i have an interview for a job i would really like to have tomorrow. I am posting this picture i took a month or so ago to remind myself that i can look nice if i try (even in a headscarf and tanktop). i have my cute-ish but still business casual outfit picked out, but i feel like i’ll chicken out and wear something more comfortable. the job is at a local used bookstore chain, and i have a friend who worked there for years and had nothing but nice things to say about it. after filling out their online application, i know it is one of those interviews i can be more myself (there were a few questions asking about applicant’s taste in books and music), so i want to try to dress to match my personality better. i think i have pretty good taste and style, but i am far too lazy to ever take the time to display it. my new years resolution this year was to be more feminine, and i have been trying. i have two dresses i can wear for almost any occasion, both plain black (my safety color. one is a sun dress the other is long sleeved that i usually wear in the winter w/ tights) and one SUPER cute one I got at H&M recently (navy w/ white & red polka dots) that is slightly more dressy and i wish i had more chances to wear. i’ve been wearing the sundress pretty regularly, and i also got a black maxi skirt from target (seriously the most comfortable thing i own!) and i’ve been wearing it to death. and now that i live downtown, i’m closer to all these fucking fabulous antique shops, and am determined to get some vintage clothes for once. I have a weird figure, so vintage clothing has always been difficult for me. I am 5’3” and wear a 38G bra, making clothes in general difficult. but i have been having some decent luck recently, and i do wish i had bought this adorable dress i found last month
it was the first vintage item i had ever tried on that actually fit. it was $36 and i had the cash at the time and i really kick myself for not buying it. i am really hoping it is still there when i have the money again. it was one of the less dazzling things at this shop (Antique Sugar in Phoenix. AMAZING selection), so i’m hoping everyone else has passed over it. but ANYWAY, i am trying to build myself up before this interview because when i’m nervous, i blow it. all the jobs i’ve gotten on the spot (or reasonably quick) are ones i went into the interview with a nonchalant and calm attitude. the two best interviews i’ve had were both when i already had a job, so i am hoping this will be the case here too. i am comfortable in my current job and actually like the work that i do and i like my bosses (and doubt i will ever be so lucky to have such relatively nice managers again) and they do make me feel appreciated which i’ve never experienced at a job before. but i recently got my annual review and got the maximum raise: $0.29. my last raise was $0.20, and then they had to raise it another $0.05 because minimum wage went up. I now making a whopping $8.54/hr. after two years. i realized, at this rate it would take me another two years to just make $9/hr, which still isn’t enough to live on, especially with these part time hours. even with this raise, i am still bringing home less than $200 per paycheck. SO even if this other place only pays what i am currently making, the job is full time, so it will still more then double what i am now (how pathetic is that?). my friend who worked there said they were wonderful and had a bunch of annual paid holidays and good benefits, so i REALLY want this job.
sorry for this long and completely pointless rant. if anyone got through this whole thing, please keep your fingers crossed for me. i must go to bed now.
- what some girl said to me in economics class senior year of high school. I remember saying like “um… thaaanks”. I’m still not entirely sure what ‘person like you’ actually meant. it’s been 10 years (ugh) and it still perturbs me.
this reminds me of the Starlite Motel in Mesa!
which was probably my favorite things about growing up there. I have missed it the past few years
They’ve been trying to raise the money for her repair (to the tune of $63,000), but I haven’t heard anything in a while. I hope she returns someday.
(Source: grottu, via teen-witches)
College Girls is a light cultural history of women’s higher education in the US. Organized by topic rather than chronologically, the book focuses on how dating, fashion, and wifely expectations impacted the lives of college girls from the 1830s through the 1960s. A good mix of colleges are represented, from land grant colleges to historically black universities, but particular attention is paid to the seven sisters as both models for later programs and havens of wacky traditions.
Tumblr loves vintage images of women from the 1920s-1960s, but there isn’t a lot of information about what life was like for those women. I think this weighty tome (over 400 pages) would be particularly enjoyed by those who have daydreamed about being a stylish co-ed back in the day. Partly for the fashion information and cute traditions, but also to better understand the downsides of life as a Victorian lady, flapper, or bobbysoxer.
College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now on Amazon
I read this a couple years ago, and thought it was ok. I made friends with a girl at my old job after seeing a copy of The Feminine Mystique on her desk and struck up a conversation with her. I told her about Bitchfest, which I had just finished reading and she told me about College Girls which she had just finished. So we swapped. Only I finished this within a week or so and returned the book thereafter. But I was never to see my copy of Bitchfest again. She never did finish it and after a couple months she got fired and I think only saw her twice after that. It sucks on two counts, because I only got to read Bitchfest once, and the girl, Katie, was a really cool girl actually. I taught her to knit in between calls (we worked at an in-bound call center) and I recorded the entire first season of The Riches for her on my DVR, and she took me out for my first sushi and my first Thai meals. I do wish we had kept in touch better. (come to think of it, she never returned a beginners knitting book I loaned to her, as well as a set of plastic knitting needles. argh. not that I miss them, I am more advanced than that book and I prefer to knit with bamboo needles, but still. I hate when my things aren’t returned to me. I still hold a grudge towards a girl who I loaned my copy of Exquisite Corpse to senior year of high school and she never returned it. it’s been 10 years, and I still won’t accept her friend request on facebook)
(via wespeakgirl)
my mister and i got into a horrendous fight tonight and it was so bad i called my mother to come all the way out to phoenix and pick my ass up. by the time i had packed a few things and wrote a note telling him to burn our marriage cert. and sell my wedding and engagement rings, he was texting me apologies and simultaneously accusing me of ‘planning to leave him’. i told him that i wasn’t leaving him but that we needed a breather, and i would just stay the one night. he came back inside and we tried talking it through and he still doesn’t get it. we were both so tired and totally spent of our anger (he called me a cunt and i called him greedy. funny though he thinks my comments were ‘hateful’). but my mom was already on her way and low on gas to begin with (it is about a 40 minute drive), so i had to go with her. plus i think the night apart will do us or at least him good. see what happens when he treats the person he purports to love like a piece of shit. i was going to leave behind my panda pillow pet (a gift from him) but he looked crushed when i told him. so i took her.
now i’m at my moms, on my little brother’s laptop which i guilted him into letting me use. she made me a frozen pizza and showed me pictures of my baby nephew and listened patiently while i tried to explain Hard Candy to her. but it’s hot in here and i hate sleeping on her couch (i did it for nearly a year when i had to move back in in 2008, and trust me, it fucking sucks), and my older brother will be here at 7am to drop off his son for my mom to babysit. it is sick but i just wish i was at home. more than anything i just want my computer and my bed and my 74 degree house, more than him at the moment. i hate to admit it but i do miss him already, but i am still pissed off at him. i don’t think we’re ever going to make this thing work. he doesn’t seem to understand me or even want to really. i just don’t know how much longer i can take this.
my mister declared today a holiday: International Panda Appreciation Day (which is an actual holiday we came to find out, on April 16th, which just happens to be our wedding anniversary. go fig), and decided to shower me with presents. His nickname for me is Panda, all because one day I used a little drawing of a panda that said ‘sad panda’ as my facebook profile picture. This started a long running gag, and now I have a small collection of panda things (ok, it’s not that small of a collection anymore. all that panda hello kitty stuff last year didn’t help matters), and we’ve created a little comic book character that will never be put down on paper because neither of us can draw, based partly on me, but as a panda. We’re really big dorks, that goes without saying.
Really he made up the excuse to buy me this Holga that was on clearance from Urban Outfitters (plus a two-pack of black & white film) that I was looking at a few day ago, but put back because I never really like to buy myself anything. 
I am super excited to use it, but I want to make sure to do it right and not waste the film or the money processing the film.
I reminded him that it was Free Comic Book Day so we headed out to All About Books & Comics for our free Serenity and Buffy comics (which is really the whole reason I wanted to go)
We wandered around for a while, he tried to get me to let him buy me the Ghost World special edition hard cover I found last time we were there. I changed the subject, and we looked at the new releases, when a cover caught my eye that reminded me of Daniel Clowes’ work. It wasn’t Clowes, but something called Optic Nerve and it looked super interesting. So at less than $3 each, I bought the two issues they had on hand (#5 & #7). I also happened to pick up an issue of American Vampire and it actually looked sort of interesting, so I figured, why not?
Comics have always been a part of my life in a peripheral way because my older brother was always really into them, and tried his damnedest to get me into them as well. While I always loved reading his Marvel Book of the Dead anthologies and the like, I could never get into the traditional Marvel and DC stuff he read in the 90’s. I remember he suggested Blue Monday to me, and I ended up reading all of his copies in high school and really liked them. I wish I could actually find them again because I think my mister would really dig them. Nothing really interested me until I was a senior in high school and my friend Leah brought her copy of Jhonen Vasquez’s I Feel Sick #1 to school. At least a year later, my brother dropped me off somewhere and asked if I wanted anything from Atomic Comics, and I asked for I Feel Sick. And he actually got it for me! it was very unlike him to really go out of his way for me (he was already going to the comic shop, but that he actually sought out something that I asked for, something that he didn’t know what it was). I absolutely loved and still love that comic, and it was such a disappointment that it turned out to be only two issues, and the second one was was sort of a let down. I still think about getting the dolly, Sickness, tattooed on me someday. 
ANYWAY… I hard a hard time getting into any other comics after that. I got interested in a lot of graphic novels, most of which I still haven’t read (mostly Alan Moore stuff), except Ghost World and The Crow by James O’Barr. I’ve been reading the Serenity comics, but almost has more to do with love for Firefly then actually being interested in comics. But now I have quite a reading list. I tore through the free Buffy/The Guild and Serenity/Star Wars comics almost right when I got home, but I’m saving the Optic Nerve and American Vampire for later. I’m in the middle of reading Orlando by Virginia Woolf (which I found at the Goodwill for $2) and really want to finish it before starting something else.
So this was a really long and stupid post that no one is going to read. whatever.
i FINALLY sort of figured out how to tie my hair in a scarf! i have been trying to do this for years, but tonight with boredom setting in and the help of a few youtube videos, i finally got a sloppy version down.
(nevermind my very messy house. we’re still in the process of moving in)
I just noticed that my friend L is friends on facebook with this guy who raped my friend in high school. At the time of the rape she didn’t do anything because she was dating him and they were fooling around at the time, so at first she didn’t think it was a big deal. when she finally dumped him, he assaulted her again, forcing his fingers inside her. unfortunately she didn’t tell me any of this for months, and in the mean time this guy started dating another one of my friends. She gave him her virginity consensually, but a few months later when she finally dumped him, he tried to assault her as well. This all happened over summer break, and the initial friend didn’t tell me about her rape until August or September, and didn’t even really consider it rape until a year or so later.
So my question is, do I tell L who this guy really is? L knows both of these girls as well, and was friends with them at the time of the assault (i think i was the only one who was told about the first one, and one of a only a few who knows about the second). Do I tell her or could it be seen as a breech of privacy of the two victims? None of us really talks to the first girl I mentioned (no ill feelings, we’ve just grown apart from her i guess), and the second friend would tell her if it came down to it. Or maybe she wont’ care, that whole ‘it was a long time ago’ song and dance… I really want to tell her because I hate this guy with so much passion, and if the situation were reversed, I would certainly want to know if someone I was friends with was a rapist.
What should I do?
in case you were wondering, this is what I look like when I’m listening to The Pogues on my headphones in the dark.
Fascinating, I know.