It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like Hell

(You were supposed to sing that title.  I know "Hell" and "Christmas" don't have the same number of syllables, but I have faith in you.  You can make it work)

Okay, the whole whopping two of you that occasionally read my blog already know most of the bullshit that surrounds my Christmas world.  I won't bore you with repetition.  Again.  Over and over again.

Moving on!

However, my sister in law the Prom Queen just inspired a new picture and I couldn't resist drawing and posting.  I don't know how everyone works a gift list, but in our family you make a big-ass list of a whole bunch of suggestions and let everyone kind of pick and choose what they want to give.  And if you don't get everything on your list, either you live your life without it or you go buy it for yourself after Christmas.  And life goes on.  Well, Prom Queen hasn't quite figured out that a wish list is just that, wishes and suggestions.  It is not a DEMAND LIST.  So she will get pissed off because she has to spend so much money on Christmas gifts because there are like 50 things on my mom's list that nobody else has gotten for her yet and they just HAVE to be purchased.  And apparently she has to do it because the rest of us are too selfish and dumb to get what mom wants.  There's a huge long story that goes with this which is full of boring details... ask me if you want to know.  But the moral of the story is, nobody can explain to her that wish lists are just suggestions, not demands.  I know my brother has tried to explain this to her before, and it just led to them having a big fight.  And I got this vision in my head:

(If you're confused by the head wound, see this.  I just had to leave it in)

Merry Christmas Everyone!  *sigh*

Get out of my head! Leave my brain alone!

After the last post, I did some real soul searching

imagine my surprise when I found I do have a soul!

and I came up with a plan for my life.  A happy plan.  Am I ditching my idiot family?  No *sigh*  Am I running away to a far-away land?  Also no *double sigh*  Am I taking control of my life and figuring out a way to do something I enjoy?  

 I'm not going into the boring details right now, but the short version is that the plan includes getting a job or going to school or both.  Or something entirely different.  But regardless of how stupid this paragraph is, I do have a plan.

Big props to Best Friend - Mountain Time and Best Friend - Eastern Time for all their love and support through this struggle I've been dealing with!  MT has endured countless pout/whine/cry emails and has helped me sort through the jumble, and just this past weekend I was visiting ET and she also listened to the story (although I'd already mostly organized it by the time I saw her) and she helped me put a little polish on it.  You two are freaking awesome.  And you need better nicknames.  Kudos to Designated Hitter too, regardless of how he really feels about it he has been saying all the right things and appears to be genuinely supportive.  Even if he's lying and a big fight comes later, those who know him know that even pretending to want what's best for me is a big deal coming from him.  And who knows, he might even be truly supportive.  I kinda think he is but I'm afraid to get my hopes too high.

I headed for home yesterday, and even though I was in Marvin the Paranoid Car I was still flying high.  (To the authorities: I was high on life.  Not meth)  I was so happy I almost didn't mind that it took me around 1.5 hours to go 12 miles at one point.  I was feeling good about myself and my life plan.  Got to the hotel last night, caught up with Hitter for a while, and went to bed.

And then the "fun" started.

I had this horrid dream... I am not entirely sure of the setting, there were a lot of weird bits and pieces that I can't figure out, that's pretty normal for me.  But the part that caused me to wake up in a cold sweat was a scene where my parents were yelling at me because I want to go back to school and they don't want me to.  Okay I don't even know how they truly feel about it, because I haven't discussed this with them and I'm not going to until after the plan is not only decided upon but is already set in motion.  If I go back to school, I may not even tell them until after classes have started.  If I get a job, HR will have already filed my paperwork before they know anything about it.  But that apparently doesn't stop them from yelling at me in my dreams.  

Okay in case that isn't abundantly clear, it's my brain, Designated Drinker poking it with a cattle prod, and Bran Flake doing Riverdance on it.  

In my dream, they were telling me I was stupid for thinking about going back to school and that I'd always said I was just perfectly happy being the dumb lab rat so why do I think giving that up and going to grad school is a good idea.  And lots of other things.  I woke up so mad at them for never being supportive of me.  Everything I ever want to do, try to do, dream about doing... they tell me my ideas are stupid and I should do what they want me to do.  And then they take things I've said in the past and use them against me.  

Can you divorce your parents?  

Of course, once I got my bearings (including remembering I was in a hotel) I realized how illogical that was... first and foremost I'm not giving up being a lab rat because I'm currently not a lab rat!  (sidebar: I use the term "lab rat" to mean me as an employee who is conducting the experiments in question, not actually being the test subject)  And secondly, to hell with them.  They never understand anything I want to do, so why should I expect them to now?  Hence my plan to not even mention The Plan until after it is already in progress and there's nothing they can do about it. 

And before anyone says "maybe that was just your subconscious trying to make sure your big plan is realistic" well I actually think I've been fairly realistic about the pros and cons of The Plan.  In fact, I'm kind of a pessimist these days.  But that really is the way my parents have treated me in the past.  The best approach I can take to that dream is that maybe it was my subconscious trying to prepare me for the insanity and make sure I'm determined to not say anything to those idiots until it's too late for them to voice their opinion.

Of course, that won't stop them.  A couple years ago Hitter and I bought a new house.  It may not be the perfect place, but it's pretty close to my dream house.  The first time the parental unit came to visit (long after we'd already closed, signed the mortgage, moved in, etc) and Flake is all "well how are you going to feel if the neighbors tear down all their trees and build a bunch of houses back here?"  Umm... what possible point does this comment serve?!  

1. you are already fully aware that it would piss me off

2. there isn't anything anyone can do about it now because we've already bought the house

3. fuck off!

So I must be prepared for the negativity and the control-freakiness and all the other crap that will come from those idiots. 

Hold out your hand so I can implant your career chip

I'm having a midlife crisis.  Again.  This is at least my fourth.  My first one was in first grade when I realized, as I was sitting at my desk bored out of my skull, that I was going to have to sit at a desk every damned day for the next 12+ years.  Then I think I had another one in 1988.  But honestly, the 80s should have caused everyone to freak out a little... have you seen that decade?  Whew.

This latest one though, it's a doozy.  At least with the previous ones, there was an end in sight.  Change was coming.  The 80s, by definition, couldn't last longer than 10 years.  (No, my crisis was not brought about by spandex ankle-lace leggings, blue eye shadow and AquaNet hair)  This time, I'm trapped.  No light at the end of the tunnel.  Just a long straight path of monotony.  Someone else's road that I have to follow.

You may be wondering where I'm going with this.  Honestly, I'm not sure.  There's a huge long story, mostly it revolves around there not being anything for me here in this strange combination of city-snob-plus-hillbilly-hell where I'm being forced to live.  So I've been trying to figure out what exactly I'd like to do, or how I could fix my situation.

I have long ago answered the question of what career path I prefer to follow.  I'm a science dork.  All the way to the core.

There ya go.  The real me.  Now here's the real problem: if I had a choice, I would NOT work in the corporate world.  They're all a bunch of regulation-following snobs.  Not only that, I only have a bachelor's degree and I've looked into the corporation Designated Hitter works for... you guessed it, I'm not qualified.  Every task that I would be qualified to do, they have automated.

The robots are taking over!

 

Okay, with that path being cut off, let's analyze a new way to go.  I love working in academia.  So I checked out a nearby college.  Their big science research area is medical, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't fit in with them either.  And I don't have the right background.  Once again - not qualified.  I don't have a microbiology or genetics background.  The only stuff I'm qualified for there is "Requirements - High School Diploma or equivalent"  So... yay?

Honestly though I've never minded being on the edge of being qualified.  I've always said that I don't want to be the one creating the experiments and proposing the theories, I'm just crap-happy hiding in a back corner of a lab with a pipetman in my hand.  And I have been.  I've had jobs fitting that description twice and have loved them.  Dearly.  And would do them again in a heartbeat.

However, here in this hellhole, there is a severe lack of those jobs like I've done before.  (I think I'm talking in circles now, sorry about that)  And even if I did get all sorts of qualified and land a job with the medical geniuses, there would still be an issue of having to deal with a horrendous commute.

Moral of story: I have no idea what to do.  I'm stuck in this cow-town because of Hitter, and there's nothing for me to do here.

But, I recently did some more deep-soul-searching.  I got to thinking about my feelings of not wanting to be the one developing experiments.  Why do I feel that way?  I naturally find myself analyzing other people's theories, developing other ways of looking at things, and so on.  I mean seriously, I watch Mythbusters and scream at the TV because of all the holes in their theories and yell at them about how they should be doing it.  Hitter laughs at me.

And then it came to me.  Rebellion.  (no, it's not about sex this time)  I remember something that happened when I was still in college, I think I was maybe on my second internship but hadn't yet graduated and definitely didn't have anything lined up for after school.  I was back in the hick town I grew up in, talking to a guy that was an old acquaintance of the parental unit.  Turns out Designated Drinker had been telling everyone in hick town that I not only had a full-time job lined up for when I graduated in another year and half, but that I was going to be the next brilliant inventor for the giant corporation I was interning with.  And I replied with "oh hell no!"

But... what if...

What if I really could do it, and what if I would really enjoy it?  What if I really am brilliant?  Ha ha ha ha ha you know what I mean.  Seriously though, what if I should be a lead scientific researcher and I'm not doing it because I want to tell my father to go to hell?  What if I should be finding the cure for cancer, AIDS, lactose intolerance, paper cuts, and salmonella poisoning?  (quite a combo, huh?  for reference, see the previous food fight) What if I should be winning a Nobel prize?

Not shown: science groupies.  Also the Easter Bunny and other fictional creatures.

What if I should go back to college, get a PhD in biomedical engineering or something.  Okay, enough fantasizing.  But a Masters in chemistry doesn't sound so bad.  Except I'd still run into the problem of being in this stupid place with nothing to do.  I don't want to work in Corporate America, and I don't want to commute to the college.  I mean I would go do one of those things if we were suddenly poor and in fear of losing the house or something like that.  But I've done enough stupid piddly jobs and volunteer gigs since getting married, I hated them all and am not looking forward to something else I'll dislike if I don't have to.

*sigh*

And what if I'm only resisting working because of what a workaholic Hitter is?  More rebellion.  

I just want to take a deep breath and tell the whole world 

But I can't.  I'm trapped here.