So I had work at 8 am, but I've been waking up reaally late, so I stayed up all night painting monsters and headed to work at 7:30 am. It was lovely, but I am so out of it that I tried to write this blog by typing my username and password into a GIS. It did not match any documents. So I tried a different password.

I was going to vent about people who call to ask for a reservation for today, "Hi, I'm calling to see if you have any availability for tonight, November 26th?" like I don't know what day it is even though my JOB is making reservations and yes, looking at the date. But given how hard it was to do my blog, I suspect I answered the phone with "This is Caitlan" or something. I am supposed to say "Good morning, thank you for calling santa cruz hostel, this is caitlan, how can I help you?" Which takes about 4 seconds.

I know what I want.

I want to decorate cakes.
And I want to be a paleontologist.
(This is not a fossil whale)
This is not a fossil centaur.


I want to be an astronaut

But I already live in space, I suppose, and at night I can see it.
I also kind of want to be a princess, if it means I can have a round library with a spinning ladder like in Beauty and the Beast.

I think this feeling is why people like online interactive video games with custom characters.

Surviving on my own...

...Or: how sometimes i can barely keep from going blind, go to sleep at night, keep track of money I earn, or feed myself.

So I keep my purse and my closet pretty messy, because I am physically incapable of devoting time to tidying when I don't feel like it. Yesterday (or actually this morning at 4 am) I couldn't sleep and my eyes started hurting so which made me realize I am due for switching my contacts but they were (of course) lost so I seized the opportunity to re sort everything I have. It is pretty easy because I only have clothes and school stuff and toiletries in my half bedroom in Santa Cruz. And I found a check from the hostel from October 15th. Nice. I also found my casio graphing calculator that I thought I'd left in Oakland, which was good except I can't make it do the statistics things I need because my textbook (of course) is tailored to Texas Instruments. Also It was 5 am. I will give it another shot now that I'm properly awake. It has a much nicer design than the TI ones. I also found that I have ninety billion pretty shirts and fifty pretty skirts that I have been ignoring.

Then at noon, when I woke up again, I realized that I am practically out of food. I have tortillas, coffee, sugar, soup, butter, juice, and cheese. And rice a roni, but I apparently can't make that on an electric stove. Oh, and I have popcorn too. So, I am doing a 3 day fast. Because I honestly would rather not eat anything than go to Safeway. For the record, safeway is about a mile from my house. But the last time I went all the things I bought tasted kind of terrible except the salad.

I found something neat!

Sometimes some things strike me as "that is why we were worth intelligently designing". Probably 15 things in the world make me feel like that. Some things almost do, like the world islands in Dubai, but this really does:




I love you tiny wooly mammoth! You can buy one here: but instead I am going to make one out of willpower. Possibly if my willpower one is too insubstantial I will buy one. But if it sits uncompleted like my paper clock I would feel too too awful.

This is a paper clock. A GIS revealed that no one has ever successfully completed one. But I am going to. I think I got discouraged when my gigantic main cog was a tiny bit crooked, so slightly that you can't see the crooked but when you turn it it wobbles. But there are a lot of copies of it that no one has attempted, and I am going to buy them and assemble them and hang them up and one of them will work, someday.

Wow. This post needs some culling.

I have been very interested in Fat Advocacy lately- I don't really know why except that I am in that place of nonconformity that comes after kneejerk teenage rebellion (shut up, I rebelled in my own scattered, happy way) to affect the optimistically cynical college students who see that every single system ever is oppressing people!!!, and it should stop! It should stop right now!!! And if it takes angry blogging, or agreeing with like minded people over coffee, or -gasp- even raising our hands to agree with a liberal prof, we are going to do it, because if you're not part of the solution, etcetera.

Okay. Now leaving Tangent Land. Fat Advocacy. Right. It is a really neat movement. It is based on the fact that people are all worthy of respect regardless of their looks. And, you can be fit or out of shape at any weight. And, it doesn't matter whether you are fit at your weight because that is your own body and your own choices.

Some parts of it seem wrong to me- supposedly overweight people can't lose weight despite dieting and exercise. That seems wrong to me. Even if you have a kick ass metabolism that can make all day nutrition out of an apple, you still would lose weight at some point.

But oh my gosh, fat activist blogs are awesome. I read middle class mommy blogs because look! It is my future! [Which, when I was little I thought I would be just like Barbie when I grew up because apparently I did not have a short artsy brunette doll to obsess over, so we shall see how middle class and maternal I turn out] and sometimes they post about diets or how they are too fat or something and it is just heartbreaking because JESUS CHRIST WOMAN, DO YOU THINK YOU ARE GOING TO GET ANOTHER LIFE? AAUGH YOU HAVE MORE MONEY AND FREEDOM THAN ANY ONE OF YOUR ANCESTORS AND YOU ARE WASTING IT! (I mostly do not post comments on mommy blogs) but FA blogs are the opposite! They are like "Look how I used ribbons to make knee high boots fit my legs" and that is just so refreshing!

And, I found a related but heavier blog that I can really sympathize with because wow, doctors are mean. I too have not been to a doctor in 6 years because the last time I was there mine said I was fat. (I would go if I felt sick.) I forget exactly what she said and I am sure it was not too aggressive because I didn't cry right away, but I think it was a very thorough appraisal of what I eat and what I should eat and how dangerous fat is. And I think she squeezed my stomach to make her point. And I think she was kind of fat. And I had to go to a nutritionist who gave me a lot of instructions about what to eat, and THEN had me write down what I ate for 3 days, so I ate the foods she said to (because I was about to have to go back and share my food log) and she said I was eating well but not eating enough so my body was working to store fat so I could menstruate. Which, fun fact, that is not science. And I still am not sure that I'm over it, but I'm over it enough to partake of medical science once again.

Or, I could move abroad.

There are some jobs that continually appeal to me, but since they need post grad studies I don't think about them much. I would like to be an art therapist or a financial adviser for low income or young people. But ew! extra school after I finish school! I am smart but not interested in academic abstractions, and more school than necessary makes me feel tired.

But in my macro etext I read that people who graduate during a recession spend months longer finding a job than their counterparts who graduate during an expansion. Which I knew and am not worried about because whatever, I will just try harder than the other graduates and find a great job anyway. But then the textbook said that when you do get hired during a recession, you get paid on average 9% less. Which, whatever, I will just live in a spacious cardboard box. But THEN the textbook said that these income differences persist for 8-9 YEARS! So taken all together that seems to indicate that if you graduate during a recession you are essentially earning 1 year less of salary over the course of 10 years. The imbalance doesn't correct until your early 30s.

So apparently I am taking a full 4 years to graduate and then getting an MFA. (That is the only kind of masters I think I could stand, except MBA which I think you are not supposed to apply right out of undergrad) And I think everyone is going to start doing this, so yay degree inflation.

It is so hard for me to major in something. I am looking at art with a business econ minor, or the other way around. Because in college, you can't think about what you like to watch movies about, you have to think about what you would be happy spending your career on. Also what you are good at.

I know I can't major in a science, because in science you have to slog through data and learn the technical details of things. I just want to be impressed. I am looking at the sun from the 8-minutes-ago-past? Wow! Looking at the sun will damage my retina---- augh too much facts make it be the end! There used to be gigantic monsters all over the planet? And I can see a rock version of their actual bones? Woah! Plants turn sunshine into food? Cornstarch in water can support our weight? Europe would be the climate of greenland if not for ocean currents? There is a rodent that weighs as much as me? Aaugh too scary make it be the end!

I do like the natural world a lot and I am glad that people understand it but I feel like there has to be a job that involves only conceptual science. Right now I can only think of jobs that involve children, like illustrating children's books. I desperately want to be in a gypsy caravan of science teachers. I would want the space caravan. Also the dinosaur caravan. Also the geology caravan. And we could travel the world telling people, "Look, this is science! Write it down! Elasmosaurus was a water dinosaur that evolved from a land dinosaur that evolved from a fish! And it was big!"

Excuse me while I devour this halloween candy.

Because it is small, and bright, and sweet.
I had a sad day. I had two opposite conversations:

#1: this afternoon, talking with a friend
Her: There're these cute little condos, and one was getting sold? It was in escrow? But now it fell through, so my parents are going to bid on it.
C: For what?
Her: For me to live in! Duh! *laughs*

#2:this evening, talking with a man
Him: Did anyone reported a missing wallet they had found?
C: No, sorry, do you want to file an incident report?
Him: It was my credit card and my phone that was gone from my backpack when I had looked for them.
C: I'm sorry to hear that.
Him: Yeah and I needed it because between my credit I had sixty dollars and my debit I had one eighty, it was enough to go to Nevada.
C: Oh.
Him: I have to go to Nevada to talk with the National Guard.
C: Why do you have to go to Nevada? Don't we have that in California?
Him: I saw the ad on craigslist. I'm tired of doing little jobs, a few hours and then nothing. I had had just enough money. I looked up a greyhound ticket. And I had had it, but then my card is gone. And the guy, he thinks I'm coming, I didn't told him.
And on and on. So I found the name and number for the MEPS in Mountain View. Because the bus there is like $10. And I felt bad for helping someone enlist. But at least he is not stranded in freaking Nevada.