Saturday, May 28, 2011

Terrible weather, terrible weekend, terrible me

So I had a long and agonizingly boring weekend. But yes, it was all my own fault. I should have just dismissed all the talk about storms and showers and whatnot and I should have just gone to Kansas City like I had planned. Instead, like a good little girl, I listened to my parents and chose not to make that long three hour drive to visit with my best friend.

I'm a horrible person. I made plans, I got all excited, my best friend got all excited, but as soon as Mom and Dad said, "You should reschedule because of the storm," I unhesitatingly said, "Yea, you guys are probably right."

And then what happened? Wichita was a very nice, peaceful and sunny weekend. Granted, apparently Kansas City was storming up like crazy, I don't think I would have hit any bad weather on my drive.

I'm so stupid that I amaze myself.

And so, out of spite, which no one seemed to pick up, I just moped around and stayed in my room all weekend-- just like an emo high school teenager who just got grounded by her parents.

OH. MY. GOD.

What the heck am I? I'm not a teenager anymore; I'm a grown adult who can make decisions on my own and will suffer the consequences of driving in a storm for three hours to visit my best friend.

What the hell was I thinking anyway?

I feel so embarrassed just thinking about it that I've been berating myself ever since the weekend ended and I realized that we actually had quite good weather. And my parents walked around talking about how business at work had been slow lately, probably because people were going out of town or something.

What the hell?!!

But I did it. It was all my own fault and my own doing. I should have just stuck with the plans and told Mom and Dad that everything would be just fine and I would make it there and back in one piece.

My days have been melancholic as thus.

Because no matter what it is that's going on, I have a feeling that my parents are more against me going out and having fun than they are with my brothers. I've been sitting around at home every evening and my days consist of waiting for work and then waiting for sleep. I try to help out around the house with chores and all, but that really doesn't make my day go by any faster.

And then when I decide to make plans for myself, I suddenly get this weird feeling that neither of my parents are very supportive of my actually having a social life outside of home and work. It's like, they think I shouldn't be out having fun and should be home doing chores like making dinner, doing laundry or cleaning house.

That's how I felt when I told my parents that I was going to Kansas City to visit my best friend for a few days.

"Oh... you're going to Kansas City?"

And that's the last I heard of them saying anything about it and they then kept forgetting that I had made plans to do as much for the weekend. And then when that supposed "storm" was coming into Wichita, they very gleefully told me that I needed to stay home because of the weather, "suggesting" that I reschedule for another weekend. And of course, no one, not even me, considered that the storm was coming into Wichita and not Kansas City and that the drive there would probably be just fine and nice.

I'm stupid. I know. I need to learn how to think things over.

So I disappointed my best friend and disappointed myself. And I even told my boss that I could not work that weekend because I would be out of town.

***

Trudging around the house looking like a lost soul doesn't help my case either. It's really funny how as soon as my brother looks like he's not going out and being bored at home, Mom immediately worries about him and tells me to hang out with him more and blah, blah, blah... But I've been moping around the house for months since my best friend left the city for her new job. But there has been no word about my being bored and lifeless and needing some companionship.

Mom just simply asks: "What's wrong with you?" Or something to that extent in Chinese. And when I shrug my shoulders and say that I have nothing to do, she replies with, "Well, staying home and not going out means that you spend less money."

And our conversation ends there.

And Dad's even more direct with his response to my boredom: "You can help clean house and make dinner and learn how to cook better."

I feel like I've lost my will to live a full and exciting life now. My goal is to survive my family for the rest of my life. How sad is that?

Anyway...

With this ranting gone and done, I still feel no satisfaction, but at least I know why I've been so bored lately. My parents encourage my brothers to go out and make friends. They then turn around and encourage me to stop going out because it would involve spending money.

I guess they've forgotten that, even whenever I go out, I have never spent more money than any of my brothers. I have a savings account and I have a car paid off earlier than planned. And while I ended up not going to Kansas City, I still ended up buying a few games online with a simple click of a PayPal button. I think I spent more money holing myself up at home than I would have had I gone to Kansas City.

PayPal is a very dangerous easy shopper concept...

***

In other news, my motivation to continue writing has come to a halt, but my desire to continue writing is still hanging like a haunting ghost. I've tried what I can to get things rolling, but instead of working on things that are in progress, I'm brainstorming new material for newer plots.

It's a shame I can't just come up with a plot, snap my fingers and get the story to write itself. Not to brag or anything, but I think I'm rather good at coming up with characters and back story and story plots. It's the writing process that's getting me where it hurts the most.

***

Oh yes, and a new blog layout. I thought it was time for a change.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

I was not meant to fly

As the post title says, I was not meant to fly.

Last week I was sent to North Carolina for job training. While I don't mind having a bit of a vacation and time away from home, I had thoroughly decided that I cannot really tolerate going anywhere by plane. Coming home from North Carolina was the most stressful four hours I've had in a long time. Because not only was my first flight delayed to the point that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to catch my connection flight, but my second flight was also delayed and then it was "rocky" the entire flight.

I know that this is probably something that fairly normal for people who fly all the time. You get delays, you get turbulence, you spend a lot of time trying to find the correct gate, running across the entire span of Atlanta's airport while people in front of you hog the entirety of the escalator, chatting freely when you need to get by in a rush. And then when you ask if they could, maybe please let you go by because you're in a hurry, they give you dirty looks.

And the staff of the airport don't make things easy on you either. Telling me that thirty minutes is plenty of time for me to catch my connection flight was NOT something that would placate my nerves. Arriving in Atlanta at 8:25 PM and having a flight at 8:55 PM was enough to make me want to hurl something or cry. I really wanted to ask the girl whether or not she'd actually seen Atlanta's airport, because thirty minutes was not enough time to wait for your carry-on and then speed from a Gate A12 to Gate C38.

Of course, I made it in time to realize that my connection flight had been delayed by twenty minutes anyway.

Go figure. I make a big fuss about not getting to my flight on time and I find out that I had plenty of time to move slowly. And thanks to the guy who happily checked some carry-on bags so that they would be transferred from one plane to another due to lack of space in the overhead compartments for carry-on luggage, I didn't have to wait to pick up my bag and could just rush off to my next gate.

So... I guess it really wasn't that bad once I made it onto my next plane and got home.

But still... for someone who has flown for a total of three trips within the year, I think I've reached my quota and I shall gladly stay on the ground.

***

North Carolina was very green. I saw the ground from my window seat on the flight there. A very pretty place with lots of trees and grass and lots of land. The training was two days and so I was pretty much there and back and it felt like I hadn't even really been out of town. It was a nice place, but it felt much more stressful than my trip to Chicago only because I hadn't had time to adjust before I needed to readjust to my sleeping schedule. For two days, I had to make sure to wake up in the morning and actually sleep during the nighttime. And as soon as I was adjusted, I got home and needed to figure out how to switch back to staying up all night for my shift the next day... well, the next night.

This switching back and forth isn't too bad if I didn't have such a set time to be up and go to sleep. Then again, the hotel room was an actual suite with a living room, kitchen and a bedroom, so at least I slept comfortably. I watched television on the couch until I was sleepy enough to transfer myself to the bed and then watched television on the bed until I finally fell asleep. It would have been nice to stay in that suite for an extra few days instead of just two nights. And so maybe in the future, just for the heck of it, I'll take a nice road trip somewhere and stay in a hotel for the weekend or something just to relax... even if I don't go anywhere.

Sometimes, you just need to be away from home and have a hotel room all to yourself. It's actually pretty darn nice.

When I was in Chicago, it felt pretty nice to have a hotel room to myself for four nights in a row. I could spread all of my clothes out on one bed, sprawl myself out on the other and just be lazy all evening until it was time to sleep. I could call room service for dinner and just walk around like I owned the place.

***

In other news, third shift is good to me, I'm going to be seeing my best friend in a few days and I have gotten myself a new computer to replace the one that has been breaking on me. My brother is going to try to spend the summer figuring out what had happened to that computer; it's not old, but it likes to crash at random times and as I am not a very computer savvy type, I was starting to get a little annoyed that I didn't know what was wrong with it, my brothers hadn't been able to figure out what was wrong with it, and it was just being so random that I would probably end up throwing it out the window before my brothers got around to doing some more in-depth investigation.

Oh, and I think those sneaky wisdom teeth of mine have finally decided that it's time to torment.

Anyway... blogging is pretty fun. I really, really should get back into it more often. It's just that, a lot of things I want to talk about have to do with work, but where I work, I absolutely CANNOT say a lot of things as according to HIPAA. And so rather than trying to pick and choose my stories and heavily editing it so that it's appropriate, I've chose just to be safe and not talk about my job at all if I can help it. I can talk about my other job... but who wants to hear me whine and complain about the part-time food service/hospitality job I do and all the irrational people I meet regularly? :D