the cop who pulled me over and gave me a ticket, which costs me MONEY, for not having my licence stickers renewed, which i have not done because i don't have the MONEY, was much nicer and more polite to me than most of the rest of the people i've encountered today.
i fail to see the merit of monetarily penalizing someone for not having money. it's either put the stickers on the car or pay the insurance. which would you rather i do, officer? we're already assuming that i'm neither eating nor taking medication at this point, of course, so there's really nothing left to deduct from. perhaps i should get rid of the pesky need for rent money and just live in the car? there's no room for the rabbits or cat, but perhaps i could sell them for gas money.
i understand that it's not like there's a 'make the driver get out of the car to be pointed and laughed at instead' option. but you know, be a little generous. ask me why my stickers are expired. maybe my car sat in the shop for the past four weeks, handily enough dating back to my birthday, and at the time when i could have (maybe) found seventy-four dollars to buy the precious piece of plastic, i wasn't sure i had a car anymore, so i chose to spend that money on whittling down other debts instead. maybe i'm getting screwed out of the hours i'm supposed to be working and can barely get myself to work and back on the budget i have. maybe charging me seventy-four dollars to drive my car is a little steep in the middle of summer when i'm only partially employed to begin with, and no, i do not make enough money during the rest of the year to save it up and tuck it away. if i did, i wouldn't have all these little niggling debts to pay off - sixty dollars to the dentist, thirty here, a hundred there - not to mention that four hundred plus the government says i owe them, for daring to work too much and not get taxed enough last year (that whopping 17,000 i cleared, which didn't come from them to begin with, was clearly an infringement of their right to My Income).
i'm ready to fucking explode. i want to go to school NOW and get it over with so i can get a fucking job that doesn't make me want to slit my wrists from elbow to palm and actually pays me enough to make my meager little ends meet. if i don't get in next year, i don't know what the fuck i'm supposed to do with my life, because i am goddamn sick and tired of this paycheque-to-paycheque shit - and that's generous, because in between those paycheques there's a lot of missed pills, plain pasta dinners, collection notices that i hope my roommate can't identify as such when she picks up the mail, aching teeth that need fixing, and pining for the luxuries of life like replacing clothes i've owned since high school, paying bills instead of avoiding them, getting a pizza for dinner once in a while, getting my rabbits fixed so they can play together, or driving on a full tank of gas.
don't tell me to get a new job, either. trust me, i've tried. and on monday, i will start another long, demeaning, *expensive* round of trying, and probably get nowhere. about the only thing you don't need a university degree or a well-connected friend or relative for is something i am terrible at - customer service, sales, and retail. i am not cute or perky or friendly. i am intelligent, which counts for nothing next to likability, and i do possess, believe it or not, a very professional demeanour - polite, helpful, nice - which is second-rate to the ability to talk someone into buying something they don't need (something i could not honestly stomach listening to myself do anyway).
i coach gymnastics really well. unfortunately, the hours that lends itself too will never amount to a full-time job, unless you spend your out-of-class time in the office (something i'd be glad to do, but which we already have two perfectly competant people).
i get along with animals really well. unfortunately, i don't feel very comfortable walking six dogs at a time off their leashes in a public park, working in a boarding kennel disgusted me and made me want to call the OSPCA daily, and any sort of doggie daycare seems to involve making friends with the human clique who is already there - something i've never excelled at. though i've heard stories from people - nineteen year old high school dropouts, even - about working in vet clinics and actually assisting with surgery without so much as a perused textbook's worth of training, i'm sure i wouldn't be able to find the place that would be so thrilled with my desire to learn that they'd take me on in such a capacity (and i don't think such a place would be a terribly upstanding institution, either). hell, i could get certified as a tech and probably still have trouble getting the job, if they've got someone else applying for it. but at least then i've got something to back me up. if i can just get accepted into the program amidst all the high school graduates who got ninety percent in chemistry (i certainly did not, and i only took the damn class because i was thinking about vet tech requirements), that is. i most certainly qualify as a 'mature student' at this point, and i'm not sure if that's good or bad, because maybe they won't consider my high school grades too closely, but i'm afraid what other method they might use to accept or reject me. names in a hat? 'let's put the applications of everyone over twenty-five in this pile, and you pick out three. then we'll take the one whose name starts with the magic letter.'
i'm just sick and fucking tired of worrying about working and money. if i were having a rocking fucking good time partying my ass off like a twenty-year-old, i wouldn't mind so much being twenty-eight and not having figured out the way to survive. it would seem like a fair enough trade off. but since i'm having about as much fun in my life as a boring grown-up, i'd at least like to work like a boring grown-up so i could entertain myself as best as i can. is that too much to ask?