a wolf angel is not a good angel

Started looking for a new place now, just in case. We saw one, but it’s more expensive and smaller. The kitchen’s bigger, the living room’s about the same size — but the bedrooms are just too small.

I’m stressed out horribly about this. I dread going home, in case the people upstairs are there. I get a panic reaction when I hear loud bass in nearby cars. I’m worried about speaking to my landlord about this: why did I ever leave this so long? I do know, and I don’t, and in the end it was a big, big mistake not to have told him, not to have called the police, not to have done something.

They’re leaving a door to the house open. There are safety issues, but also, last time they did that we got a mouse in the walls. I’m hoping that another mouse gets in — irritate the landlord just that much more. Not that the noise isn’t a violation of the terms of their lease too, but this is more obvious.

I can’t sleep or eat. Hey: diet! It’s good, actually, cause usually when I’m stressed I never stop eating. Not that it’s really *good*.

Tonight I will clean the house. It’s something to do.

I have no place I call home.

I asked CG what our status was. He paused, looked puzzled, and said he didn’t know. He was just taking things as they come. Are we dating? He doesn’t know. Oh well. He intends to defend in August, and I’ll be back in Canada for much of August, so perhaps I’ll understand in September.

I feel odd, not giving my name. Or any name, for that matter. There are a few reasons. I’d feel weird responding to some name that isn’t mine, and signing it. I’d also probably screw up once and use my real name. I don’t really mind people knowing my name — what I would mind is someone googling me (I refuse to capitalise it) to find my academic page and ending up here (unlikely, since even if I gave my real name, it’s neither uncommon nor spelled weirdly, and I wouldn’t give my (uncommon) last name). Or googling me in general and ending up here — it’d be beyond weird if someone from my high school did that. (She says, after having found someone from her high school’s site and checking it regularly, without ever actually saying it’s me. Obnoxious? Probably.)

A problem is that my discipline is so small. Everyone knows everyone in the field, or at least knows of. Since I’ve been known to do searches for [my field]+blog (to see what people in my field write), I don’t want to have this pop up. Could intelligent (or, possibly, obsessive) readers figure it out easily? No doubt — I’m pretty sure I’ve already said enough to get it down to a handful of fields at most — but that’s not the point.

The real question is if this is sane or obsessive. An unanswerable question, perhaps.

My room is getting cleaner. Since I pretty much cleaned up the living room and kitchen this week, I might actually have a clean apartment soon. I have a great system. When I get bored working, I start cleaning. When I get bored cleaning, I go back to work. Sometimes I play a kind of solitaire I got addicted to.

I also have dry sheets. Thanks, neighbours! My towels are air-drying, and almost (finally) done.I found my immigration forms, and my cats’ health booklets. Now I’m debating whether to have them get their rabies shots at the low-cost clinic next week or wait until I get home (I’ve never yet been asked to show their certificates at the border, but M’s is out of date now. S has until the end of August) at the more expensive vet’s. I need to get the vaccinations just in case I get stopped at the border — both the US and Canada require up-to-date rabies shots to enter. Since they are strictly indoor cats (well, since I think they’re strictly indoor; they think they’re outdoor cats, and work hard at making it so), I don’t actually need any of the other shots. I’m debating all this. I’ll just speak to my mother and ask her advice.
Oh well. Back to work and/or cleaning. Also I will soon need to phone CG again, since I don’t know if we’re meeting here or chez him, but if it’s here, I need to buy food to eat. Not that I shouldn’t anyways, but you know.

Since (a) my dryer is broken and (b) the upstairs assholes left their noise on while they were out of the house, I am using their dryer for my sheets. And, depending on how annoyed I am/long they are gone, I might use it for a load of laundry as well.

I don’t feel guilty about this — I’m just watching out the window for their cars. Not that I couldn’t *hear* them the second they got in, of course.

So my roommate has lost patience with the assholes upstairs. Not that I hadn’t, already, just that I never did much: she’s planning to complain to the landlord and then, if necessary, move.

They play very dissonant music very loud all the time. They’d stopped, briefly, but they’re back at it again. This time they’ve left *something* on while they are out of the apartment. I don’t know what it is. It’s not music: it sounds awfully like someone rolling a bowling ball over a wooden floor again and again, every 10 seconds. (Of course I’d be willing to argue that what they play the rest of the time isn’t music, either.)

I don’t otherwise want to move: I have a large place in a convenient location with reasonable rent that allows pets, which isn’t easy to find. And they had been quiet, lately. I assume they renewed their lease and figure they’re safe. Or aren’t going to renew it, though I suspect that’s just my being unreasonably hopeful.

Our landlord is out of town this weekend (I called him: our dryer is broken), which prevents her from calling him now and having him come and turn thesound off(which went on sometime before 3am but after midnight and apparently kept her up since 3).

Now I’m stressed. I don’t want to find a new place (though I have two ideas: someone who has almost graduated might not have someone who is taking her place, though since it’s almost August I doubt that; otherwise, my current roommate will try to find another place for the both of us (we get along well)). I’m worried that the people upstairs will retaliate if the landlord relays our complaints. I’m worried I won’t find a new place, or a new roommate for this place, or — at least this time I don’t need to worry about money. But, oh, I hate this.

Michael at Highered Intelligence has a post that far better sums up how I feel about standardised testing than I can write.

Don’t get me started, either, on how I feel about further tests, like the GRE general (the subject tests seem more worthwhile), which, I have been told, is affectionately called the “cash cow”. (And I was so irritated to find out that my department here at Dullness actually looked at those things and used them. Not that I did badly — I was irritated about my Verbal score, but I hate that section with a passion — but it was so irrelevant to my abilities as a graduate student in my field. Also my advisors back at Canada U assured me that no one paid much attention to them.)

Yes, I realise that they can be predictive of GPA in graduate school. It still seems to be missing something.

I wonder, sometimes, if it’s just me who doesn’t quite get how relationships are supposed to work. (Comic strips like thissometimes help assauge that fear. At least everyone I’m likely to meet is the same way.)

I’ve been in a not-quite-dating pattern with someone — CG, for unimportant reasons — since early May. We see each other, on average, every other week. I’m working 2 jobs (and, in theory, researching a paper for next year); he’s dissertating (and working 1 job, I think part-time). (I wonder why he would have started a relationship in the last few months before he defends. It seems so perverse.)

Actually, I don’t know if we’re in a relationship or not. I wouldn’t mind being in one. But I also wouldn’t mind this being something casual (though I wouldn’t prefer it). I just want to know. And, like an idiot,I can’t seem to figure out how to ask. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m pressuring him to see me more: I understand that he’s busy and can’t.

Oh well. We’re supposed to see each other Saturday. Apparently I’m making dinner. That’s fine; I like making meals for more than just me. Though I hadn’t realised I’d offered . . . My main objections to this are (a) this will make me clean up my room (which might be a good thing, actually); (b) my roommate is around, and that always feels somewhat awkward; most importantly, (c) my asshole upstairs neighbours will be probably be home and noisy.

Though if I make a meal, it means I’ll have leftovers for next week. And I can force CG to help me chop vegetables, depending on what I make.

This doesn’t help with my problem with not knowing what our status is, and being too something to ask. Nor with my general problem about never feeling like I’m exactly on the right track. I don’t give off the right cues. I don’t read them correctly. Does anyone? None of my friensd seem to, either.

But this means that Saturday I’ll get a hug.

My cats are suddenly racing around the house. I don’t know if it’s cooler, or if they’ve forgiven me for deserting them (again) last weekend, or if there’s just some catnip in the air, but it’s great fun to watch, since I think M has been unhappy lately. I also found some of their old toys — stupid things get under the couch, or buried somewhere in the house — and so they’re racing around with glee with little mice and pompoms in their mouths (or, cuter, attached to their fur).

Unfortunately my cats’ initials are S&M, so I think I’m going to have to start referring to them in the opposite order here.

I’m sure there are many good reasons I am trying to work myself to death. I’d say it’s all financial but I’ve now covered myself for next year, and almost enough for next summer, just in case, as well. By the end of this summer, if I work as much as I intend, I will probably have covered myself for the next *two* years (including summers, if I’m frugal, which I am).

But no, I am working 2 jobs. I go to one — an hour away — work for 7.5 hours, come home, work on the other one for . . . well, last night over 8 hours. This is clearly insane. Though the one at home is, well, at home so I can do things like take 5 minutes out and wash all the dishes, or work in front of Buffy, season 3 (the last worthwhile season, in my books), it’s still that many more hours working.

Today, since my office has summer Friday closings, I figure I can work 9-10 hours on my other job.

But see, when I work, I don’t need to think. I just work. Zoom zoom zoom and there we are, at the next day already! I sleep so little I fall asleep immediately and, even if I wake up sometimes from a bad dream, I don’t *remember* the dream. And then it’s work again so I can turn off my brain (or surf — which sometimes amounts to the same thing).

Not that the money aspect isn’t important. I had some bad periods last year, financially. The stipend cuts it close: I am not a citizen, so I pay for insurance (though I will never ever go to the health services there — if it’s an emergency, I’m allowed to go to an ER, and if it isn’t, I’m not that far from home); I’m not a citizen, so I don’t get *any* tax breaks; I’m not a citizen, so I can’t work off-campus, and there aren’t that many on-campus jobs. After I went to one conference — I spent lots of money there, and it was worth every penny, but I didn’t eat muchfor a while after. Had my cats been sick, I wouldn’t've been able to pay for any real care (probably my grandparents would have helped me out here, or my aunt and uncle. My parents normally would, but they can’t afford to). So knowing that I have a huge security blanket is very nice.

It’s only 2 more weeks with 2 jobs. Then I’m down to one, which is 35 hours a week (though I’m actually going to do a bit more, so that I can pretend to have done 35 hours while I’m at this other job — it won’t be hard to do 40 hours once it’s my only job, and that will pretty much catch me up). It’ll be like a vacation, only not.