I’m inspired to write! It’s been a bit for those of you following along...and for those of you I’ve lost along the way, hopefully I’ll have some interesting things to say in the weeks and months to come.
Simon and I have begun a new chapter to our travels in St. Cloud, MN. I’ll be working as a nurse for the summer, Simon will be working on his art. So...for those of you interested in some Simon artwork, now would be a good time to commission him for some projects. He’s working on making high-quality prints of some of his more popular pieces, so hit him up if there’s something you’ve had your eye on. There was my shameless plug for my other-half’s aspiring art ambitions. :)
So St. Cloud. It’s been four years since I’ve been employed in this town, and not a whole lot has changed, at least not at a first glance. One of the best and most exciting things that’s changed around town is the expanding craft beer availability. St. Cloud used to be (and still kinda is) the mecca of chain restaurants, but there are some mom-and-pop shops giving the corporate guys a run for their money. It’s refreshing and fantastic and I couldn’t be happier. The other day Simon and I even saw an actual hipster...a flannel clad, mustachioed, ten-speed riding dude (I’m sure the fixed-gear bike is in the works). Not that I identify with hipsters, in fact, I think they’re pretty ridiculous to tell you the truth, but I never expected to see one here. I always assumed that St. Cloud didn’t quite have the right blend of underground, off-beat mystique that would draw a hipster crowd. A lot can change in four years, I guess.
It’s nice to be back in the great state of Minnesota, and it’s been great living so close to Simon’s sister, Abby. I feel like we don’t get to see enough of her with all our travels, and now we have the potential to see her almost every day if we wanted to. Simon’s mom lives just over an hour away, and my family is about three hours away. Definitely driveable for visits.
There. I started out on a positive note. Let’s get right down to the complaining, shall we? We all know I can’t write a blog without complaining about something, so here goes. We are living in squalor. That’s about the only word I can use that can capture the state of the apartment that we’ve been placed in. Arguably one of the dumpiest apartments I have ever lived in, in my life...including college. 401 Olmsted for those of you unlucky enough to have visited me at that apartment in Winona came close, but it was still a step above this place. Let’s set the stage. St. Cloud is literally infested with apartment complexes. I don’t think you can go more than a block or two in any direction without running into an apartment complex. One would think the pickings for apartments would be abundant. There’s one caveat...about 1% (statistic made up on the spot) of them that allow dogs. Snap! Huge bummer. Given the condition of our apartment, I can understand why apartments don’t allow dogs. Our blinds have all been chewed on by something, pieces of the carpet are ripped up or missing all together, and there is not one square foot of the remaining carpet that doesn’t have some sort of stain. I’m not exaggerating. It’s disgusting, and I honestly can’t believe the management would allow new tenants to move in without replacing the carpet, at the very least. The carpet had been shampooed prior to us moving in, yet the stains remain, leaving me to assume that the previous owners did nothing to try to remove the stains as they occurred. Gross. I could decide to just let my dogs poop and pee all over the carpet, and you’d never know. Fortunately, I am a responsible pet owner and I expect and require my animals to do their business outdoors. And if in the event they have an accident, I deal with it promptly. I would assume that any normal human being with a sense of smell and a desire for basic cleanliness would feel the same way, but apparently that assumption would be wrong. Two of our three closets smell like litter box/cat pee, and we all know how I feel about cats so I won’t even waste my time ripping them from one end to the other...I understand that the fault lies not with the cat (much as I hate to admit that), but with the crappy owners. Even responsible cat owners can agree that if you don’t take care of your little box, it reeks. Reeks reeks reeks. And if the litter box isn’t cleaned, the cat starts going outside the litter box. Again we can all agree that cat pee reeks. Reeks reeks reeks. Some people should just not be allowed to have pets. And honestly, what fun could possibly be gleaned from a pet that poops and pees all over your apartment?
So...in hind sight, I maybe should have left the dogs with my parents for the summer...I could have had much nicer digs. But...they’re my dogs and I shouldn’t expect someone else to take care of them for me. So here we are. I just have to laugh that I’m 32 years old, I have a professional career where I make good money, and this is where I live. Many would point out that I shouldn’t be complaining about living somewhere for free, but I gladly would have paid above and beyond what my company is paying to have had a clean apartment. Since moving in I have also duct taped one of the fridge shelves to keep my condiments from falling out and rolling all over, I’ve covered the exposed carpet tacking with a rug so I don’t step on the nails and get tetanus, I’ve been obsessed with parking near the handicapped spot so I can only get door dings on one side of my car, and I’ve spent a good amount of money on air fresheners. I’ve also gotten strategic about fan placement to try to take full advantage of the wall AC unit that barely keeps up...it’s been hotter than blazes here this summer. The apartment is now liveable, however I will probably not be entertaining any guests here. Comes with the territory, I guess...I chose this particular facet of my career, and I have to take everything that goes with it. Good with the bad, pee stains with the view, litter box smell with the opportunity to not live in Minnesota in the winter, and so it goes.
One funny thing about our place is that there is a gamer that lives somewhere in our vicinity...I think we’ve finally figured out that he (I’m assuming it’s a he) lives above us. And he’s not just a gamer, he’s a gamer with a subwoofer. Yes, some nights it sounds like World War 3 around here. At least it’s not crappy music...I would much rather try to fall asleep to the sound of mortars crashing than the bass line of some crappy music. Last night there was some sort of wrestling match going on up there...I thought for sure someone was going to come crashing through our ceiling. Ah, the joys of apartment living.
One tradition that we always have when we move into a new apartment is that one of the pugs usually christens the place with a turd. Sometimes they both do. It’s infuriating. There’s few things worse than being in the throes of moving into a new place and then having to stop everything to clean the carpet. And usually when we move in we don’t have any paper towels, so we’re stuck cleaning up the mess with whatever we have on hand. Sometimes it’s literally our hands, gross as that is. One time the pugs ate the turds for me...that was nice of them, I guess. We’ve been working with them on this pooping business, and at 8 and 10 years old you’d think that they would have outgrown this by now, but they’re pugs and they’re stupid and the only way to beat bad behavior out of them would be to beat them to death, and you can only expect so much of them. So THIS time around we walked them until they had all pooped and peed prior to bringing them in the apartment, ensuring that there would be no turds. And there weren’t. But Lady vomited a huge pile on the carpet a mere foot from the linoleum. Gah!!! She’s the good one! I almost lost it. I dragged her over to the linoleum where she immediately collapsed out of fear, and then proceeded to vomit while she was on her side. All efforts to get her to stand up and vomit were unsuccessful. Who vomits on their side? So weird, and I was afraid she was going to choke on it. The next day Brie overdid it on the water and vomited on the carpet mere inches from the linoleum. It’s amazing I have any hair left...or that they’re all still alive. So we still have yet to move into an apartment where one dog or another doesn’t immediately do something to soil it. Maybe next time.
The job is a job. It’s better than the one I came from, I’ll give it that. It’s presenting its own challenges though, and I’m slowly working through them. St. Cloud Hospital utilizes a lot of LPN’s, and that’s taking some getting used to. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy working with LPN’s and I definitely appreciate their help, I’m just struggling with the idea of having someone else do my work for me. At least that’s what it feels like. In reality, we’re working together, but it feels like they’re doing all the work and I’m doing all the charting. My first few nights assigned with an LPN were terrible, and I think it was mostly because I was trying to do too much myself, but partly because 9 patients between two people is still 9 patients...that’s a lot of sick people to keep track of at one time. And it’s not like we split the assignment to where she had 5 of them and I had 4 of them...we each had 9 together. It’s kind of hard to explain, but that’s all I got. I know that eventually I’ll find my stride and everything will be just fine. I really enjoyed working here four years ago, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy working here this time around as well. Ellen tagged along with me from Florida, and we ended up having pretty similar schedules, so it’s been nice having her around too.
I had a conversation about work with a friend of mine recently that really made me think about the job market and what having a job means to people, especially people my age and younger. My friend is involved in the hiring of new employees where she works, and she said that the younger generation isn’t just motivated by salary or loyalty anymore, but also by how much fun a job is. People are looking for jobs that are emotionally, socially, and mentally stimulating, not just to take home a paycheck. It’s interesting to think about it that way. I think about my grandparents and even my parents, who have/had been at the same jobs their entire lives...either out of loyalty to where they work or motivated by pensions and whatnot. I feel like my generation isn’t afraid to leave a job that isn’t meeting all their needs. I’m realistic in the knowledge that I’m not going to get a pension. Even when I worked for Mayo after graduating from college, they promised a pension but made so many changes in the four years that I was there as to when you could receive it and how much you would inevitably get, that I put it out of my mind. I wasn’t going to spend the next 40 years of my career stressing about pension. I just lived under the assumption that I couldn’t count on my employer to provide for my retirement, and I’ve taken measures to save up for retirement myself. Pension means nothing to me, and maybe that’s the wrong approach to take...I might regret this decision someday. But at the same time, I don’t want to stay at a job I’m not happy with in the hopes that I’ll get a pension someday. It goes both ways, I guess. Right now I’m happier with my job than I’ve ever been, and that means more to me than the somewhat transparent promises of a future pension.
A big change for Simon and I was the recent purchase of a new vehicle. We are now the owners of a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and so far we really like it. It was a bittersweet move to make though. My little Liberty was my favorite vehicle of all time. There pretty much wasn’t anything that little bugger couldn’t do, almost no where it couldn’t go. I’ve traveled across the country in that thing more times than I can count, and it’s been such a great little vehicle. All those trips with the trailer though were definitely taking a toll on him, and it was getting to the point where he was getting too old to handle that kind of abuse. I’m really going to miss that agile little guy. The new Jeep is definitely more agile than any of the other similarly-sized SUV’s, but it definitely is bigger and I’m still working on parking it properly. It doesn’t quite corner on a dime the way the Liberty did, but I’d say it probably corners on a nickel...that’s still pretty good. I just don’t feel like this new Jeep is “us.” At least not yet. It seems like such an adult vehicle, and I feel like we’re going to have to grow into it a bit. We did put a roof rack on it and have already had the paddle boards up there, so it’s starting to fit into our lifestyle a little better. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great vehicle and I know in time we’ll learn to love it. It’s definitely going to be more useful with the trailer, and that was the main reason that we got it. And we got it for a really good price. We probably could have waited until the end of summer (and maybe for a red one to become available...I love my red), but we just couldn’t pass this one up. I still look for my little red guy when I come out of stores though...hahaha!
Moving to a new city, a new apartment, and a new job requires a lot of handshaking. I feel like I’m constantly meeting new people and shaking hands. And I’m surprised by the number of people who have really limp handshakes. I’m disturbed by limp handshakes...they give me the heebie geebies. I don’t know why. I guess I grew up around people who had nice, firm handshakes. I don’t know what to do with those limp hands. I’d rather not shake at all if that’s what they’re going to give me. I do a firm but gentle squeeze and a pump. Yes, I’m still talking about handshaking. You perverts.
I recently learned what a tractor sprinkler is. I’d never heard of them before, but it’s a sprinkler that looks like a tractor, and it follows the hose around. It literally moves around the yard by itself. I’m completely enthralled by them, and our apartment complex uses no less than three of them in their watering endeavors. Every time I go outside I get to see a tractor. I would stop to watch but they move really slow and Simon isn’t as amazed by them as I am. I’ll have to add that to the list of things to get for our future home. I’ll be entertained for hours.
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| Cheeburger Cheeburger...where the service is always fantastic!! |
I have decided that unless I get extraordinary service, I’m going back to tipping 10%. I was annoyed when standard tipping went to 15%. And it’s not that I’m stingy or a bad tipper. Most of the time I tip pretty well, extraordinarily if it happens to be a Jimmy John’s delivery person...hahaha! But I don’t like the idea of tipping 15% for someone to perform the very basic requirements of their job. The other day my family and I were at the Mall of America, and we had lunch at Hooters. Yes, my family went to Hooters. There were 12 of us, the food court was packed, some of us wanted to have beer, and we needed a place that would seat a large party. So we went to Hooters. They ended up seating us 6 at one table, and 6 at another, which was fine. Each table had its own waitress, so it wasn’t like one waitress was handling all 12 of us. Our waitress started out with a poor attitude, and I don’t know if it was because she was taken aback my my dad asking what brand of root beer they have (he can’t have caffeine, and there are certain root beers that are caffeine-free) or if she just didn’t want to be there. We had to ask for silverware several times, one of my four buffalo chicken sliders had a drummie in it rather than a boneless wing (Simon was the unfortunate recipient of that one), and at the end of the meal, the tab for all 12 of us was together, rather than by table. We didn’t specify that we wanted to split the tab between the tables, but I guess we assumed that the bill would be split since we were at different tables with different waitresses. There goes that assuming again. So while we were figuring out the bill, my aunt from the other table was all fired up and didn’t want to leave a tip at all. Apparently their waitress had been worse than ours. We ended up leaving about a 5% tip because we felt guilty leaving nothing at all. And still we felt a little guilty...guilty that it was too little. But should we have? Our service was poor, and the waitress did nothing to right the slider that was prepared wrong (I get that the kitchen messed that one up, but as the waitress she is our liaison to the kitchen and it’s her job to make sure that wrongs are righted). Why do we feel that we should still tip for poor service? And I’ve heard the argument from people in the industry that sometimes servers have bad days or sometimes they’re working short or that their base pay is crap, etc. You know what? I don’t care. And maybe that sounds callous, but I don’t go to a restaurant expecting poor service...and rewarding it besides. I also happen to work in an industry that feels an awful lot like waitressing some days, and people don’t care that I haven’t peed in 10 hours or that I haven’t had lunch or that I haven’t had a break yet or that I’m feeling a little under the weather. They’re not there to care about my feelings and my well-being...that’s on me to take care of those things. That’s just the way it is. Poor service is poor service no matter the reason, and people shouldn’t be rewarded for it. Now I sound like an old bag, but honestly.
So after a month and a half hiatus I went back to the gym today. It felt good, and I was actually a little surprised by the amount of muscle tone I had been able to salvage during my time off from the gym. There’s those genetics again. I’ve got some ground to make up, but I was relieved to see that I don’t have to start out at zero again. The gym here in St. Cloud uses the same Body Pump program that I had gotten used to and enjoyed in Florida, so that was my main motivation in joining. We joined what was formerly known as Gold’s Gym, now called Fitness Evolution. Or Evolution Fitness...I’m not sure what order those words are supposed to be. At any rate, it’s basically the same gym with a different name. This gym is bizarre though. I’ve never seen so many muscle bound (meathead) men in one place in my entire life. I had heard along the way that Gold’s had a reputation for these behemoth dudes, and maybe a few rumblings of some steroid use, but I finally got to see it with my own eyes. These dudes are huge...and admittedly, a little bit gross. I don’t know what possesses men to strive to be so big and muscular, but I find it very unattractive. Not just the way it looks, but knowing how much time and effort goes into getting that big and staying that big seems a little pathological...and let’s not forget narcissistic, since there’s really no logical reason any person needs to be that big. It gets to the point where that’s not even fitness anymore...how much stamina can those dudes really have when those giant muscles are tapping all the body’s resources? The free-weight area is always packed with these giant dudes...luckily the women have a separate free-weight area that is meathead-free. Simon said that he wants to come lift weights on the women’s side...hahaha! This morning while we were getting ready to start our body pump class (in a room with the door closed and away from the rest of the gym) we heard a man just bellering away in what I can only assume was the free-weight area. Bellering. Grunting. Loudly. I was embarrassed for him...although my embarrassment was undoubtedly wasted seeing as he was obviously purposely lifting far more weight than he probably should have been if it was causing him to yell out like that. But I digress...it’s the idiots in this world that cause us to feel good about ourselves. Am I right?
I am inappropriate with little kids. I can’t help it. I try to remedy it, but that usually just ends up making it worse. I was hanging out with my friends and their eleven year-old son recently, and he was talking about the SAW movies. I told him I’d seen two of them, and he started asking questions about what it was about and what happened. Some of the questions he was asking led me to believe that had seen parts of them, so there I went, giving him a graphic description of the movie. I had been blabbering on for what felt like hours before I finally came up for air and saw all around the me the appalled faces of Simon and the boy’s parents. Really? Did I just tell an 11 year-old kid that one of the characters in the movie had to cut a key out of another character’s stomach while he was still alive, for the sole purpose of unlocking a spiked mask from her own head, thereby preventing turning her own head into a bloody colander? Yes. Yes I did. I just don’t have filters. And I try. I try so hard not to swear, not to be perverted, not to act out, not to talk about adult things...and I fail every time. I’m sure after every interaction with me, parents are forced to give their kids a disclaimer about my behavior. Perhaps parents now are warning their children in advance. There certainly has to be some measure of damage control whenever I’m involved. Oy.
And that's it from my end. At least I hope that's it...this was certainly long enough! Toodle-oo!
