*tears*

The good, exciting news is that we got a dog. He is a three year old Pembroke Welsh Corgi named Captain. Excellent dog. We can’t believe how well we did with him. Our family is growing.

Captain lived with us, illegally, for about three days. Friday afternoon Josh packed up the rest of his non-furniture stuff and drove home with the Captain in the passenger seat. My family drove away and lives two hundred miles from me for a minimum of two years. I got a family and three days later it drove away.

I’ll be driving home Friday night and staying til Monday afternoon with them.

I’ve been sleeping on the couch since they left. Can’t bear to go back to that big empty bed and start two years of sleeping in our bed alone. I know the separateness is inevitable and is now a fact of our life, already, but I can’t bear to really begin it yet.

I’ve been crying on and off since I got home from work last night around 7.

Get your shit together kid

You've grown into an asshole. A person of whom I am no longer proud and with whom I am no longer impressed. Instead of hope and happiness, I feel fear for you every day. You used to simply inspire me and now you inspire tears and tangible heartache that makes me wonder if I'm not really too young for a heart attack.

PRINCE HARRY IS IN MY COUNTRY

I haven't updated in a while and I was planning to update frequently to slow down my verbal diarrhea when I do get out around other people. So I come on here and use shitty grammar, including run-on sentences.

What I really wanted to say today is that
PRINCE HARRY IS IN MY COUNTRY AND I'M STUCK HERE

Also, work was exhausting like none other today, but wonderfully productive. I assisted in giving almost 200 middle school kids some education and entertainment. I made friends with a teacher today who loved me and is willing to work her curriculum around ME so *I* can come back to their school NEXT MAY (this is the farthest in advance we've EVER had a race scheduled).

Finally, blogger is being shitty today as well. I don't have the center option, and my type is appearing in a very stark font that looks more like HTML than I'd like. Blogger, you may have to be given up on in lieu of my other blog, which has the last few posts copied from here.

I hadn’t realized that man had brought credibility to ANYTHING, but whatever.

Drove to MC last night to meet Mom for dinner and a movie and shopping. Had some Mexican at a place I’d gone to several times while Josh was living in MC and it was not nearly as good as I remember. Very disappointing taco salad (wink). Chatted with Mom about my plans for Josh taking this job and me staying here and my hopes for a career lasting more than a few months. Mom talked about her life and work and such. Went to the new Night at the Museum movie, which was awesome. Hank Azaria should definitely win some kind of award for it. I may buy this movie when it gets to the $5 bin at WalMart (even though I hate the idea of giving that store my money [=support]).

Josh was still in MSP last night with the family and of course the sisters and mothers waned to go shopping. Josh, his dad, and the “graduating” sister’s boyfriend wanted nothing to do with that, so the went to the new Star Trek movie, was they say was just awesome. I think I’ll take their word for it.

Josh started talking about how the boyfriend was a great guy who bought the movie tickets and how the parents just loved him and I just didn’t want to hear any of it. I’m sure they worship the ground he walks on and would eat his shit if he asked. Hell, should he ask, they’d ask if he could graciously bend over so they can get it fresh out of his ass. It’s been four years and I wasn’t even invited. Fuck you.

Watching Jesus Camp. Sadness. Pity. Waste. This woman thinks Dubya brought credibility to Christianity. I hadn’t realized that man had brought credibility to ANYTHING, but whatever.

Rode my bike for about an hour this morning, several miles. Pretty awesome.

In which I bitch and moan for several hundred words

There is more to this. We looked for a place halfway between where we would both be working and it’s a minimum 80 mile ONE WAY commute for both of us. Gas, car maintenance, and the psychological and emotional toll are way too much.

I would love to go with him to where he will be working, but that is central-western Iowa. There are no jobs listed on hotjobs, careerbuilder, cumulusjobs, Iowa Workforce Development, the local newspapers, monster, or local business’s “careers” or “employment” pages. Josh got this job because his dad owns 51% of the business he’d be working for and his dad’s parents own the other 49%. It would be nepotism if it weren’t a family-owned business. This job was never listed on anything, anywhere. My mom said she might be able to get me a job as a TA at the public high school where she works, but it would be $7.50 an hour. $1000 a month in various inflexible loan payments dictates that this is not a possibility.

He’s saying now he might not take the job because he doesn’t want to go without me. What he’s failing to fully realize is that just because of who I am, my nature, I can’t live with myself knowing that I’m the reason he didn’t take this opportunity for excellent career experience and money. When we move on to somewhere else (as we’d both DESPERATELY love to someday, hopefully) and he can’t get a job else where that’s good because he doesn’t have the kind of experience he could get here, it will be my fault for holding him back from taking this job. Or when we decide to buy a house or have kids or something else expensive and he’s not making the kind of money he could be making had he taken this job to build his resume and make more money wherever we are at that time, it will be my fault.

Of course he won’t see it that way because it was HIS decision that only HE could make. That’s how most people will see it, but that is not how I will see it. Because there is EXACTLY ONE reason he wouldn’t take this job. And that one reason is ME. It’s on me. But at the same time it’s not about ME. But somehow this does make it about me. It’s miserable.

And it gets more stressful. Our grant and/or sponsorship has not yet come through, so I don’t know yet if I even have a job here. The people who are in charge of deciding if we get the money in either of these ways know that we NEED to know NOW whether or not we have the money because we are OUT of money on June 30. Then both me and my boss are out of a job and our educational program is in the toilet. They KNOW THIS. They also know that I just finished school, which they also know means I have student loans coming due 6 months after I graduate, which they KNOW is coincidentally the month THEY DECIDE TO MAKE ME UNEMPLOYED.

I have applied for a lot of jobs, but with this economy (my GOD I hate the sound of those words coming from me-what kind of excuse schlock is that?!), I send out 15-20 resumes and hear back from about one. And that’s sometimes an interview, usually a rejection. One response for ever 15-20 resumes. Awesome.

There’s also the issue of our lease, which is signed and runs through May 2010. We know the place is a freakin steal, being a decent quality, 5 blocks from the university, free cable/internet/water/garbage, less than $450 a month, small enough to have dirt cheap utilities even in the winter but still large enough not to feel cramped or like a glorified closet, and has free off-street parking. Our lease has an explicit prohibition on sub-leasing, but I think we could do it anyway. But not until August, because it is SUMMER now, and anyone looking for an apartment like ours would have one by now. The lookers will come in late July.

It’s all quite a bit, and Josh is gone this weekend watching his sister “graduate” from “college”. I’m here alone and my last friends in this town are leaving today. They just pulled their huge dual-cab truck with big trailer onto the lawn and are loading the last of their stuff. Last friends in this town? I’m still living in the town I went to college in, which is where one is to move, go to school, grow up a little, make some friends, and then LEAVE. I got a job at the college, so I’m still here while everyone I went to school with and befriended has moved away. No friends to make? How to most people make most of their friends? Work-they hang out with their coworkers and form friendships. My coworkers-I have 7, all over the age of 50, with one exception, who is 35 and has two babies at home. Local clubs to join? In smalltown Iowa? They’re called “churches”, which I call “generally hateful, ignorant nonsense.”

Go me.

Your dad sucks

Josh got offered a job back home. In crapass Iowa, working for his family. It’s great money, great experience, and cheap living (since he’ll probably be living in a family-owned apartment). It’s also 200 miles from OUR home, where I have a job (so far, haven’t heard back yet if the grant or sponsorship is going to go through for me to keep the job past July 31) and where WE have a lease (he will be paying his half of the rent if he takes this job even though he won’t be living here, since he’ll be leaving and saddling me with the bill).

We’ll see each other weekends again, doing the long distance thing AGAIN, but it won’t be the same as when we did it for two years two years ago when we first started dating. This will be TWICE as far away and we’ll both be twice as busy.

The other question remaining is for how long he’ll be stuck there doing this. I plan (we all know about the best-laid plans) to stay at my current job until May of 2010, at which point my lease here is up and I can move to the town of whatever grad school I get into and decide to go to. There is one of those schools in Iowa and it’s over four hours from where Josh would be working should he choose to take this job. It’s very likely I won’t go there because even though it’s in-state, it’s still more expensive than some of the out-of-state places and its financial aid is extremely competitive. So I could be not just hundreds of miles away, but STATES away. Would he be able to get away from this job after just a year to move on with me or is he going to be stuck there while I move on and this be the end of us?

Or should I put off my plans and move back home with him for year so he can get more experience and give our relationship a little more stability?

Right now it’s all up to him. The only thing stopping him from quitting his job here and moving on to this new opportunity (that pays almost three times what he makes here and will be a great resume builder) is ME.

That’s right; I’m the bitch holding him back. If he doesn’t take this job just because of me, then he’ll resent me because he’ll be stuck here not getting this experience and money and/or resent himself for letting it go. If he takes it I’ll be left here in our half-empty apartment and it might spell the end for us, though I desperately hope not.

Ugh

Josh’s dad offered him a great job back home today. Lots of money in a good working environment.

It’s also 200 miles from here.

It’s also a blatant ploy to 1) get Josh to move back home and 2) get him away from me because they know I have a good job I can’t give up because there are no jobs back home (other than this one, of course).

I’m terrified and torn. I want him to take the job because it would mean financial security. I don’t want him to take it because it would mean we would either be back to long distance relationship or we’d move there and be owned by his parents.

I hate his mother.

If it comes to it and I don’t get the money to keep my job past June, we might just go. He’d be making enough to support us both and I wouldn’t have a job here.

As a backup, I have asked a friend with a two bedroom condo in Iowa City if her second bedroom will be available (she was going to give it to her sister if her sister went to college in that town, but I don’t know what the sister is doing) and I can rent it, because there are more job possibilities in Iowa City than here.

But I just don’t know. It was a long and crappy day and I didn’t really want to come home to internal conflict.