What My Cover Letter Should Really Say

June 8, 2012

Mr. Important Person
Important Company, Inc.
Atlanta, GA -any zip code-

Dear Mr. Important Person,

I am writing to express my interest in ANYTHING that will pay me a substantial amount of money at ANY COMPANY that is willing to hire me to do ANYTHING RELEVANT to my college major and/or life experience. I am not particularly gifted, but hell if you're willing to pay me, I can learn. My strengths include the ability to go without sleep for long periods of time in order to get work accomplished despite the fact that I end up resembling a meth-addicted zombie by the end of it, the ability to manipulate anything written to make it sound appealing whether I am knowledgeable in the subject or not, and extensive computer proficiency due to a solid eight years of procrastinating from homework by wasting countless hours on the internet.

If you are still reading this, which I doubt you are since you probably have letters to read from applicants who are actually qualified for this position, I would like to direct you to my resume, which is a brilliant masterpiece of the written word. Seriously, you should hire me solely based on fact that I made waiting tables sound like a professional art form. In all seriousness, putting up with customers in a restaurant more than qualifies me for so-called "customer relations." Anyone can talk on the phone; I can look straight at a customer who is treating me as if I just tried to poison them because I brought out the wrong salad dressing and, with a smile on my face, say, "Oh, I'm sorry for that inconvenience, sir. Is there anything else I can get you?" even though in my head I want to find the nearest sharp object and stab him in the face with it. That's focus under pressure, and I guarantee that makes me just as capable of dealing with people as someone who has sat behind a cubicle answering phones for the past five years.

As for a candidate with organizational skills, you can't get more organized than someone with clinically-diagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder! You'll never have to worry about losing a file, a memo, or as much as a PAPERCLIP ever again, since clutter affects me much like the Overlook Hotel affects Jack Torrence in The Shining. I organize everything from my clothes to random receipts from three years ago that I might for some reason need and don't want to risk throwing away, so you'd never have to worry about some irresponsible dunce who might lose something. My attention to detail far exceeds that of a normal, sane person, and I would apply this knack of noticing things such as layers of dust on the underside of tables and stray pieces of string hanging from strangers' clothing to correcting grammatical errors on important documents and analyzing marketing trends. Remember, I'm more than qualified, I'm diagnosed!

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize my main point, which is that I am completely and honestly desperate. I can learn just about anything if you pay me, and I will slave away doing mindless paperwork because I have student loans to pay off and IKEA furniture to buy. Please have mercy upon my broke college-graduate soul and grant me an interview so that I may dazzle you in person with my charming personality and wit, which will surely secure me the position much more than a written letter could. Thank you for your consideration, although you likely have not considered a single thing but I have imagined you doing so anyway to keep me from becoming completely depressed and jumping off a bridge. Please call me. Seriously.

Yours With a Good Starting Salary and Decent Benefits,

Hannah Fowler
317 Still-Living-Here Rd.
Rome-Feel-Like-I'm-Gonna-Be-Here-Forever, GA 30161
dem digits
dat email

What? I have a blog?!?

So earlier this year, much earlier I might add, I set out to blog every single day. The reality, however, is that with school, work, and a turbulent personal life, blogging does not exactly present itself as a priority. The conclusion I came to is simple: some days, I simply have nothing to say. Hence the title of my blog now, "When I have something to say." When I do, I'll say it. This could also be an excuse for my laziness, but either way, at least I'm writing something. Tonight, I am exhausted from work and slightly intoxicated, leaving me with little in the way of deep thoughts. The latest news with me is that I'm about to graduate college this Friday. YAY!!! That is 2 days from now!!! No more tests, no more 8 o'clock classes, no more falling asleep during lectures, no more...oh wait... what the hell do I do with my life now? Haven't figured that one out yet. My plan right now is to find a job and MOVE AWAY, and give myself some time to figure myself out instead of devoting my life to pleasing someone else like I always have my entire life. I want some time just for me, and in the past several years, there honestly has not been a lot of that. I'm either working to please a teacher, or to please my peers, or, worst of all, to please a guy. I know I need to please God, and I'm thankful that I've become closer to Him lately through all the fear I've had to face in the past few weeks. There is absolutely nothing He can't do for me. Unfortunately, I also want to please myself, and that can often be a conflict of interests. I want to grow, every single day, and never take a step back. I've come way too far.

My life.

Studying and writing. All day. All night.

January 18 and My General Dislike of Its Existence

Today was one of those days where I just woke up pissed. Not at anything in particular, but a combination of every small thing I encountered as I went about my morning. I started this post the second I got to my first class, but as January 18 sucks, I did not get to finish it and instead had to actually concentrate on my school work. The nerve of this day!

So first off all when I woke up this morning, I was waking from a dream where I was waiting tables and looked down to realize I was naked. Apparently in the world in which my dream was set this was a normal occurrence, but I was mortified all the same and was desperate to get clothes. Unfortunately they were upstairs and I didn't want to  go upstairs because then everyone would see me naked, so I resolved to hide behind the computer and sulk in my shame.

Of course I didn't want to get out of bed, so I laid there for twenty minutes falling in and out of sleep until I realized that I have to be a big girl and get the hell up for class. Then I thought, "Ooh! I'll be a responsible grown-up and make myself breakfast!"  but I had to get ready so my awesome boyfriend got up and made one for me! So sweet :) Now back to why I hate everything. The smoothie then gave me brain freeze and I didn't even get to finish it because I had to leave.

Then I realize it's freezing outside and this genius left her damn coat in the car last night. I hate the cold, and I want it to go away. Every time I walk outside now I just get angry and resentful at the fact that I am frozen stiff rather than lounging on a beach somewhere in a bikini. Damn seasons.

While driving to school I notice that every single radio station is completely disrupted by static. I think by this point the universe realized how angry I was and just wanted to mess with me, because every single time I found a song I really liked, it would be clear for just long enough to make me happy and then become immersed in static and interruptions from other radio stations.

But wait! I might just make it to school on time for once! I pulled into the parking lot 2 minutes before class, with just enough time to park my car and make it up the hill by 9 am. However, I forgot to take into account how SHITTY Shorter's parking is. If you get there at the ass-crack of dawn, you might have a chance at finding a spot. However, otherwise you are subjected to a maze of complicated and poorly-designed parking lots with random one-way signs and dead ends, and if you're late all the time like me, you have to park like this:

Although the picture does it little justice, you'll notice that my car is parked sideways on the edge of a hill. In order to get out, I had to launch myself out of my car against the insistent pull of gravity and fighting my car door not to slam on me. Oh, and I was still late to class.

So by 9 am this morning, I had already decided that January 18 sucks.

Rebellion and Denial

My hair tends to have a mind of its own. I think it is some kind of extension of my personality in that it is constantly doing whatever it wants no matter how much I would like for it to look presentable and stylish. For example, my hair is wavy but sometimes I wake up and there is one particular strand that sticks up above all the others, making me look somewhat lopsided:

Do you see it? Do you see the crazy hair on the left side? It doesn't look too bad in the picture but it was sticking out about 2 inches. As I was about to walk out the door for class I realized it might be a good idea to look in the mirror, and this fuckery is what I was met with. Sighhh, my hair will always be nonconformist.

Onto my more troubling problem, I think I am literally in denial about the seasons. It is January right now, but for the past week I have had dreams about the beach and frolicking happily in the sunlight beating down on ocean waves. I then wake up cold and angry as I realize that it is 30 degrees outside and I am nowhere near the beach. However, spring break is coming up soon and I am going to Israel. Although this may not be the ideal "vacation" spot, I am suuuuuuper excited and can't wait to go! I've heard it's pretty toasty there, so to "prepare for the sun" I went to the tanning bed yesterday. In the middle of January. Sure it will probably keep me from frying when I'm exposed to the Middle-Eastern sun, but the main reason is that being at the tanning bed reminded me of summer, and I was able to escape to my fantasy world for ten blissful minutes.

It's official. I'm so desperate for summer I am living in complete denial. Don't be surprised to find me sunbathing next to a covered pool with a CD of ocean sounds in the near future.

Attack Kitty!

Now that Sushi has realized the power of her claws and teeth, she has taken to pouncing on everything at every given opportunity. Usually her prey ends up being my keys, my feet when I am walking around the house, my homework, my pencil when I am writing, or anything she can drag into her lair, which is under my bed. However, I love her new method of attack, which is pouncing full-force onto objects and wrapping her jaws and feet around them. Observe:

How to Boil Water

I have been cooking since I was old enough to read, largely because I never had an Easy Bake oven and resorted to using a real one instead. This was mainly under the supervision of my mother who cooked a homemade dinner from scratch every single night, and taught me all she could about how to prepare food. Since then I have loved to cook, bake, and entertain, and was convinced for at least 4 years of my life that I was going to go to culinary school and become a master chef of my own restaurant. Every Christmas I bake vast amounts of food for people as gifts, managing to make several varieties of treats in a matter of hours and still have time to clean the entire kitchen before I go to bed. I have cooked dinner for friends, gotten up at ungodly hours of the morning to cook mother's day or birthday eggs Benedict for my mom who gets up at 5:30 am, and have no trouble with complex baking directions. But for the life of me, I cannot master simple tasks in the kitchen.

The other day, for example, I wanted to make rice to go with a chicken dish my grandparents gave me. What could be simpler than rice? I did what I assumed was the correct first step and put on some water to boil, then went to my room to wait for it to bubble - this was my first mistake. Yes, there is something simpler than rice, and that is boiling water. But somehow every time I put on water to boil, my ADHD kicks in and I completely forget about it and walk into the kitchen fifteen minutes later with half of the water evaporated, or I put a lid on the pot to prevent evaporation so the water simply bubbles over and splashes with hissing noises all over the stove, or I turn on the wrong stove eye entirely and wonder why the water has been sitting there for five minutes and not started simmering yet. So, back to the rice. When I remembered that I was in the process of preparing food, I dashed back to the kitchen and was greeted by a cloud of steam swirling over my stove top from the water which was now madly boiling at full capacity. I grabbed the box of rice and dumped the entire thing into the water to let it cook, completely forgetting to season it in any way. When the rice was done cooking, I realized that I had vastly underestimated the expansion qualities of rice. I was aiming to prepare maybe enough for 2 people, but apparently the entire box produces enough for about 10. So now I had at least 9 leftover portions of unseasoned rice which I had absolutely no intentions of eating. Fortunately I never had to eat them because this happened:

Fail.

Other obstacles which I frequently face in the kitchen include frozen pizzas and Pillsbury cookies, which I burn almost every time I attempt to make them. I also have issues with Ramen noodles and Easy Mac, as I always put too much or too little water in them. Any simple task in the kitchen I will probably find a way to mess it up, but if you need someone to cook a four course dinner in a limited amount of time, I'm your girl.