yeah, so I've let yet another month or something slip by without updating once again. damn my foolish lassitude!

and now the news.

well there isn't much. I live in Cincinnati now. with two people who are both over 70 years old, one of whom is deep into dementia. that would be my grandpa. his favorite thing to do nowadays is to go, "blubablubabluba!" with his tongue and then laugh. my poor grandma. yesterday my cousin came over to do something with me and we found her sitting out in the gazebo, crying. after we interrupted her privacy she explained that the gazebo was her crying room.

somehow using the word "gazebo" in a sentence makes it seem less credible, or almost humorous, but yeah, they have a gazebo here. it's nice.

anyway it's not all jibberish and tears around here. I've gotten in about two weeks of unemployed relaxing, or, as I like to think of it, unpaid vacation. sure haven't had any luck with the job market here yet! and then yesterday I found a job I really want at an arts center and I realized after pressing "send" on the email that I'd spelled the name of the center wrong. an "a" where an "o" should've been. ah, I am the asshole.

two weekends ago I went back up to Chicago (only a week after I'd left) to have a fancy dinner with the people I worked for (who were only in town 5 or so times a year). that was on Saturday night. when I got into town, on Friday night, April and I went out and that resulted in a middle aged man asking me two really bizzare questions in succession: 1) "can I be your Joey Ramone?"; and 2) "do you want to smoke some pot?" here were my responses: 1) "we'll see..."; and 2) "I'm going to go to the bathroom." he got a little creepy. and then at the end of the night I watched him and April make out just a little bit. ugh.

now I'm going to backtrack to August 30, which was the end of one of the most stressful weeks of my life. actually, I'll backtrack even further to the Thursday before which was to be my last day at my job. aaaaand go:

so Thursday the 28th was my last day working at my old job. I had been feeling the stress rise inside me all week long, which was probably magnified by the fact that I'd been drinking and getting little sleep every night for the previous two weeks. the fact that I was frantically trying to both clean out my desk and make final plans for a big meeting happening the following week was only exacerbating the sadness I was feeling about leaving the city as well. anyway, I got ready for work that morning as usual and went in to the office. I felt myself feeling weepy as I greeted Sara for the last time in the morning. and then I realized I'd forgotten to get a farewell card for my half-supervisor (ie, not robot) so I ran across the street to the newish city grocery store that had a small greeting card section.

I picked out some flowers and a card, paid for them, and exited the store to go back to work. I was waiting at the street corner to cross the street when I heard a crash and turned my head to see a cab running into another car and then watched as the cab careened up onto the sidewalk directly across the street from me. there were people on the sidewalk, so as soon as I saw some of them diving away in all directions I turned my head away quickly and covered my face.

when I turned back around the cab had lodged itself between an underground entrance to the subway and the building on that same corner. and there was a girl laying on the sidewalk and there was some blood. I'd never seen anything so frightening in my life and I just felt completely panicked and helpless, looking around at the crowd of people who'd also witnessed the scene. I watched as the girl on the ground started twitching and heard people yelling "fuck you!" and other things at the cab driver, who was laying back in his seat, motionless. I must've stood in the same spot for ten full minutes, just watching and waiting for help to come, when I thought I should cross over to the side of the street where my work building is.

I recognized a few other employees from my work standing there who had also seen the accident. as I continued to watch the scene and listened to the people around me discussing what they had seen, I saw the paramedics and the ambulance arrive and started tearing up beginning to think how the girl on the ground was my age, how she could've been me if I'd left the grocery store 60 seconds earlier. eventually I forced myself to go back inside my work building so I could just get started working.

as soon as I entered the building I started crying uncontrollably. I tried to calm myself down before walking past the security desk and got into the elevator, telling myself I would just go find a quiet spot and recover. I prayed for the elevator to go all the way up to my floor, the 8th floor, without stopping, but then on the 3rd floor I felt the elevator slow and watched the doors open. I looked up to see Sara enter and saw that she noticed my red eyes. she put her hand on my shoulder and I started crying outright. I don't know how she knew this but she asked if I was ok and then if I'd seen something really horrible. I nodded and she asked if I wanted to talk about it. I said to wait until we got up to our floor and I would tell her about it.

we walked into her cubicle, which has chairs and a semi-private location, and I quickly told her and Amy what I'd seen. it's funny, when you're crying really hard in public, people want to make sure you're as comfortable as possible, but they're also a tinge frightened of the emotion. it just felt so daunting having to start my last day at work (it was only 10am by the time I'd recovered) before leaving a city I loved having seen a horrible accident. I was looking forward to a bittersweet day during which I'd be treated like a princess but ended up being treated like the walking wounded, feeling preoccupied with the image of that poor girl who'd been hit.

I found out later that the girl had lived but suffered serious head injuries, and the cab driver lived too, but that's all I knew about the whole thing. the rest of my day went ok, I was treated to a nice lunch by my boss, and then I didn't leave work until 90 minutes later than I normally would've. I just couldn't quite get everything sorted in time.

that evening a bunch of friends and some co-workers came over to my apartment for a small farewell party that ended up being a lot of fun. the night ended with me sitting and watching a group of my drunk friends dancing in a circle to (I think) New Order. some of them were slightly stoned (I refrained, and my co-workers had already left), which made it even funnier, and April was dancing in this hilarious modern dance manner that she sometimes does, completely straight-faced. I think everyone hung around until about 4am, even though they all had to work Friday morning.

Friday I don't remember too clearly, although I know that I packed and hung out with April. we also went out to dinner with Stephen, Megan, and my dad and my youngest sister. it was very nice, even though my dad talked too much in his own special way. then that night Stephen and Megan and April and I went out, and eventually Stephen went home. so it was just April and Megan and me, out for one last girls' night out. but for some inexplicable reason April was a complete bitch to me. however, I don't feel like that behavior deserves any further explanation.

Saturday morning I woke up at 7am to my alarm. I had gone to bed at 4am but needed to wake up early in order to pick up the U-Haul that I'd reserved for Friday but had been told would not be available until Saturday morning. thanks, U-Haul. after an hour on hold, I got a truck and hopped into a cab with April to go pick it up.

by the time I'd gotten back to my apartment, my dad and little sister were there and Stephen was on his way to help us. the next few hours were absolutely terrible. I had done a wretched job at making sure everything was ready to go and realized I still needed to pack several items. when April and Stephen left to take a few baskets of stuff over to April's new place I started crying in front of my dad and little sister out of frustration (and exhaustion, I imagine). it was a tad bit pathetic.

by 5pm I had cleaned up, my dad and Stephen had taken all of April's stuff over to her place, Stephen had left for work, and I was finally ready to go and loaded up. so I said goodbye to April (very sad) and got into the driver's seat of the U-Haul. my little sister offered to ride with me, which was really good since I was in a terrible state to be driving alone. my dad followed in his car.

the whole drive to I-90/94 I cried, undoubtedly freaking out my little sister. but I couldn't help it. I passed bars where I had spent many hours and dollars, I passed the neighborhood where I spent my first year in Chicago, and I passed countless other landmarks that meant "Chicago" to me. earlier in the week, someone had aptly described what I was doing as "uprooting." I felt that I was ripping myself away from my solid base, throwing myself into something that I knew wasn't going to bring me as much unadulterated joy and excitement.

as we got closer to the downtown cityscape on I-90/94 I asked my little sister to take a few parting shots of the city for me on my new digital camera (thank you, work). and then, before I knew it, I had left the city limits.

somewhere inside Indiana my dad called me on my cell phone to ask me where I wanted to eat dinner. I'd seen a billboard for Cracker Barrel and said we should go there. I knew it would have just the right degree of absurdity to help lift me out of my melancholy, and my dad agreed. he loves their chicken-friend steak, after all. haha. me, I had a plate of semi-vegetarian vegetables and the saltiest grilled catfish I've ever tasted. plus two big Diet Cokes. it was a mildly great meal and when the bill came (it was less than $30 for the three of us), I laughed at the low cost.

I laughed again when I excused myself for the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror. I hadn't a trace of makeup on my face, which always makes me look about ten years younger than I actually am. my hair was pulled back into a ponytail, a style which I never wear, and was matted down from the buckets of sweat I'd been dripping all day. there were faint dirt marks on the grey t-shirt I was wearing, and if you looked at my green army shorts at just the right angle, you'd see two huge holes in the inner thighs. "air conditioning," I called them when Stephen noticed them during a stair climb earlier that day. my navy blue Adidas were the most presentable part of me, I think. but I was in Cracker Barrel and I didn't care. as I'd said, the past week had been the most stressful (non-death-related) week of my life, and it was almost over.

we rolled into my grandparents' driveway around midnight and I slept hard that evening. Sunday morning we all woke up and my dad and I unloaded the small stuff into my grandparents' garage. it was raining slightly as we carried the heaviest items into the house through the lower patio, but we were able to finish the whole unloading process in about an hour and a half. we left with my little sister to return the U-Haul, and after I handed the keys to the man at the rental place and signed my bill, I exited the small storefront skipping and singing to my dad, "it's over! it's over! it's finally over!" it was a happy occasion.

so that pretty much brings us up to date. my first week here I relaxed for a day after my dad and little sister left. then I began applying for jobs. Thursday I interviewed at a temp agency and then Friday I drove up to Chicago. I came back Sunday night and resumed vacation/job application mode. I've gone grocery shopping for my grandma several times, have frequented both the public library and the video rental store, and have done lots of thinking and emailing. so now it's just a matter of finding a job and starting what I came here for. and actually it looks like I'll be going back up to Chicago again this coming weekend with my cousin, who's giving me her extra ticket to the Wilco show that was originally intended for her Chicago-based ex-boyfriend. I'm excited since, in all my three Chicago years and throughout all the concerts I went to, I was never able to see that band live. so it'll be a nice, short and sweet trip. I'm ok with my breakup with Chicago now. and all in all, I'm good.