I need a roomba.

This is what I have spent the past half-hour doing. Watching animals either ride, stalk or be mercilessly teased by any number of Roombas or other robotic vacuum cleaners. 

Clearly, I need to start doing something productive with my life before that half-hour of robot-riding critters turns into hours, or days. 

This trip to Rhode Island is really starting to catch up with me. My drive up was fun, spending time with my mother and cousin has been fabulous, but this entire scenario, as well as several others, is really starting to catch up with me. I need to go back to school, be in my natural habitat and put myself on some sort of schedule. Hello, 2009? Start being proactive. 

I have an interview on Thursday with an in-home tutoring company called Club Z. I'm really hoping it goes well and hoping I can really hone some of the skills I've already picked up from substitute teaching and help some kiddies with English and grammar. Really? A grammar snob's dream job. This means...I can create other grammar snobs. Finally, the power to make the world a more beautiful place. One child at a time, single handedly saving the world from improper uses of the word there. 

Assuming they like me. Assuming no one calls the LHBP and talks to Crystal. Assuming I don't come off as an idiot. 

Two Weeks Notice

I suppose my snobby tendencies finally got the best of me last week. I have been trying to fight it for so long, because, honestly, there are a lot of great people in the world who don't need college in order to be great. I tried to tell myself I was just a poor, helpless victim of the economy and my first degree has a poor market, anyway. (You know, journalists get laid...off...) 

I couldn't do it anymore. Last week, something terrible and mean kept mumbling, "you went to college, you're too good for this" in my ear. 

Not to mention, my manager is seriously starting to grate on my typically overly-cheery Christmas spirit. 

Apparently, though, because my manager consistently has to have the last word in any matter, I've been exhibiting a bit more tension than usual lately and I'm stressing her out. I guess, when I'm "stressed out" after a day of substituting and have to report to work for an additional five hours, it makes her "stressed out." Her solution to me was to not worry about the money and just quit one of the jobs. 

I'm not sure if she meant substituting or her store, but I have never had a boss tell me to quit their job before. Perhaps I threw her for a loop. 

Regardless of where I was supposed to quit, I gave her my two weeks notice. My last day of undergarment peddling will be December 27th. That knowledge is the best Christmas present I could ever provide myself with. 

I'll be able to really focus on substituting until I start classes on January 12, and after that I'll still be able to be in the schools on Wednesdays. After that, I'll just figure something out. Maybe tutoring? I've gotten more comfortable helping kids with lessons with how many times I've had to really look back into my mental bank for answers to high school and middle school English questions. Just getting myself an MLA handbook and re-introducing the Oxford comma to myself, and I think I'd be pretty okay as a writing and grammar tutor. 

We'll see. 

Oh, and one more thing. To Miss Brittney Spears: curse you and your catchy little "Womanizer" tune. Every time I hear it (read: every eight seconds I'm not listening to the Sirius-XM Christmas station), I get closer and closer to looking into downloading Circus. Curses.