which I've decided to think of as "breaking it in." Fucking skin cancer.

I just finished The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, and if you only ever read one book on the politics of the last 50 years, this is it. I'll even loan you my copy. I'm going to start on her other other book, No Logo, as soon as I can get my hands on it. But, disaster capitalism is a subject for another post.