Dear Blog,

...horribly, horribly neglected blog,

I have so much happening in my life here in the bitter cold world of Minneapolis that I couldn't possibly know where to begin.

The biggest thing on my plate right now, unfortunately, is my job, and I'm going to talk to you about that for awhile, starting by saying a big FUCK YOU. Fuck you, job, for making me hate theater, hate the holidays, hate older people, hate children and families, hate wine, hate haute cuisine (and faux-haute cuisine), hate food in general, hate people I used to like; for bringing my patience level to an absolute zero; for not trying -- AT ALL; for breaking me financially, emotionally, spiritually, breaking me in every way possible.

I'm struggling right now, blog, and I'm struggling a lot. I'm fighting for positivity, optimism, perseverance, reason, and gratitude, among other things. The fact that I'm fighting for them as strongly as I am says a lot about how much I've grown up through all of this, and I did that through this job.

New possibilities emerge from the awful wreckage that is a dying restaurant, and they are, for lack of a better word, infinite at the moment. A new era is approaching in the life of Anniemosity... I'm on the verge of bigger and better things, and as much as I know I will not be able to completely turn my back on the last two years, I'm fighting so hard to have the option to do so.

I will forever be grateful to this godforsaken place for the people that it has brought into my life. Reflecting on who I may not have met if I would have quit the first thousand times is a startling thought, as a good number of them have become people I depend on regularly for stability, friendship, solace, and a zillion other things.

I don't understand how or why I continue to acquire and stay at all of these awful jobs, but at this particular point in my "professional" life, I am at an all-time rock bottom, so things naturally must go up. Ups and downs, highs and lows, balances happen, they really do.

Wish me luck at 11am tomorrow, but you probably won't need to, because Harvey Dent makes his own luck, and so does Anniemosity.

WHOA.

Hello world. My name is Anniemosity. Remember me? I used to blog all the time? I get real excited about everything? I live in Minneapolis and go to shows and ride my bike and hate my job but have great people that keep me together? Yeah, me? Yep. I'm still around. Trust. Wait. Breathe. Love.

I moved (with pictures!)

One week ago on Monday, Jack and I moved into our brand new apartment.

I will preface this post: it's a beautiful apartment. It feels more like a home than any place I've lived so far. Everything was worth it.

That said, this was the most goddamn horrific move ever. Ever. I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but seriously, I have never wanted to kill myself or someone else so many times in the span of 48 hours.

This is how Damon decided to move -- he rented the largest moving truck known to man, and he got it the day before our deadline. We could have learned a lot from Damon.

Hey, at least I was labeling.

This is not a good job of labeling.

This is what our truck looked like at our noon deadline. Whoops.

Carissa bailed our asses out like crazy, tetris-ing the shit out of our moving truck. Head Bitch in Charge, for real.

Labeling becomes livejournal.

Full goddamn truck. Everything literally JUST fit.

Beers for breakfast at 1pm.

Bye bye, living room.

Bye bye, other side of the living room.

Bye bye, kitchen.

Adios, porch-slash-patio.

We transported the fish in a Blue Bunny ice cream bucket. One of thirteen survived. He is called Dazzler, and he is a fucking trooper. During the transportation, I only got fish water splashed on me about thrice, which is a very small number considering how long they sat on my lap.

EMPTY TRUCK. Thank you Jesus and Kyle Johnson, who may be the same person.

The other side of the new place. Sigh.

Oh yeah, I dropped a couch on my leg.

Close up, to accentuate the epic failure.

This fucking bookshelf deserves a blog post all to itself, and someday it may happen. Let's just say the moral of the story is: don't buy anything pre-assembled from Ikea if you're not sure whether or not it will fit in your vehicle. We disassembled the entire goddamn bookshelf in the parking ramp and had to reassemble it when we got it home. Son of a bitch.

Re-assembling this piece of Satan was almost as annoying as unassembling it. Trust me. (Also now it is brown and red, not that horrific white.)

All this said, I love my new place, I love my new neighborhood, and it was all fucking worth it.

I'm moving.

Literally, like right now. I'm moving right now. I'm mid-packing, mid-cleaning, mid-nervous breakdowning, mid-sneezing, mid-organizing, mid-annoyance. In less than 24 hours, my stress will be completely gone and I'll be drinking a beer with BFF & Co., celebrating the one birthday that is louder (and longer) than mine. I'm holding on to that with all of my might. That shit is my reward.

I was making excellent progress. I've been doing shit non-stop since 7:30 this morning (with one small fifteen minute pizza break), not to mention the solid six hours we put in yesterday. We have lime green duct tape. We have boxes labeled in expletives and exhaustion. We have dust everywhere.

I was making excellent progress. I ran across a big folder full of cards that I had kept because a) I'm a fucking pack rat, and b) I'm a fucking pack rat. No more pack ratty-ness!! I only began going through them in order to make sure I had no loose cash in any of them. Naturally.

I started tearing up when I found a card from my father from my birthday a few years ago. It was a very simplistic card but for some reason, it hit me then, and it hit me now. Keep.

I threw away a bunch of other cards until I ran across a card from my late grandmother, the light of my life, my hero. As I studied her handwriting, remembering her smile, the tears started to come again. Keep.

I found a bunch of mix tapes I made in high school to people who once upon a time were very important to me. Blurred vision encouraged by melancholy memories. Keep.

I ran across a small card that I didn't recognize. The handwriting inside was familiar. The lines were not straight and the penmanship suffered, but the card came back to me immediately. "You are the best thing that's ever happened to me," it read. A goodbye, good luck, Jesus fucking Christ I don't want you to go card. As I read, the tears became unstoppable. I cried into the dusty silence and texted the BFF, reminding her that I fucking fiercely love her. Keep.

Thirty minutes later, I was still crying. I couldn't stop. I haven't had a really hard cry in a long time, and it was apparently due. Stress from moving, stress from work, stress from money, stress from family, stress from boys, stress from impending separation anxiety, stress stress stress, cry cry cry.

I'm growing up all of a sudden. I am a 24 year old independent woman with a bus pass and a bicycle and a job and bills and a desktop computer and a checklist and furniture that belongs to me. I am very different than I was when I was 22 and moved into this breathtakingly beautiful apartment with the oversized lavender Adirondack chair and the vine-covered walls and the picture-perfect deck and the yellow kitchen and the tiger wood shelving units and the long long long hallway and that lake... that lake.

Throw shit away, start new. Throw shit away, start new. Throw shit away. Start new.

Throw shit away.

Start new.