Simone Jester

So...yeah, I'm still around. Online, I'm mostly at Archive of Our Own (orbitaldiamonds), Twitter (simonejester), and Tumblr (krepta-starchild and others).

I got the data entry job in Olrando, so now I'm Walgreens corporate instead of Walgreens retail. I lived with family in T-ville until I could afford my own place and since the end of November I've had a little apartment in Orlando. It's 45 minutes from work, but it was the best I could afford at the time. When all the colleges let out I'll check out apartment prices again and look for better neighborhoods that are closer to work.

I keep meaning to get back into LJ and DW, but if I do manage it, it won't be until sometime in March at the earliest. It's been overtime season at work (which I love! After having my hours cut drastically at the store, I consider the opportunity for overtime--which is strictly voluntary--a privilege!) and I've been working 60 hour weeks since December. I really should be doing housework on my one off-day (to be fair, I did do dishes and clean out my refigerator), but most of it's stuff that can wait until overtime season is over and the stuff that isn't (cleaning the bathroom, grocery shopping) can be done later. Besides, I have a fair amount of stuff to sort out online. I'm going through my email and deleting a lot of crap that should have been deleting years ago, and I'm considering creating a new email account and just using the old one (well, ones) for junk mail and archiving chats with Fizzy and others.

Hope y'all are well, if there's anyone still following this DW and the LJ it crossposts to. I'd say Happy New Year, but it's freaking February and it's too late for that. :P

P.S. I've been following the political news all along like the glutton for punishment I am. Semi-seriously considering learning Swedish and emigrating.

I'm going to be an aunt! (I mean I technically already am, but you know what I mean.)

I am so excited for my brother and his wife. While I don't much get along with either of them, I love them like family and I hope I can meet baby Isabella (no, they're not Twihards) soon.

After reading this thread at ontd_p (and the huge one at the beginning), I'm feeling a surge of gratitude for my mom's simple give-a-damn. Now, we never lived in poverty, but between divorcing from my dad and marrying my stepdad, my brother and I just barely didn't qualify for reduced-price lunch at school. Also, for I-don't-take-it-for-granted privileges like her reading to me since before I was born, for paying attention to us, for having books in our home, for taking us to the library once a week when my appetite for books exceeded her budget for not-needs.

I'm even grateful that she has worked full time for that long. My mom wishes she could have been a stay-at-home mom, but I think she set a better example for us (and especially me as a girl) as a working mom. It taught me, even though it wasn't really explicitly stated, that I should go to college and get a good job, and not to expect that a man will take care of me.

I'm also super grateful for the awesomeness (well, most of the time) of my mom's boss and co-workers. My mom is a police secretary and she's been allowed various kinds of flexibility in her hours, and if my brother or I ever needed to come home in the middle of a school day, her boss let her go right then. If she needed a sick day to take care of one of us, she got the sick day. Granted, she's worked at the same job for over 22 years, which can be seen as a privilege (though I honestly think when she retires it'll take two people to replace her, she works her butt off for realsies), but still, it's great to have a boss/employer that's that understanding. (And it helps to have a small city and therefore not a huge PD, so everyone knows everyone else and their family.)

Anyhow...just saying what I should have said on Mother's Day and her birthday and, well, way more often than I do.

Thank you, Mommy. I'm sorry I was such a brat most of the time.


P.S. This was not a crack at stay-at-home moms or dads, especially since I might wind up being a stay-at-home mom myself someday, what with the job market being le suck and Chris having pretty good job security with the Army. I just think that I picked up on the best lesson one can about single motherhood.