Reason number 4,612πrˆ2 that I have to move out, like yesterday.

Yeah, I might still live at home a little bit. Let me tell you a story. There once was a beautiful little girl. Me.

I was a driven child, mostly due to fear of terrible retribution which might or might not have included grounding me from my Pocket Rocker™

or old school NES if I brought home anything less than an A to my school teaching parents. I grew up to repeatedly take the SAT, have nightmares about the ACT science section and busy myself with every AP class imaginable at my high school, all the while supplementing my CV with activities like Teen Volunteers, Mu Alpha Theta and National Forensics League. I did everything I was supposed to do, including dropping $1000million on application fees and even a couple of college visits. And then, the culmination of all of that hard work and unreasonable expectations was upon me. It was time to choose a college. It was then, after 18 years of grooming me for this expected achievement, that my parents let me in on a little secret. They were simply unprepared to pay for me to go to a college that cost $800,000 plus shipping and handling or any college really. The nerve. Therefore, as I attended this little school

(be sure to calculate this year's tuition, it is, most likely, more than your salary, ok, fine, just mine) I racked up more student loans than the GNP of most central African nations.

What is the moral of this tale? Because my student loan lenders (including the US Department of Education) fuck me in the ass daily, and not in the way I like, I still live with my 'rents while I save up. I would also like to blame George Bush, either of them really, the state of the US economy, the unreasonableness of private college tuition and my unwavering inability to accept employment that nudges me above the poverty level (I have a big heart boobs).

I was about to tell you the moral of this amazing story. So, tonight, I arrive home after a grueling day of potentially hiring and firing employees at random because I don't quite understand our new HR software, to a totally unappealing smell in the kitchen. It appears that my mother, in all of her culinary wisdom, had prepared a dinner of frozen chicken breasts stewed in a crockpot, covered with Prego pasta sauce. She was preparing boil in bag Minute rice as an accompaniament as well as canned peas. I would have included a picture, but it actually looked like tantalizing Indian food. But it was not. Not at all.

+ + + + =

I looked for, but couldn't find an image of Gremlin puke.

Let me know if you have any leads on places where poor ex-students can live safely or boxes or extra cash.