Just Another Tree

My name is "Sarah." I work at "X Corp" in online marketing and development. I am a new grad trying to survive in a new town while making sure my pint-sized washer doesn't burn this bitch down. I come from a place with many trees. I now hail from a place with many cars and drunk college students ("Get off my lawn!!"). I hope I don't die soon because this "being an adult" shit is kind of fun. In a very, very broke kind of way.

[justanothertree-blog]

Son of a Flea.

What's cuter than a cat? A kitten. What's cuter than a kitten? MINE. Cat is absolutely adorable. Her mewing, the way she cuddles up with me at night, the adorable rolling around on my carpet. That shit is just. Fucking. Adorable.

What's not adorable? Running out to HEB in too tight jeans (if I buy new ones in the right size, the cellulite wins) and a bleached out hoodie at 9pm to get $50 worth of flea-killing products. Flea killing shampoo. Flea killing carpet cleaner. Flea killing and preventing skin gel. Another pack of flea killing gel. Cat gets to be flea free and I've just spent my grocery budget for two weeks. (See: Post-Grad Weight Loss Plan). 

So, cute kitten owners, here's how you get rid of fleas in 6 easy steps: 

OCD Steps One and Three: Douse carpet in 24-hour insecticide that I'm pretty sure is DDT's radioactive cousin.

OCD Step Two: Bathe Cat in shampoo that costs more than two bottles of my own (if I weren't still using a stockpile of hotel samples). Feel like a horrible human being for bathing a kitten.

OCD Step Four: Find band-aids for claw marks on arms, hands, neck and stomach.

OCD Step Five: Put preventative gel on cat, wash all clothing, bedding, and anything not sewn to a chair in scalding hot water. Take a shower. Beg forgiveness again from the Cat for bathing it. Take another shower.

OCD Step Six: Die of insecticide poisoning while Cat plays with string.

And that's what happens when you get a kitten. It's cute forever and you die a painful, penniless death. 

[justanothertree-blog]

Post-College Weight Loss

WeightWatchers makes you pay to lose weight and do all the work while they stand on the sidelines shouting "Count your points, fatty!" (Best business plan ever). I don't play that shit. I do, however, need to lose the forty pounds I put on in college. It's getting past "there's more of me to love!" and moved into "mawmawmawmawCAKE!"

My pre-college weight: 115 (I am only 5 feet tall, y'all).

My current weight: 156 (This be pre-diabetes.)

My goal weight: no diabeetuhs. It runs in my family and, as much as I hate running, I'd like to not get it.

So, the miracle weight loss plan I discovered that costs nothing but time? Being a broke new grad and not buying any food. I am going to let my bills eat my food right out of my hand. And then go grab a 99 cent Frosty at Wendy's. 

[justanothertree-blog]

I now work at a not car dealership.

I now work at a not car dealership. I work for, let's call them, X Corp. X Corp is not their real name. Unless it is and I am just trying to throw you off my trail. Which I am, but not by giving you the real name of my new employer.

So, I work at X Corp. A few weeks ago, out of the blue yonder known as LinkedIn, I was contacted by a member of X Corp's marketing team to see if I would be interested in a position. After I made sure the team guy, X Corp, and the offer were legit, I had myself a little moment:

I am a fucking BEAST. Who get's contacted because their online work is so awesome? This person. And then I got over myself and went to the vending machine.

The job was an offer that I could refuse, but I've seen The Godfather (only one and two, duh) and I know what happens when good offers are refused. Horses end up dying. And I can't let that happen, so I took the offer and quit my dealership job last week. 

This week, I moved back to my college town where X Corp is headquartered (mutherfking HQ omgskljdhfsaljk) and into a single apartment. The first night was scary as shit, mostly because I was sure that The Bad Guys would auto-detect that I was the only person in this state who doesn't own a guy and would come to kill me. They didn't. 

Two nights of sleeping on the floor later, my mattress set arrived and I felt like a grown up. The kind that pays bills and shit, not the kind that has suffered through years of life and is slowly succumbing to gravity's merciless pull on their various body parts. I now have a dining room table (also known as a black fold out table from WallyWorld), a new TV (thanks parents!), and some old furniture that my older siblings didn't want. Something about it being moth-infested. Who knows.

And here I land. In my own apartment, in a newish town, going to work at 8am tomorrow for X Corp. I believe I can fly.

Right through that open floor. We will see how this goes.

[justanothertree-blog]

Post #2

At 8:30 this morning- or noon, I can't really remember because I was in a state of otherwise unconscious bliss- my mom burst into my room (not a cliche, this is just her usual style of entering) and asked me if I had seen the job postings she sent me.

A quick deviation from her unawareness of my state of sleep. My mom hates my job. I love my job. I like playing on the computer and competing with other online marketers to see who can get the best outreach and launch the most successful campaigns. My mother, however, disapproves of my place of work and doesn't realize how employment that is in any way enjoyable to me will be beneficial for my future. A part of me thinks she's jealous, another thinks she's slightly batshit (in all fairness, for reasons unrelated to my job), and a large part knows that she isn't satisfied until every part of my life has been chosen, dictated, and enforced by her royal highness. 

It's a real Russian tragedy.

Anyways, I was very clearly asleep, and her question, as most of them were, was to  instruct me of something she wished to be done- in this case, to apply to jobs with a bit more security. 

As the day went on, we duked it out when I was actually awake and came to an amicable impasse. Happiness is found in the moment. She agreed to back off her constant pushing and asked, in a moment of weakness that she displays where a woman who grew up with a mother would display strength, "but it's been worth it, constantly pushing you farther? Right, it's been worth it?"

And I thought of the Aplenzin perscription standing at the ready on bathroom counter, and I thought of the eleven rejection letters floating around my desk, and I thought of the 40 pounds I gained in college. And I was silent.

A moment of silence. Of calm. Of being left to fix what no one else can and find the path I must carve for myself. Who's to say what twenty-two years of relentless "not good enough"s and "what were you thinking"s and "work harder"s and "I'm disappointed"s will be worth at the end of my life.  Who's to say that they didn't land me where I am now, but save me from a fate I'd rather not imagine.  

[justanothertree-blog]

Post #1

I work for a car dealership. Since I was 14 I wanted to go to law school, but I made some (synonymous with a lot) of mistakes in college and got denied from 11 law schools. So, now I work at a car dealership.

I do online marketing analytics and social media marketing for a group of old men that don't realize what I do isn't magic, it's part of my youth's culture. They talk on the phone, I talk online. I'm good at what I do, but so are a lot of people. However, I'm not giving away that little slice of information. I'll wait and see if they figure it out before my benefits kick in.

I live with my mom and step-dad, who puts up with my mom, in their new house. I dreamed of great things for many years, and ended up in the same place I would have if I never went to college: living at home, making $34K, and working- did I mention this?- at a car dealership.

I play on Facebook and Twitter and with the back end of a corporate website all day, so I think I'll just stick with bitching about other things. 

I can't keep a diary because I hide them and then forget where I put them. That, and I'm not a pre-teen girl wondering when that-cute-guy-from-class will talk to me. That, and I'm just another tree in the forest, and keeping a diary would be slightly pointless. That and I hope that one day I come back to this site, if it's even around then, and laugh to myself about how I worried about nothing, about being just another tree. Then I would go back to my messy kids, my demanding job, and my tall husband with high blood pressure but a constant sense of humor. 

To the future me, laugh away- just as long as it's all the way to the bank.