by Stacie
Howdy, friends. There's no politics or policy in this post, so feel free to keep scrolling.
I just felt like recapping the last year of my life, very quickly, because today may be a momentous day.
April 2007: Broke up with girlfriend of 4+ years.
Spring/Summer 2007: Recorded spoken word record, planned tour.
August 2007: Attended National Poetry Slam in Austin, TX all solo like.
Late August 2007: Got laid off from job of 4 years.
September-October 2007: Toured Southeast with spoken word record.
October 2007-present: Job hunted. Wrote poems. Planned summer tour. Paced my house letting the booming sound of my own voice bounce off the hardwood floors and the walls and loved every damn second of it.
March 2008: Ex-girlfriend (did you forget her?) finally moves out of my house.
My ex... well, she's another creative type and one facet of that was that she was sometimes creative with calendars and bill paying. Actually, that was a pretty regular aspect of her creativity. It wasn't a huge deal when I had a steady income, but obviously after the layoffs, it became a small catastrophe for me to have to cover the bills and await reimbursement, and our relationship by then had degraded to such a point that any attempts to discuss it resulted in apparent psychic trauma. It's been a bad go of things with the ex.
Today, my new housemate is moving in. Interesting story there, maybe: I've never met her. We've been MySpace "friends" for quite a long time, exchanged the occasional e-mail as she's interested in my spoken word career (such as it is), and had been planning a move to Atlanta for the last year or so. She'll be arriving from Pittsburgh (hey Fester, we're stealing your ladies!) later today, and we have discussed at length the possibility that this could be a real nightmare situation for one or both of us, and agreed that if that's the case, we'll just be upfront about it and handle it. I always have to cover the worst case scenario to assuage my limitless anxiety.
The upsides: my bills will reduce considerably, relieving a lot of pressure. If it works alright, I'll have what I think is a great new friend. We do vibe on a lot of stuff, and in truth, not having an office to go to, I get a little lonely sometimes and often find myself out at bars just for the social aspect of it when I'm not necessarily even in the mood to drink. And of course, end up hammered, so hopefully that'll happen less often.
Anyway, I have a little checklist of things to do before she arrives later, including scouring my -- our -- kitchen floor and vacuuming up the dog hair that accumulates every damn where. It feels like a pretty momentous day. I haven't had a roommate (aside from my girlfriend) in about five years, and I'm a little eager to apply all these interpersonal skills I've acquired in that time to this new situation. And to have somebody around. Another First Reader for my poetry (I have a friend who lives in my backyard cottage who does this job admirably, but I love First Readers), someone to turn me on to new music or films, or just someone to say, "Hey, wanna go do something?" to when I'm bored. I think my backyard friend maybe needs a bit of a break from me.
So the Casa de Blue Compound is about to expand by one, giving us three humans and four dogs in two houses. And I've got a lot of work to do before she arrives, so I'm going to go do it. Enjoy your Friday.