Why is it that Target is smart enough to deny me a two hundred dollar credit line but the government was dumb enough to loan me nearly fourty thousand?

They were so dumb. I have so much college loan debt and it is quckly spiraling out of control. I don't even know where all of the loans came from but I keep getting these threatening letters. It is so complicated. And I don't know enough about consolidation (though I know enough to know that I should do it and haven't).

I am really trying to keep up with it, too, but there is so much to do. For every loan there is a different way to defer it. Some are deferred by Teach for America, some deferred because I work at a poor school. Each type requires a different form and different people signing it. Different fax numbers. Different companies.

I am so overwhelmed that I have decided to spend the day sitting in the sun reading. That will help my loans!  ¶ 2:36 PM

  Oh, spring break is doing nothing productive for my brain.

I am watching Maury...backsliding into my old talk show habits. Talk shows are what I was obsessed with before reality tv.

But the real news is- what in the world has happened to television? It is like you can say anything on tv now. Here is a sampling of the things I heard today on television at 3pm:

"Maury, he smelled like FISH! Fish, ya'll. He wasn't at no Long John Silvers!"

"She is a bitch of all bitches! Bitch, bitch, BITCH!"

"I'm tired of sniffing at his boxers."

Ewwwww.

How can they say stuff like that? Gross, first of all. But secondly, it is obscene, isn't it? Ewww.  ¶ 3:06 PM

  I did reschedule my date. He seemes very nice. I was won over when he suggested that after lunch we could either go to a giant flea market or go watch an IMAX movie about elephants. Interesting ideas. I'm sold on the flea-market. I just hope that he doesn't mind that I will make fun of every single thing. But I guess if he does mind, he is not for me. Good test.

I just spent the last hour in the craft store pretending to myself that I am crafty. As I walked down each aisle, I imagined myself the kind of girl who was going to take up scrapbooking in a real way. I could imagine myself collecting small and interesting memorabilia from everywhere that I go and turning it into an amazing and creative scrapbook. I thought that I would be just the kind of woman who would have shoeboxes full of unique scraps of paper that I would twist and cut with scissors that cut in shapes like zig-zag and curves! I could imagine giving my friends amazing gifts that took me weeks to make and picture their eyes tearing as they looked through them. I even had exacto-knives and glue in my hands when my dream bubble exploded and I remembered that I have tons of craft stuff I don't use. And that I am not terribly creative in that way. And that I don't want to make scrapbooks. Oh well.

PS. D- I washed the orange blanket!  ¶ 9:02 PM

  I found one of the best reasons to back out of a date ever!

Tornado warning!

As I was driving, the radio started to warn me of the apocalypse-like conditions I should expect today in Eastern Carolina and, Californian that I am, I turned right around.

I don't want a tornado. No I don't.  ¶ 12:33 PM

  I have a blind date this afternoon in Raleigh. I have been sitting here this morning, feeling nauseated, trying to think of reasons to back out of it. I hate dating in so many ways. The fear of feeling awkward. I don't fear rejection so much. I fear lapses in conversation and laughing at the wrong moments...and not laughing at the right moments. Ugh.

But I have figured out a way to make this all better! I am going to pretend that I am secret shopping him! I am going to pretend that I have a survey in my car and that nothing that is going on has anything really to do with me at all. If he is boring or lame I will just pretend that I am going to be reporting him to his superiors in order to help him improve his service! Wish me luck.  ¶ 10:38 AM

  Secret shopping is really the best job in the world for me. It satisfies two very strong desires in me: the desire to lie and the desire to feel superior.

I started off today at a car dealership pretending to be shopping for a particular car. My instructions were to claim that my "husband/wife/partner" and I decided to get a new car because "our family is growing". I have posted before about my love of lying to strangers and creating new identities for myself, but in my defense this time it was my JOB to lie. I had so much fun in that car dealership. I went on and on about my "life". I told the dealer that my husband Joe and I had just moved here from San Francisco. I didn't think my story through and was a little caught off guard when he asked me what Joe did for a living. Suddenly I found myself spinning this yarn about how Joe was an accountant but he really didn't care for such a mathmatical life. In high school he had been a pretty good artist but his military father discouraged him so he went to Harvard Business school. After five years of doing accounting in the city, when we found out we were expecting our first baby we decided together to just pack it all in and move somewhere new (Rocky Mount). Now, Joe was finally exploring his artistic side and I was going to support us all by teaching. I actually got a little tear in my eye when I told the man how proud of Joe I am. Just packin' it all in like that.

Then I got to go to a toy store and do a secret shop. This one wasn't as fun because it didn't have the one on one time that shopping for a car has. But it was fun in that I received terrible service. But instead of feeling completely impotent about the horrible service I was getting, I felt hugely powerful. I felt such enormous satisfaction when Jeremy (who had spent our interaction sighing and rolling his eyes when I asked for help and then just pointing me in the general direction of the Diaper Genie instead of taking me to the actual) gave me his name because I knew that his manager would get a full report on his awful service. And I was almost gleeful when Mysty took over six minutes to ring up the woman in front of me because I knew her name would be on my little form, too. I felt very superior to everyone as I strode through the business armed with a pen and a survey.

I also made nearly thirty dollars today. Yee-haw!  ¶ 9:38 PM

  Today I went to Greenville, North Carolina to go to church. I decided to check out the Unitarian church there in hopes of finding some liberals amid all the East Carolina madness.

I drove about an hour to get there. The landscape between Rocky Mount and Greenville is pretty bleak. It is pretty, in its way, but it is also miles and miles of empty land with a few shacks here and there. And when I say shacks, I am talking about the kind of housing that many of us who are not from here have never seen before. There is something very unique about rural poverty and the way of living out there. Very different from urban poverty. I saw a whole family cooking something outside on a fire...I'd like to think it was a barbeque, but from the way the place was set up, they may cook outside because they don't have a stove. The table was out there and everything.

The church I went to was pretty cool. There were lots of nice people there and I was happy to see the presence of lots of rainbow flags on some people's nametags. There was this one very elderly woman (like eighty or something) who was wearing one and then she sat next to this other very elderly woman and held her hand. I don't know why it is so shocking to see elderly gay people...I mean, everyone gets old, right? But it was shocking. It was so cool I got a little teary.

I think that I will probably go back again. It is something to do and the drive is not too long and pretty interesting.  ¶ 1:08 PM