The last couple of weeks has been a bit surreal. Since I have graduated, I didn't have to go back to school. I was supposed to start working. Or at least I thought I would start working. Turns out, lab work and paper work take longer to process. Thus, I have been at home. Not doing much, which has given me lots of time to think about things.
During my time at home, I have come to realize that I would not like being a housewife. The last few weeks I have become my mother's "assistant". Since she works and is stressed when she comes home, I volunteered to help her out with house chores. As such, I vacuum the house multiple times a week, I take the dogs out for walks, I swept the house and the patio, I make sure my old dog gets her insulin shot (yes she is diabetic), I get groceries, I send out mail to my brother, I get gas in cars that don't have any, I take my grandmother to her appointments, etc. Though I am happy to do it because it eases my mother's work load, it can be a bit boring. My mind is not challenged, and often I feel useless after all is done. If this is what my life would be if I became a stay at home wife, I would not want to do it. Perhaps it would be different if I had children to take care of, but at the moment there are none and its boring! This is why I need to be a career woman.
Also, being in Miami isn't as fun when all of my friends are gone away at school. I have a few left in Miami, and as a result I meet a few new people through them, but it just doesn't have the same feel as being home during breaks with all of my friends. At the moment I am in Pittsburgh getting some things sorted out. And in the last two days here, I have seen more people and socialized more here than I have in the past few weeks in Miami.
The only upside to this waiting game is that I get to watch lots of movies and instant Netflix. I have become in love with Psych, mainly because of its ridiculousness. And the constant 80's references. Sadly, Netflix only had the first 4 seasons and the latest one. I'll have to find it elsewhere.
I have seen two movies that are part of my AFI 100 top movies list: The Maltese Falcon and Bringing Up Baby. The Maltese Falcon is a good movie, but not good to watch when you are extremely tired or have trouble paying attention to things. Its a classic noir movie from back in the day, before Bogart got his "romantic hunk" status in Casablanca. A mystery about an expensive falcon statue, its disappearance, its actual worth, and where it is. The reason I say you have to be attentive to watch this because like all noir genre films, there is extreme amounts of talking. That's how the story is carried, its how it flows, its all the action you'll get. Many discussions, lots of speeches and monologues. The script and story are phenomenal, but the real kicker is the talking.
On the other side of the spectrum is Bringing Up Baby. This was one of my most ridiculous movies I've seen in a while. And I was laughing through the whole thing. I must admit, I enjoyed seeing a young Cary Grant be an awkward nerd. Katherine Hepburn as usual was stunning. And the story, well, it was interesting--a real screw ball comedy. It deals with a dinosaur bone stolen by a dog, an escaped "tame" leopard how likes the song "I can't give you anything but love, baby", and a very strange romance between the two stars. Needless to say the dialogue and scenarios of the whole this is just so utterly ridiculous you can't help but laugh.
In the last month I have performed in my last DS show ever, I finished my Design class project and won Most Innovative Design (laptop cooler team for the win!), officially graduated from undergrad with honors, attended Mickey Mouse's Very Merry Christmas party with my family, gotten extremely sick, celebrated Christmas with everyone in my family for the first time in 3 years, got to see Adam for the first time in 4 months, went to Islands of Adventures for New Years Eve and got to enter the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (and had butterbeer), and decided on my future job: Associate Engineer at Bettis Laboratory.
I feel nostalgic yet the same--as if nothing has changed, yet everything has changed, and all the while feeling like I'm in limbo--I know I have graduated, but I feel like any day now I will go back to school though I know it is not true. In fact I will soon start work. However, being at home doing practically nothing is making this all seem unreal.
It's like waiting for my life to start, yet not wanting it to.
