I was really down when I got to work. I counted up every last dollar I had and was only $30 short on my credit card payment that's automatically debited from my checking account. One of the girls I worked with loaned me $30 so I wouldn't get an overdraft fee.

I made exactly enough to pay her back, but only because another girl felt sorry for me having only patio tables for a section, and gave me two of her tables.

Love my coworkers.
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My cell phone was turned off today; if it were just mine that'd be one thing, but there are four other lines on the account. So I had to pay $83 to get them turned back on.

My giant conglomerated credit card payment is automatically debited from my account today; I'm short on that, so there's a lovely $36 fee on top of it.

Rent is due the next day; I have $0 of that.

My electricity will be turned off if they don't get $100 by the 8th.

My natural gas will be turned off if they don't get $60 by the 10th.

The phones will be shut off again if they don't get another almost $400 by the 20th.

Where the fuck did the month of June go, and where did all my money go?

Somebody has waaaaaaaay too much time on their hands!

I work with a girl we'll call Roxanne. She's a couple of years younger than me, and has two kids with two different dads. She's living with a third guy, who she luckily didn't get knocked up by before realizing he's a douche. She's a skinny, pretty little thing--who is utterly convinced she's fat. She goes on and on about how big her belly is, grabbing it and squeezing it. She bemoans how her second son ruined her figure, and says she looks like "one of those hillbillies" with scrawny arms and legs and a "big belly".

Meanwhile, I'd love to look like her. Yeah, if you really, really look, you can see her stomach isn't flat--which is natural, not "fat"--but she looks like a normal, healthy woman. And yet I, at 260 pounds, would be more comfortable wearing a swimsuit in public than she would. I've tried several times to tell her that she's being too hard on herself, that nobody else thinks that, that she's perfectly proportional and has no reason to feel self-conscious. She just says either "you don't have to see me naked" or "you don't know how I used to look".

It makes me sad that she's got such issues, but it also makes me sort of happy that I don't have any sort of glorified, thin youth to look back on and beat myself up about "losing".

So Michael Jackson just died. I could make a joke about adolescent boys breathing a sigh of relief, but ... Wait, I guess I just did.
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I went there for new shoes for work, my stupidly expensive hair conditioner, and a toilet seat (I got an all mighty ass pinching last night when mine suddenly snapped, that was lovely).

I came out with work shoes, other shoes, toilet seat, a small desk lamp (which I forgot to get the right bulb for), several mini lint rollers for my purse, and a swimsuit. But no conditioner, so I didn't really spend more than I intended. And I did need a new swimsuit--the one I have is actually a "bathing" suit, which means it's not made for moving, so swimming was pretty much impossible because the straps continually fall down. It has nice wide straps if I want to tan my back--by which I mean scald like a lobster and get skin cancer since I'm the whitest white girl ever--but not so good for anything but sitting still.

And I need to start going to the gym again. I'm tired of my muscles feeling weak. More importantly, I need to start riding the exercise bike in preparation (which is why I got the non-work shoes, which were only $12). I'm going to be a full time student next year, which means I get a free bus pass, so it's obviously not very cost effective to shell out $140 for a parking pass. Getting to class is no problem; fifteen minute walk up the street and hop on the bus. But to get home after class in the afternoon in time for work is going to require either jogging or a bike. This is because the bus I can take to school only leaves campus 50 minutes after my last class ends, so I wouldn't get home for an hour and a half after class ended. There's another bus I could take that leaves half an hour earlier, but would drop me off a mile and a quarter from home. And I'm a slow walker.

Of course, I could drive most of the way, park on my old street, and hop the bus, which would let me sleep an extra half hour and get me home quicker. But it doesn't solve the problem of getting from my second to third class three days a week, so we're back to the bike thing.

Which is why I need to start on the exercise bike. I haven't ridden a bike in about eight years, so if I try to hop on one and ride a couple of miles a day I'm going to be a sorry mess. And since I don't actually have a bike yet, the exercise bike will be my starting point. So, my gym stuff is in the washer right now, and I'm hoping that with new work shoes my legs will feel okay enough to give the exercise bike a spin tomorrow after work, and maybe a swim.

I've had this window open all day writing this; I can't focus worth a damn today!

Apparently that's what kummerspeck means literally. Learn something new every day.

I'm still cranky and sorta feeling sorry for myself lately; but having found out about the plights of a couple of the girls I work with, I feel better.

One of them found out about a month ago that her husband had been sleeping with someone he works with for the last six months. She has a son with her first husband (who also cheated on her), a daughter with this douchebag, and he has two kids from his first wife too--so this upset a lot of lives. After a few weeks of not knowing what to do but not moving out, he found her copies of applications for public housing assistance that she filed when she first found out .... and the bastard kicked her out of their house. He cheats on her, and he kicks her out of the house. I can't believe the balls on him. She's living with her parents now and driving to Denver every other day because her first husband can't keep their son all the time, while trying to figure out what to do for money since she did daycare from home and can't do that now.

Another girl is trying to move somewhere too--she has two sons with two different fathers, and recently moved in with a third boyfriend. She hadn't known him very long, but felt like she didn't have a choice. Her second baby's daddy had dumped her, but they were still living together until he decided that he was moving in with the girl it turned out he'd been cheating on her with before breaking up with her. She couldn't come up with money for her own place that fast, so she moved back to her parents'. A week later, they kicked her out--said the kids could stay, but she had to go. I don't know the whole story on that, but she ended up moving in with this new guy, who also has a kid. For a couple of weeks things were good; then he started getting weird. Still, she had everyone at work horrified because she was talking about marrying this guy already. Now apparently they've essentially split up but have co-signed a lease until the end of November, and he doesn't know she's lying about how much money she makes every night so she can save up money for moving.

And then there's another girl who moved here from Indiana with her boyfriend, because he was moving back to be with his kids. So she and her boyfriend live in a house with the three kids, and his ex-wife and her new husband. They're feeding the kids with food stamps and other government assistance; the other day she was eating some food that was cooked by mistake and said it was the first time she'd eaten that day because they had to save the food for the kids. I don't know exactly why; she doesn't like to talk about it.

The general manager is a single mother; another of the bartenders is too. Another bartender has been living with her boyfriend (who used to beat her, supposedly he's stopped) for about ten years, and a couple of months ago he got a job for the first time in five years (she'd been supporting them both while going to school full time). Etc. etc. At least I don't have kids depending on me; I'm not stuck living with someone who treats me badly; I may be scrambling for next month's rent, but I'm not at the end of my rope yet.

The people I work with are probably tired of me talking; how do I have nothing to say here? All day I think about things, my brain is spiraling around, and I don't really talk to people at work about the things I think about. But now I'm sitting here and I can't think of a damn thing to write about!

Well, that's not quite true; I can't think of anything that's not more whinging about my life in general. But that's gets tiresome after a while, right? It's not like anything's changed; other than if I can find a job that pays well enough I'm ditching the waitressing bullshit--I can't take it anymore. Okay, I can, and I will if necessary--but it's just damned hard. Not the job itself, as in the physical actions. I can even fake the people part of it, mostly. But never knowing what I'll have in my pocket is just endlessly stressful. I need about $1200 at the end of the month between my massive credit card payment and my rent, and right now I have .... umm ... well, $60, but another $180 in utilities to pay. Plus little things like food and gas. And they cut one of my shifts each week, which is just splendid. I'm trying to pick up shifts, but nobody's giving away shifts I'm not already working. It's really frustrating.

But I've got a ton of stuff to eBay still, so that's my project for tomorrow .... er, today, technically. Hopefully that'll help me squeak through another month. I'm trying not to worry too much; it's not like it helps. I didn't used to be able to do that; I used to stress and panic and worry and not be able to shut it off. At least now I'm able to say to myself "the worst case scenario is ...." and think about how I could handle that a little, and then I feel better. Right now the worst thing that can happen if I don't make enough money is that I have to pay my rent late. Which wouldn't be great, but can be dealt with. Even if I get far enough behind that I get an eviction notice, that can be dealt with too--because if I get an eviction notice I can do an emergency withdrawal from my damn 401k.

And might I say, it really kind of chaps my ass that I have $3000 sitting in a 401k that I can't access when I really need it. I mean, I know it's important to save for the distant future, but damn.

It's not really about fat anymore, after all. At least not most of the time. Now it's just random crap from my terribly exciting life. Maybe that'll be my new title. "Random Crap From The Terribly Exciting Of Your Average Short Fat Blonde". Or I'll think of something else terribly witty.

I've been both really busy and really bored lately. Working a lot; and 40 hours a week serving just kicks my ass. Part of that is because I need new shoes; my current ones are breaking down, and as soon as I put them on my knees start hurting. Yesterday, I could feel something in my right knee popping every step I took. Not really a good sign.

Other than that, it's been same old stuff. My house is a semi-wreck; I'm staying up too late and sleeping too much; I'm broke. I had to empty out my change/spare dollar bill jar to pay my rent--I had $200 in there, which was a lot more than I expected. But that was actually just more depressing, since that was my new car/trip to London to see my favorite band fund.

No luck finding another job, either; I think I'm screwed. If I weren't going back to school in the fall I'm sure I could find something, but having such limited hours soon is really screwing me. My best lead was working from home doing telephone stuff with a company my grandmother works for; but apparently they're only hiring people full-time.

Basically, I'm sorta screwed. I'll probably have to pay tuition out of pocket next semester; so I'll probably end up taking classes in the fall and working next January through August to pay it off, then taking another semester's worth of classes. And I'm not going to be able to get a new car, and I'm not going to be able to go see a-ha, and I'm just all sorts of bummed out right now.

At least I'm going to see Eric Clapton on the 21st, that's something to look forward to. And the new Harry Potter movie comes out next month. And I haven't seen Angels & Demons yet. Little things to look forward to. That's the key. Keep looking forward to the little things, and pushing forward, and eventually I'll dig myself out of this sucking hole of financial bullshit!

So I play a game in Facebook, and have a toolbar that gets me game credit for a certain number of searches each day. I'm reading the new Anita Blake book, so I typed in "weretiger". I normally just search things and don't click any links, but excerpt that popped up for this site was .... interesting. As was the URL, www.weretiger.ca.

I still don't get it.