helloooooo, what a damn week or two or so,

so, i'll stave off the whining because we all, or i all, know the truth about how the overflow too much oh boy, is really just my way of dealing with things, and if i don't have it, then i'm all depressed about life being far too slow. so, the deal is that things haven't been far too slow at all, no, not at all.

*

i've started a new job, and although i told the woman who hired me that i had two more weeks of school, within which my schedule would be erratic and sparse and i wouldn't be able to give her the full hours she wants until it's all over, she is still scheduling me like a fulltime crazy person, and so that's what i've been doing.

yes, that's right, i'm a cashier.

i don't know what to think about the fact that i'm a cashier.

i mean, i don't have a real problem with it, but even after a few days i'm starting to realize that this won't hold my attention for long. but if you must know why i went into it, well, it's at a plant nursery, and i was hoping to fondle plants all day long.

lh, my buddy, asked if i said in my interview: "I want to fondle your plants all day long." he implied, really, that if i had done so, perhaps that's why they stuck me at cashier, but honest to god, i didn't let on that i wanted to have long, extended love affairs with the leaves of their plants, to touch all the floral arrangements, to deadhead the sex affairs spent, or to pick up the lost flowers wilted and tuck them away in my pocket. it wasn't much of an interview really; i simply showed up right as one of their other workers skipped a second day of work, and there i was, wanting a job, and there they were, needing a worker. so, there you go.

and even in my three days of work so far, i have noticed the following:

1. the gay boys stay the longest, past the closing hours, long past the gates being closed, and they coo and there's always one who's doing the buying and one who says darling, how lovely, and the other who smiles. gayboys around plants are the cutest;

2. there's lots of dykes around dirt, as well;

3. is it interesting gossip to run into X person you know who is technically in a relationship with Y, but who is linked arms with Z and leaning into the leaves with Z and buying plants all sweetlike with Z?

4. most people don't have a clue how much soil they are going to need to plant the number of flowers they bought. why don't they just get the big bags? i don't understand this. i'm rather fond of the half-bags on my porch, so why don't they go ahead and invest in the 20qt instead of making more than one trip. because plants don't really need soil?

5. nurseries, lo' and behold, don't hire cashiers because they know shit about plants, and by god if i don't intend to be the exception.

but also, it took me a half day to memorize all the prices for the annuals, but folks who have been there for over two months still don't know them, and i'm seriously confused as to why, since really the selection in the annuals department is rather limited: begonias, pansies, pansies, trailing plants, pansies, impatiens, and a few little other colored things.

by the way, i'm impatient. impatient, impatient, impatiens. i really hate people telling me things i already know. but seriously, how are they supposed to know that i've already learned what others have told me (not all of it, but a significant proportion, especially when it has to do with flowers and not that stupid cash register)? i wish people were far more psychic, that's all there is to it.

all in all, it might be an okay job though. something that doesn't ride home with me piggyback. you know, like all those poorly-written essays i'm supposed to be grading, but piss me off so badly that i stay up at night making extended metaphors for how an essay without a thesis, question, or perspective is really an essay without a spinal column to hold the nerve inside, and how a essay that doesn't link or transition is like a quadriplegic (or a paraplegic if they made it a bit further in their reasoning), and the nerves are the claims, and the bones aren't stacked but ligamented, etc, etc, etc. In other words, i walk away from the plant nursery and those plants are either going to survive or die regardless of my thoughts of them, or any long silly analogies i might create to breathe life into words in order to assist kiddos who see language as some kind of friggin cash register.

i might talk about this later. the new job, i mean.

*

dreams of car crashes, and kittens spilling out of open Volkswagon buses, and girls i still have crushes on despite all the reasons leaning towards the devil's own stupidity, and of swimming without need for breath, and my family following me around, and babies not my own, and pretty much everything, so there you go...

*

i also had my crit panel finally. i was freaked out about it, which is silly, but oh well. i had to change my first panel at the last moment for undisclosed reasons, but once i got it changed, a new sort of nerves set in. i had the most conservative member of the writing department on my panel, one who has myths of evil revolving around him, and whom i've successfully avoided for my time here at SAIC. so, i panicked imagining what he'd slash around regarding my playful, silly piece that was somehow really important to me because i tried new things and got new places, not everywhere i've ever wanted to go, but at least further.

but then he didn't show up. neither did the other person with the same first name. and one of the other panelists didn't get my work ahead of time because they gave me her wrong email address. so i ended up with two panelists who had read my work, plus a student panelist, thank god, who had read an earlier draft. um. it was a little weird, but i'm aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive, Igor, i'm aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive.

i got an email from one of the panelists ahead of time, telling me that he had some questions for me that needed answering before the panel, and asking if i would provide my phone number. everyone who is acquainted with me knows that at best i have a tentatively amicable relationship with The Phone, and at worst, one of all-out phobia. so i emailed someone in the panelist's department for the lowdown as to his freakishness, and got the thumbs up (not for freakishness, but for go ahead and give him your number, you dumbass).

but then when he called, it was like he was telling me that he was coming from a different writing tradition (southern. he said that about his own writing, not me. it's different?), and maybe i'm sensitive, but it seemed implied in this sort of conversation that somehow my stuff was less legible because of where he was coming from. but what i don't understand about that: i grew up on the same stuff, man, and i understand writing from the south, from Russia, from South America, whatever, pretty well, maybe not as well as the people from those areas, but why pull region when approaching a work that is slightly outside of the norms?

well, i'm not sure how to explain this, but i'm unclear on whether writing should really need to be explained. i don't think it's regional or weirdo so much as playful. i think. it's not like i grew up reading plant stems or something. so basically, i feel like my stuff is just as illegible (or legible) to someone from the PacNorthwest as it is for someone from the south. not a big deal, just respond. or something like that.

anyhow, despite the thumbs up, his phone call made me even more panicky.

yet he turned out to be okay at the critique. we were different, and he was approaching writing differently, but his comments were genuine and he was trying to be helpful, so there you go, an okay kind of panel. not great--i mean, two people missing and one person without the work, so whatever--but not the heinous mess i was imagining.

*

i'm in a group reading tomorrow. at a theatre. i'm nervous.

*

there's lots more but i've got to get up early tomorrow to work a full eight hour day fondling plants, then go to my nervous reading, and so i best be off to sleep. i seriously hope that when the next week.half is over, i actually have a bit of time to call my own. three jobs plus end of school is really too much. so there, nyah.