chewing nails and spitting bullets...

life has a tendency to blindside, coming at you sideways like a drunken sailor with blood on his mind.

i was cruising along, working, having a good time, and they tell me i can't enroll in school.

what?!? what the fuck?!? cause it has been so long since i did a placement test and it is possible that my classes from alaska won't transfer over and blah yakkity spanky blah.

right before christmas break so i can't storm in there like unholy vengeance and give them a piece of my mind (actually, i can't do that, i have so little of it left for myself!)

then last week, out of the blue, like a brick dislodged from an 8th story window, they drop on my fragile cranium that they are cutting back my hours at work.

well, motherfucker!! now i have to be in school so my gi bill will offset the loss i take in my paycheck and i can use the free time i suddenly find forced upon myself to write papers (and my second novel, which i am tentatively calling The Island of Misfit Toys, depending on whether rankin/bass will fuck me in the ass legally for stealing a name from their christmas shows while in actuality the book has nearly nothing at all to do with rudolph the red-nosed reindeer or yukon cornelius and yet at the same time, has everything to do with them) and do homework and study for tests, as opposed to lolligagging around and spending money i don't have on shit i don't need.

so as soon as humanly possible after the offices of the hollowed halls of learning (heh heh) open back up, the hint of candy canes and champagne still in the air, i am in talking to an advisor. yes, i can attend school. yes, my gi bill will (most likely) reimburse me for it. yes, i can get into the autocad classes i want to take. i will have time to retake my placement test sometime this semester, but yes, they offer it right here on the campus.

whew! breathe a sigh of relief, dash off into the sun and sea breeze with the rest of the day and my education and my life wide open before me.

fuck those lazy good-for-nothing motherfuckers at work who are shafting me out of hours to try and save a few bucks. sod them, the bastards. i will be just fine.

my wife and i even talk about me possibly going into the air force reserves so that my gi bill stretches further (the government would pay a percentage, or maybe even all, of my tuition) and for the most part, i am down for that. however, there aren't any reserve openings in my past job of dental assisting here at the base, so i would have to cross-train into something else (com was one of the possibilities, working on computers n phonelines n radars n god knows what), which means a few weeks or maybe even months somewhere else (texas, most likely) to learn the new job. it also means, if i do this, that there is a good chance that i will get to write a memoirs from the other side this time, being the spouse that goes off to parts east and leaves my wife to fend for herself with the chitlins.

now, this is conjecture at this point. not anything to get ourselves bent into a twist about just yet.

then sat night, my neighbor j, who got me the (jodido) job that is fucking me for hours, and with whom i am working on a winter project of trimming all the palm trees on fuck knows how many acres of semi-green grass and old duffers who should really drop golf and take up bowling, and who, by the way, was even madder than myself at my hours being cut, stumbles up to me, beer in hand, and says, "k wants me to let you know you got your hours back."

so in a space of a couple weeks, i have ridden a rollercoaster from angst, anger, betrayal, and stress to ease, acceptance, and relaxation (possibly even the potential to have even more money than i planned on initially) so fast as to leave me breathless. and i find myself on the other side, thinking an umbrella drink and a sunbathe on warm sand with a dippy smile on my gob and the bikini chicks passing by is in order.

thanks, as always, for tumbling through it with me, o my faithful and wonderful non-existant readers.

darth sardonic