One Year Later

Well it's been a year since I graduated from college. It was very very strange going to see graduation this year. I've seen my friends graduate before but this time I was continuously flashing back to what it felt like to be sweltering in those black robes and to have all the speeches be about me. I have to say, our speeches were better. Scotty B (the president) talked about how Beloit College is like turtle sex (the video is up on youtube if you don't believe me), Ben Pascoe handed out milkshakes, and I don't really remember the guest commencement speaker but I feel sure he was more uplifting than this years' who was interesting but also talked a lot about how depressing the world is right now and how it is the graduates' job to fix it. I had nearly as many people to hug and say goodbye to this year as I did last year (although it helped that two of them will be coming to live with me in a couple of months and more will at least be heading to Madison). I also got to see a couple of my professors (for all the time that I've spent in Beloit since graduation I've never gone back to the Bio floor or seen any of the professors, mostly because I worry they'll judge me for my work choices and ask me when I'm going to grad school) but it was much less stressful than I thought. Mostly because it was Yaffa and Carl/Carol, I think, and they seem much more okay with the idea of taking some time off and doing something fun and interesting than, say, John or maybe Ken. But I'm getting off topic. It's funny how the end of the school year seems to be affecting me about as much as it usually did during college (although not as much as last year, obviously). I've been visiting Beloit weekly or every two weeks and so I'm really really going to miss seeing everyone this summer (especially Alexander, although he's staying with me right now which is lovely). Also, when I visit next year I won't get nearly as many hugs or shocked and excited expressions (people ask me why I never told them I was coming down, it's because of how much fun it was to tap them on the shoulder and see them do a double take and then grin and give me a huge hug. That did not get old and now it will happen a whole lot less because I don't know many of the sophomores - who will be seniors next year but will always be sophomores to me - nearly as well as I knew the juniors - who just graduated). So, I'm feeling a little sad and nostalgic and even a little weepy as summer begins. On a brighter note, though, I survived my first year out of college! How exciting is that? I had not the slightest idea where I would be now one year ago and never in a million years would I have guessed I would be getting paid to work with polo horses. I have an awesome job, I will only be living alone for another two and a half months and then I will get two lovely roommates, my wonderful boyfriend of almost a year and a half is sleeping a few feet away and when I finish this I will wake him up so I can teach him how to ride a horse, I live in a beautiful city with friends and more friends will be flocking here soon. It's a great life but I'm starting to get a little antsy to do something else. I mean, obviously I will be in Madison for at least another year, but maybe it really is time for grad school after that. Or at least a change of scenery. I don't know. Everything was always changing in college, I would be doing something completely different every semester, always meeting new people and moving and planning for the future and so it's hard for me to wrap my head around staying in one place and doing one thing for very long. Maybe I should learn to but maybe I should not force it until that is what I want. I have no idea. I'm still very much figuring this whole thing out. But I've done a really good job of it this first year, and I think I'll continue to do that, so everything will be okay. *knock on wood*.

The Beginning of a Healthier Life

Today was a good day. I had my first therapy session in years and I'm feeling really good about this psychologist. It's nothing super major or anything but there have been some things that have been sort of gnawing away at me for a while, and I think this is going to be very good for me. I went to yoga tonight. It was a detox class, which is very intense in a very different way from other classes I've been to. I like it. I'm going to try to go much more often, or go back to dance, or something. Just riding and all the barn work that goes with it is not enough exercise, even though I am tired when I come home. The yoga studio is right above Fresh Market so I stopped there on my way home and got ingredients for dinner tonight: locally made pumpkin tortellini and spinach salad with blackberries. I'm going to study for the GREs before bed tonight (actually, I've been sort of having fun studying so far. I haven't gotten to the math part, I think that will be less fun, but I just really love words). From here on out I am going to be healthier and happier and more positive and things are going to be wonderful. Not that there won't be missteps and bad days, but I think this is the start of something very good.

Life: Going Pretty Well, Actually

So this week has been pretty amazing so far. My mom came to visit which was lovely. She brought my bike which is also lovely. She bought me new books and got to see where I work. I got to be the one who knew where to go, which is incredibly rare. Overall, I was just really happy to see her.

Work is going very well, too. Well, today was not so great. I got stepped on, nearly bucked off, and two horses ran off (back to the barn while we were riding in the field, nothing terrible, but still scary and bad, because it made my bucking horse much worse), and I almost got kicked in the face. Not a great day, but also a great day if you look at it differently, because I didn't get bucked off (actually, I was fairly safe the whole time, I'm lucky to have a really good seat, but it was still scary) or kicked in the face, and my toes are not broken, just swollen and in pain. But in general, my job is becoming slightly more about learning polo which is very exciting and fun and complicated. Mostly I am happy because this is the sort of thing people (including me, if I had the funds) would pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to do, and I am getting paid to do it! Pretty awesome.

On Monday I headed down to Beloit for a quick visit and there had been hints of some sort of surprise. On my way down I got a call from Alexander saying he had been kidnapped by Plains Walkers and I needed to save him. When I got there Stitch and Brianna were cackling evilly and said they had stolen him and I must play them in Magic to get him back. Then Alexander appeared only long enough to toss me a small package and disappeared back into his room. It was my very own deck of Magic cards. I've been playing Magic occasionally for years, since I was little and my brother needed a partner when his friends weren't around. I've never been very good at it but recently I've been playing a lot more and having a lot more fun with it. I've never had my own deck, I've always just used other people's. So who would have thought that a Magic deck would be one of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever gotten? He picked out a playing style and theme I would like (it's elephants!), picked the best and the prettiest cards, play-tested it extensively to get it just perfect, and then orchestrated this whole tournament because he knew he'd have some homework and other stuff to do before he could hang out with me Monday night. Sooo lucky. So happy. :) And for the friends who played along! It was a lot of fun!

And finally, on Tuesday Brianna called our future landlord to find out if we got the apartment and he said yes! I am so excited! We will sign the lease on Monday and then I will absolutely positively have fantastic roommates and a gorgeous place to live for a whole year, and I won't have to go apartment hunting again for at least a year! So happy!

Food Accomplishments and Modern Adaptations

Guys, I went grocery shopping! I know this doesn't sound like a huge accomplishment to anyone else, but it is to me. You see, lately I've been on a diet I like to call "too lazy to go to the store". It's not that I haven't had the money, I have foodstamps (which are wonderful by the way), but I hate going to the grocery store smelling like dirt, hay, and horses, plus I'm starving by the time I finish work and you're not supposed to go to the store hungry. But then, by the time I get home and shower and change all I want to do is eat and veg out for a while/take a nap. It's a problem.

But! Today I went on my way home. I was incredibly hungry and I didn't have a list, which are both things you are not supposed to do, but I think I did a fairly good job of not getting a huge amount or stuff that looks good now but I will never eat. I hope. I'm still having trouble mastering this whole "buy enough food to last you for a while, but not have any of it go bad" thing. I think this will be greatly remedied when I have roommates. If I buy stuff for a salad I basically have to eat it every day until it runs out or it goes bad before I can eat it all. And you can never buy just enough to make one recipe for one person. There's always leftovers and what am I going to do with one ounce of ricotta cheese? Yes, I probably should have figured out something instead of just letting it go moldy on the shelf in my fridge, but what's done is done now.

For the most part I got simple fresh ingredients to make sandwiches/wraps which is a good amount of "making something" for me. It's better than just boiling some noodles and putting canned sauce on them, but not as prohibitive (to a lazy person like me) as a whole meal recipe. I also got berries, because I had a lot of foodstamp money I knew I could spend. I am really really excited about them. I hope that I can manage not to eat them all this afternoon, but to eat them all before they go bad. Bad berries are the saddest thing, and they happen so fast!

My other huge accomplishment today was that I went to the grocery store hungry and I managed not to buy any sweets!...Sort of. I was in the bakery section oogling the doughnuts, cakes, and cupcakes for a while and thinking "I have so much money and it's not really mine..." but! I mustered all my willpower and pushed the cart away. I did, however, buy the ingredients to make cupcakes. I have decided that if I want sweet things I am going to have to work for them. I want to get better at baking, that way I feel some sort of accomplishment before I reward myself with deliciousness, plus if I have that many I am more likely to share them instead of just pig out alone in my room. Maybe. The only potential flaw in this plan is that I bought pre-made frosting. There is the slightest possibility that I might just eat that. But I'm excited about baking, so I don't think I will.

I don't know why grocery shopping is one of the hardest parts to adjust to about being an adult, but it really is. I think it is how we are raised. I grew up going with my parents to the grocery store occasionally and my job was chiefly to beg and whine for the things I wanted and see how many of them I could get, like so many young children. Our parents worried about how much and which of the real (read: boring) food stuff to get, I just argued for more fruit and cookies and the most sugary-looking cereal. And then in college I pretty much only shopped for a couple of necessities (like peanut butter) and whatever I wanted in my room that Commons didn't offer (similar to the things I whined for as a child). Now as an adult I walk into the grocery store and go "Okay. So. Real food. How does that part of the shopping go, again?" And I constantly have to stop the little voice in my head that whispers "It's your money. It's your kitchen. No one will tell you not to get that box of double stuff oreos. And maybe on your way out you should wander past the ice cream section..."

But actually, I've found that shopping for myself I get less junk food than I did when I was with my parents or the few times I did the shopping for the household. I actually feel more guilty about it. It's weird. I still usually splurge for something small, like hershey's kisses, that I can munch on occasionally to get my chocolate fix, but nothing like the ice cream and bars and whatever else we usually kept at home.

I have also discovered that the adaptations I developed for dealing with college are hurting me now in more ways than just food. Throughout school, I worked hard. I also worked a lot. This meant that the few times I didn't have classes or a huge project or anything I needed to be doing right that second, I would lay down, watch a show on Hulu or Netflix, or take a nap. Whenever I could I needed to let my brain shut off so that it could keep functioning on overdrive the rest of the time. Sort of like how people evolved to need to store up any fat they could find whenever they could because it was rare and their body needed it. Now we have it everywhere, and are giant sacks of fat. Now I have free time all over the place, I don't even work full time, but my body still thinks it needs to shut down whenever it can so I spend a lot of my days laying around, taking naps, and watching things on Netflix, even though I don't need to anymore. Actually, I could really use some mental stimulation.

Yesterday and today I've been pretty astoundingly productive for me, but I still go home afterwards and collapse. Right now is a bad example because I'm sick, so I kind of needed to, but I need to start trying to break this habit and adapt to being my own motivation to use my brain. Starting, I think, with studying for the GREs. I need to start doing it in earnest. I don't know if I'm going to apply for grad school this fall or not, but if there's any chance I am I really need to work on studying now. So. This is the plan. At least...ten minutes every other day. Yeah. That sounds good to start out with. We'll see how it goes. I also need to start working out again. Taking a break isn't helping my back as much as I thought it was, and my job is just physical enough that I don't feel like doing anything else for exercise afterwards, but not physical enough that I don't still need to. Yes. So this is the plan. That and get better at food. Starting slow. Sounds good, right team? Okay, ready, break!

Fishion Accomplished!

I have fish! Two of them! One of them is a Black Moor so I obviously needed to name him Othello. The other is a Ryukin (I think) who is tentatively named Puck. I needed to go with the theme, he's one of my favorite characters, and plus this little fish seems lively and inquisitive. We shall see how much of a trickster he becomes. I am very excited because I've never been the sole care-taker of an animal. I've never picked out my own pets. You would think, considering how much I love and want to surround myself with animals that I would have had more pets by this point but I have not. I am both very excited (more excited than I feel normal people get about fish, but in my opinion that is their loss) and very afraid that I will accidentally kill them. But! This will hopefully cure some of my Efficiency Blues as mentioned in the previous post.

Other big news: Tanya, Brianna, and I decided on an apartment! I'm trying not to get my hopes too high because we haven't applied yet (I left a message for the guy who showed it to us this afternoon, but he has yet to get back to me, then again, it is Saturday). But! I can see our life there and it is excellent. I like it a lot and I'm glad we all had the same number one choice. Let's hope we get it!

This past week was great. Alexander came to visit and we played mini golf and went bowling. Turns out we are both terrible at both (our bowling scores were lower than our mini golf scores. Ouch) but I am slightly better at mini golf and he is slightly better at bowling. Also, he physically swept me off my feet and carried me over a particularly large puddle, which was one of the greatest things ever. But most importantly it meant that he was there for a very important phone call.

Thursday morning I got a call from the recruiter who got me my cheese job. She wanted an answer immediately on a lab job that paid very well and was full time, meaning I wouldn't be able to continue with the horses. It was in my field much more than the cheese job, working with cancer and doing lab tests that I did in school. It was tempting, mostly because of the money, and I did seriously think about it. But she only gave me an hour because it was really competitive and I would have had one interview on Friday to decide if they wanted me and I would have had to agree ahead of time that if they wanted me I would say yes (head hunter rules are weird). I decided (with the advice of Alexander who was lovely even though I woke him up to council me, and my father, who was just lovely) not to take it. I mean, when else in my whole life will I get the chance to ride horses for a living? And yeah, maybe I could be happy in a lab job, but I could also be miserable. I know I love riding horses. If I gave up this chance I think 10 year old me would come into the future and kick my ass. When I was growing up I always said I would rather do something I loved than be rich. This is a lot harder to cling to when you're looking at rent and student loans, but I'm proud of myself for choosing happiness. I need to try harder to let go of my worries and experience the fact that I am doing something amazing right now. Yes, I need another job, yes, I could use more money, but I am incredibly lucky and lucky that my parents are willing to help me out to do something I love. I am 23 and if this isn't the time to be poor but happy, I don't know what is. So, that is what I am going to do, to the best of my ability.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some fish to feed.

Roommates Wanted

Okay, it's happened. This week I am officially sick of living alone. Just really. Yes, it's nice to be able to wander around naked and put things wherever I want but I want roommates now. I want people to casually and spontaneously be around. I want to be able to see friends without extensive texting trying to figure out what they're doing and where they are and if it's okay if I come over. I want people to be around all the time whom I can play games with (I've started playing Magic recently and I really have been wanting a game for a couple of days but there is no one here to play with me). I want people to cook with and for. I want a real kitchen and a table and all those things that you have in real apartments. I want people around to tell me "Hey, stop watching TV shows on your computer and do something with us." or even just "Hey, watch TV shows on your computer with us." I want people who will give me outfit input (I have been this person at Maggie's place, and I miss it from college). I want to be able to casually remark upon something I see or read without having to call someone, go to someone else's house, or post it on the internet. When it's cold and snowy I want to have people be around without having to trek out into the white abyss. And I want the kind of apartment that there is any point in inviting anyone else to. Basically no one who lives in Madison has seen my place because there's very little reason for them to, and very little seating or space if they did come over.

Don't get me wrong, it's comfortable enough, it's just that I would feel so much more productive if I had a room that wasn't my bedroom to be in all day when I'm at home. I get lazy and bored and I have the internet so I spend inordinate amounts of time doing that. Not that I would necessarily be able to break this habit with a bigger place and roommates, but I could at least, when I realize I've been on Failblog or Cracked for more than an hour, get up and go into the living room, leaving my computer behind. Or call over a roommate and see what they are doing, if there's anything they want to do. I'm having trouble with the "learning to cook" project because it is just for me. So I say to myself each night "Well, I'm hungry. I could try to make a new recipe, or I could heat up noodles and put pesto on them." Fundamentally, I am easy to please with relatively bland things and willing to eat the same thing over and over again, so without anyone else's input I generally do the latter.

Most of all, I'm bored and lonely a lot of the time but also lazy. Or bored and lonely but don't want to text people every single night asking if I can come over to their place and hang out with them. I know it's strange but that just feels weird after so many years of being able to just walk up or down stairs or at the most across maybe twenty yards and find a whole bunch of people just hanging out and for it to be perfectly reasonable to drop by without asking first and just see what there is to do. I miss that so so so much. It feels much more like an imposition to have to text first and see what they're up to and ask if I can come barge in on it. Not that they mind, I know they don't, but it's just how I think. I want people to talk to and hang out with that are just here. And honestly, having my own room in a place with roommates, if the room is decently sized, will be a lot like what I do now but with people, which is excellent. Also, if my kitchen is not 10 feet from my bed, I feel like I will be able to cut down on the snacking, which would be nice.

So, I knew it would happen. I'm sick of living alone. A lot of that might be that my default when I am alone is the internet, and I am so sick of that but addicted and I need to find other things to do. But I need the internet for things like job hunting and apartment hunting. So I can't just say "I won't go on the internet today, instead I'll be productive" because being productive almost always involves going on the internet. And once I'm on, I'm on Facebook and Failbook and webcomics and then it's four hours later and I've done absolutely nothing but open a whole bunch of Craigslist tabs for potential jobs that I might apply to later.

I really hope this whole thing with Tanya and Brianna works out. The more I've been looking at places the more excited I get about it. It won't be until August which really sucks, because I have months more of living on my own and I know I can do it, I just have to try harder. But it's also the tail end of winter, the hardest time to try because everything is bleak and awful and you keep thinking it's going to be spring but then it snows all day like today.

Also, I have way too much time in my own head. My job is largely me alone with the horses and as I'm also alone at home I have far, far too much time to think and brood and worry and then little problems become large and large problems become huge and then I feel less like doing anything and it is a vicious cycle.

Long story short: Karises were not meant to be solitary creatures. But hopefully this will be like Australia and the Tortoise job, where after a couple of months I hit a wall and go "No, this is the end point, I cannot do this anymore, this sucks" (although for both of those it was 3 months and I'm only 2 months in now) and then after that I find that it's actually totally fine and I enjoy it again. So, since I have five and a half months left of this, let's hope that happens and I don't just spend all of it laying on my bed on the internet.

Maybe having more furniture would help.

Horsing Around

Hey so sorry it's been so long. I waited for a while to post because I didn't want to put anything too bitter out on the internet about Epic. I was really really disappointed when they decided not to hire me. I had been applying since October and over the months my hopes had gotten really high. No one I'd talked to had gotten to the final interviewing phase without actually getting the job, and I was on campus for almost an entire day during which I got to imagine what it would be like to work there, so by the end of all that I was sort of banking on getting that job. It sounded like fun and everyone I met was great and I liked the idea of it a lot. But, when I'm completely honest with myself, the main reason I wanted that job was because it sounded so very very nice to not have to worry about money for a little while. It would have just completely taken that set of anxiety off my plate, would have let me pay my loans, my rent, and still save, start a 401(k) and not spend ridiculously lavishly or anything but just not have to check my bank account before I went out to dinner, you know? It would have been nice to be that comfortable. And it's not that the job didn't sound fun and interesting, it really did, but the money was the big thing. I probably could have saved up and taken vacation time to go see my brother, which I really really wanted to do and am scared that I won't be able to now.

But, alas, I did not get the job. I was sad and bitter and I ate a pint of icecream. The worst part really was that a couple days later I put up my resume on Monster and almost immediately I got an email from Epic telling me I was a good candidate and should apply. Really?! You can't take two seconds to check whether or not you rejected someone within the past week before you send out that kind of email? But anyway, even though I am still not financially set, I am glad I didn't get that job now because it led to something so much better!

I had applied to a job with a nearby polo club to exercise their horses and had never heard back, so I called the woman a few hours after I heard back from Epic. She hadn't gotten my email, or at least couldn't find it, but was impressed by my resume (14 years of riding horses) and invited me out to her stable to try out. She was even more impressed with how I handled Remy, one of her biggest horses, and invited me back for a second try out with the other top three. She and her trainer watched us ride and they were both very nice and seemed impressed. I left feeling fairly confident but then didn't hear from them for a few days. Finally I called to check and she said she would make a decision by the next day. I was a bundle of nerves for the next day and a half until she called and said I'd got the job!

I started on Saturday and have been at the stable for at least three hours every day except Tuesday. Most of her horses are Thoroughbreds, which I haven't had too much experience with but are mostly very well behaved. There are a couple who got aggressive in the stall and still kind of freak me out, but for the most part they are a great bunch of horses. The one thing I'll say about Thoroughbreds is that their canters are different. I don't know exactly how, they're just a little hard to get the hang of compared to Morgans. It's weird. By now my muscles are mostly used to riding so often, but the first few days I was ridiculously sore. Luckily, I have a very large bathtub and I bought a box of Epsom salts.

Besides the comfort level around some of the horses (which I'm sure will get better the more I work with them), my only problem with this job is that it makes me miss my horse. Lark is so special and he's getting older and he's far away. It's been a long time since I've ridden him regularly and although he seems very glad to no longer be a show horse I still feel bad. I mean, he's got a good life. He's at a stable where they take good care of him, he's got a herd, he's got food and water, he's got a pasture, Mom goes out to see him, but I just feel bad. I miss him. If I knew I were staying in Madison for at least a couple of years I would move him out here but I just don't know what I'm doing and that is really unfair to him. I feel a little bit like I'm letting him down having fun with so many new horses when he is back in Minnesota. I know that is stupid, but it's true.

On the other hand, I'm really enjoying this job. So far I think my favorites are Aria, Breez, and Raz. They are extremely responsive and Raz is just so ready to go. It's a lot of fun. In addition to the nine polo horses, the stable owner has two fairly new additions: young paints rescued from a nearby farm where the owner was starving and neglecting them. They're very young and very cute. One of them (Tux) is a bit wild but other than that is very well-adjusted. The other (Picasso) is extremely timid. When they first got him he wouldn't let people get near him. He's improved a lot but is still very afraid of people and noises and, well, really everything. He's been lame for the past week but absolutely flipped out when we tried to soak his hoof to help it. I've been tasked with the job of socializing him, which I am just so so happy about! He really is a sweetheart, and he seemed to take to me pretty quickly. I spent a while in his stall today just hanging out and talking to him and getting him used to petting and brushing. By the end of a half hour he even let me put liniment on his bad foot. I'm going to spend time with him every day and slowly get him used to people and movement and all sorts of things. I think he could make a really good western horse eventually. I'm really excited about this project.

I still need to find a second job, but I'm working on it and as of right now I'm just happy to have a fairly well-paying job that I love. It's funny, I've spent so many years paying large amounts of money to ride horses, I never really thought I'd be paid to do it. I'm still worried about the future and many many things but when I stop to think about it, I'm happy. Right now, when I'm not visiting the boy (that is also going quite well, by the way, and we have now been together for over a year! So happy!) my days mostly consist of riding, laying around, and dancing. I know this can't go on forever, but really, life is pretty damn sweet and I intend to enjoy it.