10 things I just don't understand

1. Getting a tattoo of your dog. Or your cat. Or your your albino ferret. I love animals as much as the next person (give me otter or give me death) but a tattoo? Really? No. 

2. People who order sandwiches with no bread. Get a salad. Or, really, anything. But a pile of turkey and cheese with a side of mayo is weird.

3. The als ice bucket challenge...good cause, I know. But so fucking annoying. 

4. My job. I would elaborate if I could. Ugh.

5. How rioting is a solution to violence. And how violence is a solution to anything. And sending tear gas into a crowd of elderly people and children. Mostly just violence as a solution.

6. My addiction to cheese fries

7. My cat's inability to shut the fuck up between 3 am and 7 am

8. Why when it rains it pours. Just one thing at a time, universe.

9. People who are gluten free that order pasta. Because you can't have a gluten allergy if you don't know what the fuck gluten is.

10. The Kim Kardashian game. That I can't stop playing. Send help. 

Struggling

I am struggling right now. With money, with life, just struggling. 

My credit is terrible. With the foreclosure of last year and some medical bills, I have a lot of "dings" on my credit. I decided to try to clean it all up. This means I am literally barely breaking even. I have had to cancel plans and hermit in our apartment just because I have zero money to spare. It's good, it's really good, that I am finally taking all of this seriously. I HATE DEBT. Several years ago, I decided to never have a credit card again. This makes emergency situations be a cash only kind of deal. Sometimes this is fine, sometimes not so much. Man-pants and I are going to Aruba in March, so I am trying to save for that. Passports are expensive, blah blah blah. I'm broke. I can pay all of my household expenses with half of one of my two paychecks a month. So, I shouldn't be broke, right? STUDENT LOANS. I have $42k in them. They literally want an entire paycheck a month in payment. 

Blah, Blah, Blah. Whine, Whine, Whine. The moral of the story is that man-pants and I have decided to move into an apartment a few doors down that is a 2 bedroom, much nicer and a little cheaper a month. We are spending the winter banking money so this vacation doesn't break us. September is the month where we officially combine bills and I can start actually having money again. It will be a breath of fresh air, where in everything goes into savings so I can have the vacation of my life in Aruba. 

I also have come to a realization that two chefs cannot survive together. There just isn't any money, health insurance, blah blah blah. If I ever want to make a life for myself, I can't continue in this line of work. I don't plan to leave soon. I don't plan to, actually, leave at all. I just want to be the on the other side of things. I am actively pursuing a job working for the food vendors that sell me food. To get back into some sort of a corporate chef. Whether I am doing test kitchens, sales, whatever. Both of us can't work for locally owned businesses and ever be more than living in 400 sq ft apartments and counting pennies. 

I love what I do. It's time to find a way to survive while still loving what I do. 

My Fucked Up Romance

Before man-pants and I started dating, he would leave pink post it notes all over my office that just said boner. 

I realize it sounds silly, but it always made me laugh. I would open a notebook or a file and there would just be this pink post it that said boner. 

Our front of house manager frequently drew penises on, well, everything. There are a lot of dick jokes in restaurants. 

Sometime during the first week that we dated, I came home from work to find the bed made and my apartment picked up and a boner note on the bed. I still have it. 

Boner eventually escalated to penis drawings which would be hidden all over whatever station I was working. 

Man-pants last day of work led to this...they were hidden all over everything. The next day, me and a coworker boob bombed his station in retaliation. 

This explanation leads up to one of the sweetest things ever. Our schedules frequently suck ass and we are working opposites. Today, for example, I left for work at 9 am, man-pants was sound asleep. I got off at 5. Man-pants gets off work at 10 pm, about the time that I go to bed because I work at 7 am. One night I was working late and came home to this.

This is the door at the top of the stairs that leads into my apartment. There were little notes like this taped everywhere. 

To the average outsider, we probably look like an insane couple that is kind of mean to each other. But I finally found someone who speaks kitchen. Who gets that a dick drawing is a thousand times sweeter to me than flowers. Who I can be totally blunt and honest with all the time and understands that it isn't mean or spiteful, just honest. 

We are currently living in 450 square feet with a cat and a dog and all of our stuff. 

If you had told me two years ago this was my life, I would have run away screaming. 

I have never been happier.