The day started so well

Sometimes im ioverwhelemd, espcially financally. Sure no one can make it on their own but i hate relying on people, asking people for money. I live in Atlanta partly because of the freedom i have here. I dont have a family member for miles. I like that space.

I got paid two days ago, add to that a hefty commission check and my tax return came back. Plis my birthday is coming up so that usually yields an extre spending change. so for while i was in the clear. finally, 2008 of to a new start.

Well just when i was riding igh. My cars transmission stated acting up. I took it by the shop, he put some new transmission fluid in it and for a day it drove like a dream. But then it reverted back to its old ways again and the problem came back with a vengence. I dont know how much its going to cost to repair it.

So i set aside some time this week to take it by the shop.

Tpday i went to piedmont park because the weather was nice. Walked some dogs, did that whole thing. Afterwards we decided to go to Six Feet Under. I bit into an oyster and wouldnt you know, it had sand in it which caused my teeth to crack and crumble out my mouth. AGHHHH!

Oh and did i mention that rent is due Friday?

I have alternating paudays so trouble dont last always. With this new job i had visions of moving into a studio of my own, have my own space, but i think i may still have to be with a roomate. Man we havnt made it past January and shit already falling apart.

Mardi Gras is next week, im excited about stumbling through the french quarter drunk, hearing music and partying. Hopefully itll be a good endcap for this misdirected month...



So now it looks as though i

They wear fur coats to the library

Because its buckhead. They talk with long southern drawls that sound straight out of Driving Ms. daisy . There is even a booster club to raise money for the library.
Its another world.

When i interviewed for positionsin the Atlanta Fulton Public Library system, it was my last choice. so confident and cocky i was certain i would get my top choice, that i didnt even feel the need to go to the last library. But i did...for 'practice'. (Dont you love being slapped back down?).

I wante something more 'urban', something where i could 'work with' people. I had a demographic in mind. Something more diverse. (and not to mention MARTA accessible). It takes an hour to get there on the train as opposed to the 20 minute commutes in the other libraries i interviewed at.
But the Lord works in mysterious ways. THey called 3 weeks after my interview. 'Which library I asked excitedly...

Oh...

Well. I needed a job asap. The money/hours were cool. And there was a bus that went there...

Those were pretty much the reasons i decided to take the job. I agreed over the phone and called the branch manager to confirm. "oh girl im so excited! you were my first choice! I was hpoing and holdong my breath that you take the posotion"

Well at least someone was excited. But i mean, how can you be disappointed when shes so happy youre coming?

I'm wondering what the lesson is here. Of the 30 branches of the Atlanta library system,, why this one? I think its partly karma for my cockiness and my issues with AmeriCorps. But most of all i think of it as a kind of resume rehab. THe last year has been filled with a string of short term stints and i need to show hat i can commit to a job. I mean what kind of trouble could i possibly get myself in in checking out books to socialites and their children? Especially when i have a manager ho believes in me. I need to do the best i can. At least for 6 monthes(after 6 monthes you are eligible to transfer)

Im starting to warm up to the quirkiness of the 60 something white librarians. In circulation class, i even had a little 'branch pride' moment surrounded by people from other branches.

I guess u cant judge a book by its cover

hard day

Everything was going well. Well actually it wasnt, Ive been fighting off debt and just when i got back on my two feet, my car decides to start acting up. Now ive had this car for a month and its been real good too me, in fact so good i named her lucky. She has her problems shes a maure woman but i like mature women.

Well im going from 285 to I-20 east to 75/85 North and shes sailing, keeping a good 70 mph. I get off Freedom at freedom parkway and the car starts thumping. I had about 4 more miles to go so i prayed the car wouldnt give out in the one lane surrounding the carter Library. I made it home, thank God.

I hope hope hope i dont need a new transmission.

Little bites

I'm not a meal person. I'm a nibbler. I like to take a portion of a meal, take it back and work on it then return back to the pot and take another scoop. If there is an entire meal put on my plate, i get overwhelmed. Its too much food at one time. Sometimes ill spread out one meal over a 4 hour time, keeps it eaiser for me to eat.
I have realized that this minute detail translates into other pieces in my life. Like college, work and lceaning my slovenly abode. In projects, i like to do little pieces of the project and return to the group. So with this bit of new found self knowledge, i wonder if i can conquer a few things that i have deemed to overwhelmong to deal with in 2008. We shall see.

what does this have to do with thoreau?

"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it. "

I read Walden my junior year in high school. My teacher, Ms. Carp, introduced the book as either you love it or hate it. I had grown eary of the obooks. Junior year english was full of literature. THeir eyes were watching God, The Scarlet Letter, The sun also rises, Huckleberry Finn. I dont like literature. As I dont like most fiction. Even movies, i generally prefer a good documentary over a heartwarming tale. In2nd grade in our trip to the library, I found it helpful to remember fiction vs. non fiction by pairing fiction with 'fake'. I wonder if that colored my later experieneces with it.

But THoreau and the rest of the trancedentalists caught me. It wasnt fake. It was something real. It was observational. Nothing intrigues me more than someones observations. But it turns out i was the only one who 'loved it'. Class after class, my peers lambasted the book, calling him cynical and a loser who had no friends. But what i saw in his work reflected my own experiences. Like literally sitting in a room full of people and not feeling in any way connected to another person. It was such a common feeling for me, i had grown accustomed to being the only one, loniliness was my steady companion. It was in this class that i realized that being alone was second nature to me.

I was talking to a friend. She asked me why i had built up so much resentment toward people with money. I told her that evryone around me had more money than me, it always seemed like they 'could' and i 'couldnt'. They got things, I wanted things. To try to even the playing field I worked at the local star market for a year bagging groceries. In my blue shirts and khaki pants i scanned groceries for 5.50/hr, but even that never reallly got me past first base. The resentment, i tell her, was the only way i could be jealous and still like the people around me. If i didnt hold the jealosy inside, i wouldnt be able to talk to anyone around me. It was a functional jealosy.

It hurt. I felt disconnected. Lost a lot of confidence. And it wasnt that i wanted there to be people poorer than me because i get nothing from feeling better than someone else. I just wanted to be able to relate to someone. The median household income in my town was 85,000. Our household income was not even a quarter of that. I wanted there to be another Black girl in Belmont, who lived with her single mother and shared a room with her sister. Or something even remotely similar. Never happened. Oddly enough, people i went to HS with complain about not having any rent money, or money for utilities, now as adults they can relate, but that was my entire childhood.

And sometimes that feeling of not being able to realte still haunts me. I still dont have a lot of friends that i feel close too.I fucked up the friendship i had with my best friend and now i feel even more alone than i ever have.

And what does this have to do with thoreau, well everything and nothing. he was just on my mind today. I needed to read that passage again and feel the way i did in that Junior year class...

Luck be a lady tonight

My new car, her name is lucky. Her rear defrost doesnt work. Its dangerous to drive when you cant see behind you. When things are obscured by shifting weather and cold mornings.

Got a napkin, reached backed and wiped it down.