I’m not really sure what’s going on with my life, except for the fact that I went from having no job to having what feels like 3 in about 4.7 seconds.

There was no transition period.

And I’m pretty sure that everyone needs a transition period.

I’m assisting in a wedding photography shoot on Saturday.  I have no idea what I’m doing.  I feel like I’m constantly playing catch-up in my one freelance writing gig.  My dogs are vibrating balls of energy because I haven’t figured out how to fit walking them into our new schedule.  Dinners are becoming slightly more “convenient,” and the Chinese take-out place down the street might start recognizing us once again.

Also, things are hectic in the land of real estate assistantship.  Assistantry?  Asskickingshiptry?  Apparently I’m doing something right, because after exactly a week-and-a-half of part-timing it, they want me to help out full-time.  And I’m torn.  On the obvious hand, it would be great to have the extra money.  On the other hand, it will take away serious time from my writing pursuits, including my little land of Domestiphobia.  Which is obviously already suffering.

I think I will take it on for a little while, mainly to help the team out of the current bind that’s caused when a group already manages over 50 properties, then takes on 40 more it knows nothing about all at one time.

On the plus-side, I’m learning a lot about the land of juggling showings, repair companies, and the egos of finicky clients.  I’ve pulled my travel coffee cup from the back of the cupboard, dusted off the mothballs, and can once again enjoy the de-stressing qualities of an aromatic cup of Kona on a 30-minute morning commute.  I feel a little bit important and needed.  The world is getting interesting again, and that’s never a bad thing.

On the negative side, well.

Let’s not worry about that unless we come to it, shall we?

This weekend we went camping.  Not roughing-it-in-the-woods-with-a-tent-and-no-toilets camping, but sleeping-in-a-trailer-with-hot-water-and-a-bathroom-and-air-conditioning-and-a-full-size-refrigerator camping.

The good kind of camping.

Especially when it’s over 100-degrees outside.

But that’s not the awesome part.

The awesome part is who went camping with.  Remember Catherine, from Simply Solo?  I wrote a guest post for her a while back.  Well, we figured it was time to bring our blogging friendship to the next level — the real world.  And since her family has a camp site about half way between where we both live, she was gracious enough to invite us out for the weekend.

And I’m pretty sure I had a blast, from what I can vaguely remember.

There was a lot of food, a lot of alcohol, and many, many good times.

I mean, how can you not have a good time in a place like this?

I probably had a little too good of a time, because we spent the first couple of hours playing beer pong on a floating raft in the water, and suffice to say I don’t really have any pictures after that point.

FAIL.

After reading each others’ blogs for so long, Catherine and I already felt like we knew each other.  I was a bit surprised, though, when she confessed I seem younger in person than I do on my blog.

At first I wasn’t sure what she meant, but after some explaining, I think I get it.

My blog is all over the place.  I know this.  You, as a reader, never know what to expect from me.  Will I be lamenting about my quarter-life crisis, talking about depression and failed relationships with counselors and my quest for my dream job?  Or will I get all Martha Stewart on yo’ ass and come at you with hippie recipes for chipotle sun-dried tomato hummus and spinach feta turkey burgers?  Will I organize a closet?  Will I try to figure out my design style?  Will I bitch about work?

No one knows.  Not even me.

But it made me realize that, over the past few months especially, I’ve started trying to portray a level of perfection that simply doesn’t exist. At least not for me.

Even though I tell you stories of how I ruined a quiche or how our carpets (circa 1994) are so heinously dirty that I tell people to leave their shoes on when they come in my house.  I could even tell you about how I stabbed myself with a corn skewer at dinner with Catherine, the infamous Chef, and her parents this weekend, but some of you still, for some reason, will think I have my sh*t together.

The problem is all those DIY home improvement Martha-esque blogs out there that make people — myself included — want to attain that practically unattainable level of perfection.  We all try so hard to pull our own weight.  To keep up with the Joneses.  To be better wives.  Husbands.  Cooks.  Housekeepers.  Professionals.  Our focus becomes one of competition — how to be better at something than someone else (or at least just as good), and it doesn’t even matter if that something is a thing we even give one ounce of a damn about.

And that, my friends, is how you waste a life.

So I think that what I’m trying to do right now is remind you — and remind myself — that I am one hot mess of a human.  I screw things up.  My windows are never clean and my finger nails are probably dirty.  I like cooking, but I detest figuring out what to cook.  I’m too cheap to buy new underwear or get my hair cut when I need it.  Sometimes my refrigerator smells and I don’t know why.  I had braces for 2 1/2 years.  Dusting bites the big one, I kill all of my plants, and perfume makes me sneeze.  I Google everything because there is a lot I don’t know and I want to get it right the first time.  Yet that desk I painted still has streaks.  I’m chill in public but get stressed at home, and I feel bad that Justin always has to see the worst of me, and I’m terrified of wasting this precious, precious life by spending it in a competitive, restless trance.

I have a lot to figure out.

But I’m working on it.

And, in the meantime, I might need to share the occasional hummus recipe that turned out awesome to remind myself that I’m not a total failure.  That sometimes I get things right.

And I highly — highly — suggest you do the same.

We’re all in this together, you know?

Okay.  I’ve always known that Justin and I currently live in the type of area that many people around the U.S. would refer to as “the boonies.”  Or maybe the suburbs of the boonies.

But I didn’t fully come to grips with that fact until yesterday, when I was working my new job.

See, the city of Fayetteville is not that terrible.  It has all of the basic amenities, a very small mall, a slurry of chain restaurants and fast food joints, and more and more “urban-chic,” privately owned cafés, coffee houses, restaurants, and specialty shops are cropping up here and there.  Thanks to the existence of multicultural Fort Bragg and a high Hispanic population, we can be treated to all kinds of hole-in-the-wall culinary delights, if we know where to look.

The non-sketchy half of downtown Fayetteville is cleaning up quite nicely.

Much of the time, however, I prefer to visit friends in nearby Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, or Pinehurst/Aberdeen/Southern Pines, just to feel like part of a non-transient community for small fractions of time.  And sometimes we visit the beach.

The problem is that military communities, in general, can become run-down relatively quickly if the city doesn’t stay on top of things, because if people don’t consider a place a long-term home, they don’t tend to care about long-term aesthetics.  Abundant pawn shops, strip clubs and tattoo parlors cater to a young soldier’s basic needs, but it takes a bit longer for a wine café or an independent book store to attract a steady customer base.

So.  I would consider this a transitional period for this area.

Then, there are the outskirts.  The outskirts are a little… sketchier.

My new job as a real estate assistant involves a lot of running around, primarily stuffing the tracker full of lock boxes and corrugated cardboard signs, then fiddling with keys and combination codes and attempting to use my high-heeled sandals to stamp signs into the ground in 100+ degree heat while wearing a pencil skirt.

It ain’t pretty.

Add to that the fact that  yesterday I was so middle-of-nowhere lost, that directly in front of me lay a beautiful field of goldeny wheat looking stuff, but I was too afraid of the ominous meaning in the shotgun pellet-riddled sign I’d just passed to stop and take a picture for you.  Or maybe it was the lease we’d just signed with a guy who threatened to shoot us if we tried to get on his property without permission.  Or maybe it’s the eviction stories I’ve been hearing around the office.  Empty houses.  Strangers’ secrets.

Yeah… maybe I’ll get that picture for you next time.

Those of you who are scared of the city and its petty thefts and crowd anonymity should come take a look at the country where everyone has a gun and no one can hear you scream.

Who would’ve thought working in real estate could be such a scary job?

I’m curious about you readers — are you city or country dwellers?  Which do you prefer?  More importantly, if you’ve ever worked in real estate, just how do you not end up looking all haggard, sweaty and bedraggled at the end of the day?

P.S.  We’re doing something exciting this weekend and I’ll be back to tell you all about it next week.

P.P.S.  I finished my desk and will be back to show you pictures of it next week.

P.P.P.S.  I need my coffee.  There really was no point in telling you that, except that I wanted another post-script.

Thank you for your time.

Well kids, that ship I told you about, she’s turning but fast.  I got called last-minute on Monday to meet with someone to go over the photo shoot for a wedding he wants me to help with, and then yesterday I went in to hear a job offer for a part-time job and ended up working it for the rest of the day, and yesterday I found out I’m one of the finalists for Re-Nest’s hunt for a new writer.

You can see one of my submissions that got posted here.  And, you know, comment if you feel like it.

Of course, it could just be some ploy on their part to get a bunch of free material, but either way, having my photography and writing up on such a hugely popular site is a pretty good feeling!

I promise I will be back with more as soon as possible — but now I have to run to work.

Will someone remind me why I wanted a job again?  Or three?

But I will say this: Just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom and no body wants you and your life is just one big fat waste of time but it doesn’t matter because the world’s going to end anyway, things turn.

See?  What did I tell ya?

This morning I had to be the mean neighbor.

Usually, believe it or not, I’m the nice one.

I won’t call the POA (Property Owner’s Association) on you if your propane tank isn’t “camouflaged” by lattice.  (Because, you know, white-painted lattice blends in with nature more than a white-painted tank.)

And there is no way in the reality of this vast universe as we know it that I could care less about whether your trash can sits outside.  (Unless you’re using it to store a dead body, in which case I might take issue with the smell.  But I’d talk to you about it before calling the Authority.)

Need a cup of sugar?  I’m here.  Some eggs?  Look no further.  A Percocet?  Well.  I’m not going to discuss it in a public forum, but call me.  We’ll talk.  (It’s the suburbs — we understand pain.)

But this morning, I was not in the mood to dole out coffee, farm products, or prescription drugs.  My generosity ends when you let your dog piss all over my world.

On a daily basis.

Look, I’m human.  I have dogs.  I understand that you can’t always control where they pee when you’re walking them.  But remember this?  Remember my nice little mailbox planter I worked so half-assedly to complete in a semi-finished, it’ll-get-me-by-for-now sort of way?

Every day, this old man walks by with his golden retriever.  And it’s a mean golden retriever.  (I know — that’s like a depressed Richard Simmons  or Kurt Cobain singing pop music.  It just doesn’t seem right.)  And every day, he stands there while his retriever raises his leg and pees on my mailbox.

And it drives my dogs crazy.

So today, I was in the garage slapping a coat of polyurethane on my desk.  I’ve given up on waiting for a non-humid day.  And, sure enough, Gramps and Kojak come ambling along, and there he stops.  The dog doesn’t initiate it — he does.  Like he’s saying, okay, Fido.  Here’s where you pee.  It ticks her dogs off.  Hear them barking from inside?

All I did was stand up, back sweats and all, sponge brush in hand, and say, “Really?”

He was startled, like a kid caught stealing baseball cards.

He gave the leash a tug and ambled on.

I knew he knew.

And this battle, I’ve won.

I’m not really sure why I just went into all that, because that’s not really what I sat down to write about.  I guess I’m still breathing in the sweet fumes of victory and clear gloss lacquer.  Ah, the problems of the privileged.

What I sat down to tell you was something about which you might already be very well aware.  But, in case you’re not, I wanted to expand your horizons and help make your life a little easier.

See, while the internet is a reliable distractor, providing us with ample writings, videos, and more time wasters than it’s possible to count (like this here blog), it also provides us with ways to streamline these distractions so we’re more efficient in the ways we avoid actual work.

Enter Google Reader.  It’s a nifty little tool that combines all of the blogs you like to read in one, compact space, so you no longer need to sift through email subscriptions or remember to visit individually bookmarked sites to catch up on each one.

All you need is a free Gmail account, and it’s yours.

Then, you just go to google.com/reader, paste your blog URLs (like http://domestiphobia.net) into the “Add a Subscription” window, and you’re set!

The reader will list all of your subscribed blogs in the left-hand column and automatically track what you’ve read and haven’t read.

Tip:  If you don’t like how narrow the reading pane is, just press the “f” button on your keyboard, and you’ll be able to read the blog posts full-screen.  If you move your cursor to the top of the page, a hidden navigation bar will drop down.  Press “f” again to exit full screen.

If you read more than one blog, I highly recommend you start using  this little gizmo.  It takes about 2 minutes to figure out, and it’s allowed me to be a lot less productive by helping me read and keep track of significantly more blogs on a daily basis.

And that is a beautiful thing.