The girls are losing their minds and the boys aren't far behind

I got the job at Family Video. That’s so exciting! I’m really happy about it because I just feel like the job is going to be a good fit. I’ve already written about how difficult it is for me to find a new job that I like and when I showed up for the skills test and later for the interview with the district manager I still had the feeling that I’d like to work in the store a whole lot. I suppose I should address this as it happened. The skills test basically blew me away. I’m not going to say it was hard or anything, because for the most part I think it was probably scored really realistically and that I probably killed the competition. I’m a standardized tester. It’s sort of my thing. But the test was so incredibly taxing. Because it wasn’t like the ACT or GRE or even the SAT where they sort of mix up the difficulty of the teste (well the GRE doesn’t… but they mix up the kind of questions you’re answering… and if you start to suck cos yr tired then you’ll get easier questions for a smidge). So this test just got progressively more difficult as you went on and it was timed. The longest section was 10 and a half minutes and that was math word problems. The hardest question on the test was “What is the square root of 20736?” I’m not kidding. The answer is 144, i found out later. I figured it would be sometehing like that. But seriously. What were they thinking. There’s just next to no way I would even do the work to figure that out mentally. After an hour and a quarter of skills test or so… I was freed from the video store to await my test results. Rock. By about 3:30 or so I was sitting in the history department and received a call from Tyler (the manager) asking if I could come for the final part of the interview where I sit down with the district manager.

My interview with the district manager went incredibly well. She’d just purchased the shirt I was wearing a few days prior at Old Navy. She’s a catholic. We both like to talk all the time. She’s abrasive in that way that I like in people. It was awesome. So eventually trying to figure out if I’d be a good hire turned into just shooting the breeze with me turned into offering me a job. I only make 6.5 starting out but they move me up to seven in like 20 days or something. That’s exciting. And I’m happy to have something else to do for a change. I’m still working at the Cap-J and probably won’t stop that anytime soon. I’m just glad that I have nights and weekends during which I can work. I start Friday probably.

I’m sort of inspired to write new poetry again. I’d been in another dry spell, save that poem that I didn’t like that much about drinking Ginger Shandy at McCoys with Kyle and Banks/sleeping on Banks’ floor with Kyle. These ones should be good. One is exploring metaphor of breaking up. The other is a frank look at body image and what it means and how i struggle with it. I might try to work on them in a bit here at work, but I think they’re the kind of poems you hand-write on notebook paper and then type. They’re definitely not the kind that you just type outright. They’re not going to come that easily. When I finish these words you will see your face in them and never think to ask me who’sitabout?

The second poem is inspired by my trip to Target with my mom. We went to lunch then we went to buy polos.  The thing is, I really like my body most of the time.  But i’m at that point where clothes shopping is just really difficult.  My weight is stable right now… which is both good and bad.  But I don’t know.  Shopping with mom is frustrating. Cos I feel like she basically just tells me that I’m fat and look unnattractive in everything I try on.  I practically had a panic attack before I left the dressing room for the first time today and then couldn’t come out in anything.  Agh.  Frustrating.

• Category: Journal