Chores & Chuckles

Occurred May 13-May 18

It’s important that this information is predated with the knowledge that I was leaving for Dallas on Sunday to attend an event for work. I don’t live in Texas, so it’s a significant trip. You should also be aware that I drive a ‘96 Toyota Avalon, that I’ve had for about 10 years. (Her name is Mars and I love her.) Mars has 200k+ miles on her, no AC, and her trunk no longer opens.

This story spans 4 different towns, all within 1 hour of each other. The town where I work on Mondays, the town I work the rest of the week, the town where my SO lives, and the town where my mom lives. We will call them, in order, Town C, Town S, Town T, and Town P.

I knew this trip was coming up. I had known for months. I put it on my to-do list to get Mars an oil change and a spare tire. She had a blowout a few years ago and I lost track of where that tire, or rather, its rim, went. Do I do anything on my to-do list leading up to the week I leave? Ha, no. I make plans to do it all on Wednesday, May 15.

Monday, I’m in Town C, and I ATTEMPT to leave work half an hour early and find out that Mars has a flat. I do not have a spare. What I do have is my ‘99 Toyota Avalon that I got a few years ago. It was totaled Jan ‘23 and has been sitting at my mom’s place. I had since fixed most of its issues, but it still needs completely new tires, an oil change, tag update, and the like. However, when I was replacing the radiator a few weeks before this, I had checked the tires and they seemed fine enough to use as a temporary spare.

My lovely SO picks me up from work, but we live on the very edge of broke and they need gas money. The only money I have access to is on an app called Yotta. I’ve had it for almost a year and never had any problems. I try to withdraw it to my bank account and it takes my money, but doesn’t put it in my account. (I get an email several hours later that the company that does their banking for them quit or something. It takes about two weeks before that money is returned to my Yotta account.) I contact a friend who cash apps me some gas money, thank fuck. It was a very tense fifteen minutes before they responded to my plea. After we leave my workplace, we swing by the bank that has my savings account in it and I withdraw some emergency money. (I do keep my checking account and my main savings account in different banks. If I have the power to transfer money from one account to another to spend it, I WILL. I’m much less likely to drive to my bank and withdraw money in order to spend it.)

I stay with my SO for the night. The plan is they’ll take me to my mom’s Tuesday morning so I can steal one of those tires. (I couldn’t go the previous evening. I called in late to work. We have flexible schedules, so it’s not putting them out that I come in late or else I could have done it after work.) I have 3 vehicles; Mars, laid low by a flat tire in Town C, my ‘99, broken down in Town P, and a van parked at my workplace’s main office in Town S. (I also have a motorcycle parked at my cousin’s in ANOTHER town, but that’s an entirely different story.) The point is, I own a jack and jack stands and a 4-way and an air compressor and all the handy-dandy tools that someone with 3 vehicles from the 1990s and no desire to pay a mechanic would own. However. Do I know where they are? No.

(My living situation is wonky too; I have a storage unit for most of my things and kind of cycle from my van to my friend’s house to my SO’s house and etc depending on who needs me to babysit their kids/animals and what kind of plans we’ve got coming up, living out of my book bag and a Wal-Mart sack of clothes.)

I digress. My mom’s vehicle has a specific kind of jack that won’t work for my ‘99, so we hunt through my SO’s parent’s things until we find theirs. (SO lives right next to their parents. It can be convenient. Sometimes.) 30 min drive to go and remove the tire, easy enough, leaving the ‘99 sitting on jack stands. With the rain and everything, it’s not a good idea to risk the stands sinking into the mud. I make plans to come over on Friday to put its tire back on it. (Note: There was a brief panic when we realized that my ‘99 required a lugnut key in order to remove the tires. I had no idea that was a thing, although I can admit in hindsight that it’s very cool. In the moment, we were ransacking the car until we, thankfully, found the key we needed.)(Quick side quest: the people that live across from my mom had a cow loose. No one answers their door when you knock anymore, so we had to follow it down the road to take pictures of where it went and send them to my mom so she could let them know.) 30 min drive to Mars where we swap the tires, easy enough.

I make a Wal-Mart pick-up for Wednesday afternoon so I can have my own jack, jack stands, and 4-way in case I need them on my trip, as well as an appointment to get my oil changed and get a new tire. (I don’t have time to hunt through my things to find my OG ones and between my SO and I, we have plenty of younger siblings who we can re-gift these too. Alongside a lesson on how to change a tire, probably.)

30 min drive back to my SO’s place where I work from home the rest of the day because I’m trying to minimize the amount of time I drive on this tire. Wake up Wednesday morning to leave for work and the tire we had taken from my ‘99 was flat. Okay, that’s fine. Luckily my SO doesn’t have to go anywhere, so I take their van to work and afterwards, I go to Wal-Mart. They’re short-staffed and busy, so they take over 2 hours to swap the rubber on the rim of the flat tire. I get the fluids checked on my SO’s van while I’m there and it’s apparently in DESPERATE need of some oil. I buy some of that. I reschedule Mars’ oil change for Thursday. (I just don’t feel like doing it myself.) I’ve been needing to make a copy of SO’s house key so I can have one, but the auto center doesn’t do that anymore and I’m not really up for going to the pharmacy after 2 hours idly walking around until the tire was done. It can wait until next time.

I go back to Town T and swap the flat tire on Mars for the new tire. My SO has been dealing with a cold this week and his pregnant sister had an early doctor’s appointment. They’re out of the house at 7am. I don’t have to leave for work until 8:15am, therefore I’m not getting up until 8am. It’s raining pretty heavily. I go outside to leave for work, shutting the door to the house behind me, and then abruptly realize that I’ve locked my car keys inside. Usually we communicate through messages, at my workplace, but I have to straight-up call my supervisor to explain to her the absolute ridiculousness of this week.

If you’ll recall, my SO’s parents live right next door. Fortunately, they use a keypad lock. Unfortunately, it takes about 20-30 minutes to get ahold of anyone and find out the code. I hang out until my SO gets back about an hour later. There’s an extra level of tension involved, since Thursday is the day I attend court and there were several clients lined up. I was just BARELY able to make it and then was busy enough at court that I spent the rest of the day there.

Friday, I had plans with my mom and I needed to get the ‘99 off jacks, even if it was onto a flat tire. I was too busy to leave work early, so I ended up not being able to get my oil changed (in case it took another 2 hours), but I swung by to buy some oil for Mars to do it myself or have someone else do it. Spent the rest of the evening at mom’s and got the tire put on. Also, in the first streak of luck for the week, there was a spare tire in the trunk of my ‘99, which solved one of my issues. Went to stay the night with SO and return their parents’ jack stands.

Saturday was a baby shower for SO’s previously-mentioned pregnant sister. It was on the outskirts of Town P, at their older sister’s house, about 45 min away. A family friend offered to do the oil change for me. Go to the baby shower, come back, and it gets to be around 6pm when we try and call him to see if he’s managed to do it. (I’m leaving Sunday at 5am and I really don’t want to do an oil change by flashlight.) It’s not until 8pm that he gets back to us and lets us know it’s done. SO brings Mars home with her brand new oil, brand new tire, and the spare in her backseat after a long, trying week of attempting to get those three objectively easy things done.

Start Date: March 12, 2024

Motivation: My work is hosting a black-tie event in August and I want to be able to spend the entire night bragging about my outfit and being complimented so I don’t have to utilize any actual conversational skills. (Because I don’t have them. My boggart is small talk with strangers and it shows.) (I’m also just enchanted with the idea of being able to make my own clothes. I used to be the most colorful person in my middle school. We’re talking neon green leggings under bright pink shorts. I LOVED it and I feel like, as a plus-size adult, I’m limited in my options to express myself through clothes unless I forfeit half my paycheck.)

Challenge: I’ve never sewed. Ever. I bought a sewing machine 2 years ago. Never touched it. Lost the peddle. Don’t even know if it works. Is 120 days enough time to design and make a dress? I have no idea. Gonna try anyway!

Extra Challenge: I own 3 pairs of pants and 3 pairs of shoes. I do have some variety in shirts because I don’t want people to actually notice how lacking I am in a wardrobe, but it’s…dire. I’ve never paid attention to fashion and I have no idea about “color palettes” or…other important fashion-adjacent terms.

Reality: I am working full-time and I’m doing school full-time, like, three times over considering all my extra courses and programs. Also, I’ve got several other projects I’m working on. Also also, I’m living in a van that doesn’t have electricity outside of a 1000-watt Jackery, which means I’ll be trying to complete this in hidden corners at work and my SO’s place. If I can’t manage this, I’m not going to be mean to myself or get discouraged. I’m going to appreciate that I gave it a try and choose a different future event for another sewing challenge that’ll hopefully have more success. No self-hate here for attempting something new!

I use a notebook for my to-do list now and it goes on a week-by-week basis. I average having around 20 items to accomplish per week, but I don’t stress myself about it if I can’t manage everything. I’ve got 4 main writing projects going on right now and every week, each of those projects has a word count goal. This post is going to help me keep track of how many words each of those projects should have by the end of each week.

I do that on paper too, but it’ll be satisfying to be able to strike-through each week as I finish it; I could hypothetically do that for the paper version too, but it might impair my ability to read it.

Something you should know is that, for my to-do list, I only do about 3 weeks per month. The extra days are at the end of the month and they’re meant to help me catch up on anything I haven’t been able to do. I also keep a low word count as my weekly milestone for each project in order to not fall behind. I hope to get ahead and have about 20k words for each of the 4 projects written by the beginning of June. Again, not going to pressure myself about it too much either. I’m also crazy busy with all my education stuff.

The projects are: greek mythology, collector’s, family, and chess. You may recognize a few of these, as I’ve mentioned them before. I’ve completely started over, so any previous word counts are not applicable.

Week 1, Jan 8-15: greek mythology, 500 ✅

Week 2, Jan 16-23: greek mythology, 1k ✅

Week 3, Jan 24-31: greek mythology, 1.5k ✅

Week 4, Feb 5-12: greek mythology, 2.2k & collector’s, 700 ✅

Week 5, Feb 13-20: greek mythology, 2.9k & collector’s, 1.4k & chess, 700

Week 6, Feb 21-29: greek mythology, 3.6k & collector’s, 2.1k & chess, 1.4k & family, 700

Week 7, Mar 6-13: greek mythology, 4.3k & collector’s, 2.8k & chess, 2.1k & family, 1.4k

Week 8, Mar 14-21: greek mythology, 4.8k & collector’s, 3.6k & chess, 2.9k & family, 1.9k

Week 9, Mar 22-29: greek mythology, 5.3k & collector’s, 4.6k & chess, 3.4k & family, 2.4k

I’m going to use this post to keep track of what I’ve read for the year and what I hope to read. I’m one of those “former gifted kids” who devoured books in school and slowly lost the ability to do that as I got older. I don’t think I’ll ever get back to how I was and I’m not going to try, but I do want to work more reading into my schedule than I have now.

Currently, all of my reading comes from books assigned in college courses and fanfiction.

I’m absolutely going to pad my list with aforementioned books I’ve read for my classes, but I bet you won’t be able to identify which ones are on a syllabus and which ones aren’t. My interests are extremely varied.

TBR:

Flight of Icarus by Caitlin Schneiderhan

The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

Superman’s Not Coming by Erin Brockovich

On Writing by Stephen King

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Vietnam War by Geoffrey Ward & Ken Burns

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer

What is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology by Addy Pross

Launching a Business: The First 100 Days by Bruce Barringer

The Art of War in the Middle Ages by Charles Oman

Magic: A History by Chris Gosden

Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo

Paper Towns by John Green

Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown

Treasury of Greek Mythology by Donna Napoli

Mythos by Stephen Fry

Uncovering Greek Mythology by Lucas Russo

The Martian by Andy Weir

I’m with the Band by Pamela Des Barres

Red Water by Lisa Courtaway

The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Baker

The Storyteller’s Secret by Sejal Badani

It’s my first day back to work after a 2-week vacation. I used comp time to cover it because I severely overworked myself during the holidays, so I’m not sure if I’m actually more “rested” or just catching up on what I missed. Either way, I’m dealing with a severe case of post-vacay-existential-crisis that has me questioning my entire life. I’ve had this job for over two years now and it’s nice, I love the environment and I feel like they care about their employees, but lately I’ve had an increasing feeling of…complicity.

“Comfort breeds complicity” and all. I think I need to move on soon, even though the thought of it terrifies me. This is the best job I’ve had; it’s the best paying, the best work culture, the best work, and more, but none of that is saying much. My salary is $39k and I came to this job from one that paid $11/hour and was very toxic.

I think I’ve maybe outgrown this job. I think if I stay…I’ll stop improving. But I’m worried I’ll regret leaving. There’s always the chance of having to backslide and ending up in a worst position. I hope that I get something lined up soon so I can move on.

Anyway, outside of that, I’ve been dealing with an ongoing medical issue. I have another appointment tomorrow where I hope we’ll come up with a game-plan to deal with it, but we’ll see. It’s a somewhat sensitive issue and I live in a very conservative state.

I also still have two weeks of comp time (yes, I had a month total of comp time that I accumulated over the span of three months) that I’d like to use sooner rather than later, to have less holding me back if when I decide to leave.

Still working on my college classes and my numerous other educational pursuits, as well as my independent projects. It’s quite the juggling act lately, but I’ve felt a lot more purposeful in my personal life as a result.

I like it.

Oh my gosh, now to move on to frivolous things, I highly recommend the show Gyeonseong Creature on Netflix. I’ve been watching it lately and I love it! I’m reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and I’ve been obsessed with the video game Vigor. (The PalWorld fixation has come and gone for me already. Might revisit later.) Also, super disappointed about Madame Web. I haven’t watched it, but the reviews and clips on social media are plenty reason to not put myself through unnecessary hardship.

What else? I’m obsessed with smoothies lately! I use frozen fruit, plain yogurt, vanilla protein powder, super creamy oat milk, and white chocolate to make them AMAZING.

Unit 1: Introduction to Insurance

Risk is the possibility that loss will occur. When a person purchases insurance, the risks they might face include storm damage, fire, theft, or a car accident.

Insurance is a contract that transfers the risk of financial loss from an individual or business to an insurance company.

Q1: Which of the following property policy forms should be used when it is difficult to provide the insurance company with an accurate statement of values because of fluctuations in inventory from month to month?

A: Reporting form

Reference:

US TEFL Methodology Course, 2/8

Unit 1: Understanding teacher and student roles

16 modules

Unit 2: Teaching structures, strategies and methods

19 modules

Unit 3: Activities in the classroom

20 modules

Unit 4: Classroom management, correcting errors and giving feedback

27 modules

Unit 5: Teaching vocabulary and functions

14 modules

Unit 6: Teaching, reading and listening

13 modules

Unit 7: Teaching, writing and speaking

16 modules

Unit 8: Introduction to phonology

28 modules

Unit 9: Teaching young learners

17 modules

Unit 10: Teaching Business English

16 modules

Unit 11: Teaching one-to-one

11 modules

Unit 12: A PPP lesson

Alright, the deadline for dropping courses without having to pay for them has officially passed. I am locked in for the semester with 18 hours of classes and a bill of approximately $7.6k. If I want my degree I still have 2 semesters after this, so I need to book it on finishing out the other programs I’m doing (TEFL certification, Video Game Dev, and Kaplan’s claims adjuster course). Hopefully I can put them to good use once completed and pay this off before I’m saddled with loans for the rest of my life. (It probably wouldn’t be the rest of my life since I’ve already completed the first half of my degree.)

Living on the edge, amiright?

AFTER completing one or more of the other programs I’m in, I might also enroll in a real estate course. I wouldn’t do it full-time, but realtors in my area average 2-3 houses annually while working part-time and the commission on that would be around the salary of a minimum wage job. It would be more flexible with my actual full-time job too. The issue is that I hope to move out of state soon, but depending on which state, I could transfer that real estate license over. I’m still considering it. It’ll depend on if I can land a remote claims adjuster job and/or a remote job as a TEFL instructor upon completion of the programs.

I’m still working to improve my (again: minimal) art skills. It’s a running item on my weekly to-do list, to complete at minimum 2 pencil sketches. The first three images are things I completed yesterday. I love them dearly.

I would like to reiterate that these are not original; I found art online and copied it for the practice. I did NOT create these on my own. I’m using a 0.9mm mechanical pencil and a small 5inx7in notebook with blank pages from Dollar General.

I feel like this year was fairly “meh” to be honest. I don’t recall much of importance happening.

The basic overview: I turned 25 and hit my 2-year anniversary at my current job, my 4-year anniversary working in the nonprofit sector, and my 6-year anniversary with my SO. I got promoted to a Supervisor position and became a Supervisor of a separate program associated with my job. I got my passport, started a retirement account at my job (separate from my individual Roth IRA account), and opened a money market account. I totaled a vehicle, although it wasn’t my fault. I got my wisdom teeth removed and I took a roadtrip to Las Vegas. I finished a basic How to Video Game Development course. Then I proceeded to enroll in a 200-Hour TEFL Certificate course, a 600-hour Video Game Development course, and college f/t.

Ongoing Projects:

greek fiction book• family restaurant fiction book• mechanic fiction book• clean-up crew fiction book• collector’s item fiction book• TT-inspired fiction book• strategist medieval fiction book• god-heavy medieval fiction book• modern magic fiction book• magic villain script/animated movie• chemicals nonfiction book• children’s book & theme song & season 1 script• party-inspired card game• book-inspired card game• strategy-inspired board game• big video game• horror video game• project app• picture website

Most-Watched Movies:

Note: These aren’t always movies that came out this year, but these are the movies that I watched the most.

•The Big Short• Nimona• Last Holiday (w/ Queen Latifah)• Bohemian Rhapsody• Spotlight• The Laundromat• Colombiana

Most-Played Video Games: