- Following up my last post, my grandma passed away on September 4th. Keegan and I were driving back from St. Louis after spending the long Labor Day weekend with a bunch of friends when my dad called me to tell me the news. Of course I was upset, but a kind of calm came over me knowing that she wasn't in pain anymore. I'm currently working on getting my passport so that I can attend her funeral in October. I hate that family reunions only seem to happen in times of sorrow, but I will love seeing all of my family again. It has been far too long since I have seen everyone.
- Labor Day weekend was....interesting. I don't know if I was just on edge because of everything that was going on with my grandma, or if our friend dynamics have really changed that much in just a few months, but certain people in our friend group were just rubbing me the wrong way. It was the same people that annoyed me when we hung out in Rolla, so I wasn't surprised that they annoyed me when we got together for the weekend, but I was kind of hoping that since most of us have graduated from college now, they would have grown up by now. Oh well; overall, the weekend was fun. We got to go to the zoo, hang out as a group in the hotel, swim, and just generally catch up with each other. We talked about making this a yearly thing and changing the location each time to where a member of the group is living. The idea is next year will be in California, but I'm not sure if Keegan and I will be able to make that with him only getting 10 days of paid vacation a year and us wanting to save that for holidays with family. We'll see what happens.
- So far, I'm still technically unemployed. I'm still "working" at the arts council in the next town over while I wait to see if the Vista grant will come through from the government. It looks like the earliest that will happen will be November. I'm very conflicted with this situation because I love working at the arts council, but I can't keep working there for free. My student loan payments start in November and I don't want to push them back any farther. Getting the Vista grant will be extremely helpful because while I'm receiving the grant, the government will pay any interest I have on my student loans as well as paying me a monthly income. I will also get medical insurance and if I had children, the government would pay for their child care. The Vista grant is exactly what I need right now, but with the U.S. government wanting to decrease their debt, they are being extremely slow with approving any kind of budget for programs like this. There is even talk about the government getting rid of the Vista program which would mean that I wouldn't be able to stay at the arts council because they just don't have the money to pay me since they are a non-profit organization. My boss did say that she is going to officially put me on the pay roll just in case there are days when the girl I work with can't come in, so they could pay me.
- I also need to either get the Vista grant going, or find a real job so that I can hopefully get a new, or at least a less crappy car. My car died again last week and it was another $750 to fix (the stupid gas line broke or something like that.) I HATE having to ask Keegan to pay for things like this. Since I was 15, the legal age in Missouri for minors to hold a job, I was working as much as I could during the summer and while I was in school. During college, I worked three jobs to keep a roof over my head, feed myself, and pay for school supplies; most of the time I was only able to afford two out of the three. I have always been a very self-sufficient person, never wanting to rely on anyone to pay for anything because that always (well 99.9% of the time) leads to them holding it over your head. I made a promise to myself when I was young that I would never rely on anyone for monetary reasons and unfortunately in the situation I'm in down here, I have to rely on Keegan. I thought that I had a job lined up with the arts council before we moved down here, but the Vista grant has fallen through twice now. If it falls through again in November, I'm going to have to leave my dream job and probably the only arts-related job in this area to work retail or something with a paycheck. I also promised myself that I would use my degree, and giving up my job at the arts council and going back to working retail makes me feel like I've failed and going to college was for nothing.
- With my money situation in mind, I'm thinking of opening an Etsy shop with simple handmade things that I can make easily, with either scrap fabric I have left over from school, or old t-shirts that Keegan and I want to get rid of. I just hope that it will be worth it and I can actually make some money off of it.
- On a more positive note, R, the girl I work with at the arts council gave Keegan and I two tickets to the MSU college football game last Thursday and it was a blast. We were in the nosebleed section (seriously, I think we walked at least 7 stories to get to our seats,) so we could barely see the game, but it was fun to forget about everything for a while and to band together with the strangers around us and cheer for the home team. Keegan and I were looking into getting better tickets for one of the biggest games of the season, but reasonable ones (read less than $100 per ticket) are already sold out and the game isn't for another two months. I guess we'll be watching that game from our couch unless someone wants to give us tickets again. I can't believe how big football is down here. Some people pay $500 per ticket per game! I don't think I would ever pay that much for a sporting event, but I wasn't brought up with football being a big deal in my house. This town gets so crazy busy during game days so I think unless we're going to the game, Keegan and I might go out of town on game days.
- Keegan and I are making friends. The couple that I thought we would be close to have turned out to be a lot more introverted than we thought, so we have only hung out with them a few times. With them falling through and Keegan's summer interns leaving, I was afraid that we wouldn't have anyone our age around until next summer. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there are a lot more people under the age of 30 that work with Keegan than I thought. We went out to dinner with a bunch of Keegan's younger male co-workers one night which was a lot of fun. Last night we also went out with a girl that is the office next to Keegan's and her girlfriend. They are both born and raised Mississippians and it was a hoot to compare our two different childhoods, especially since the girlfriend was brought up in a less-developed part of Mississippi. They are both super nice and I really hope that we get to know them better. I am not so worried that we are not going to be able to find friends down here anymore.
~Aislinn
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