Book quote fun

Rules:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence in the comments. Include the title of book and author.

This is my result:

"My mother of course saw clean into the marrow those dreams, and laughed."

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

(Thanks for the timekiller, Snodge)

In an instant I shall blink again...

If you ever need proof that every person has the potential to lead hundreds, if not thousands of lives, other than the lives they're currently living--take a leave of absence.

Maybe it's a little different for me since I have no kids, no pets, no spouse (Tim can still say "Yes, please" or "No, Thanks" to any shenanigans I get into), no investments, all of my stuff can be sold or given away in a moments notice. Hell, my only valid form of ID is a passport. Still, I think even for someone with some or all of those things it might be easier than it seems to have a totally new life.

I've been thinking a lot about this in the past week. The most obvious reason is that I'm not in my DC life right now. Time has suddenly slowed down again. Days are passing like they used to pass, before I was so stressed out and every day was completely the same seemingly down to the minute. In DC, four weeks pass before I can catch my breath, suddenly a month is over and I haven't bought groceries, spoken to my friends, finished half the things I wanted to do... and suddenly another month has passed. Maybe this is just what it means to grow up but I doubt it.

There's a poem by Pete Winslow that begins:

I blink and half my life is over
Yet I am still making plans
In an instant I shall blink again
My eyes are half closed already

It's a sad and terrifying poem about what I don't want my life to be. Even if I love (or perhaps like is better word) my job and what I do, I hate the way it feels to blink and feel as though I've missed it, whatever it is.

I've been in Arkansas just under a week and I feel like I've been here forever. It takes me a solid minute to remember what day it is. I had completely forgotten what luxury feels like. It's not that I'm not working, I'm working on all of my graduate school applications which is soooo nice in a moderately frustrating but invigorating sort of way. It's another way of looking in the scrying mirror at the potential lives that are out there. Right now I'm looking at Georgetown, Tulane, Purdue, CU, and University of Washington, which--as Tim points out--covers all four U.S. time zones. Frankly, I don't know where I want to be. Only that I want to study English. And soon.

In a perfect world, I'd be able to go to graduate school close to all of my friends and family, but since my friends and family live all over the freakin' place if and where I get in to school will decide whom I'm close to, I guess. Having this time off has made it possible for me to reconnect with people I don't talk to much, or see EVER, and I don't want it to end. It's all very mushy and touchy-feely.

Which is pretty much exactly how I want my life to be. No matter which one of the hundreds of thousands of possible lives actually ends up happening, I want there to be lots of trees and deep breaths, friends and family, novels and reasonable grammatical correctness, and long, numerous days.

Thank you for bein' a friend...

If you want to watch the rest of the interview, where she talks about getting stuck in her own refrigerator for an hour (among other things), it's here.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I can't sleep.

And I just spent about a half an hour writing about how the past three months of frustrations with my incredibly stressful job have lead me to this point of insanity.

That post started off well enough. It started off like this:

"I. Can't. Sleep.

And that's ok. It's just not really what I expected at this current point--I should be sleeping like a rag doll. I took the GRE on Thursday, Ok, "took" is not the right word. I "shrugged my way through" the GRE is more appropriate. I got pretty much exactly the score I was expecting on the verbal portion (maybe a little lower than I wanted, but higher than average) and I got WAY higher than necessary on the math, which I may or may not have achieved by solid guesstimation.

I say I shrugged my way through it because I have been so insanely stressed out by my ridiculously insanely stressful job that by comparison, the GRE was a walk in the daisies. Basically, I didn't have any stress left to spare when I got to the testing center. It was sort of nice to not have to go to work for the morning actually. To get to wear jeans... To write a couple of essays... Sit in a quiet room with some strangers... ahhhhhhh... Niiiiiice..."

But then I went a little crazy--for about 9 paragraphs. Frankly, I want to go a little crazy. But I also am at a point where working myself into a froth three days before I get the hell out of dodge won't do me any good. I've done the best I can to prepare everyone for my absence and I wasn't kidding when I said I have a special ring tone when my office calls me called "Horns of Destruction" so I know not to answer unless I'm getting paid.

It's not personal, it's business. The whole reason I'm taking this leave is because when I'm here, my work takes up so much of my life that I'm too mentally and physically exhausted to even contemplate applying for graduate school. I literally have to remove myself from the timezone to get anything done. If that means taking myself out of cellphone range too, so be it. Let the record state that I offered to be on call two days a week, but they didn't want to pay me.

Anyway.

I still can't believe I am such an idiot that I bought my plane ticket for ELECTION day. I spent 45 minutes on hold trying to have it changed, but it would have cost over $900. And I love Obama, but I don't love Obama that much. I just can't believe... if there's one stupid city in America that you want to be in on that night it's this one, and what do I do? I put my self on a plane, where you get no TV, no phones, no internet, NOTHING. OMG. I've been waiting 8 years for this crap to end and I did this to myself.

*sigh*

The outside of the white house looks like a trailer park right now with all of the modular dwellings set up for the media hullabulloo that will be going on in the coming months. And of course they're going to start building stages and whatnot for the inaguration... My office building is on the parade route and inaguration day should be exciting either way. We'll either get it off because we'll be shut down for security reasons, or we'll have a view from the 8th floor window of the whole parade.

That is, if I still have a job when I get back.

I'm filling up the candy dish on my desk as a peace offering before I go. I really wish that going on this leave didn't feel so much like a break up--because I AM coming back ("It's not you, Work, it's me. Wait, maybe it is you."). I tried so hard NOT to leave frustrated, but I guess that's how it goes. I still have to go to work on Monday (grrrrrrrrr), so though I very much doubt that will make me feel better since that's largely the source of my bitterness ( I should be FREE right now!!) maybe a miracle will occur. :)