one day at a time

I've gotten over my little temper tantrum from the other night. Daytimes are always easier to contemplate what comes next.

My time at home so far has been pretty lazy - the most I have accomplished are two dog walks and driving my mom to the train station yesterday. Talk about productive.

The reason I had to take my mom to the train station is because she is a tutor for students who are in Broadway and off-Broadway plays, and she was headed into the city for a tutoring session. Today my mom and I are headed into New York to see The Burnt Part Boys, for which she's tutored two young actors. The show is a musical about coal mining, and seeing how music and coal mining are two of my favorite things in the world, I'm pretty excited for this.

So that's this evening. Tomorrow I will probably spend some time cleaning out my car (there's a LOT of dog food on the floor; it took me a few days to realize that Blake doesn't like to eat in the car, but, if offered food, he will take some in his mouth and drop it on the floor), which is extremely exciting, and then tomorrow evening Emilie, one of my best friends, will be in town for a few days, visiting from Montana. So that is likely to take up much of my weekend. Monday I'll head up to Bergen County, near the New York state border, to see family.

And then, come Wednesday, I'm headed back down to Knoxville. It's less than 700 miles from here to Knoxville, which is much less than I thought - so I will be able to leave here Wednesday morning and get there by Wednesday evening. Then Thursday evening, Patrick and I have tickets to see Neil Young. After that, I'm not sure when I'll leave Knoxville. My parents will be in Pittsburgh, visiting my brother, for Memorial Day weekend, so I may leave Knoxville and drive the 400-ish miles up to Pittsburgh through West Virginia and meet up with them there. Not positive, though.

I'm just taking all this one day at a time. If I think too much, I get nervous about what's next. So right now I'm just focusing on going to get dog food this afternoon and then heading into New York this evening. I'm not thinking about next week. I'm not thinking about getting to Knoxville. More importantly, I'm not thinking about leaving Knoxville again. And I'm really not thinking about the trillions of little trips I'll be taking around the Northeast to see all my friends; upstate New York, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Boston, perhaps Maine. If I think about all those I might explode.

And I'm really not thinking about how to afford all this. When I learned my trip was derailed, I did what I usually do: Spent money to make myself feel better. As a result, due to both necessary errands and unnecessary expenditures, I blew through my whole last paycheck (which included payment for unused vacation time) and then some. So I'm left without a dime at this particular moment - hence the other day's job applications.

The whole no-money thing really is my fault. I could have done it smartly, but I didn't. I've always been bad with money, and I was proud for a few months in there that I wasn't sucking as hard as I used to... Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

But for now, I need to shower and get dressed. Unfortunately, unlike Madrid, New Mexico and fly fishing camps in Tennessee, people in New Jersey expect you to be at least a little bit clean (if not impeccable) when you go into public.