poor maggie’s almanac

as previously mentioned, i am poor.  i love love love my poorly paying job, and work full time.  i think technically, i would still be below the poverty line, though.  i am barely able to pay all of my bills, rent, have gas in my car, and eat.  i haven’t been grocery shopping since the beginning of december or so.

cole taught me that he doesn’t go shopping until absolutely everything he has is gone.  still a can of creamed corn in the cupboard?  then why the hell would you shop?  oh, you still have a random packet of maple and brown sugar oatmeal?  hello dinner!

i don’t eat at home often anyway.  i usually wake up, have breakfast, and then go to work where i get dinner for free because i’m a manager.  then on my days off, i’m kind of screwed.  i love to cook, and i would love to be able to eat fresh food all the time.  fresh veggies and fruits and bread and eggs and all that, but i’m not at home often enough for it to be worth it for me to buy fresh products.

right now, i have half a box of yogurt crunch life, some peanuts, a little bit of milk, some orange juice, some oatmeal, whole wheat pasta, girl scout cookies, and then condiments up the yin yang.  bbq sauce, hot sauce, butter, cream cheese, grated parmesean cheese, two different types of salad dressing, and so on.  once, wayne and i went grocery shopping and spent nearly $100 on condiments alone.  true story.

sunday, i spent a good part of the day clipping bits of the buffalo news jobfinder up.  i need a job with hours that are something like 8-2 or so.  my hotel job starts at 3.  i am not at all opposed to food service, and would ideally like to find something with benefits.  i would like to work about 20-30 hours per week.  the hotel has health plans, but i can’t afford them.  i have been without insurance for probably about three years, maybe four.  i’m sure i could use new glasses by now.

anyway, today i stopped by one of the places i’d seen advertised and filled out an application.  adam’s rib, a restaurant in snyder.  truth be told, i had never been in there before.  i thought it would be a cute little place.  and it is, kind of…  when i walked in, there were 4 septuagenarians at the bar and the bartender looked like she was about 55 or so.  aww, cute old folks.  the decor looked like it probably hadn’t been updated in at least three decades, possibly more.  the position was a cook’s assistant/ dishwasher and the ad said that it would be perfect for a mom with kids in school.  this makes me think that the hours are primarily morning based.  however, this job would not fulfill my benefits wish.

a lot of the jobs i clipped for were office assistants, mail room assistants, telemarketers, call centers, blah, blah, blah.  as a secondary job, though, maybe it would be all good.  i also clipped out for people inc.  i am thinking this might be a great job for me.  i also believe that they have benefits.  we’ll see.

i plan on filling out several applications so that i can have my choice of many options.  and i’m not going to stress out over this.  a coworker at a former job once told me that there is never any need to stress out over a second job.  second jobs should be stress free, and in my mind, so should second job searching.  ah, relaxed, and looking for a few hours here and there.  ahhh…

one of the jobs i am thinking about applying for is a cafeteria monitor for a charter school in the city.  ha, what a dorky job.  i think i would actually really like it.  do i discipline?  i have no idea.  going to a private school sheltered me from a lot of situations in school that some consider universal.

hmm… i wonder where this will all lead me.  seriously, though, i love the title for this entry.  so so true.

a completely uncomprehensive weekend recap

on saturday, my roommate’s parents came over to paint our living and dining rooms. my roommate, cole, bought the house we’re living in, and i pay him rent and split the bills. the upstairs apartment is vacant; he’s in the process of renting it out now. i told him that what would probably be the most effective way for him to get someone in there a.s.a.p. would be to post on craigslist. the two of us went up there and we took photos with my digital camera. i had him install the photo software on his computer and upload the pictures. he posted on craigslist and not 15 minutes later, his phone was ringing with people wanting to come see it, set up appointments, etc. i am so smart. smrt.

anyway, they came over and i was woken up by the sounds of them moving furniture around, vacuuming, doing dishes. it was kind of nice to hear people other than cole and myself moving around in the apartment. it was nice to have other people over. and then, i heard some distinctio notes. i was rolling around in my twin sized bed, fluffing my fabulous down comforter, and i thought maybe i was imagining things. nope. i woke myself up completely and sure enough, they were listening to my phish cd. divided sky.

i don’t know if when i was seeing live shows i had enough appreciation for this song. it’s gorgeous. i never disliked it, that’s for sure, but now, waking up to hear it mixed in with the cacauphony of industrious productivity– it was such a lovely way to wake up. “aaaaaah… divided sky, the wind blows high…”

i tried to clean my room which basically consisted of me getting sidetracked looking at all my stuff that i haven’t seen in a long time. maybe i own too many things. too many books, too many clothes, too much clutter, too much junk. i feel like i have moderately inherited my mother’s pack-rat-ed-ness. i’m nowhere near as bad as she is. but do i really need the april 2004 issue of cosmo? (this is the only random old magazine i have in my new apartment. it’s not *too* bad, right? what if i want to re-take the quizzes? or jog my own memory on 81 ways to be a goddess in the bedroom?) i found phish tickets for some of the last shows i saw. i found a book that i carried around with me for that month, december 2003. there were scribbled memories and hilarious quotes.

i found in that book a list of phone numbers for all these people who i never see anymore. it’s odd just how drastically my life has changed since then. anyway, i wrote everyone’s numbers in colored pencil, in very neat longhand. and then, in ink, at the end of the list was wayne. i ended up memorizing that number, loving it, spending so long thinking about dialing it, not wanting to hang up once it was dialed and answered. in an age where many people can’t remember anyone’s numbers and would be lost without their cell phones, i can still rattle it off without hesitation.  when dialing it, i feel like my thumb– my dialin’ digit– is making circles.  i love it.  and i bet now you know why he lovingly gave me the title “queen of digression.”

cole’s parents were going to come back sunday morning to do some more work.  i had to work overnight on sunday and wanted to watch football in the afternoon, so i decided to stay at the hotel saturday night.  i didn’t want to be woken up too early, and didn’t want to get in anyone’s way.  colts lost.  giants won.  the mannings were split.  i would marry peyton in a second if i could.

overnight was all right.  i thought it was going to be awful.  i had been trained once on the audit, and had taken extensive notes.  i still thought that i would mess it up something awful, but as it turns out, i did okay.  i had to call my manager once and stayed on the phone with him trouble shooting for about 40 minutes, but for a first go at it, i feel like that was good.

weekend over, entry over.