The only certainty is bad grammar – Page 137 – Too personal for the internet.

relatively small problems

Published: February 7, 2009 / Updated: February 7, 2009 Crystal long

my aunt and uncle sent me some money in the mail today, which obviously proves God exists.

let me sum up how broke i am — I’ve been telling people I had $12 to last until Friday, Feb. 13 because I figured if i told people that i only had $2.33 – which is what i DID have – even MORE people would tell me to leave journalism. and i do not need ANY more people to tell me that im on a sinking ship. and i guess part of it was my own fault, because you know, i like to pay my rent, my car payment and eat, so i suppose i did “blow” my money on those things.

irregardless, i was pretty worried about having just $2.33, seeing as how there was a mighty good chance i would need to drive to work and back for the next five days and what not, and gas isn’t free. my plan was to live on generic Cheetos and the rest of the chocolate chip cookies i bought that tasted like cardboard with fake chocolate chips in them and tap water for the next six days and hope that a 1/2 tank of gas would last the week. and after a good cry in my car and then another in my bedroom closet i pulled myself together and proceeded to fake that i had everything under control with a strong sigh.

i had kind of figured id be in this position seeing as how the bills are the most reliable things in my life, but that didn’t stop me from writing another $5 check to God last week at church. and i was semi-considering writing a $1 check tomorrow, but was worried that having a bank account balance of $1.33 was a little on the risky side. after i spent my saturday morning weighing the pros and cons of this, i decided i was STARVING enough to each another generic Cheeto, and went downstairs to the kitchen. on the way, i looked through the mail so i could see all my lovely medical bills.

and there it was.

in all it’s golden-envelope glory. the letter from my aunt and uncle was just sitting there on the dining room table, like it wasn’t the MOST amazing thing to happen to me in the last five months. and inside was enough cash to get me through my week. the sight of it sucked my breath right out of my lungs and out the window. and my eyes teared up because i was so moved, and relieved, and grateful to my aunt and uncle, and happy, and it felt like God had come down through my ceiling and pulled 18 pounds off my shoulders.

and sometimes i do doubt that God will have the time to deal with my relatively small problems. alas, he did though. he came through. and i was so happy.

i remember another time i knew god existed. it was when my friend april was arrested on the side of highway somewhere in the middle of the 7,692 cornfields that make up southern Illinois. she had unknowingly been driving without a license because a few months prior she was driving some teen-age boy’s car and got pulled over and the teen-age boy didn’t have insurance. and even though a judge told her everything was cleared up, due to a clerical error her license was suspended after the incident. only nobody told her, so here she was driving all over southern illinois illegally for months.

and she had almost been pulled over a few weeks before that amongst those same cornfields because she was going like 20 miles per hour over the limit on her way to a very important place. but, just before she would have sped past the cop hidden around a corner, someone pulled in front of her and slowed her down to legal speeds. thereby avoiding the time it would have taken for her to be arrested.

see, we were on our way to my brother’s house because he had threatened to kill himself that night. and neither of us had much experience with suicide, but we were pretty freaked out and decided this was one of those times it was better to be safe than to risk death and whatnot.

and when we got there, my brother had already taken WAY more boxes of cold medicine than any stores should even carry, much less allow one person to walk out with. ( in the stores’ defense, i believe my brother stole the medicine. but STILL). and so, shortly after we got there and saw my brother’s eyes glazed over, we realized he was not so much alert as he was slowly fading away. and we called 911 so medical professionals could save his life — which they did. thank. GOD.

and i really do believe that if that cop had pulled her over on the way there, we would have been late for the only thing in my entire life that i have actually needed to be on time for.

and i also really do believe that God was the reason she didn’t get pulled over. and maybe it was even Him in that car in front of us that slowed us down, so that april wouldn’t be arrested and instead we could get to my brother on time. because even though i sometimes doubt that God has time to deal with my relatively small problems, he always comes through. and that makes me so happy.

i’ll stop writing about money when i finally get some

February 5, 2009 Crystal humor, sh*tty things that happen to me, short

the thing about being broke that nobody ever tells you is that it makes it really, really hard to do the right thing.

today i got one of those headaches that feels like i have a blue and green mass growing above my left eye. and i tried to take some tylenol, which my lovely co-worker gave me for free, but that crap didn’t do a darn thing to ease my pain. i knew when i took it though that the only thing that was going to work was advil. except i didn’t have any freaking advil.

so i was going to try and ignore the problem by relying on my old stand-by – praying that God and/or magic will fix it. however, neither came through for me today, so i had to drive over to wal-greens and buy some stupid advil.

and im ashamed to admit this, but for the first time in my life the thought of stealing the medicine actually crossed my mind. i just did NOT have the $3.98 it was going to cost me for the generic ibuprofen. i mean i had it, but it had already been allocated for gas money.

of course, i did not steal the medicine. but the thought fluttered over my brain and past what felt like a blue and green mass above my left eye for at least a solid half of a second.

and my 12-year-old self, who never got headaches that felt like a blue and green mass was growing above her left eye, and who never had to understand money, would have never, for even a half a second, ever considered stealing something. in fact, one time, when i was about 12, i walked to the dominick’s grocery down the street from my house with some friends. and they decided to each steal one grape from the produce bins, and i refused to partake. PEOPLE I WOULDN’T EVEN STEAL A GRAPE.

now look at my moral-less self. im one step away from stealing drugs. not illegal drugs, mind you. but those can’t be too far off.

lifting yourself up

Published: February 4, 2009 / Updated: February 6, 2009 Crystal exercise, humor, long

today i downloaded music from my roommates rhapsody account onto my 2GB memory card, which i recently installed in my Barbie-pink crackberry. Strangely, her and i have similar musical tastes, which is probably based on the fact that we are still on the cusp of the industry’s target market, so i got myself a good helping up Rhianna and Brittney. the songs are for working out, so they are supa upbeat and what not.

yes. yes. i’ve started working out and such. only i haven’t actually started lifting weights yet because my mom scared the gall bladder out of me when she mentioned that my insides might not be all the way healed after my recent surgery — a fear i had not had until she mentioned it with panic over the phone.

i used to lift weights though. back in my grad school days id wake up every morning at 4:45 a.m. so i could get to the gym by 5 a.m. and work out with this amazing trainer who i had flirted into working out with me for free. and aside from the minor-ly annoying sexual harassment, i thought it was a pretty good deal.

he’d yell at me while i did the stair master, then explain to me how all the various weight machines worked. and im not sure how i got it in to my head to lose weight and stick with it, but holy dumbbell did i ever commit myself to the place.

not only did i never miss a day, i also gave up all alcoholic beverages under my new found belief that empty calories such as the type found in long island ice teas were just not worth the pain. and i only drank pop on wednesday nights during my weekly dinners with stephanie. and i ate 5 meals a day to keep my metabolism on the up and up.

and i lost weight. 30 pounds actually. and on the day i got my diploma from grad school, i worked out and weighed myself and then out of bliss, slid into a clingy black dress to wear under my gown. and everyone was so impressed. and they would say things like “wow, you look SO good” and a little part of me would wonder whether i had looked good before, but then I’d convince myself that i’d never gain the weight back and therefore never look like that again, so it was all a moot point really.

only the part of me even littler than that knew i would gain the weight back. because even though i had worked out. and given up all forms of alcohol and eaten five small meals a day, the only reason i actually lost weight was the diet pills i was taking.

and i when i stopped the “as close to meth as you can legally get” pills, i gained back 12 pounds in about three weeks.

and i tried to take the pills again, but this time my body knew to say no from day one, and i got really dizzy at work and had to have a co-worker drive me home at 1 a.m. because i was a horrid copyeditor and that’s when i got off.

so i had to give up on the diet pills, and as a result face the fact that nobody really does anything out of shear will power alone. somewhere, somehow they always have help. maybe it’s friends. maybe it’s God. maybe it’s diet pills. but nobody, anywhere, ever does anything out of shear will power alone.