To the unknown person in Atlanta, GA, who dropped by at 2:58:12 yesterday...
...and to the other 29,999 people who've stumbled in before them, and the 23 who've come through since...
Thank you. All of you.
It's really weird to think of how long this blog has been running; in the grand scheme of bloghood, it's about middle-aged, I would guess. I wasn't on the cutting-edge--I consider those to be the people who had a blog before there was a word for them, when it was called "a website" or "an online journal" and was seen as a daring, faintly-dangerous thing to do--but three years, three months, and twelve days is still a long time to stick with anything, particularly a lot of rambling, disconnected thoughts and whining. I would say that this blog probably represents most of what people who hate blogs hate them for; it's entirely personal; full of Too Much Info-type details; alternately whiny, over-confessional, and self-congratulatory. It's not political, it doesn't involve celebs, and it will never be quoted on any cable-news program. And I'll never be up at the tip-top of the Technorati hierarchy, which is fine with me, I guess.
Online relationships are very strange things. I was on Prodigy back in 1992, as part of a message board called "Words Together", and in early 1993 I flew out to Berkeley for a meet-up. Most of my friends, family, and acquaintances were sure that I'd be hacked into my component parts and mailed to a bus locker in North Dakota; instead, I met some very nice people and went to a Grateful Dead concert. In 1993, just before I got married, I started talking to a guy on AOL; I didn't meet him til years later, but we stayed in touch for a long while. When I was seeing JP, before I left Dave, I spent time IMing a couple of guys, just as friends; then, after JP died, when I was in North Carolina, I used to hang out in a chatroom on AOL. This was in 1996, when the Internet was just gathering steam; at that time, you could actually chat in a chatroom, and if you were very lucky, you could find intelligent conversation mixed in with the constant requests for "age/sex/location" and "ne1 wanna cyber?" The chatroom I was part of had many incarnations--"Sensual Intelligence" and "Men With Minds" were two of the names I recall--and a cast of regulars, with all the drama and intrigue of a junior-high cheerleading squad. I met quite a few people from that room, actually--there were various meet-ups, and one guy who came to North Carolina against my better judgement, because he really liked me and thought we were meant for each other; that weekend ended with a kiss on the forehead and a statement that still rings true: "You live too much in the past," he said, and he was right. A few months later he was engaged to another one of the "regulars".
Then there have been my many correspondents; people from newsgroups, from message-boards, from methadone forums and grief-support websites and Layne Staley memorial pages; a couple of guys who answered my personal ad but decided I had more potential as a pen-pal than as a love interest. Most of my correspondences have been lost, though I was more-scrupulous than most in saving them--I have disks filled with IM conversations from the early and mid-1990's. Yahoo purged my main e-mail account once, without my knowledge, and claimed they couldn't restore what was lost; I lost about five years of messages that way. Most of them probably weren't worth the bytes they were written on, I guess, but together they formed a picture of that part of my life. I think about that a lot--not just for my life, but on a grand scale. I wonder how many geniuses there are out there, people who will one day be famous, but there will be nothing left of their correspondences and daily minutiae for future generations to pore over because it was all stored on hard-drives and keychain disks and floppies. I wonder what will go in the Smithsonian a hundred years from now.
Mostly I wonder what happened to those people I used to talk to--to Laz and Cally and Zrst and Kiwi and Melly and RNA, to JNabis and AuroraDwn and Abbbycatt and Dross and Scorp and MGFP04C and "Kim" who was really Josh, who was only 16 and hadn't come out to his parents yet. I wonder what happened to all these people I knew by nicknames--8 letters or less and no special characters--and by the personas they created for themselves, out here where "no one can tell you're a dog". Some of them were pretty much just as they represented, and some of them recreated themselves completely--wedged their mousy lives and uninspired days into red corsets and high heels, and became the persons they always imagined themselves to be. I tried to be more my real self than any witty, dangerous fantasy-woman, and if I wasn't the most sparkling, in-demand conversationalist in the chat-rooms, I was at least recognized for being real. I think about all those people sometimes; I wonder if they ever think of me, if they ever think "Hmmm...I wonder whatever happened to __________."
As I wrote in a letter to Lou, in jail in Ohio, "the Internet is a hell of a thing." There are a lot of people in my life I'd like to find, people who live below the radar and who are thus impervious to Google, who can't be found through People Search; generally these are the ones I miss the most. (Then again, if I find them, I wouldn't have to miss them, I guess--so that makes sense.) Between the constantly-shifting identities and the vagaries of persistence on the Internet, I've begun to wonder if it's not a better tool for losing people than for finding them, sometimes.
I guess what I'm saying, in a roundabout, verbose way, is this: Thank you for being a part of my life, even if it's "just" through words on a screen...because even if it is, it really isn't "just" anything. There's no such thing as "just" a part of someone's life.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Generalized Awesomeness
I have the most awesome roomie ever. (And no, Firefly, that doesn't diminish your awesome-roomie-ness in the slightest, but after you read what Tim did for me as a Christmas present, you will understand my superlatives.)
I spent Christmas Eve at Mom's, as usual. That's been the family tradition; Christmas Eve dinner with Mom, the traditional Gospel reading *, and luminaria** placed out in front of the house. Mom went off to Midnight Mass, I took my heathen self to bed, and next morning we opened presents. Around lunchtime, I drove back here to pick up Tim, who was coming to dinner because Mom couldn't stand the thought of anyone being alone on Christmas. Of course, Tim, who is used to being alone on Christmas, found this outrageously awkward and intimidating, for which I can't say I blame him--back when he was "CR's friend", he was not so much looked upon with kindness by the family circle. Guilt by association, I guess; but now that he's "Gladys's roommate", that's a whole new situation, and requires a different approach. And Mom, who feels awkward just by nature, spent the intervening few days questioning me about what would and would not be appropriate for discussion. So the few days leading up to Christmas were spent calming everyone's nerves, and wondering how, exactly, I'd gotten into this.
Christmas dinner went fine, despite everyone's angst, and despite the meat thermometer, which apparently has issues with the concept of "medium" vs. "medium-well" as regards steaks. Since I was in charge of the steaks, the shame of overdone meat fell upon my shoulders, even though everyone claimed it was fine. Of course, if everyone would just eat their meat rare like me, we would have had no problems at all. But it wasn't nearly as awkward as all of us feared it would be.
We came home after dinner, Tim and I, and he went into his room and told me my gift was "upstairs". I wasn't sure if he was entirely serious--we spend a great deal of time abusing each other's credulity--so I figured if there was anything to find, I'd find it. I peered into my room--nothing unusual there. I went into the bathroom and discovered that the air-conditioner, previously in my bedroom window, had been removed for the season and placed on a sheet of cardboard to drain. I was thrilled--I had been meaning to do that for the longest time, but it's an irritating job and anyway I have nowhere to put it, as my closet is still in unusable condition. So I paged Tim on the cordless phone*** and said "Thank you!"
"For what?" he said.
"For taking out my air-conditioner," I told him. "That was really great!"
"Thanks," he said. A few minutes later, he paged me back. "That totally wasn't your Christmas present."
"Was it the fresh box of Christmas Q-Tips in the bathroom?" I asked.
"Well yeah, that too, but...Keep looking," he said.
By now I was totally perplexed, trying to figure out what, exactly, he was talking about..."Upstairs," he says, and I'm upstairs, and it's not anything obvious in my room except the air conditioner being moved, which he says isn't it, and there's nothing in the bathroom, and....no, the closet didn't miraculously get fixed, so it's not that, and there's nothing out of place in the hall closet, and the only other thing up here is....
Light bulb.
I opened the door of LJ's room.
It was no longer LJ's room. The floor had been vacuumed into a state of immaculateness--or at least, as immaculate as a carpet can be after two years of gratuitous abuse. The bed had been moved and, as much as possible, made; there was a comforter and pillows covering it, anyway. The little TV from the basement had been placed on the little stereo stand which we had moved from the living room when LJ removed his stereo from it; the dresser was beside the bed, with a lamp on it, and an alarm clock. It looked, in short, like a guest bedroom, instead of something you might access through a dark alleyway after being beckoned by a middle-aged bottle-blonde in a too-tight skirt and too much bright-red lipstick.****
In case he hadn't heard my yell of "Awesome!" I paged Tim and yelled it into the phone. He came upstairs and told me the story of the process (including a confirmation of my dark prediction of what would become of anyone who would attempt to vacuum that room*****.) "I wasn't sure, though," he said, "that it was such a good idea....I mean, I didn't know how you'd feel about me doing this. I didn't know if maybe you had been putting it off for a reason...like, an emotional reason..."
"No," I assured him, "I was putting it off because I knew it was going to be disgusting in here and I didn't feel up to the challenge."
"Well, I mean...I didn't have any money to get you anything, so I figured...Anyway, Merry Christmas," he said. I gave him a hug.
And then--the ultimate.
"Oh yeah," he said, as he descended the stairs. "I fixed the faucet in the downstairs bathroom, too."
The day I moved into this house, nearly three and a half years ago, I noticed that there were a lot of problems with it which hadn't been evident on inspection. One of the subtlest was in the first-floor bath; when I turned the hot-water knob, I got cold water, and vice versa. I had mentioned it to the seller's agent, and his response set the tone for the entire experience: "It's an old house--you can't expect it to be perfect." If someone had said this BEFORE the closing, I would not be living here today; unfortunately, by the time of that conversation, all the papers were signed and there was nothing to be done.
Throughout the time I've been here, that faucet has been symbolic of all the small aggravations here. I didn't want to mess with it myself, lest I cause something even WORSE to go wrong ******; during the tenures of all my various repair-people, there were always more-pressing things to do, and so the faucets stayed reversed...until Christmas, when Tim fixed them.
I went into the bathroom and turned the knobs. Sure enough--the hot-water knob produced hot water, the cold-water knob produced cold.
I'm not sure, but these two incidents of home repair may rank among the most awesome Christmas presents I've ever received.
However, the most awesome thing of all is this: the holiday season is, mercifully, almost over, and if all goes as I expect, people will start hiring again soon. I had an interview for a job this past Tuesday, which I almost certainly didn't get, and I have another one scheduled for this coming Thursday. The Thursday job is downtown, and has an added advantage: I applied for one job they'd posted, and after looking at my experience, they decided they'd rather interview me for a different, higher-level position. I'm really, REALLY hopeful on this one, but I'm not holding my breath just yet.
But something needs to happen soon; the financial situation is becoming fairly dire, and according to the folks at Unemployment, it will take about a month before they can hear my appeal. I filed it last week, but they have to schedule a hearing--which may, if I'm lucky, leave me in the entertaining position of having to take some time away from a NEW job so that I can get compensation for being fired from the OLD one. Life is just a ceaseless round of hilarity, you know? (An ideal outcome would be this: my back-dated unemployment would arrive at the same time as my income-tax refund, which I always get in February after e-filing. That would solve many, many problems all at once.)
Even with the money problems, I'd have to say things are going very well indeed...but I won't miss the money problems when they're gone!!
_______________________________________________________________
*Performed by yours truly, no less; apparently this has been a family Christmas rite for, as Mom calculated this year, probably approaching 200 years now. Her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did it; after that she can't trace, but she's already threatened to haunt me if I break the chain after she dies. As I told her this Christmas when she repeated this threat, there's a pretty decent chance at this point that what she's condemning me to is a couple dozen Christmas Eves spent reading the Gospel to cats, but I don't think that unsettled her nearly as much as it should have.
**"Luminaria"--paper bags filled with a bed of sand and with tea-light candles placed inside. We did this when I was a kid, when my dad was alive, and we have quite a few stories about what happens when you put out candles in paper bags on a windy night, or in a blizzard, or any number of other conditions.
***Another contribution of Tim's; nestled among his belongings was a two-unit cordless-phone system. We discovered the paging system by accident, and spent a couple of childlike hours paging each other with every random thought, question, and belch that came into being. It's wonderful to be able to communicate without hollering down the stairs.
****I still want to borrow some sage incense from Debbi, so I can burn off all the evil in that room. Seriously--the number of men who cheated on their girlfriends in that room, and the number of evil plots that were hatched there, and the sheer weight of all the slimy thoughts, leaves a sense of palpable ugliness that no conventional cleaning products could remove.
*****I learned about this a few days after the last time LJ vacuumed that room, when I was thwarted in the attempt to clean a patch of crumbs off the living-room carpet. I went over the crumbs four or five times, and still they were there. I emptied the dust cup--still no suction. I pulled off the hose--nothing. I pulled off the hose at the other end, where it joined the vacuum itself, and spent a jolly hour--no exaggeration!--with a needle-nosed pliers, pulling out clots of impacted fluff, dust, cat-hair, and god-knows-what from the vacuum cleaner's innards. In the end, there were at least THREE dust-cups full of debris piled in the trash can by the time I could get the machine to work properly. LJ, of course, denied all wrongdoing.
******For example: as a result of a simple request to Morris the Handyman to move the upstairs bathroom sink, I ended up (two years later!) having spent over six thousand dollars --repairs to the joists below the bathroom, a new kitchen ceiling, and three grand worth of money lost to Bob the Plumber. I stopped making small requests after that.
I spent Christmas Eve at Mom's, as usual. That's been the family tradition; Christmas Eve dinner with Mom, the traditional Gospel reading *, and luminaria** placed out in front of the house. Mom went off to Midnight Mass, I took my heathen self to bed, and next morning we opened presents. Around lunchtime, I drove back here to pick up Tim, who was coming to dinner because Mom couldn't stand the thought of anyone being alone on Christmas. Of course, Tim, who is used to being alone on Christmas, found this outrageously awkward and intimidating, for which I can't say I blame him--back when he was "CR's friend", he was not so much looked upon with kindness by the family circle. Guilt by association, I guess; but now that he's "Gladys's roommate", that's a whole new situation, and requires a different approach. And Mom, who feels awkward just by nature, spent the intervening few days questioning me about what would and would not be appropriate for discussion. So the few days leading up to Christmas were spent calming everyone's nerves, and wondering how, exactly, I'd gotten into this.
Christmas dinner went fine, despite everyone's angst, and despite the meat thermometer, which apparently has issues with the concept of "medium" vs. "medium-well" as regards steaks. Since I was in charge of the steaks, the shame of overdone meat fell upon my shoulders, even though everyone claimed it was fine. Of course, if everyone would just eat their meat rare like me, we would have had no problems at all. But it wasn't nearly as awkward as all of us feared it would be.
We came home after dinner, Tim and I, and he went into his room and told me my gift was "upstairs". I wasn't sure if he was entirely serious--we spend a great deal of time abusing each other's credulity--so I figured if there was anything to find, I'd find it. I peered into my room--nothing unusual there. I went into the bathroom and discovered that the air-conditioner, previously in my bedroom window, had been removed for the season and placed on a sheet of cardboard to drain. I was thrilled--I had been meaning to do that for the longest time, but it's an irritating job and anyway I have nowhere to put it, as my closet is still in unusable condition. So I paged Tim on the cordless phone*** and said "Thank you!"
"For what?" he said.
"For taking out my air-conditioner," I told him. "That was really great!"
"Thanks," he said. A few minutes later, he paged me back. "That totally wasn't your Christmas present."
"Was it the fresh box of Christmas Q-Tips in the bathroom?" I asked.
"Well yeah, that too, but...Keep looking," he said.
By now I was totally perplexed, trying to figure out what, exactly, he was talking about..."Upstairs," he says, and I'm upstairs, and it's not anything obvious in my room except the air conditioner being moved, which he says isn't it, and there's nothing in the bathroom, and....no, the closet didn't miraculously get fixed, so it's not that, and there's nothing out of place in the hall closet, and the only other thing up here is....
Light bulb.
I opened the door of LJ's room.
It was no longer LJ's room. The floor had been vacuumed into a state of immaculateness--or at least, as immaculate as a carpet can be after two years of gratuitous abuse. The bed had been moved and, as much as possible, made; there was a comforter and pillows covering it, anyway. The little TV from the basement had been placed on the little stereo stand which we had moved from the living room when LJ removed his stereo from it; the dresser was beside the bed, with a lamp on it, and an alarm clock. It looked, in short, like a guest bedroom, instead of something you might access through a dark alleyway after being beckoned by a middle-aged bottle-blonde in a too-tight skirt and too much bright-red lipstick.****
In case he hadn't heard my yell of "Awesome!" I paged Tim and yelled it into the phone. He came upstairs and told me the story of the process (including a confirmation of my dark prediction of what would become of anyone who would attempt to vacuum that room*****.) "I wasn't sure, though," he said, "that it was such a good idea....I mean, I didn't know how you'd feel about me doing this. I didn't know if maybe you had been putting it off for a reason...like, an emotional reason..."
"No," I assured him, "I was putting it off because I knew it was going to be disgusting in here and I didn't feel up to the challenge."
"Well, I mean...I didn't have any money to get you anything, so I figured...Anyway, Merry Christmas," he said. I gave him a hug.
And then--the ultimate.
"Oh yeah," he said, as he descended the stairs. "I fixed the faucet in the downstairs bathroom, too."
The day I moved into this house, nearly three and a half years ago, I noticed that there were a lot of problems with it which hadn't been evident on inspection. One of the subtlest was in the first-floor bath; when I turned the hot-water knob, I got cold water, and vice versa. I had mentioned it to the seller's agent, and his response set the tone for the entire experience: "It's an old house--you can't expect it to be perfect." If someone had said this BEFORE the closing, I would not be living here today; unfortunately, by the time of that conversation, all the papers were signed and there was nothing to be done.
Throughout the time I've been here, that faucet has been symbolic of all the small aggravations here. I didn't want to mess with it myself, lest I cause something even WORSE to go wrong ******; during the tenures of all my various repair-people, there were always more-pressing things to do, and so the faucets stayed reversed...until Christmas, when Tim fixed them.
I went into the bathroom and turned the knobs. Sure enough--the hot-water knob produced hot water, the cold-water knob produced cold.
I'm not sure, but these two incidents of home repair may rank among the most awesome Christmas presents I've ever received.
However, the most awesome thing of all is this: the holiday season is, mercifully, almost over, and if all goes as I expect, people will start hiring again soon. I had an interview for a job this past Tuesday, which I almost certainly didn't get, and I have another one scheduled for this coming Thursday. The Thursday job is downtown, and has an added advantage: I applied for one job they'd posted, and after looking at my experience, they decided they'd rather interview me for a different, higher-level position. I'm really, REALLY hopeful on this one, but I'm not holding my breath just yet.
But something needs to happen soon; the financial situation is becoming fairly dire, and according to the folks at Unemployment, it will take about a month before they can hear my appeal. I filed it last week, but they have to schedule a hearing--which may, if I'm lucky, leave me in the entertaining position of having to take some time away from a NEW job so that I can get compensation for being fired from the OLD one. Life is just a ceaseless round of hilarity, you know? (An ideal outcome would be this: my back-dated unemployment would arrive at the same time as my income-tax refund, which I always get in February after e-filing. That would solve many, many problems all at once.)
Even with the money problems, I'd have to say things are going very well indeed...but I won't miss the money problems when they're gone!!
_______________________________________________________________
*Performed by yours truly, no less; apparently this has been a family Christmas rite for, as Mom calculated this year, probably approaching 200 years now. Her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did it; after that she can't trace, but she's already threatened to haunt me if I break the chain after she dies. As I told her this Christmas when she repeated this threat, there's a pretty decent chance at this point that what she's condemning me to is a couple dozen Christmas Eves spent reading the Gospel to cats, but I don't think that unsettled her nearly as much as it should have.
**"Luminaria"--paper bags filled with a bed of sand and with tea-light candles placed inside. We did this when I was a kid, when my dad was alive, and we have quite a few stories about what happens when you put out candles in paper bags on a windy night, or in a blizzard, or any number of other conditions.
***Another contribution of Tim's; nestled among his belongings was a two-unit cordless-phone system. We discovered the paging system by accident, and spent a couple of childlike hours paging each other with every random thought, question, and belch that came into being. It's wonderful to be able to communicate without hollering down the stairs.
****I still want to borrow some sage incense from Debbi, so I can burn off all the evil in that room. Seriously--the number of men who cheated on their girlfriends in that room, and the number of evil plots that were hatched there, and the sheer weight of all the slimy thoughts, leaves a sense of palpable ugliness that no conventional cleaning products could remove.
*****I learned about this a few days after the last time LJ vacuumed that room, when I was thwarted in the attempt to clean a patch of crumbs off the living-room carpet. I went over the crumbs four or five times, and still they were there. I emptied the dust cup--still no suction. I pulled off the hose--nothing. I pulled off the hose at the other end, where it joined the vacuum itself, and spent a jolly hour--no exaggeration!--with a needle-nosed pliers, pulling out clots of impacted fluff, dust, cat-hair, and god-knows-what from the vacuum cleaner's innards. In the end, there were at least THREE dust-cups full of debris piled in the trash can by the time I could get the machine to work properly. LJ, of course, denied all wrongdoing.
******For example: as a result of a simple request to Morris the Handyman to move the upstairs bathroom sink, I ended up (two years later!) having spent over six thousand dollars --repairs to the joists below the bathroom, a new kitchen ceiling, and three grand worth of money lost to Bob the Plumber. I stopped making small requests after that.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Well, I'm Off...
...to Mom's for a couple of days.
I hope everybody has the best possible holiday full of people they love. (And cats, if you've got 'em.)
See you Monday night!
I hope everybody has the best possible holiday full of people they love. (And cats, if you've got 'em.)
See you Monday night!
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Just Because I Didn't Say It Doesn't Mean It Didn't Happen
Note: In an effort to curb my abuse of parentheses and the consequent, almost-continual derailing of my trains of thought, I'm now moving to an end-note system for my posts. Wherever you see asterisks (*) after a sentence, if you scroll to the end of the post, you'll find a semi-related tangent. Hopefully now I'll be able to complete a thought once in a while, before bounding off to some other, equally-fertile ground.
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Hey, you notice that so far we haven't had an "LJ is gone again, hallelujah*" post??
There's a good reason for that.
No, he's not still here. But it's only this morning that I'm willing to accept his absence as a fact.
Confused? Yeah, so was I. He was here Friday morning; he was here Friday night; he was here Saturday morning and afternoon. Saturday evening, I went to see the Christmas lights at the zoo with Debbi.** When I returned, he wasn't here; Tim said he'd come back for a few minutes with a friend of his, and then he'd left again. Since that's pretty much an hourly occurrence when LJ is in town, I figured he'd come back around 4 AM or so, probably drunk, and either sleep the day away or puke the day away, depending on the hangover.
But Sunday morning came: no LJ.
Sunday afternoon came: no LJ.
Sunday evening, and Monday morning, and Monday evening, and Tuesday came: no LJ. Not a sign of him, nor a phone call to tell me "hey, you were out when I left, but I just wanted to let you know I made it back safe" or anything like that.*** Apparently I am now so insignificant as not to merit such courtesies; after all, you don't have to call a hotelier and tell him that you're leaving. (Of course, even at a hotel, you DO have to check out...which is more than I got.)
Curiously, this is the last straw. This is the offense that allows me to say, when he calls, "Hey, listen, if there's anything you want that's left at the house, let me know so I can drop it off at your mom's--anything else is going in the trash or going to Goodwill, because you now officially live elsewhere. " I mean, seriously. What a jerk.
So: LJ is gone, finally, again. And this time, I think it's for good. (Well, I mean, it was always for GOOD, but this time I think the for-good-ness is permanent.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
* (I had to look this up. Didn't there used to be an "i" in there somewhere??)
**(Debbi's doing well, though in a few months she'll weigh less than me, for the first time in our adult lives, and I don't know how I feel about that. Or rather, I DO know how I feel about that, but would prefer not to acknowledge it because a) it seems petty, and b) acknowledging that it bothers me would open the door to the possibility of having to DO something about it, and frankly I'm just not ready for the whole diet-and-exercise hoo-raw right now.)
***(Also no acknowledgement of the $110 he was supposed to collect for the cell-phone bill from the sister of the friend who's on my cell-phone plan but now locked up, so his sister is keeping the phone and she'll pay the bill on time, she PROMISES. Well, the bill is due again, and I've sent her a text message asking her to call me, and I've tried to call the number but she doesn't answer, and I'm sure she doesn't have the voicemail password, so if it gets to be next Friday when the bill is due again and I don't have $220--$110 for the bill I already paid and $110 for the current month--I'm reporting the phone as "lost", changing the number, and going to the cheapest possible plan. I've been more patient than most people would be--originally one friend was on the plan, and he was going to pay, he PROMISED--but then he didn't, and LJ took the phone away and gave it to this other friend. The other friend was good about paying--except he paid LJ, expecting him to give it to me, which rarely happened (about twice in the 2 years he's been on the plan.) Now HE's locked up, and his sister wants the phone but apparently doesn't want to pay...well, the charity bureau is now closed, as I've gone out of the "giving" line and moved into the "getting" line.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey, you notice that so far we haven't had an "LJ is gone again, hallelujah*" post??
There's a good reason for that.
No, he's not still here. But it's only this morning that I'm willing to accept his absence as a fact.
Confused? Yeah, so was I. He was here Friday morning; he was here Friday night; he was here Saturday morning and afternoon. Saturday evening, I went to see the Christmas lights at the zoo with Debbi.** When I returned, he wasn't here; Tim said he'd come back for a few minutes with a friend of his, and then he'd left again. Since that's pretty much an hourly occurrence when LJ is in town, I figured he'd come back around 4 AM or so, probably drunk, and either sleep the day away or puke the day away, depending on the hangover.
But Sunday morning came: no LJ.
Sunday afternoon came: no LJ.
Sunday evening, and Monday morning, and Monday evening, and Tuesday came: no LJ. Not a sign of him, nor a phone call to tell me "hey, you were out when I left, but I just wanted to let you know I made it back safe" or anything like that.*** Apparently I am now so insignificant as not to merit such courtesies; after all, you don't have to call a hotelier and tell him that you're leaving. (Of course, even at a hotel, you DO have to check out...which is more than I got.)
Curiously, this is the last straw. This is the offense that allows me to say, when he calls, "Hey, listen, if there's anything you want that's left at the house, let me know so I can drop it off at your mom's--anything else is going in the trash or going to Goodwill, because you now officially live elsewhere. " I mean, seriously. What a jerk.
So: LJ is gone, finally, again. And this time, I think it's for good. (Well, I mean, it was always for GOOD, but this time I think the for-good-ness is permanent.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
* (I had to look this up. Didn't there used to be an "i" in there somewhere??)
**(Debbi's doing well, though in a few months she'll weigh less than me, for the first time in our adult lives, and I don't know how I feel about that. Or rather, I DO know how I feel about that, but would prefer not to acknowledge it because a) it seems petty, and b) acknowledging that it bothers me would open the door to the possibility of having to DO something about it, and frankly I'm just not ready for the whole diet-and-exercise hoo-raw right now.)
***(Also no acknowledgement of the $110 he was supposed to collect for the cell-phone bill from the sister of the friend who's on my cell-phone plan but now locked up, so his sister is keeping the phone and she'll pay the bill on time, she PROMISES. Well, the bill is due again, and I've sent her a text message asking her to call me, and I've tried to call the number but she doesn't answer, and I'm sure she doesn't have the voicemail password, so if it gets to be next Friday when the bill is due again and I don't have $220--$110 for the bill I already paid and $110 for the current month--I'm reporting the phone as "lost", changing the number, and going to the cheapest possible plan. I've been more patient than most people would be--originally one friend was on the plan, and he was going to pay, he PROMISED--but then he didn't, and LJ took the phone away and gave it to this other friend. The other friend was good about paying--except he paid LJ, expecting him to give it to me, which rarely happened (about twice in the 2 years he's been on the plan.) Now HE's locked up, and his sister wants the phone but apparently doesn't want to pay...well, the charity bureau is now closed, as I've gone out of the "giving" line and moved into the "getting" line.)
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Hindsight, 20-20 Vision, and Other Irritants
Sitting here at my neatly-organized computer desk in my nice clean living room, it occurs to me:
If I'd spent the 54 days of my unemployment writing my book instead of sleeping late, eating Little Debbie Swiss Rolls, watching cartoons, playing computer games, and cleaning house, I could conceivably have finished my project--thereby accomplishing something that would guarantee I could spend the rest of my life doing all of the above, instead of working another nine-to-five with limited room for advancement.
This is why I don't like it when things occur to me. They're always things I SHOULD have done. This has never happened: "Hey, it occurs to me that sleeping til noon every day was the PERFECT plan!" That never happens. (The perfect-plan part never happens. The sleeping-til-noon part?? Oh yeah. My circadian rhythms are all to crap from this unemployment thing, and I've got all sorts of bad habits to break when I DO get hired somewhere. But I'm a night-owl by nature, and it's been fun to indulge that side of myself.)
It's pretty much a given, now, that I won't be working til after the first of the year. I know for a fact that I've never been out of work this long before; I'm fairly sure, as well, that I've never been on so many fruitless interviews before. I'm wondering if maybe that's got something to do with my diminished self-esteem--if maybe I'm not as able to sell myself as I used to be. It wouldn't surprise me at all. (Debbi did a Tarot reading for me over the phone a few days ago, and she agreed too; she also said that within "four days to four weeks" I should receive an offer. I love Debbi to pieces, and I'd never dismiss the possibility that there are forces at work in the universe of which I know nothing--but that seems like an awfully wide span of time to count as an actual "prediction". But this is Debbi, my oldest friend, and I'd never say such a thing to her! Besides, I'd rather have her be right in this case.) I need to re-learn the fine art of corporate schmoozing; I used to be very good at giving potential employers and other authority figures the "right" answer--the one they wanted to hear. But lately I'm more inclined to be honest; when they ask me if I know how to do such-and-such, I'm much more likely to say "I haven't had any experience with ____ yet" than "I haven't done _____ exactly, but here are some things I've done that are similar..." I -know- how to interview, but lately I've been less-willing to do the necessary dance-steps. I'm hoping to find an employer who recognizes and respects that brand of straightforwardness, but I'm not holding my breath!
Even though I was hoping to have everything settled by Christmas, I have to admit: since it's not settled, I'm glad to have a few days off from the effort. Job-hunting takes a lot out of me. So til the first of the year, I'm just going to pull up my computer chair, my remote control, and my bowl of oatmeal, and relax for a while. I don't know how, exactly, but everything will be fine.
If I'd spent the 54 days of my unemployment writing my book instead of sleeping late, eating Little Debbie Swiss Rolls, watching cartoons, playing computer games, and cleaning house, I could conceivably have finished my project--thereby accomplishing something that would guarantee I could spend the rest of my life doing all of the above, instead of working another nine-to-five with limited room for advancement.
This is why I don't like it when things occur to me. They're always things I SHOULD have done. This has never happened: "Hey, it occurs to me that sleeping til noon every day was the PERFECT plan!" That never happens. (The perfect-plan part never happens. The sleeping-til-noon part?? Oh yeah. My circadian rhythms are all to crap from this unemployment thing, and I've got all sorts of bad habits to break when I DO get hired somewhere. But I'm a night-owl by nature, and it's been fun to indulge that side of myself.)
It's pretty much a given, now, that I won't be working til after the first of the year. I know for a fact that I've never been out of work this long before; I'm fairly sure, as well, that I've never been on so many fruitless interviews before. I'm wondering if maybe that's got something to do with my diminished self-esteem--if maybe I'm not as able to sell myself as I used to be. It wouldn't surprise me at all. (Debbi did a Tarot reading for me over the phone a few days ago, and she agreed too; she also said that within "four days to four weeks" I should receive an offer. I love Debbi to pieces, and I'd never dismiss the possibility that there are forces at work in the universe of which I know nothing--but that seems like an awfully wide span of time to count as an actual "prediction". But this is Debbi, my oldest friend, and I'd never say such a thing to her! Besides, I'd rather have her be right in this case.) I need to re-learn the fine art of corporate schmoozing; I used to be very good at giving potential employers and other authority figures the "right" answer--the one they wanted to hear. But lately I'm more inclined to be honest; when they ask me if I know how to do such-and-such, I'm much more likely to say "I haven't had any experience with ____ yet" than "I haven't done _____ exactly, but here are some things I've done that are similar..." I -know- how to interview, but lately I've been less-willing to do the necessary dance-steps. I'm hoping to find an employer who recognizes and respects that brand of straightforwardness, but I'm not holding my breath!
Even though I was hoping to have everything settled by Christmas, I have to admit: since it's not settled, I'm glad to have a few days off from the effort. Job-hunting takes a lot out of me. So til the first of the year, I'm just going to pull up my computer chair, my remote control, and my bowl of oatmeal, and relax for a while. I don't know how, exactly, but everything will be fine.
Monday, December 18, 2006
They're Doing It Again
I got in the car today to run approximately seven thousand errands, and when I turned on the radio I discovered they were doing it again: Q101 is trying to kill me.
Just like last year, they're ending the year with "14 Years in 14 Days"--a retrospective of all their yearly countdowns since they became an alternative station back in 1993. Today was 1993.
Most of the time lately I've been able to deal with missing JP, mostly by not thinking at all about how much I miss him. I know it's not the healthiest way to handle it, but it's the best I can do for the moment; I've just got other things to deal with right now. On some level I think I've managed to believe that if I really try hard enough, I can come up with enough "other things to deal with" to fill up the rest of my life. Or I can keep dwelling in my imaginary little world, where just thinking about doing something or being something is as good as the actuality. If I dream of being a writer, or plan out how to be a writer, in my imaginary world I am excused from the work of actually writing. If I remember a better life, where I was happy and loved, I can live in that memory and avoid the work of accepting that it's different now, that it's never going to be like that again for me. And if I don't think about those things, or any of the other things that can hurt me, I can stay quiet inside and make it through another day.
But then sometimes there's a day like today--a day when I hear a song that reminds me--or a dozen songs that each remind me. And suddenly it's not so easy not to think about it anymore, humming along with songs that were playing on the radio when ...fill in the blank. Songs I remember from the apartment in the suburbs where I lived when Dave and I were married; songs I remember from the apartment in Humboldt Park, on JP's battered-but-loud stereo. Songs from the little storefront apartment with the amazing sunlight, or from the room at his mother's house, or from the little red Dodge we drove around. We attached worlds of meaning to those songs, and hearing them again just makes me want to sink to the ground and cry. I still miss JP so damn much sometimes...
I think I'll be staying out of the car for a few days. I don't think I could take hearing much of 1994 or '95...too close to my heart. Meanwhile, I think I'll sit on my sofa and watch Christmas shows..."The Year Without A Santa Claus" must be on, somewhere.
Just like last year, they're ending the year with "14 Years in 14 Days"--a retrospective of all their yearly countdowns since they became an alternative station back in 1993. Today was 1993.
Most of the time lately I've been able to deal with missing JP, mostly by not thinking at all about how much I miss him. I know it's not the healthiest way to handle it, but it's the best I can do for the moment; I've just got other things to deal with right now. On some level I think I've managed to believe that if I really try hard enough, I can come up with enough "other things to deal with" to fill up the rest of my life. Or I can keep dwelling in my imaginary little world, where just thinking about doing something or being something is as good as the actuality. If I dream of being a writer, or plan out how to be a writer, in my imaginary world I am excused from the work of actually writing. If I remember a better life, where I was happy and loved, I can live in that memory and avoid the work of accepting that it's different now, that it's never going to be like that again for me. And if I don't think about those things, or any of the other things that can hurt me, I can stay quiet inside and make it through another day.
But then sometimes there's a day like today--a day when I hear a song that reminds me--or a dozen songs that each remind me. And suddenly it's not so easy not to think about it anymore, humming along with songs that were playing on the radio when ...fill in the blank. Songs I remember from the apartment in the suburbs where I lived when Dave and I were married; songs I remember from the apartment in Humboldt Park, on JP's battered-but-loud stereo. Songs from the little storefront apartment with the amazing sunlight, or from the room at his mother's house, or from the little red Dodge we drove around. We attached worlds of meaning to those songs, and hearing them again just makes me want to sink to the ground and cry. I still miss JP so damn much sometimes...
I think I'll be staying out of the car for a few days. I don't think I could take hearing much of 1994 or '95...too close to my heart. Meanwhile, I think I'll sit on my sofa and watch Christmas shows..."The Year Without A Santa Claus" must be on, somewhere.
Friday, December 15, 2006
The Comcast Gods Have Silenced Me
Note: I have now been trying to post the post below for TWO FULL DAYS. Every time I try to post it, my Comcast cable broadband connection goes kerflooey and stays so for hours at a time. Comcast then attempts to tell me that it's something wrong with my computer, even though the connection was working minutes earlier and no change was made to the settings. I'm getting a wee teeny bit tired of Comcast, to say the very least.
I'll try this again:
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I've done what I can to enlarge that so it's readable, but Blogger has its own ideas of how large a picture can be, apparently. What you see above is a letter from the Illinois Department of Employment Security, otherwise known as the unemployment office. The letter is explaining why my application for benefits has been denied.
Here's the reason, in its entirety.
"The claimant was discharged from: BUTTWEASEL INC because: OF SLEEPING ON THE JOB. Since the reason for which the claimant was discharged constituted a violation of a known and reasonable company rule, the claimant was discharged for misconduct connected with the work."
I opened this letter, and within seconds both Tim and the cats had fled to various safe corners of the house. I was furious. "Furious" is actually a grave understatement. "Sleeping on the job"?? That information came from one of two places: either it came directly from Buttweasel Inc, or it came from my "caseworker" at the unemployment office. (She gets irony-quotes because when I called her, she loftily informed me that she was just about to go to lunch when I called, and when I offered to call back, she was gracious enough to actually take my call--with several breaks in the conversation so that she could negotiate with co-workers as to who was going for sandwiches, how much they would cost, and how much change she expected. Then, weeks later when I'd still heard nothing back from her, I left a message every day for five days sequentially and she never returned my call ONCE.)
Regardless of where this reinterpretation of my medical condition as "sleeping on the job" came from, it is wholly inaccurate and a gross distortion of the facts. We're talking about lapses in consciousness lasting 15-60 seconds at a time--they make it sound like I fluffed up a pillow, stuck a thumb in my mouth, and pulled up my blankie for a nice long nap. Needless to say, I WILL be appealing, and I WILL be requesting a different caseworker. I've called my doctor and asked for copies of my diagnosis, and proof that I'd made the appointment before I was fired. Once I have those, I'm going straight to the office and pleading my case. But regardless of whether or not they reverse their decision, I've decided: I do NOT like bureaucracies.
I have had ONE offer of employment, however. It was for a one-year contract position, no guarantee of work beyond that point--and it was 40 miles from home. One way. On two of the four most ghastly expressways in the Chicago metropolitan area: the Eisenhower (290) and the Elgin-O'Hare (90). I went to my interview at 1:30 on a Friday, and the traffic heading out there wasn't bad--but the reverse trip, at about 3:00, took me the better part of two hours. I am not sacrificing four hours a day to go to a job which could easily dump me at the end of the contract and leave me back in the same situation I'm in now. They wouldn't even be giving me benefits; I'd have to get them through the recruiting firm's insurance plan, which isn't that great. And worst of all, they weren't even willing to pay me what I was asking--I had raised my requirements when I realized how much gas I'd be burning, and how much wear and tear I'd be putting on the truck. The recruiter said the client was very interested in me, which...yeah, nice, but....I told him I'd have to pass.
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This is as far as I've managed to get in my effort to compose this post without Comcast kerfloo-age taking place. In the two days that have elapsed as I've attempted to post this:
1. The nonprofit job turned out to be offering not-nearly-enough money to make it worth my while;
2. Still no word on the other job--the manager's still sick;
3. With about five hours' notice yesterday, LJ showed up.
(No, I was not pleased either. He'll only be here for a day or so--he didn't bring any clothes with him, and plus he has his friend Damien's car, so he CAN'T be staying long...I devoutly hope. He came in about 2 AM, to tell me he'd just been robbed as he waited for one of his friends to get off work as a bouncer at a nearby club--the robber pulled a pistol and got $6 and a non-working cell phone for his trouble. Stupid.)
There have been other developments, as well, financial-and-I-don't-mean-that-in-a-good-way in nature, but I'm going to keep those gory details to myself for a bit. So far, nothing irrevocable has happened, and I'm working to make sure it stays that way...but the holidays are coming at a mighty-inconvenient time, this year.
I don't think I've ever looked forward to January so much before.
I'll try this again:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've done what I can to enlarge that so it's readable, but Blogger has its own ideas of how large a picture can be, apparently. What you see above is a letter from the Illinois Department of Employment Security, otherwise known as the unemployment office. The letter is explaining why my application for benefits has been denied.
Here's the reason, in its entirety.
"The claimant was discharged from: BUTTWEASEL INC because: OF SLEEPING ON THE JOB. Since the reason for which the claimant was discharged constituted a violation of a known and reasonable company rule, the claimant was discharged for misconduct connected with the work."
I opened this letter, and within seconds both Tim and the cats had fled to various safe corners of the house. I was furious. "Furious" is actually a grave understatement. "Sleeping on the job"?? That information came from one of two places: either it came directly from Buttweasel Inc, or it came from my "caseworker" at the unemployment office. (She gets irony-quotes because when I called her, she loftily informed me that she was just about to go to lunch when I called, and when I offered to call back, she was gracious enough to actually take my call--with several breaks in the conversation so that she could negotiate with co-workers as to who was going for sandwiches, how much they would cost, and how much change she expected. Then, weeks later when I'd still heard nothing back from her, I left a message every day for five days sequentially and she never returned my call ONCE.)
Regardless of where this reinterpretation of my medical condition as "sleeping on the job" came from, it is wholly inaccurate and a gross distortion of the facts. We're talking about lapses in consciousness lasting 15-60 seconds at a time--they make it sound like I fluffed up a pillow, stuck a thumb in my mouth, and pulled up my blankie for a nice long nap. Needless to say, I WILL be appealing, and I WILL be requesting a different caseworker. I've called my doctor and asked for copies of my diagnosis, and proof that I'd made the appointment before I was fired. Once I have those, I'm going straight to the office and pleading my case. But regardless of whether or not they reverse their decision, I've decided: I do NOT like bureaucracies.
I have had ONE offer of employment, however. It was for a one-year contract position, no guarantee of work beyond that point--and it was 40 miles from home. One way. On two of the four most ghastly expressways in the Chicago metropolitan area: the Eisenhower (290) and the Elgin-O'Hare (90). I went to my interview at 1:30 on a Friday, and the traffic heading out there wasn't bad--but the reverse trip, at about 3:00, took me the better part of two hours. I am not sacrificing four hours a day to go to a job which could easily dump me at the end of the contract and leave me back in the same situation I'm in now. They wouldn't even be giving me benefits; I'd have to get them through the recruiting firm's insurance plan, which isn't that great. And worst of all, they weren't even willing to pay me what I was asking--I had raised my requirements when I realized how much gas I'd be burning, and how much wear and tear I'd be putting on the truck. The recruiter said the client was very interested in me, which...yeah, nice, but....I told him I'd have to pass.
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This is as far as I've managed to get in my effort to compose this post without Comcast kerfloo-age taking place. In the two days that have elapsed as I've attempted to post this:
1. The nonprofit job turned out to be offering not-nearly-enough money to make it worth my while;
2. Still no word on the other job--the manager's still sick;
3. With about five hours' notice yesterday, LJ showed up.
(No, I was not pleased either. He'll only be here for a day or so--he didn't bring any clothes with him, and plus he has his friend Damien's car, so he CAN'T be staying long...I devoutly hope. He came in about 2 AM, to tell me he'd just been robbed as he waited for one of his friends to get off work as a bouncer at a nearby club--the robber pulled a pistol and got $6 and a non-working cell phone for his trouble. Stupid.)
There have been other developments, as well, financial-and-I-don't-mean-that-in-a-good-way in nature, but I'm going to keep those gory details to myself for a bit. So far, nothing irrevocable has happened, and I'm working to make sure it stays that way...but the holidays are coming at a mighty-inconvenient time, this year.
I don't think I've ever looked forward to January so much before.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Here We Are...
Since Blogger has finally straightened itself out, here's my Snick pic...
Note: No cats were harmed in the creation of this photograph, although we did consider adding this one to a light cream sauce and a sprig of parsley.
We explained to Snickers, after we took this picture, that after a long day of tormenting BadCat and Cassidy, knocking papers off the table, and generally causing chaos, it MIGHT not be the best time to plant this particular idea in our heads. I mean, it might as well say "serving suggestion" underneath the picture.
Note: No cats were harmed in the creation of this photograph, although we did consider adding this one to a light cream sauce and a sprig of parsley.
We explained to Snickers, after we took this picture, that after a long day of tormenting BadCat and Cassidy, knocking papers off the table, and generally causing chaos, it MIGHT not be the best time to plant this particular idea in our heads. I mean, it might as well say "serving suggestion" underneath the picture.
I'm Losing Track Of My Numbers
I'm on the verge of a very unpleasant conclusion: I'm thinking maybe I might not have a job til after the first of the year.
I can't tell you how scary I find that. But all the interviews I've had have yielded nothing, and all the applications I've submitted have only yielded a very few interviews which have yielded, as mentioned, nothing. If it comes to that, I'm probably going to end up taking a pizza-delivery job or something, if there's nothing happening by Christmas. Just something to bring a little money in, you know?
Fortunately I am once again in a position in which I could do that, if necessity required, because I once again have custody of the truck. LJ called this morning around 7 AM to tell me that his friend was leaving to come back to Chicago, and that he'd be there around 2:00. At about 2:45 he showed up--but no one had told me I was going to need to drive him home after he dropped off the truck. On the long ride out to Maywood during rush hour, I solidified yet another of my growing list of Fundamental Characteristics I Can't Live Without In A Partner. Number one was "a job of some description"--not for the monetary aspect of it, but because if he has a job it serves as a fairly-good indicator that he's not going to be a complete and total leech. Number two, the one I came up with today: "the ability to plan more than five minutes into the immediate future." The next guy will realize, for example, BEFORE he takes the truck, that a) there is a deadline by which he needs to return it, and b) it might be a good idea to have enough money for BOTH legs of the journey before you depart. (He did leave me about six gallons of gas, though, so I won't have to injure anyone. That's a relief.)
The roommate situation continues to hum along; even the cats have learned to cohabit, and Snickers has been found asleep on Tim's bed more than once, much to my jealous maternal dismay. (I've accepted it, but the minute I find that kitten sucking his tail on Tim's bed, I'm taking him up to my room and locking him in there. The cat, not Tim. Tippy-Tail is for cat-mom's room ONLY.) I looked around the house this morning--clean kitchen, everything put away, reasonably-well-stocked fridge and shelves, vacuumed living room, sleeping cats, rearranged furniture--and I said "You know, things have just been so much...better since you've been here." It's true. The house is absolutely cleaner--a team effort--and it looks lived-in in a GOOD way, not in the clutter-explosion/high-end crackhouse way it looked when LJ's friends were tromping in and out at all hours of the day and night. It looks like a home, sort of, even if it's a starving-artist Bohemian aesthetic--which pretty well fits the personalities of the creatures who live here.
And speaking of the creatures who live here, I promised you a naughty-Snick picture; well, here it is.
Oh, wait--no it isn't. Because Blogger is being a butthead again. How refreshing and unusual--Blogger being a butthead and not letting me do something. What ARE the chances?
So I'll put it this way instead: as soon as Blogger pulls its brain out of mothballs and remembers what happens after we upload a picture, you'll get to see my Snick-pic. Stoopid Blogger.
I can't tell you how scary I find that. But all the interviews I've had have yielded nothing, and all the applications I've submitted have only yielded a very few interviews which have yielded, as mentioned, nothing. If it comes to that, I'm probably going to end up taking a pizza-delivery job or something, if there's nothing happening by Christmas. Just something to bring a little money in, you know?
Fortunately I am once again in a position in which I could do that, if necessity required, because I once again have custody of the truck. LJ called this morning around 7 AM to tell me that his friend was leaving to come back to Chicago, and that he'd be there around 2:00. At about 2:45 he showed up--but no one had told me I was going to need to drive him home after he dropped off the truck. On the long ride out to Maywood during rush hour, I solidified yet another of my growing list of Fundamental Characteristics I Can't Live Without In A Partner. Number one was "a job of some description"--not for the monetary aspect of it, but because if he has a job it serves as a fairly-good indicator that he's not going to be a complete and total leech. Number two, the one I came up with today: "the ability to plan more than five minutes into the immediate future." The next guy will realize, for example, BEFORE he takes the truck, that a) there is a deadline by which he needs to return it, and b) it might be a good idea to have enough money for BOTH legs of the journey before you depart. (He did leave me about six gallons of gas, though, so I won't have to injure anyone. That's a relief.)
The roommate situation continues to hum along; even the cats have learned to cohabit, and Snickers has been found asleep on Tim's bed more than once, much to my jealous maternal dismay. (I've accepted it, but the minute I find that kitten sucking his tail on Tim's bed, I'm taking him up to my room and locking him in there. The cat, not Tim. Tippy-Tail is for cat-mom's room ONLY.) I looked around the house this morning--clean kitchen, everything put away, reasonably-well-stocked fridge and shelves, vacuumed living room, sleeping cats, rearranged furniture--and I said "You know, things have just been so much...better since you've been here." It's true. The house is absolutely cleaner--a team effort--and it looks lived-in in a GOOD way, not in the clutter-explosion/high-end crackhouse way it looked when LJ's friends were tromping in and out at all hours of the day and night. It looks like a home, sort of, even if it's a starving-artist Bohemian aesthetic--which pretty well fits the personalities of the creatures who live here.
And speaking of the creatures who live here, I promised you a naughty-Snick picture; well, here it is.
Oh, wait--no it isn't. Because Blogger is being a butthead again. How refreshing and unusual--Blogger being a butthead and not letting me do something. What ARE the chances?
So I'll put it this way instead: as soon as Blogger pulls its brain out of mothballs and remembers what happens after we upload a picture, you'll get to see my Snick-pic. Stoopid Blogger.
Monday, December 4, 2006
Freedom, Day 5
Because one of you asked and I'd bet more than one of you are wondering:
Of COURSE the truck's not back yet. Did you think I was dealing with a mature adult who was capable of following through on a commitment? Bwahahaha...it is to laugh.
The best part? Even though it wasn't true, I told him specifically, three days ago, that I had an interview today, so I would need the truck back by this morning at the latest. (I am not normally big into lying, but I knew I had to give him SOME sort of concrete deadline backed up with something more than "I'd like to have it back", or I wouldn't see that truck for WEEKS.) He agreed, and promised that if anything came up, I'd know by Saturday night. Late last night--SUNDAY night, at 9 or 10 PM--he calls and tells me that his friend is bringing the truck back either "Monday night or maybe Tuesday." As far as he knows, I had an interview Monday afternoon. According to him, nobody had enough money for gas to get the truck back to Chicago til today. Yeaaah....rrriiiiiiiiiiight. Whatever, sure, yeah, don't care, buh-bye now. Jerk.
Even though I didn't have an interview, I DID have to get up this morning for my weekly trip to the methadone clinic. And since I had no truck, I had to take the bus. It's not far, mind you, but...Have any of you seen the Chicago weather reports over the last couple of days? We didn't get the foot of snow they predicted, but we got a good four to six inches, with a nice hard underlayment of pure sheet ice. And after the snow? It got cold. I mean, COLD cold. The kind of cold where you put on the big warm fleece hat even though you're fully aware that it makes you look like a total idiot, because the aftereffects of NOT wearing the big warm fleece hat would involve microwaving your head for six minutes on 40% power in an effort to defrost your ears. The kind of cold where, in order to keep the collar of your jacket zipped up over as much of your face as possible as you wait for your bus, you hunch up your shoulders as high as possible and end up with a tension headache afterwards. (Actually it wouldn't have been so bad, without the wind--and I'll freely admit that the city as a whole was totally spoiled throughout November, so this probably wasn't even that bad of a cold snap--it just SEEMED bad in contrast to our 67-degree Thanksgiving.) It was the kind of cold, in short, that makes people wish they didn't have to wait for the bus, that makes them stand at the bus stop thinking "Maybe I ought to get myself a car, you know?" Except in my case, I was standing at the bus stop thinking, "Oh, wait--I ALREADY have a car...(unprintable) triflin' (curseword) of a (swear) (profanity) (expletive)...and it's (unprintable) COLD!!!!!!"
UPDATE: As I wrote the last sentence, the phone rang.
Guess which newly-single blogstress now isn't getting her truck back til "Wednesday night, at the latest" because guess-who-else lost his cash card and some other person didn't have any money and a DIFFERENT party couldn't convince his wife to hand over $100? (Smart wife. Wish I'd been as smart.)
Did I mention "jerk, jerk, jerk, jerk, JERK!!!!!"? I didn't?? Please consider it mentioned, then.
I am SO glad he's GONE!!!!
(Incidentally, some comments from my last post's comments section: Ka, we missed you! Firefly--no breakup convo yet, but it's coming! Spins, thanks for being one of my best commentors, and you too, Misery...and to Teresa, welcome!!! (Teresa's from The Daily Kitten, which is a website totally devoted to pictures of adorable kittycats. Tim refers to it as "kitty porn" and that's not entirely a bad summary--everytime I visit the site, I want more kitties!!) In a day or two, I'm gonna post a new pic of Snickers....he's outgrown the "kitten" designation but oh, man, we just got a PRICELESS shot of him--caught in the act of being really, really bad.)
Of COURSE the truck's not back yet. Did you think I was dealing with a mature adult who was capable of following through on a commitment? Bwahahaha...it is to laugh.
The best part? Even though it wasn't true, I told him specifically, three days ago, that I had an interview today, so I would need the truck back by this morning at the latest. (I am not normally big into lying, but I knew I had to give him SOME sort of concrete deadline backed up with something more than "I'd like to have it back", or I wouldn't see that truck for WEEKS.) He agreed, and promised that if anything came up, I'd know by Saturday night. Late last night--SUNDAY night, at 9 or 10 PM--he calls and tells me that his friend is bringing the truck back either "Monday night or maybe Tuesday." As far as he knows, I had an interview Monday afternoon. According to him, nobody had enough money for gas to get the truck back to Chicago til today. Yeaaah....rrriiiiiiiiiiight. Whatever, sure, yeah, don't care, buh-bye now. Jerk.
Even though I didn't have an interview, I DID have to get up this morning for my weekly trip to the methadone clinic. And since I had no truck, I had to take the bus. It's not far, mind you, but...Have any of you seen the Chicago weather reports over the last couple of days? We didn't get the foot of snow they predicted, but we got a good four to six inches, with a nice hard underlayment of pure sheet ice. And after the snow? It got cold. I mean, COLD cold. The kind of cold where you put on the big warm fleece hat even though you're fully aware that it makes you look like a total idiot, because the aftereffects of NOT wearing the big warm fleece hat would involve microwaving your head for six minutes on 40% power in an effort to defrost your ears. The kind of cold where, in order to keep the collar of your jacket zipped up over as much of your face as possible as you wait for your bus, you hunch up your shoulders as high as possible and end up with a tension headache afterwards. (Actually it wouldn't have been so bad, without the wind--and I'll freely admit that the city as a whole was totally spoiled throughout November, so this probably wasn't even that bad of a cold snap--it just SEEMED bad in contrast to our 67-degree Thanksgiving.) It was the kind of cold, in short, that makes people wish they didn't have to wait for the bus, that makes them stand at the bus stop thinking "Maybe I ought to get myself a car, you know?" Except in my case, I was standing at the bus stop thinking, "Oh, wait--I ALREADY have a car...(unprintable) triflin' (curseword) of a (swear) (profanity) (expletive)...and it's (unprintable) COLD!!!!!!"
UPDATE: As I wrote the last sentence, the phone rang.
Guess which newly-single blogstress now isn't getting her truck back til "Wednesday night, at the latest" because guess-who-else lost his cash card and some other person didn't have any money and a DIFFERENT party couldn't convince his wife to hand over $100? (Smart wife. Wish I'd been as smart.)
Did I mention "jerk, jerk, jerk, jerk, JERK!!!!!"? I didn't?? Please consider it mentioned, then.
I am SO glad he's GONE!!!!
(Incidentally, some comments from my last post's comments section: Ka, we missed you! Firefly--no breakup convo yet, but it's coming! Spins, thanks for being one of my best commentors, and you too, Misery...and to Teresa, welcome!!! (Teresa's from The Daily Kitten, which is a website totally devoted to pictures of adorable kittycats. Tim refers to it as "kitty porn" and that's not entirely a bad summary--everytime I visit the site, I want more kitties!!) In a day or two, I'm gonna post a new pic of Snickers....he's outgrown the "kitten" designation but oh, man, we just got a PRICELESS shot of him--caught in the act of being really, really bad.)
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