The Aftermath: Part 3

Part 3 is complicated. Part 3 deals with my inner psyche and of course, so HBF tells me, I’m complicated. While in Oregon, I can honestly say I was hiding out. I didn’t really want to see any of my friends (family was ok) and I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because I had been spending 24 hours 7 days a week with HBF and I didn’t know how to talk to anyone else. I couldn’t poke some random friend in the ribs and make him scream like a girl if I didn’t like what he said. Another friend wouldn’t be able to tolerate playing cribbage for hours and able to entertain me all the while with witty banter. Or maybe they could. I think really it came down to the fact that I had a hard time relating to people. This is already tough for me, as girls are usually too crazy for me to tolerate, but boys just aren’t girls. Make sense? Hmm, maybe I’m crazy too.. (HBF hurt his neck by violently agreeing with this point). Ok, who cares about the reason, but I did hide out. I hung out with mi madre and absolutely drank up any television I could (along with milk). All the while, HBF had made his way down to San Diego and was trying to start life again. Life goal #1: Find a house. This was tricky, as I was up in Oregon and I had a pretty strong opinion on what I want in a house. I would look at craigslist and send HBF possible options and then proceed to pester him until he went and looked at them. He would send me back videos and I would ultimately veto them for one reason or another, usually because they didn’t have a dishwasher. After about 2 weeks of this process, HBF got fed up and demanded I come down to SD and help find us a house. The only problem: M dog. I had to bring him down with me and since we didn’t have a house, where would we stay? I don’t think any of our friends even had a yard and I hated the thought of imposing on someone with my smelly dog for who knows how long. Logistics, logistics. I finally told HBF I would only come down if he came back up to get me because I didn’t want to drive alone. Apparently he was just that desperate (and loving) and he flew up to Oregon, had delicious Easter brunch with the fam, and we started the trek down south. About 2 days before he was scheduled to fly to Oregon, he found a great place near Mission Hills and I was pretty happy with it. So, he put a deposit down and our logistics nightmare ended. We could move straight in.

The ride down was pretty uneventful, and by uneventful I mean my car broke down and could only go 45 mph for the last 200 miles to Santa Rosa. But, that’s the beauty of dating a mechanical genius: HBF fixed it and after a wonderful night hanging with HBF’s parents, we were on the road again going 90 (sorry mom). We arrived in San Diego on April 8th.

HBF had set up a sweet deal with his previous company to work 3 days a week while looking for another job. He was bringing in enough income to float us for awhile, so there wasn’t too much pressure to find a job. In the first few weeks, it was sweet. HBF would have 4 day weekends and I had non stop weekends. But then, HBF got a real job, and he started wondering aloud when I was going to follow suit. He had a good point, but I also started wondering aloud, louder than him, that really I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself and maybe I should figure that out before I found another job. He wondered even louder when I was going to figure that out and I would give him the evil eye. The stink eye. Whatever you want to call it, I was giving it to him. But inside, I wondered if I would ever know what I wanted to do with myself and these thoughts were very troublesome.

Here’s the thing: I had spent a crap load of money on college and would continue spending a crapload on college for the next 20 years thanks to my crushing educational debt. I studied engineering, and I felt stupid for even entertaining the idea that I wouldn’t get another engineering job. Of course I would get an engineering job! I owe all this money, right? I studied it and liked it, right? Well engineering classes and engineering jobs are very very different, people, and anyone who tells you different should be poked in the eye. Hard. My last 3 engineering jobs were terrible (see previous post) and I just couldn’t bear the thought of repeating my misery again. Every engineering job posting I read filled me with dread, and none of them were really what I went to school for anyways. My heart was telling me to pursue my love: Animals. I volunteered at the local animal shelter and I loved it. Giving those dogs and cats love and helping them get adopted into good homes after they have had horrendous lives made me feel really good, and it was really the only thing that I was passionate about. This led me to conclude that maybe I should be pursuing a job in animal rescue. The only problem was that any available job was minimum wage. Now, this looks like a black and white issue. Passion vs. money. But it wasn’t just about that. I wanted a job I wasn’t embarrassed about and that I could explain exactly what I did and people would understand. I would have been mortified to explain that I went to engineering school, and now I work for 9 bucks shoveling dog poo. Or, now I’m some ‘systems’ engineer that goes and sits in my cube for 8 hours and puts together PowerPoint presentations that no one pay any attention to.

Neither of these options sounded very good to me, and I let this be my excuse for inaction. I would volunteer, I would look for jobs, but I would never really pursue either path. Now, you’re prolly asking yourself, ‘what the heck did she do from April 8th until she started her job on July 26th?’ This is a very good question, and I have a few answers for you.
Accomplishment #1: Watched all 11 seasons of Law & Order: SVU available on Netflix.
Accomplishment #2: Watched all 6 seasons of Law & Order: Criminal Intent on Netflix

Let me stop here. I know you are all galled at just that amount of TV that I watched, but you gotta remember, I had like 15 weeks of totally free time. I basically could do anything I wanted (except find a job) and I guess what I wanted to do was watch TV. There was no one to talk to, since everyone else worked. HBF would measure the success of my day by how much time I spent outside. Each day he would come home from work and ask the inevitable question: ‘Did you go outside today?’ 80% of the time I would fail. The TV was like a black hole I could fall in to and not think. When HBF would get home, the brain would turn on and the animal/engineering debate would ensue. There were tears, yelling, outrage, hugs, indecision, etc, etc… Each day I would come to a different conclusion of what I was going to do. There was a time I thought I would start my own pet sitting business, but even then I waffled. I didn’t really want to do that, but I had no idea what else to do…

This is a really long story, but the end is nigh. Stay tuned for part 4.