The Dirt Field

"October 31, 2006 -- Everything that happens in your life can teach you something worth knowing. In fact, on a higher, more inclusive level there is no such thing as good or bad: there is only experience. With that thought in mind, spend less time this year judging yourself and other people and more time enjoying yourself. It's really that simple."

That's a woman putting the cuffs on me.

Caitlin, MJ, and I decided last week to make this past weekend our lengthy celebration of Halloween. We began on Friday night with plans to watch four horror movies and then conduct a seance, plans that disintegrated immediately when we all fell asleep during the first movie, reaffirming my greatest fear - I am getting old and boring. I might as well take up knitting and then just die.

Today, however, we decided to visit an abandoned and condemned mental hospital outside of Philadelphia. We first discovered this particular site while surfing the Internet for good places to crap our pants, and spontaneously decided to make it part of our Weekend of Scary Things. After a long drive, the three of us disembarked from the car and hiked along the road that bordered the hospital. With the decrepit buildings in sight, I hopped the fence onto the property, followed shortly by MJ. Caitlin decided to pass on the experience and opted to hike around the perimeter instead (and she claimed I wasn't adventurous because I refused to try dipping my Boston Market cornbread in her lemonade).

MJ and I made it across the property and into one of the creepiest buildings with no trouble. The pictures from that building are posted below, although over half of the ones I took were hastily deleted during the events that followed in order to divest myself of incriminating evidence. Yes, the building is condemned and unsafe. Yes, the building is full of asbestos. Yes, we could have been injured/mutilated/killed by angry ghosts. But you only live once.

After exploring the first two floors of the building, we decided to head back to the car. By this point, we were feeling pretty secure in our ability to exit the grounds unmolested, so we strolled casually along the dirt road back to the fence. It was at that point that a blue pick-up truck came screaming down the road and screeched to a halt in front of us. A man in a security jacket leaped out and demanded that we get in the back of the truck. When we hesitated (my biggest concern being that the flatbed was dirty and would soil my jacket), he became rude and abusive and demanded that we comply. We did.

It took an hour of waiting with the Rent-A-Cop for the real police to come, an hour that I spent being a raging, irritable bitch. I started by being polite and respectful, but the security officer was vulgar, mocking, and condescending and I finally reached my breaking point, snapping, "If you have no plans of letting us go, would you mind NOT TALKING ANYMORE?" I couldn't possibly stand to listen to him bitch about how so many people trespass there with the intention of causing damage (we were completely unarmed and were not every carrying a nail file or a toothpick), and how trespassers like us are so annoying because we waste his and other people's time (last time I checked, security officers have jobs because of people like me, so theoretically he should be thanking me for giving him a chance to make his $7.29 per hour).

I'll admit that I also started pulling out every legal piece of bullshit I could invent, a right that is fully mine as a veteran of one month of law school. There is probably no more obnoxious person on the planet than a law student in legal trouble because you combine the desperate desire to save one's own ass with the arrogant know-it-all attitude of one who has been forced to eat, sleep, and breathe law for days on end. That was me today, to the point that I was snarling at everyone and making every possible attempt to establish that a reasonable person would not have felt free to leave and BY GOD I HAVE RIGHTS, NOW OBSERVE THEM. In the end, I only succeeded in earning myself the nickname "Heinous Bitch", which surprised me because both of the people detaining us seemed to have a combined IQ of 6, leading me to believe that heinous was not part of their vocabulary.

But I digress.

The cops came and searched us (it was a damn good thing that I was carrying a large, plastic toy ghost ring in my pocket and nothing else), and then cuffed me and put me in the back of the police cruiser. Me. In the back of a police car. In handcuffs. The saddest part was that my biggest concern was that the seats back there were most likely highly unclean, a concern that was only moderately assuaged when the officer assured me that "nobody has pooped in my car, or I'd have thrown them in the trunk." I know this because I asked. I also asked if we could initiate a traffic stop and pick me up some company (MJ was in another car), but there was no such luck. My kind arresting officer did however inform me that the other inmates at the jail would be happy to make me their bitch and pimp me out. That's a direct quote.

When I got to the station, I faced more questions and teasing from the officers, who apparently didn't think the incident was nearly as amusing as I did. They searched me again and then put me in a cell (A CELL. LIKE, WITH BARS. AND A SMALL METAL TOILET THAT WAS EXPOSED TO THE AIR I WAS BREATHING.) and left me there while they wrote up my citation. My first question after being shown to my cell was, "Is it clean?", a question that was answered with a disdainful no, followed by another officer coming in to mock me for exploring a condemned hospital and then worrying about the sanitary state of my jail cell. I'm sorry, but I KNOW what happens in prison cells. I thought it was a fair question.

I was incarcerated for probably an hour, although I have no way of knowing for sure because evidently jail is unlike the Ritz Carlton in that nobody cares about making your stay enjoyable by providing things like a blankie and a hot chocolate and a clock. I passed the time by sitting, and then picking dirt off my shoes, and then running in place. When the arresting officer came in to get more personal information, I had to show her my tattoos, explain that I was on medication for being crazy, and repeat my personal data at least six thousand times. She then called me anorexic (to which I exclaimed, "I had gummi bears earlier! I am not!"), but did not take offense when I corrected her on the description of my coat ("It's not black. IT'S TWEED.") MJ later told me that the officers in the room where she was being held couldn't stop talking about how ridiculous I was and how terrible it was that I kept laughing. I guess I'm not very popular at the 7th District Station.

In the end, I was given a citation for "Defiant Trespass" and released with a court date and a warning to return or a warrant would be put out for my arrest. MJ was released into Caitlin's custody (a legal requirement given her status as a minor) with a similar citation. The three of us then had a jolly good laugh discussion of the seriousness of our crime, grabbed dinner, and drove home. When we pulled up to my house, Caitlin climbed out of the car and thanked MJ for driving, to which MJ replied, "Well, thanks for signing me out of jail."

And that was our weekend.

Okay, so getting arrested isn't exactly brilliant, but it's not like I beat up a small child or robbed a homeless man; I trespassed at a mental hospital. (Oh, the irony.) It was a learning experience, sure, but by the same token, I have to stop and laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. I was arrested. I was handcuffed and put in a police car and stuffed in a jail cell. I'll never forget this weekend, and not because it was bad. I raised hell and got into funny, funny trouble with two of my best friends. And really, how often can you be at a rest stop getting dinner and have your friend say to you, "I'll bet all these people checking you out have no idea that you just got out of jail"?

"It is important to know that once insects die, postmortem changes happen rapidly making them unpalatable very quickly. You have to cook them alive like you do a lobster.

Just before cooking, put your crickets in the refrigerator until you are ready to roast them. You don’t want to kill them, only slow their metabolism down so that they stop moving. This allows for arranging them on the cookie sheet with out them trying to get away.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Spread a bunch of pre-cooled live crickets out on a cookie sheet. Bake at low temperature for an hour or more until completely dry. Test by crushing a dried cricket with your fingers. If they do not seem completely dried out, roast them some more. However, be careful not to burn them as they taste terrible scorched. Let cool.

Dry Roasted Crickets have a nutty flavor and are very good eaten plain with a sprinkle of salt. They are also very tasty as a substitute for nuts in dessert and cookie recipes."

Which one do you think is mine?


Perhaps this will give you a hint...


The best part of the whole experience was that less than an hour after I finished carving pumpkins at the kitchen table, The Landlord and I decided to clean our guns at that very same table.

The Thing in the attic is on the move again. An entire attic of space, and The Thing chooses to run in circles above my bed. I'm cowering under the covers, waiting for plaster dust to rain down on my head, followed by teeth and fur and claws and rabies.

I really don't want to be the girl that was killed by The Thing from the attic. How horribly trite and mortifying.

There is something living in the attic above me. I heard it this morning, running rapidly with its sharp claws scratching away at my ceiling, and I can hear it pacing right now. It sounds unhappy and restless, and also disturbingly active. I called my roommate (who I will refer to from now on as The Landlord), and he indicated that he too had heard The Thing in the attic and that he was glad that it wasn't just him going crazy. He declined my request to explore the attic on my own with a rifle and a flashlight, stating that he would call in a trained professional who would not be killed by a rabid animal flying out of the trap door.

As I sit here listening, two things keep running through my mind. One, The Exorcist. As in, the early part of the movie when Reagan's mom heard creaking in the attic that signified the arrival of the devil. Maybe there's not an animal up there and it's actually Satan coming in through an air vent to visit in time for Halloween. Or, two, the fact that AT ANY MOMENT, I could be lying in bed when an enraged, fanged animal plunges through the ceiling and onto my floor. Next to me. In my room. Where I live.

It sounds like it's playing rugby. I'm nervous.

When I took my leave of absence from law school, I did so long after the tuition refund period had elapsed, meaning that my choice had the potential of being a $7600 decision. I say potential because the Director of Student Academic Affairs informed me that I could petition the university to refund my tuition based on my circumstances, meaning that I could theoretically reverse the significant financial impact of my choice to take a year off.

In the past four weeks, I've been preparing to submit my request. Okay, that's a bit of a lie. I've been thinking about it for the past four weeks - I really only took action in the past week, because for the previous three weeks I have been very busy doing nothing. Anyway, I had two letters from medical professionals indicating that I have serious issues, and I took the time to draft a lengthy letter explaining my circumstances and my request. With my entire packet in hand, I headed off to Mason today to plead my case.

In addition, I needed to talk to the financial aid counselors about some confusing account statements I'd received in the past two weeks. One indicated that I owed close to $7000, while the other said that I owed nothing. When I arrived in the Student Accounts office, the confused student behind the desk tried to tell me that both statements were incorrect, and that the school actually owed me $750. I knew that this was impossible, but that did not stop me from asking just how quickly he could get me that refund and could it possibly be in cash?

After a lot of confusion and one visit to a back office, the student came back and informed me that my request, the one in my hand that I had yet to submit, had already been approved and that was why the printed statement said I owed nothing. I pointed out that there was no request to have had approved, but he assured me that there was one in the file and that everything was already settled. I started to push the issue, inquiring as to who submitted the request for me, but realized quickly that I should shut my mouth. If somebody tells you they have a check for a million bucks with your name on it, that's not the best time to start arguing.

So that's settled. Somebody somewhere felt that I was crazy enough to deserve a full refund of my tuition, and crazy enough to need think I needed somebody else to submit the request for me. As much as I detest looking mentally unstable, in this case, I'm willing to wear my strait jacket with pride.

Although I'm technically working again, I only have a part-time position that pays on an hourly basis. This could still mean good money if my company would, you know, have work for me to do. However, at this point they don't seem to need me, which means that I don't have to go to work and they in turn don't have to pay me.

I'm completely out of money. I had grass for dinner.

Consequently, I went to a job interview yesterday. A friend from a previous job had offered to send in my resume for a position in his office, and I happily accepted an interview while only knowing that it was for an "admin" position. Within moments of sitting down with the interviewer, I was told that my responsibilities would include sitting at the front desk in order to assist the public and filing, with an emphasis on filing.

"Um," I asked tentatively. "Is there room for possible advancement?" [Like, would I be allowed to use the photocopier someday?]

The interviewer looked hesitant. "If somebody were to leave in the future, we'd be willing to consider you for an administrative position in the back office. But it wouldn't be a change in salary, just responsibilities."

At that point, I was tempted to get up and leave. The salary stank and the work sounded suicide-inducingly boring, but since I was already there I decided to stick it out. The remainder of the interview went relatively well, but then I was asked if I had time to take a brief tying and filing test.

I assumed they were testing to see how quickly I could type. Instead, I was handed a printed, one-page document and told to make an exact copy in Microsoft Word. As in, please show that you can hit those little squares with the letters on them and make this same picture. As in, this job will require you to have the intellect of a sock.

The filing test was a two-page, multiple choice test in which I had to demonstrate my ability to properly use alphabetical order. I was also asked to circle things that were identical, like the following:

John Smith - John Smyth
9874654 - 9474568
Mary Anne - Mary Anne
Caitlin - Catelin
74 - 74

I don't think I've ever felt more inane than I did in the moment that I circled "74 - 74". I have a college degree. I WALK UPRIGHT AND HAVE OPPOSABLE THUMBS. Is this what my life has come to?

They'll call me next week and let me know if I got the job.

For the love of god, stop slurping at the fur on your leg. YOU'RE KEEPING ME AWAKE WITH THAT DISGUSTING SOUND.

As my three week hiatus from life draws to a painful and wholly undesirable close, I feel the need to reflect back on a few bad habits and addictions that I've acquired in this time.

1. Recycling Outfits: Did you know that if you fall asleep in your clothes, wake up the next morning, and keep wearing the same outfit all day, you totally economize on your laundry? Because I do.

2. Caramel Apples: In the past six days, I have consumed eleven of these delicious little beauties. That in and of itself may not seem too shocking, until I admit that seven of them were consumed in one day. I couldn't help it. The nutrition facts indicate that they're not that bad, they were in the pantry literally screaming my name, and everything is so much easier to handle with a caramel apple in your hand.

3. Sleeping On The Floor: In case you weren't aware, I can be a tiny bit neurotic at times and am often governed by my idiosyncrasies. One of those little quirks is that I am unable to sleep peacefully until I have gotten ready for bed, which includes brushing my teeth, washing my face, and taking my medication. If I fall asleep while pursuing another activity like reading or watching television, I will not bother to move to my bed and turn off the lights until I have gotten entirely ready for bed. Therefore, if I fall asleep on the floor, regardless of how many times I awaken during the night, I will not move until I am in the mood to floss. Or until the sun rises. I have discovered, however, that sleeping on the floor while fully dressed significantly increases the frequency of #1 on this list, which makes for great efficiency.

4. Nicknames: My friends and roommates have decided that I will be called Roto-Rooter (because apparently my pants and I are constantly trying to part ways), Theoretical Physics (because me smart but do many dumb things), Quark (because I spend 32/33 of my time outside the universe), Dirty Hippie (because I like to observe the time-honored Middle Eastern tradition of smoking a hookah periodically), and Fruitfly (because my outfit the other night APPARENTLY made me look like rather insect-like). I'm not feeling the love here.

5. Chai Lattes: I am addicted to Panera's chai lattes, but those are a bit out of my budget at this point (hell, air is out of my budget at this point), so I've made do with making my own chai at home. No fewer than three times a day. The worst part is that the two packets of Splenda that I stir into each cup of happy goodness are, um, borrowed from my local Starbucks, because I'm too cheap to buy my own. There, I confessed. Do I still have to go to Hell?

Please note the absence of such things on that list as alcohol, heroin, or hiding in the recesses of my closet while crying and eating Cheetos. I may have nursed a few less than healthy habits in the past few weeks, but come on, do you really NEED to bathe more than weekly?

And with that, it's back to the real world.

Three weeks ago today, I uprooted my life and made some pretty serious changes. Two weeks ago today, I dragged my recalcitrant butt into therapy and forced myself to pour my heart out to a complete stranger. One week ago today, that stranger decided that I was as crazy as I sounded and agreed to write me a letter to accompany my tuition refund request affirming his realization. And today, I rejoin the workforce.

Tuesdays suck.

Therefore, I propose a renaming of Tuesday, in hopes that a rechristening will somehow change the course of Tuesdays forever. My first inclination was to call it Bluesday, because that sounded so very appropriate. I then realized, however, that such a name either painted a negative, depressing picture of me (probably accurate) and set me up for future ill luck OR made people think I was honoring a style of music (inaccurate). I then considered Poosday (a day full of crap), Foolsday (a day for idiots), and Cruelsday (a day that is impossible to easily pronounce).

And then it came to me.

Moosday. A day for cows. So go forth, enjoy your Moosday. May you have more auspicious luck under a new heading on the calendar. I'm feeling optimistic.

A few weeks ago, Caitlin was in my room and noticed that I had a bunch of bananas that looked green and tasty. Knowing that we both prefer our bananas unripe, she advised me that bananas, when stored in bunches, tend to ripen faster due to hormones that are collectively released. Caitlin then decided to be a good friend by separating my bananas and hiding them individually in various places around my room.

I thought I had found all of them until a week ago, when I decided to store some things in the bathroom cabinet. I opened the door, and right above my roommate's belongings was a single banana.

He never mentioned this to me. Once again, I was forced to conclude that I am so strange that occurrences like these do not even warrant a question.

This morning at the breakfast table, he finally looked up at me and asked, "Um, why was there a banana in the bathroom cabinet last week?"

This will not be easy to read.

Two weeks ago, I left law school and my home all in the same day. It hurt and the tears and snot kept dripping as I packed up my textbooks and my belongings, but I was mostly numb and just going through the motions. It was hard to keep moving forward and remembering to breathe, but I just stopped thinking and feeling and kept pushing myself onward. Since that day, I've had moments of feeling sad and lost, moments when I'm confused about where I am and what I'm doing, but otherwise I've just kept going through each day with detached disinterest.

In the past five days or so however, things have started to go downhill. It's no secret that I deal with depression, that my ability to smile on a regular basis is regulated by a little bottle in my medicine cabinet. But I thought the depression was under control, and when I saw my doctor the other day to discuss my prescription, I told him that everything was great and filled with sunshine and lollipops.

I spoke too soon.

For those of you who deal with depression, you know how it feels when it flares up. You keep telling yourself that you're fine, but little by little you've started adjusting fine to be lower and lower. And your desire to laugh, to eat, to move starts to wane, and every little bad thing makes it feel like the scary darkness around the edges starts creeping inward. It's a terrible, stifling feeling that I wouldn't wish on anyone, even George W. Bush. Even wonderful things, like sunny days and cake batter ice cream start feeling like you're seeing them at the end of a very long tunnel that just keeps getting longer.

But despite knowing that I've been sliding downhill, I've ignored it. I sailed through my first counseling session with glib jokes and casual candor, even laughing at being the "eating little shards of glass" girl. I thought if I kept moving, kept smiling, and kept eating pumpernickel & onion pretzels in bed, I'd start feeling better.

Everything caught up to me yesterday. A few things went wrong, I was feeling really depressed, and then I got a letter from my credit union thanking me for the massive payment I made on my car but notifying me that, per the rules of my loan, it was only applied to the principle, and not to the next four months as I'd intended. And then I fell into a million little pieces that I thought would never be glued back together.

It sounds so stupid - I lost it because I now have to make four car payments that I hadn't planned to make. But it wasn't the car payments; it was the realization that I have another obstacle to overcome, that I'd lost control of something else. In addition to the problems with my school, my marriage, my family, my financial status, and my lack of job, I'd now have to come up with an unplanned $350 every month. In that moment, I gave up, I gave in, and everything I hadn't cried about, everything I hadn't discussed or even allowed myself to feel in the past two weeks hit me like a brick wall.

Once the train started crashing, I was hoping that maybe I could cry out all of the hurt and just start feeling better. I had been trying to drive home when I lost it, and had to pull into the parking lot of the mall because I didn't think I could drive without dying. I sat in that parking lot and cried and cried and cried, and tried to imagine a moment after I left the parking lot and nothing came to mind. It was one of the darkest, most hopeless moments of my entire life.

But it passed.

I'd like to say I did it on my own, that I cried out my unhappiness and felt better, but I didn't. Quite honestly, I don't think I could have; I needed somebody to push through all of the terrible feelings and force the urge to keep breathing back into me. To the person who did just that, to the friend that knew what to say and how to say it, thank you. I know you've been through this before, I know you knew exactly how I was feeling, and I'm incredibly grateful to you for saving me from my own worst enemy.

I know things aren't all better now. I know that one good breakdown is not enough to fix the hurt caused by the combination of major changes, big mistakes, and serious depression. But when I woke up today, I felt okay. Things weren't so bad, they weren't so dark, and I knew that I'd live through this. I'd feel better soon, I'd get a job, a new life, and the ability to laugh without hurting at the same time. I know that everything will be okay.

While babysitting the other night, the little four year-old looked down at my admittedly large feet and exclaimed, "Wow! They're like monsters!"

You haven't lived until a French mastiff attempts to play a game with you called "Let Me Try To Fit Your Entire Arm In My Mouth."

When I first took my leave of absence from law school, it never occurred to me that I would be leaving myself with absolutely nothing to do all day (well, until I found a job, which is a work in progress). It has now been a week and a half, and I am still blissfully without any real obligations to fill my schedule. Sure, I have occasional errands, appointments, and periods of time when I spam my resume out across the country, but I generally am very busy doing the following:

1. Nothing.

This can be very boring at times, because there are only so many episodes of Grey's Anatomy that you can watch before you just want to scream at Dr. Grey and Dr. McDreamy, "JUST DO IT ALREADY!" However, there are also days where my complete lack of scheduling requirements makes for a very nice time. Like yesterday, for example, when I did this all afternoon:


Lest you picture me sitting alone on my back porch turning into that chick that devours twinkies in an attempt to eat her feelings, I assure you that I was not alone. I had my friends MJ and Caitlin stuffing twinkies with me:


I also had a moment of enlightened creativity that involved one roll of tinfoil and one very unhappy dog:


And my roommate, Matt in the Hat:


After a few drinks, that creativity turned into something far more sinister and deranged:


Followed by one incident with an inflatable sheep that will not be discussed:


I don't know if I'd go so far as to say life is good; more that life is different and weird. I've made a lot of significant changes lately, and there are times when stop abruptly and have a complete WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING revelation. Last night, after seeing a particularly bad movie with Caitlin, I had one of those feelings and decided to collect my thoughts while lying on the back porch staring up at the sky. After a few minutes, my roommate Jeff came out onto the deck to smoke a cigarette, looked at me wordlessly, and proceeded to play with his cell phone. I sat up, stared at him, and asked, "Am I so weird that seeing me lying here in the dark doesn't seem the least bit unusual?"

He replied that he thought I was just having a moment.

And I guess I was. I have a lot of those lately. I'm not sure what I'm hoping to figure out; perhaps what I want to do with the next ten months or maybe how I got here in the first place. I just don't know. I think everything will make a lot more sense once I have a job and a regular paycheck, because really, how can anything in life seem normal when your money is a one-way street with no speed limit? But until then, I'll just settle for being a little inflatable sheep who has lost her way.

I know Panera is relatively noisy and crowded. I know I'm wearing headphones that give the illusion that I can't hear background noises. I know we're both here to use the free Internet. I know it's a free country.

But for the love of God, please stop reading aloud from your computer.

I'm not sure why you need to read out loud in the first place. You're sitting alone; you're not on a phone or communicating with a webcam. You're just sitting in front of your laptop reading out loud about special education. And really, I'm about to kill you. Because although you may think I can't hear you, you're speaking quite audibly, and you're pushing me JUST THIS MUCH CLOSER to insanity. At first, I thought it was just weird to see you speaking to the screen of your laptop. But now, forty minutes later, I'm am in a blind rage, fighting the urge to chip little bits of porcelain off my coffee mug with my teeth to spit in your general direction.

Please, all I ask is that you just shut the hell up. Or go to another table, or another Panera, or another planet. I don't care. Just stop before I am forced to do something that you may regret. Like dismember you, for example.

Sincerely,

The Girl Who Keeps Shooting You Nasty Looks

I just discovered that I've been sending out my resume with my expected date of graduation from Mason Law as 2019, instead of 2010. I know I'm taking some time off, but that's just a bit absurd.