The New Year's Eve Post

New Year's Eve...is generally not my favorite holiday.

However, I think I managed to find a way around the sadness that was threatening: I made a long list of things I wanted to accomplish today, mostly in the realm of housecleaning and "starting the new year off right" types of stuff.

I washed dishes, cleaned the bathroom, changed sheets, did laundry (even all the stray laundry I'd stowed in the closet til "later"--dust ruffles, cleaning rags, the sheet I took down from my bedroom window last thing before leaving the house). I swept and mopped floors, cleaned the catbox, dragged all the flattened-out packing boxes down to the dumpster. I rearranged the hall closet, straightened out a couple of drawers, vacuumed the whole place. While all this was happening, I put a pot roast in the oven, and so I had a nice New Year's Eve dinner for one; then, once those dishes were cleaned up, I sat down to think about what I wanted this next year to be.

I am going to treat myself better this year. I am going to find things to do that will help me pull my head out of my navel; I am going to stop putting everybody else's wishes in front of mine. I am going to take care of myself, by MY standards--more of what I need to do, less of what everyone else says I ought to do.

I am going to create more. I am going to paint more, draw more, write more, sew more, crochet more, scribble more. Sometimes, I am even going to let the so-called "important" things wait, while I do the things that are important to me.

I am going to be kinder to myself. I am going to be a little bit stricter with myself, in some ways, but it will be for my own good--my REAL own good, instead of all those things that are SUPPOSED to be "for my own good". I am going to start treating myself as well as I treat the other people around me.

I am going to stop complaining. It's a horrible habit; I try to make it funny, when I do it, but complaining is complaining and all it does is make me see the bad in a situation. If I can't do anything about a situation, I'm going to be quiet; if I CAN do something about it, I'm going to actually DO it.

I am going to stop...I am going to TRY to stop assuming that everyone around me sees me as this pathetic, pitiable loser. This one's going to be hard. I bring a lot of it on myself, talking about things that are going on in my life, but obviously that's not having the effect I'd like it to have; ideally, I'd like for people around me to see me as strong, a survivor, somebody who's made some dumb choices, granted, but who has overcome and learned from them. I very, very much don't get the impression that that's how I'm seen. I don't know if that's an error of perception, or if people actually DO see me as a walking one-woman version of the Chicago Cubs. I'm a lot of things, but I'm really not pitiable.

I am going to stop being so scared of everything. I am going to finally let go of my sense of panic--another task which I suspect will be much, much harder than it sounds.

I am going to learn to enjoy my life.

I'm going to learn HTML, so I can pretty up this blog for realz. Templates are lame. :)

Happy New Year to all of you; and thank you all for being here with me through this year. It's been a wild ride, to say the least, and I appreciate everyone's support through the highs and lows. Here's to a wonderful 2008!!!

Arrgh.

I know it's fashionable to bash the traditional media for not being connected to the "new media"--by which they mean, electronic and viral media--and far be it from me to jump on the bandwagon...

...but man, they're gonna have to do better than this (seen on tonight's chyron on Fox News Chicago (WFLD) 10:00 newscast):

(something something) "...Joining the 'Blagosphere'".

If the story had been about Illinois politics, I could see it as an intentional, albeit hackneyed, pun (for my out-of-state friends, our governor's name is Blagojevich, and he's commonly referred to (among many, many less-flattering names) as "Blago", pronounced "bloggo", hence "Blago-sphere", ha ha freakin' ha)...

...but the story had absolutely NOTHING to do with Illinois. The story was about student journalists in Texas who were partnering with Fox News to deliver "new-media" content regarding the primaries and the 2008 election. The word "Illinois" was not mentioned even once during the story.

All of which leads me to these inescapable conclusions: not only does the guy in charge of creating the chyron text for the 10 PM newscast not know how to spell "blog", but he hasn't seen it out of the punny, old-media context to realize that "blagosphere" is not the correct spelling of the term; furthermore, either the individual doing the proofreading for the chyron guy fell down on the job (excusable, I guess) or he/she doesn't know the proper spelling of the term EITHER (just completely, utterly SCARY.)

Sometimes it's nearly impossible NOT to take a ride on the bandwagon.

Trends That Need To Stop, Now

I'll assume that it was that angry little boy in the middle of the top row--Stewie Griffin, of Family Guy fame--that started the whole trend. And yes, yes, babies have big heads. So ONE tiny tot with a football-shaped giant head and teeny-tiny disproportionately small body...yeah, ONE is cute. ONE is funny. ONE is....

Enough.

But then we had Franny, of "Franny's Feet" (top left). She not only has a big head, she has little stick-legs, which make me wonder how she doesn't topple over.

And then the "Super Readers", the four principal characters of "Super Why" ("Whyatt", top right, and then the middle row: "Princess Presto", "Alpha Pig", and "Wonder Red". For some reason, Wonder Red is the one who ticks me off the most; maybe it's that ridiculous spandex outfit and those roller blades, or maybe it's just that they didn't come up with a better superhero name for her than "Wonder Red". If I was going to be a superhero, even an enormous-headed juvenile one wearing spandex, I'd demand something a little flashier in the naming department than "Wonder" anything. But mostly it's their big-headedness that annoys me about these four...at least, as far as their looks. Their substance is even worse, as we'll get to in a moment.)

Then we get into the realm of the REALLY ridiculous. It's one thing to have giant-headed babies and tots, but then we get into the realm of the Big-Headed Tweens. (On the ends, Maya and Miguel, twins, of the show of the same name; and in the middle, the aptly-named Bratz. My opinion of THAT particular adolescent phenomenon is best left unmentioned; let's just say that any trend which results in little girls trying to dress like sluts-in-training does nothing for my estimation of children's television as a whole. I mean, LOOK at the outfits on those little bimbettes. If I had a preadolescent daughter, there would be no Bratz in my house, based on fashion alone--to say nothing of instilling poor spelling habits. It's one thing to use "z" for "s" on something meant for adults, who supposedly know the correct way to pluralize; children, on the other hand, need to see MORE correct usage, not LESS.)

If the large heads of these characters signified greater intelligence, even THAT would be a mitigating circumstance; but with the exception of Stewie, that's just not the case. Franny is probably the least-offensive of the little-kids' group; "Franny's Feet" is a cute show...too cute, if you ask me. It's full of squeaking butterflies and exclamations like "Fran-tastic!" and "Zammy! (apparently an expression of approval--whatever.) It's meant for very young kids, though, and it's far from the worst thing out there; it's interested in diversity, nature, and social skills, so if those things have to be cute-ified for the kids to like them...well, cute-ify away.

That's the good. Then there's the bad... "Super Why" (I refuse to use its official name, which is "Super WHY!", with the inappropriate caps and the exclamation point and the whole works) purportedly teaches kids reading and decoding skills via retellings of well-known fairy-tales.

Sounds like a fairly noble task, doesn't it? Well, there's a small problem: they completely and utterly screw up the fairy tales!!! I mean, an actual STATED part of the plot line involves "changing the story". Here's an example:

The setup for each show starts the same; one of the four main characters--Whyatt (oh, god, the spelling!), Pig, Red Riding Hood, and Princess Pea--encounters a problem in "Storybrook Village", which is where all fairy-tale characters live. In one episode, for example, a character called "Wolfy" (a baby Big Bad Wolf, obviously) keeps playing tricks on Pig, and Pig wants him to stop. He could just ask, of course--but of course, if the obvious answer took place immediately, we'd have no show. So he has Whyatt summon the Super Readers to the "Book Club", using a cell phone (of course) so he can explain the problem they need to solve. At this point the Super Readers transform into their alter egos-- "Super Why", "Alpha Pig", "Wonder Red", and "Princess Presto"--and fly their "Why Flyers" into a fairy-tale book, to see how a famous character escaped a similar situation. In this case, they fly into "Little Red Riding Hood" because (as Super Why explains, in case the parallel isn't obvious enough) the wolf in that story kept tricking Red Riding Hood.

Now first of all, the overlap between the actual fairy-tale and the framing device of the "Super Readers" being characters themselves...If I was four years old, I think I might be confused by this, is all I'm saying. (If Little Red Riding Hood is Wonder Red, and this is supposedly her story, then doesn't she already know how it turns out? Couldn't she just tell them how it ends? Okay, granted, I'm thirty-seven years old, not five; of course, every five-year-old I've ever encountered has been pretty good at picking up on paradoxes like that. Fine. Suspend disbelief, whatever.)

Here's where things go wrong. The Super Readers introduce all sorts of unrelated elements into the story, so that their characters can display their word skills. This usually SORTA sticks to the real story--for example, Princess Presto uses her "spelling power" to spell the word "BOAT" so the Super Readers can get across the river to Grandma's house. Every character has their role; Alpha Pig helps kids identify letters, Wonder Red deals in rhyming words, and Princess Presto demonstrates how letters go together to make words. Fine. But Super Why is supposed to help kids learn comprehension, and how to choose the right word that helps the sentence make sense--to me, the most important skill of all--yet when they get to "Super Why, with the power to READ" that they screw everything up.

Super Why, with the aid of a pen called the "Why Writer", makes changes in important parts of the story--like changing the "Big" "Bad" Wolf into a "Little", "Good" Wolf--and then Little Red Riding Hood asks the wolf to "stop tricking people". And the wolf--now good instead of bad--agrees to stop, in exchange for being made Big again.

At the end of the show, to tie everything together, the Super Readers--who, throughout the show, have been collecting something called "Super Letters"--plug their "Super Letters" into the "Super Duper Computer", which rearranges the letters and gives them the "Super Story Answer"--the word or phrase that is the solution to their problem. In this case, the solution is "STOP"--which, they extrapolate, means that Pig should ask Wolfy to "stop" tricking him. And of course, this solves the problem, and the end of the show features all four characters doing a hip-hop dance to a song which includes the lyrics "We changed the story/We solved the problem/We worked together so Hip Hip Hooray!"

"Changed the story" is right--like, to the point of unrecognizable, watered-down pap. The difference between the REAL fairy tales and their "Super Why" equivalents is the difference between fresh cold chocolate milk and tepid slightly-sour skim milk; between a plate of chocolate-chip cookies and a carob-coated sugar-free fiber bar. Not only are the original versions much, much tastier, you can't even necessarily argue that the redone versions are better for you. I haven't seen a single episode of this show that didn't suck all the life out of the featured fairy-tale--you should see what the hell they did to "Hansel and Gretel", for mercy's sake! And since one of the stated aims of this show is to foster a love of reading, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot--or maybe in this case, a better description would be "gently dropping a blob of room-temperature mush on their shoe". If I was a little kid, and I saw this show, no way would I want to read about Little Red Riding Hood--because I'd have the impression of it being a wishy-washy story about asking people to be nice. And seriously, what five-year-old wants to read THAT?

I'm not sure how this went from a diatribe about ugly cartoon characters to a rant on the state of kids' television--but there it is. And I don't even HAVE kids. I shudder to think how finicky I'd be about television if MY kids were the ones watching it, instead of some hypothetical kids I don't even know. (Of course, there's a good chance I'd be exposed as a total hypocrite; you all would be sitting at your computers reading my judgements on PBS shows, and meanwhile my five-year-old and my three-year-old would be sitting in pajamas from three days ago, eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos and drinking Kool-Aid while watching Maury Povich while I played World of Warcraft, or something. Yeah, that's an exaggeration--but it's surely easy to be all high-minded about other peoples' parenting choices when I haven't got to make any of those choices myself!)

Anyway: Dear animators: Big-headed cartoon characters are ugly. Please stop. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Gladys.

Tomorrow: the New Years' entry.

File Under: Needs Killin'

The highlighted text, for those of you who don't have your microscopes handy (dang, thought I had zoomed it enough):

"GARLAND, Texas--- A 6-year-old girl who won four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert with an essay falsely claiming her dad died in Iraq isn't going to the show after all."

(story continues--she won tickets in an essay contest, etc etc)

"The girl's mother had told Club Libby Lu officials the girl's father died April 17 in a roadside bombing, spokeswoman Robyn Caulfield said. Mom Priscilla Ceballos admitted later Friday the essay and the military information were untrue.

'We did the essay, and that's what we did to win. We did whatever we could do to win,' Ceballos told KDFW-TV of Dallas on Friday."

Hands down, no questions asked, this mom wins the 2007 inaugural Nobel "Totally Going To Hell" Prize.

Glad That's Over

I have to say, that was...You know, I am WELL aware that I have no right to be unhappy. But man, I really, really was. I just wanted to come home last night, and the night before...

Not that I didn't enjoy the company of the various relatives at my aunt-in-law's house--particularly the ones my age and younger. My various semi-cousins are really fun people, and their kids, who were toddlers or babies in bouncy-seats last time I saw them, are now ACTUAL LITTLE HUMANS, running around being wild (three-year-old boys) or little six-year-old girls showing off their twirly-skirted dress and Christmas toys. Christmas is one of the few times I think Hey, maybe I COULD do this having-kids thing...then I think, what crack am I smoking? Because first of all, see, that requires a partner, or at least someone willing to loan me a turkey baster....

And it's not that I didn't take some pleasure in working with my mom on the potato dish we'd promised to bring along, which necessitated an entire Christmas Eve of cooking and preparing(the end result of which was oh-my-god delicious, if you ask me, much like the rest of the dinner...My aunt-in-law's house is a WONDERFUL place to spend the holidays if you like to eat. I highly recommend it).

But Christmas Eve at Mom's, when it got to be bedtime, and I tucked myself into that same room where I've spent all the failures of my adult life, and thought about JP and what might have been (again, for the four-billionth time)...

Or on Christmas morning, when I feigned enthusiasm for clothes I already know I'm never going to wear, because Christmas is the time my mother tries most subtly to change me, even though I know it's done (mostly) out of love...

Or facing up to the fact that my mom is reaching the state my grandmother reached eventually, where the super-strict standards of housekeeping start to slip because she doesn't see the dust, or it hurts her back too much to bend down to scrub, or any number of other signs that remind me how old, exactly, she's getting...

Or when answering the innocent question "Oh, so you moved?" from people who hadn't heard the story, or listening to Mom practically BRAGGING, now that it's over, that I'd survived living on the West Side..."But she never had a problem the whole time she was there, surprisingly," I heard her tell someone...this from the same woman who begged me for four years to tell her family that I was still living in Rogers Park...

...or listening to the politics out in the main dining room, from the comfort and safety of the "kids' table" where most of the twenty- and thirty-somethings had landed just out of habit...

I know I have nothing to be unhappy about....but really, all I wanted for Christmas was just peace and quiet, mainly; or maybe just "quiet", since "peace" these days seems to be a little bit out of reach.

(A day off work would have been nice too, though I was heartened somewhat by how many of the rest of my age-bracket had to go to work this morning too. Seriously, though--How much does that suck??? WORK, on the day after Christmas??? Aren't we supposed to go out and shore up the economy with further mindless consumption today??? Doesn't the retail sector count for ANYTHING???)

I have a lot to feel thankful for, I know. I'm just having a hard time mustering the energy to feel it.

Remodeling, V 2.0

After a heartfelt plea from a reader, I've abandoned the white-on-black color scheme. Though I've never seen the problem reading light type on a dark background, I know a lot of people do have an issue with it--and believe me, my eyes aren't getting any better either, so I'm going to take the side of empathy here.

In other news...

Non-Chicagoans, bless your hearts, don't know what we're up against here.

I'm sitting here with my windows shut, and even though this is TOTALLY not Chez Gladys and these windows are actually GOOD, I can feel the wind squeezing through every crack. The wind here has, for the past 18 hours, been positively INSANE. We had wind gusts, according to the news, of 63 mph. Oh--and it's less than 20 degrees outside, too. So...(skips off to the Wind Chill Calculator) that's somewhere in the area of -2 degrees wind chill (assuming 20 degree temp, 45 mph wind). And that's saying nothing of the whole trees-blowing-over, power-lines-down issue. There are several major construction sites not far from my new home; I can hear a lot of flapping tarps and wind-howling-through-fence sounds, and one loud crashing noise which fell very clearly into the category of That Really, REALLY Doesn't Sound Good At All. I wonder whether the tree in the backyard of Chez Gladys survived--I always wondered what, exactly, was keeping that thing vertical.

The one major Hallelujiah moment of the day: realizing that I, in a show of forethought totally unlike my normal holiday proceedings, had completed my holiday shopping YESTERDAY. When it was still 50 degrees outside. :::pats self solidly on back::: If I'd had to go out today and take the bus or the train or the anything to go shopping...you know, I love my mom and all, but--just to face the facts here--it wouldn't have gotten done. There are some things I don't handle well, and having to go out in vile and unnecessary weather is one of them.

Instead I stayed in, slept late, edited Wikipedia for a while, made cookies, and ordered myself a pizza. As I said, I'm really, REALLY not feeling this holiday; I'm going to Mom's tomorrow, for Christmas Eve dinner, then spending the night and driving home first thing in the morning (to feed the kits--this fresh-food-instead-of-kibble plan has certain drawbacks) and then back to Mom's, to go to dinner at my aunt-in-law's.

The outrage of all this? I have to be back at work on Wednesday--in fact, I have to be back to work EARLY on Wednesday, since there's a project I'm working on which needs to be complete by Friday. We don't even know for sure if the project is going to happen--there are certain technical and managerial obstacles in the way--but on the off-chance it does, I'm supposed to be at work at 8:30 AM the day after Christmas. That doesn't seem quite cricket, but...oh well. At least THIS Christmas, I HAVE a job!!

I think I would feel better about Christmas this year if it wasn't so....obligatory. I'm expected to participate even though I don't really care to; I'd feel better if it was optional, if I had the chance to say "Hey, you know what? I'd rather not, this year." It's selfish, really; I have to keep in mind that time is passing, and nobody's getting any younger. At least one of the people who will be at dinner at my aunt-in-law's on Tuesday won't be there next Christmas; a friend of her family was diagnosed this past fall with terminal cancer, and he has maybe three months left. And who knows what the next year will bring to anyone?? I keep thinking of my mom's friend who passed away last January; she'd spent Christmas with her family, too, and then a month later she was gone. Nobody expected that.

I guess I'm thinking a lot about this sort of thing lately. (Who, me, depressed? Surely you jest.) I think about one of my old grade-school friends who, every Christmastime, used to have Nabisco Holiday Jingles cookies in her lunchbox from...it seemed like Halloween through Easter. We drifted apart during high-school, and I hadn't seen her for years; then, a couple of months after JP died, she was killed in a car wreck with her grandmother, right before New Years'. I think about her at this time of year...and of course, JP; and of course, my dad.

Dad was the one who would go all-out to get the weird, off-the-wall Christmas gift, the one that Mom couldn't for the life of her understand why you wanted it. The Laser Tag game, or the Douglas Adams box set, or the giant-size 1983 boom-box radio with dual cassette, or the Commodore Vic-20 computer...those were Dad-gifts, to go with Mom's more-practical, more-normal gifts--the dollhouses, the sweaters, the board-games, the warm winter boots. When my dad died in 1987, I gave up asking for technological gifts; no point confusing Mom, or making her feel obligated to do something she didn't enjoy. (Fortunately, I'm at an age where practical gifts are also much-appreciated; in fact, the KitchenAid mixer from two Christmases ago just mixed my chocolate-chip cookies, so: viva practicality!)

People ask me, "Isn't it strange, just having the holidays with you and your mom?" And in a way, it's not...this is how it's been, really, at least since Grandma and Grandpa died; but in a way...yeah, it kind of is strange--in the sense of "it feels like things are not as they should be." In a way, I take some of the blame for this; wasn't I supposed to have provided a husband and some kids to these proceedings somewhere? When I was in college, I always saw my late-30's self with a husband and a couple of kids--you know, like my cousins have. And then...well, things happened. I hadn't completely given up on the husband-and-kids side of things, even after JP died...honestly, I don't think I formed my final opinion on the whole parenthood issue til after CR left. Put it this way: I would have GLADLY had JP's kids; I would have had CR's kids reluctantly. After that, and maybe after looking back at how I treated my own parents...yeah, no. I can at least spare myself that experience. But it makes the world look a lot smaller, around Christmastime.

I'll be all right; I always perk up once the Christmas-ing actually gets going. Meanwhile, I hope all of you have a great holiday; I appreciate all of you, quite a lot.

(Okay, so I'm sitting here, blogging and watching the news on Channel 7 (the local ABC affilliate). They were about to cut away to a remote story about the wind, and as they cut, the anchor suddenly screams "WHOA!!" and there's a loud bang. They do the remote, and you can hear the remote anchor ask "What happened?" as they roll the audiotape. When they pull back from the remote, the anchor looks SHOOK--and he says "You might have heard, right before we went to our story, a loud noise in the studio...well, here's the reason why..." He cuts away to a picture of a CAR, which has crashed into their studio!! Their studio is at ground level on State St. and Lake, and apparently somebody lost control of their minivan and went through the window!!! It's the damndest thing--you just KNOW this is gonna make one of those "news bloopers" reels somewhere. I hope nobody was hurt, but...see, I LOVE it when stuff happens on live TV. (Now they're saying it might have been deliberate...hoo, man! This is wild.)

Pardon Our Dust

So...yeah, Phase One of the Great Remodeling Experiment has begun. (end blatantly obvious statements) It'll get better, I promise.

I am in raptures because I have discovered that I could, were I so inclined, use some of my SketchFu efforts as background images. I looooove me some SketchFu.

Otherwise, nothing new; just getting ready for Christmas. I'm not feeling it this year--I say that as though it's somehow different from any of the last few years!--and I'm seeing my holiday apathy as proof that I'm still somewhat depressed.

(Wait...I thought I ended the blatantly-obvious statements up there somewhere. Oh well.)

Random Bits and Pieces

First off, to those of you who were getting popups, or block notices, or any type of related crap--I found the culprit. (Firefly--sorry, didn't mean to send you into a spyware-related panic--in the joyful land of technical support, one report is a user problem; two reports is an issue.)

There was a list of blogs over on the left-hand side, in the sidebar with everything else, from a site called Link2Blogs. Well, apparently some of the crap blogs with names like "Free Money Making Site!!!!" learned how to bypass what minimal controls Link2Blogs.com had implemented over content, because instead of going to "http//link2blogs /blahblahblah", it was going directly to "expressaffilliates.com", which was causing the popups.

Needless to say, Link2Blogs will be cluttering my sidebar no longer. (Jeez, guys. Show a little quality control, will ya?)

Secondly: In trying to answer one of those online polls that comes up on the 9 PM local news, I was required to create an account at MyFoxChicago.com. Now, despite my suspicion and antipathy toward anything with the words "Fox" and "News" displayed near each other, I must admit I rather like the local Fox affilliate news team. I mean, don't get me wrong--I'm well aware that it's fluff and filler, not even remotely resembling journalism. It falls under the auspices of the usual "If-it-bleeds-it-leads" school of newsertainment; were it not for Stacy Peterson and Lisa Stebic, they'd have had to dig up some fake "expose'" to keep the ratings up for the past few months. They're basically just the same as every other local news show in Chicago. But their talking heads are less annoying, their weather radar is cool and technical-looking without being incomprehensible; and their human-interest stories are at least interesting once in a while. And they have this nightly poll, "Right or Wrong?", where they invite viewers to call in and agree or disagree with a given premise. They can also comment on the question via the website, and it was here that I found myself this evening.

(The question, incidentally, was "Is it right or wrong to require a three-month moratorium on foreclosures?" They really need to shoot the people who phrase these questions; I can identify at least six or seven major points of ambiguity which would make any attempt at a yes/no, right/wrong, or any other dichotamous answer completely useless.)

Anyway, upon registration, they ask you if you want to set up a blog; I figured "what the heck?" and so: http://community.myfoxchicago.com/blogs/gladys_j_cortez (for some reason, the nice "link" function on Blogger is pissing off Windows and/or one of my toolbars tonight.) Of course, I have no intention whatsoever of allowing the new blog to supplant this one--in fact, quite the opposite, which leads me to item three.

Item Three: It's been quite a while since I've straightened up around here. My Blogroll, as a few clicks will quickly demonstrate, is in a state of near-total disarray and uselessness; the template I'm using is getting on my nerves; in short, the decor is stale. The place needs work.

I'm drawing a couple of parallels here, I suppose. For example, physical residence and blog "residence"--in the "real" world, I've got a new home, and I'm trying to put my own mark on it. That's something that never happened in the former Chez Gladys; I never hung a single picture, never painted a single wall. I loved that house, but I was overwhelmed almost instantly by all the things that needed to be done, and I think that sense of being overwhelmed tipped over almost immediately into a pervasive and unbreakable apathy. Compared to the house, for example, the apartment is a showplace of tidiness and sustained effort; even though it's still got boxes that need to be unpacked, and it's clearly still in a state of not-completely-moved-in-yet-ness, it's clean, and it shows evidence of its owner's personality. That was never true of Chez Gladys, not even after four years. (There's a whole 'nother blog post in there, but as usual, it's way-too-late on a work-night to delve into my psyche.) But the same thing holds for the blog; I have been so overwhelmed for so long that I have allowed myself to sink into apathy in all realms of my life (again, there's enough material in that sentence to fuel at least another healthy-length post, but again: midnight on a work-night) and the blog has been one of the areas that's suffered.

Really, to put things flatly out there, I'm trying to overhaul my life. I have things I need to figure out, of course, but unlike previous efforts, I'm not going to allow those ambiguities to stop me from actually doing something. I have a bad habit of thinking too much and doing too little, and it's a habit I intend to break. Fortunately, I have a better-than-average track-record in regards to the breaking of bad habits, so I'm hoping this attempt succeeds as well.

Thus: Within the next few weeks, I hope to debut a new look for my happy little online home here. I have a few ideas, and I'm looking forward to playing with them.

In fact, I'm just generally looking forward to playing. It's been a while since I've let myself play and be creative, and I think my emotional state and my self-esteem have suffered for it. I'm looking forward to shedding my self-imposed restrictions and just having fun again.

Oh No He Di-n't: STFU, Drew, Part 2

(background here for non-Chicagoans, or for Chicagoans who slammed bricks through their TVs, radios, computers and newspapers long ago)

Is there SERIOUSLY no depth this individual will not plumb?

(inarticulate burblings of rage)

See, here I was all ready to feel sorry for myself (we may or may not go there later) and then I found this:

The Infantilization Of America Takes Another Exceedingly Wacky Turn

Because I know you all hate clicking on links: This story details a ban on mail addressed to "Any Wounded Soldier", which in many prior conflicts was used to send holiday wishes to recovering military members. One of the main rationales given for this ban:

USO spokesman John Hanson said that like the military, the nonprofit service organization does not deliver unopened mail to unspecified recipients. He said the USO worries about security as well as hateful messages from war critics. "We just want to make sure it's not, `Die, baby killer,'" he said. "There are people out there who act irrationally, and we don't want anyone to get a message that would be discouraging."

Now you all know I'm rabidly anti-American, and...wait, what???

No. Hold on. Lost my train of thought there.

Seriously: we can send adult human beings to entirely different countries, on largely-specious grounds, for the purpose of killing those with whom we disagree; can send them there to be killed and maimed by hostile factions, some of whom weren't even hostile until AFTER we got there; but by God, we must protect the eyes of our fighting men and women from the war critics' nanny-nanny-boo-boo?

We can lie to them about the death of their comrades, and have them shoot others full of holes as revenge for things that never happened; we can give them nonfunctional and inadequate protection against the attacks we're causing them to face, and point fingers at political figures from years past as the excuse; but dagnabbit, we're gonna make DARN SURE that no pinko commie lib'rul long-haired anti-Amurrican idjit calls our boys names by mail???

Jeebus Chesterfield on a dancing can of tuna-fish, have we LOST OUR EVER-FRAKKIN' MINDS???

Monday

So Monday, on my day off, I had Tim and Squeaky over for a visit.

Squeaky had invited herself, in the course of a phone call with Tim--he puts all our calls on speaker because, as we know, no reasonable conversation is complete without Squeaky getting all up in the middle of it. And speaker on a cell-phone is bad enough; speaker on a cell-phone where the other end is populated by Squeaky and a drunk Tim...oh, yeah, THAT's a conversation you want to avoid having, believe you me. And you CAN'T get away. Any effort to hang up is systematically thwarted. It's like...I don't KNOW what it's like. It's an experience which defies comparison, truly.

Anyway, during the course of one of these conversations, Squeaky asked me if I was working Monday, and I said "no" and she said "Cool! I'm gonna come visit you!"

I actually FELT my stomach sink. "Um...Yeah, sure...Okay," I said. "Tim, you're coming with, right?"

"Nah," he said. "I've got too much stuff to do, and..."


Typical Tim; he delights in exploiting my gullible nature. I saw through it; he was drunk enough to think his jokes were funny, so I could hear him smiling. And so after about half an hour of trying to get off the phone, it was finally set that they would come over at 1:00 Monday.

They got there at 2, and left at about 6:30; I was ready for them to leave by about 4. I mean, it was good to see Tim, sorta.

But Tim claims that he's trying to teach Squeaky certain skills she needs in the world--like, how to shop wisely, how to budget her money, things like that. While THAT sounds laudable, I have my doubts; from my perspective, it's a lot closer to "control" than "teaching". She's lost a lot of weight, which looks good on her; "...because Tim doesn't feed me," she claims. She brought her own cans of diet soda, instead of drinking her usual Pepsi, because "Tim says I can't drink soda with anything in it." It seems like he's building himself the "perfect" girlfriend--one who does whatever he says, cooks for him, cleans for him, worships the ground he walks on...

And if he IS "teaching" rather than "molding", he's missing some KEY points. Chief among them: Squeaky needs, above all else, to learn this: if two people who are NOT you are having a conversation, the thing to do is to wait til they're done making a point, or finishing a sentence, before interrupting. It also helps if, when you DO inject yourself into the conversation, you actually speak regarding a topic at least tangentially related to the subject at hand. Even MORE ideal? NOT interrupting every conversation with loud demands that one or both of the conversants direct their immediate attention to YOU.

A perfect example: Tim was trying to get some information from me about wireless computer networks. Before we moved, I gave him a defunct laptop and he had a friend fix it up for him (his friend had spare parts, apparently) and now he wants to get wireless service for it. But throughout the ENTIRE conversation--not an extended conversation, maybe ten minutes--Squeaky was interrupting with totally off-topic remarks designed to direct Tim's attention back to her.

This didn't happen once. It happened like, a dozen times. To the point where I was nearly moved to say "Hush, dear; grown people are talking." (I didn't. But I only BARELY didn't.)

I was very, very glad when they left, and so were the cats; Tim and Squeaky love cats, but they play rougher than my little fluffballs are used to.

(Of course, "things my little fluffballs are used to" is maybe NOT the best gauge of appropriateness; they are rapidly becoming used to late-night meals, generally served on demand, and having the run of the entire apartment. Ill-behaved little princes, they are; but unlike Tim and Squeaky, they're adorable enough to get away with it.)

I am so, so very glad that Tim and Squeaky are no longer a part of my day-to-day experience. Just being around them--their bickering, their schmoopsy-whoopsy-ness, the generally awful details of their little vibe--is exhausting for me. I have no idea how I lived with it for as long as I did; all I know is, I don't have to do it again and for that, I am exceedingly grateful.

No, Seriously....

...it really is THAT QUIET.

(Well, aside from the 3 AM sound of a certain gray-and-white cat upscuttling an ENTIRE freshly-opened bag of cat litter into the just-vacuumed carpet, that is--and the spate of profanity, dire threats, and a swat on the hindquarters (the cat's, not mine) which attended that discovery... Anybody want to be night-care for a cute kitty, so I can get some frakkin' SLEEP?)

Also: does anyone other than Firefly get a popup window when they get to this site? (FF, I'm thinkin' you've maybe got spyware--I tried opening my site both at work and at home, and my popup blockers don't even burp...but I wonder if anyone else is having the same issue?)

Work--which I still love, mind you--is nevertheless a multi-ring circus, just at the moment; having come much closer than I ever have in the past to divulging where, exactly, "work" is, I'm not going to get detailed about it (as I did in the past) because there's a much better chance that "my readership" and "my colleagues" might bump up against each other on a Venn diagram. Still love the job; it's just...There are less-than-competent people no matter WHERE you work. That's all I can say, although I can freely cross-reference with the Peter Principle.

Otherwise, it's very, very quiet. And I'm happy, for the moment, with the quietness. By spring I'll be ready for something new; in the meantime, though, I'm content to go to work, come home, eat, feed cats, watch TV, and go to sleep. It's an extremely peaceful life.

Things I Am Thankful For, 2007 Edition

Things I am thankful for, in no particular order:

--peace
--quiet
--the disruption of peace and quiet by two gorgeous kitties
--employment and the accoutrements thereof
--...especially the paycheck part
--singlehood (which I'm thankful for, except when I'm not)
--that I'm ME, and not some other people of my acquaintance
--my mom (I'd say "family" but...um, not so much--except for Dad's side...Okay, so: family.)
--my friends, both the blog kind and the "real-life" kind
--sobriety
--the absence of drama
--the substantial amount of extremely delicious food which I am now going to Mom's for the purpose of consuming.

I'm thankful, as well, that anybody bothers to read this drivel--so a happy Thanksgiving to all of you! May your family be non-contentious, your turkey juicy, and your gravy lump-free.

Peace and Quiet....Sorta

While my personal life has (with the exception of Tim, who still needs to STFU, and LJ, who just needs to borrow a clue along with the $800 he owes me) been remarkably peaceful and quiet, that's pretty much ALL that has.

If you're not from Chicago, I'll explain in a minute. If you ARE from Chicago:

That fatal shooting off-campus at the University? Three blocks from here. The other incidents that same night--the armed robbery and the near-robbery-with-gunfire? One was about six blocks from where I'm currently living; the other?

About 100 feet from my building's front door.

It would be ironic, wouldn't it, if something happened to me HERE, after living uneventfully in the 'hood for four years? (And I use "ironic" in the sense of "...and also really, REALLY bad.")

For you non-Chicagoans: a doctoral student from Senegal, a chem student here at the University, who had just successfully defended his dissertation a few days ago, was shot and killed a few feet from his front door on Sunday night. That shooting happened a little after 1 AM; within the previous hour, two students were robbed at gunpoint several blocks away, and a University employee was shot at as he attempted to avoid being robbed (they missed him). The police have pretty much nothing, or at least, nothing that they're saying; a "light-colored" car, men of "average" height and weight...so basically, nothing.

Things are a little tense here, as you might imagine. My mom is freaking out because I walk home in the dark; I try to tell her there's a difference between 6 PM-dark and midnight-dark, but I see her point all the same. Even I'm nervous, a little, and you KNOW how much it takes to make ME nervous. I hope they catch the guys who did this.

Otherwise, all is fairly quiet. I'm still not fully unpacked, largely owing to a lack of places to put my various kitchen items; I'm going to make a Home Depot pilgrimage over the long weekend, and put some shelves in a closet to convert it to a pantry. Once that's done, I can reclaim most of my bookshelves, and unpack my books and assorted little decorative items; then, once the boxes are all gone, I can arrange things more to my liking. It's still a wonderful place, boxes and all, and I'm very happy here.

I took Tim's cat back to him over the weekend, much to the relief of BadCat and the despair of Snick; they were best buddies, and I don't think Snick knows what to do with himself now that his wrestling-pal is gone. He's managed to fill the void, however, by bouncing insanely off the walls--no, that is NOT a figure of speech; the cat LITERALLY BOUNCES off the walls. If I ever manage to videotape it, it will be the YouTube hit of the year. However, yesterday morning he added an unpleasant finale to the performance; he raced around for forty minutes like a crazed thing, then spewed his breakfast over a six-square-foot area of the living room. (It was a momentary upset, what cat owners sometimes refer to as a "snarf-n-barf"--cat eats too much, or too fast, or goes crazy too soon after eating, and ...blorggh.) Shortly after the blorggh in question, he started meowing to be fed again--apparently, having emptied his stomach, he felt he was entitled to a second helping. I grudgingly gave him a spoonful of food, along with dire threats of the vet visit that would take place if he didn't keep THAT down. Chastened, he nibbled at his snack and slunk away for a nap. Since then, he's answered, reluctantly, to "Dr. Pukenstein".

Cat stories, if you've not noticed, are generally harbingers of a peaceful, unruffled existence. And I hope to be telling cat stories quite a bit; they're INFINITELY more enjoyable--for me, at least--than Tim-and-Squeaky stories.

Well, okay, ONE more of those...

My mom drove me to drop off Cassidy. Tim is living with Squeaky and her dad, in the far north suburbs, quite a long way from me. So I pack up his cat, along with a few days worth of food and supplements for when Tim tries to make his own cat food, and the three of us--Mom, Gladys, and cat--ride 45 minutes into the 'burbs (during the last NASCAR race of the season!).

We reach the appointed address, and I call Tim on my cell phone. The first thing he says when he sees us? "Oh, thanks so much for bringing...."

Oh. Wait. That was in a dream world, where Tim acts like a civilized human with a sense of gratitude.

What he REALLY said: "See, I wish you would have pulled around to the back...I thought you were gonna pull around, so I wouldn't have to bring him through the front door...."

I looked at him for a moment, attempted to start an unrelated sentence, and then stopped and simply said "You know, you're WELCOME...."

He covered his embarrassment--assuming that's what he was feeling, which is a pretty big assumption--by yelling at Squeaky about something. But I really, seriously, just wanted to slap him til his teeth rattled. He's really been a jerk lately. (He tried to explain that away over the phone a day or two later--he was talking about how he's in pain--he hurt his foot, and his shoulder hurts, and his teeth are acting up, and....I was like...you know, people manage to be civilized and have manners, even when they're not feeling well, so I really wish you'd just own up to having been a butthead, apologize, and move on. The excuses are getting old. )

Needless to say, I was very glad to get home. Solitude, even with insane housecats, is a wonderful thing.

STFU, Drew Peterson

I know lots of you who are reading are Chicagoans; for those of you who aren't, I'll throw you a little background on this one first:

Stacy Peterson is a wife and mother who disappeared about three weeks ago. Her husband is a police officer in suburban Bolingbrook--or was, til he resigned today--and he is a suspect in her disappearance. What makes this story unusual is that the missing woman is his fourth wife, and that his third wife died under suspicious circumstances several years ago. The death was ruled an accident at the time, but her body has now been exhumed in an effort to link Peterson to her death.

Peterson has criticized the media roundly throughout the search for his wife (in which he has not participated) but this morning, he went on a local news show and said, among other delights, the following:

Drew Peterson said Stacy would ask for a divorce on a regular basis "based on her menstrual cycle" after her sister died.

If that, and that alone, doesn't make every one of my female readers want to slap this man til he cries like a two-year-old...

I'm not saying that women don't get hormonal. I don't think there's a woman around who can deny that at least once in her life, at a certain point in the month, she's singlehandedly polished off a half-gallon of ice cream, an entire Eli's cheesecake, or three bags of Milano cookies--in bad cases, all three--while sitting on the sofa sobbing over a peanut-butter commercial. And yeah--we get angry sometimes.

But sometimes? We even get angry when it's NOT our period.

Sometimes we actually get angry in--hold on here, Drew--in RESPONSE to the actions of those around us. Like, maybe controlling husbands. Or people who make us feel threatened, or (as you yourself put it) "cornered".

And frankly, Drew, even if Stacy's requests for divorce WERE "based on her menstrual cycle"--why is that information you felt you needed to share? Why couldn't you just say "she asked for a divorce periodically" or "she'd mentioned it several times"...Why does the whole question of hormones need to be brought into this discussion--unless it's to paint Stacy as a "flighty", "emotional" female who couldn't make up her mind--in other words, a stereotype? Because it's much harder to have sympathy for a stereotype, isn't that right?

I don't know if he's got anything to do with Stacy Peterson's disappearance, or whether there's good reason to suspect him of being involved with the death of wife #3. What I DO know, though, from this quote alone, is that there IS good reason to suspect him of being a vile, chauvinistic, macho-bullshit assclown.

Excuse Me While I Become Insensitive

Okay, look. You all know me pretty well by now; I'm a marshmallow when it comes to other people's pain. And of course, anyone's death is a tragic thing; the death of a parent is possibly one of the most anguished moments in anyone's life; and I love me some Kanye.

BUT.

I have to say this.

From everything that's being reported right now, Donda West died from complications of plastic surgery; allegedly, a breast augmentation and a tummy tuck. (Updated, 11/13/07: The original report I saw said "augmentation", but that info came from the highly suspect TMZ.com. Since then I've heard it was a breast reduction, not an augmentation. I don't know why I have a slightly easier time accepting a reduction than I do an augmentation; still, they're both changes that aren't medically necessary, and certainly aren't worth dying for.)

If that turns out to be true, isn't it ironic? Kanye West, through his lyrics, supports the standard that requires women to have enormous breasts, flat stomachs, and round butts in order to be considered "attractive". Not just in HIS songs, but in songs he collaborates on with other artists, he pushes this whole "ideal" of female beauty which practically demands surgical intervention in order to reach it.

He's not a stupid or uncaring guy, I don't think. This is the same man who wasn't afraid to tweak George Bush's nose on live TV for his inaction during Hurricane Katrina; the same man who wasn't afraid to contradict nearly ALL of hip-hop by calling for an end to homophobia and gay-bashing in rap. Kanye West, whatever his quirks of personality, whatever his self-aggrandizements, is no sheep. Apparently, when he thinks, he thinks clearly and kindly, for the most part...

...unless the topic is women. He gives us no quarter. My ability to listen to some of his music without puking is preserved only by my understanding: people generally speak from their experience, and judging from some of the things he's said, I don't doubt he's been involved with some treacherous women. There are such things; I'm not blind enough to pretend there aren't. But that's not where I have the problem. The problem, for me, is the physical characteristics he demands women display in order to be attractive--the same characteristics you hear celebrated throughout all of hip-hop, in nearly every song, generally in words nobody says in front of your grandma. I'm normally not one for "blame-the-music", but in this case, music and music video have been a big influence on creating the particular beauty standard.

I'm not saying hip-hop is the only medium obsessed with looks, nor am I blaming ONLY Kanye for the messages women are surrounded with. But he is a voice, and he has the standing in his field which makes his words very influential. He could have been using that influence to go against the tide, to speak out for "real" women, and to decry the surgically-enhanced fakeness only porn stars and video dancers can dream of. He chose instead to reinforce the fantasy-world so many men choose to live in, and so many women choose to become a part of.

And when his own mother tried to live up to those standards--the same ones her son, with his status as a renowned lyricist and an established talent, chose to advocate as the ideal even when he COULD have been speaking out against them--something went wrong, and Kanye West lost the most important person in his life.

In no way am I blaming Kanye West for his mother's death. That, besides being completely incorrect, would be purely disgusting and hateful. At 58, who knows what his mother was trying to gain from a tummy-tuck and a breast augmentation? But if the cultural tide wasn't so strong, would she have perhaps felt better about the changes time makes in all of us? Would she have still felt the need to try to turn back the clock--the same clock we all run by?

I feel terrible for Kanye, the same way I would feel terrible for anyone else who's lost a parent they were particularly close to. I went through it myself and I know it's incredibly painful, and I would imagine that much of his time and thought for the next little while will be taken up with grieving. But when he returns to making music, as I'm sure he will...if Kanye West keeps on in the same way after this--if he doesn't re-evaluate his own words, the false ideals they support, and the cost of those falsehoods--I'm going to lose a lot of the respect I have for him.

You're An Insincere, Self-Aggrandizing Jackass, And I Mean That In A Good Way

So I talked to Tim again last night--since he accused me of having "dodged" him while he was homeless, you can be damn sure I call him back when he leaves a message--and I called him on that "insincere" accusation. Get this: He says he "didn't mean it that way".

How on earth can you call someone insincere and mean it in any OTHER way?? If I called you a steaming pile of pustulent, worm-ridden vulture poop, how many ways are there to take it? And of those ways, how many are positive?

Yes--people have differences of opinion. Yes--each person tries to see himself or herself, and his or her own actions and motives, in the best possible light. I'm every bit as guilty of this as anyone else. But I think I have a pretty good monitor on it, at least; I'm fairly conscious of my own flaws, at least. I don't think insincerity is among them--though impatience with whining and excuse-making is DEFINITELY one of them, which is what Tim interprets as my "insincerity".

But apparently it's okay, because he "didn't mean it that way".

Well, to that, I say: Have a lousy day, you stenchitudinous, intellectually-underdeveloped puddle of hippo puke. And I mean that in the best way. ;)

STFU, Tim!

First things first:

People, I am TIRED of cardboard.

If I nevereverever see another box again, it will be entirely too soon.

'Nuff of that, though.

So tonight, Tim calls me. He's clearly been drinking; he's in that voluble state he gets into after a few beers. We chat pleasantly for a while, and then the conversation gets down to Squeaky, and how he's "looking out" for her. ("Controlling" would be a better word, if you ask me; nobody did, though, so: whatevva.)

And then he gets down to talking about ME; how he just wanted to remind me how he said I shouldn't "pretend" to be Squeaky's friend if I didn't really mean it. And how the REASON he said that was, over the three years he was homeless, how he felt like I wasn't there for him in the way I seemed to want to THINK I was.

In other words, this colossal prick was accusing me of being insincere and not doing enough for him when he was homeless.

Does anyone but me remember that I cared for his three cats for EIGHTEEN MONTHS???!!!??? (He pretty much holds me responsible for the fact that two of his cats did not survive--because I told him he had to take care of them, because I told him that they needed to stay somewhere else and HE chose to take them somewhere where they were not safe. Of course, the only reason I said this was because he was making NO effort--NONE--to provide for these cats AT ALL--not a bag of food, not a bag of litter, nothing. Certainly not a dime did I ever see. And speaking of "insincere"--all those times he would promise to "help me out" with the cats' needs...Yeah. Whatever. But I didn't do ENOUGH for him, because I wasn't willing to do everything without any compensation.) Apparently, I was also supposed to INSIST that he come to stay with me and LJ; even though I offered repeatedly, I was apparently not "sincere" enough. And because I got tired of listening to his litany of excuses and woes and "reasons" he couldn't keep a job, and started screening my calls and not answering or calling him back every time he called, apparently that makes me a bad person. (I didn't completely ignore him--I would say I answered maybe a third of the calls. And could we, just for a moment, remember that during that time I was battling heroin addiction and VERY severe depression??? But I didn't do enough for HIM. Nevermind that I could barely take care of mySELF--apparently I was supposed to knock myself out for HIM.)

And even if all those things are true--even if I am completely, 100% delusional about my own motives and actions--that does not obliterate the following fact:

HE LIVED IN MY HOUSE, RENT-FREE, FOR A YEAR. All his cigarettes, all his beer, all his food, were purchased by me. Favors were done for him with no argument, no request for compensation, NOTHING. I asked, occasionally, when he was going to be able to live up to the agreement he made--to pay a certain amount of rent per month--but at no time did I nag, bitch, or complain that he was not even making an EFFORT to find a job.

Oh: and--HIS GIRLFRIEND LIVED IN MY HOUSE, RENT-FREE, FOR TWO MONTHS. At least SHE bought food, occasionally--but that doesn't make up for the fact that she also drove me BAT SHIT CRAZY, nor that she was there AGAINST MY WILL. (She also, apparently, reported back to Tim every encouraging word I said to her about not allowing him to run her life, talk down to her, or treat her like shit. I can't hold it against her--some women don't know HOW to do anything other than be abused--but it still pisses me off. Try to help someone, and see what it gets you.)

Pardon my overzealous capitalization; I need to calm down. But: SERIOUSLY.

I was very good; I just let it slide off my back. I just told him I had to go eat my dinner, and I'd talk to him soon--probably when I DRIVE UP TO THE NORTH SIDE TO DROP OFF HIS CAT, which I am feeding and caring for.

God. I am so, so, so, SO SO SO done with being helpful. People just aren't worth it.

I Am

...very, very happy.
Very, VERY happy.
And also....carless.
(That does not say "CARELESS"; it says "carless". As in, sans car. Without vehicle. Devoid of transport.)

Apparently, LJ's girlfriend wasn't making her payments; yesterday afternoon, I got a nearly-frantic call from LJ, asking for the address where the car was parked, so that she wouldn't get arrested for concealing it. I gave him the info, and this morning when I left, the car was gone.

I am absolutely fine with that. I WALK to work. Today it took me six minutes to walk home. SIX. I got home at 6:36 PM; when I was at the old place, I would get home a little before 8:00, once you figured in the whole "could you stop at the store for ___ (smokes, beer, junk food for Squeaky, anything Tim's heart desired)" issue. That's a time savings of almost NINETY MINUTES--one way.

Which is good, because I need the time to unpack.

Mom saw the new place for the first time today; she drove me to the clinic, which was the only drawback to the repo situation--I'll need to figure out how I'm going to work THAT, but I figure all I'll have to do is change my pickup day to Monday, then take the bus. She loved the apartment, which is great; it makes two of us.

I am almost scared, being this happy. JP's anniversary was Tuesday; I didn't forget it, but I chose not to dwell on it. It's hard to dwell on sad things in the middle of a Chicago autumn. It's been absolutely beautiful here this week; sunny days, cool nights, peace and quiet and no Tim-and-Squeaky. I almost feel like it's too perfect to last long--I'm not used to a drama-free, safe and quiet life. At night I sleep like a stone, now that I don't have to sleep with one ear open for the creaking of the front gate or chaos out on the sidewalk. It's not that I don't miss my house; I think I will always, on some level, wonder what might have been. But being here is a weight off my shoulders--so many responsibilities I don't have to worry about anymore, so many details that are no longer mine to deal with. It feels good.

I am very, very happy.

Home Sweet Home

Okay, NOW I'm home.

I just need to get rid of some of these boxes; the sound of felines climbing Mount Kittimus is quite troubling. They're reaching truly alarming heights. Sometimes I think these aren't cats, they're monkeys.

New Scene

AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaand....we're back.

(Okay, MOSTLY back. I'm at work right now. But tonight's task is to reconnect the computer, and the Internet is already in place (as is the cable, installed as the movers hauled things in...happy, happy me!) and once I'm reconnected fully, THEN I'll consider myself COMPLETELY back. But right now, that's a small thing.)

And NOW I'm excited. NOW I'm happy. NOW I am not so ambivalent anymore.

I have three lamps and two small boxes left at the old place. I'll pick them up on Saturday, after work. But otherwise, everything I own is either in my new place or snugly tucked away in Mom's basement.

The cats, having spent yesterday in carriers, have been giving me dirty looks since I let them out to explore. They also, however, decided to share the bed last night, in a rare show of feline solidarity; all three of them managed to spend half the night with no hiss, no spit, no growl nor yowl. Cassidy slept on my left arm, which I found adorable. (Poor kitty has been through a lot, and he's got a lot more to go through; apparently, apartments not being a possibility, Tim and Squeaky are going to live at Squeaky's dad's. Cassidy will join them once they're settled, in a couple of weeks; in the meantime, I'm kittysitting. I don't mind--he's a love, actually.)

When I finally let them out of their carriers, Cass ran around the house investigating everything; Bad ran under the bed and stayed there til dinnertime; and Snick was nowhere to be found. He finally emerged when I put out food, but he'd clearly had enough of this ordeal; I plucked him off a bookcase at one point, and for the first time in his life he HISSED at me. Snickers NEVER hisses at me. He's clearly stressed. (Not stressed enough to affect his appetite, though!)

I am very, very happy with my new place. I will be happier once things are unpacked...but it's DONE; it's OVER; I have moved. (Hallelujiah!)

Here Goes Nothing

Last step before moving: pack up the cats.
Second-to-last step before moving: pack up the computer.

Hopefully, by the time I have internet access again, the memory of the past 24 hours will have vanished from my mind; this will spare my readers the most profanity-laced post in TSOW history, because...

Let's just say I am so, so, so very done helping people, ever.

EVER ever. From this point on, I plan to nurture a carefully cultivated streak of total jerkitude and self-centeredness, so as to avoid ever, EVER going through ANYTHING like this again, EVER.

Last thought on this before I take the requisite deep breath:

When you live in someone's house rent-free for a year, should it not be customary to assist with projects without complaint? Or even better, without making yourself out to be some kind of tragic hero for successfully "balancing the wishes of two entirely different people"? Especially when one of these two disparate parties is doing NOTHING for the cause, is in fact DISTRACTING at every turn from the process at hand; and the other party is THE PERSON IN WHOSE HOUSE YOU AND THIS DISTRACTION HAVE LIVED RENT-FREE FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME??? Wouldn't you tell the distraction, "You know, babycakes sugarbooty bumpkin pie, after tomorrow, I can give you every moment of my undivided attention forever and ever--which is what you seem to require in order to continue operating as the barely-functioning individual you are, bless your cute widdle heart--but just for today, I feel like I owe this to a person who's helped both of us quite a bit"? Instead of "This is what amazing, wonderful, self-effacing people like me do for their friends. Look how heroic and wonderful and long-suffering I am"???

Firefly, I apologize, but I gotta use the V-word here: the whole thing makes me wanna vomit.

Every choice, every plan, and every decision I have made through the course of this move--everything from where to stack stuff, to whether to tape certain boxes shut, to what time I could go to bed (!!!), has been debated, argued, contradicted, and second-guessed. Last night, I just snapped--several times, in fact--and by the time I finished with the requisite tears of nervous exhaustion and total fury, and finally DID get to bed, I was so tense that it took me about an hour to fall asleep.

I have to stop ranting now and put the computer away. In a few hours, this move will be done. But since Tim and Squeaky have walked out the door to go to work/wherever--the worst is over.

See you all on the other side....

:::set fades to black:::

Six More Days

I'm moving Monday.

Seven days from now, I will be leaving work and heading home to an apartment with a trillion boxes, furniture in places it shouldn't be, two bewildered kitters, and...

...absolutely nothing else.

The court date went fine; they granted us an extension til November 5th, which was just fine with me. Frankly, even if Tim and Squeaky don't get their apartment, I'm not going to worry about it. I've had it; my "nice" button is now broken from overuse.

I am really, really very excited about this move. (Welll...Okay, I'm not excited about the move itself. I loathe and despise moving. But eventually it's over, and when that moment comes THIS time, it's going to come with SO many perks. I fully intend to spend my first night at my new place with a delivery pizza, my cats, and whatever crap is on television. I won't even care what it is, because for the first time in forever, I'll be able to watch it without Squeaky coming out of the other room to ask me "a favor", or Tim talking through whatever I was watching, or anything but the sound of Bad and Snick charging through the boxes.)

I know I'm not doing a very good job of being patient--I'm sure I'm just as annoying to them, in my own ways, as they are to me. The difference is: I'm being annoyed WHILE I'm supporting them; they're being annoyed while being supported. That shouldn't matter, but it does; I can't wait to see how my financial status changes, as well, when I'm not stopping at the store every day for their little whims (and occasionally for a couple of mine, as well).

It's just time, is all, for this whole scenario to come to an end.

That Update I Promised

So....lessee. What's been happening in my life?

I got the apartment, for one thing. Moving day could be as soon as the 29th or as late as...well, as late as whatever the judge will allow it to be.

I was pissed-off enough by what happened with Countrywide "We'd Be More Accurate Without The O" Mortgage, that I took the advice I got from the nice lady on the other end of the Cook County Sheriff's phone, and filed a Motion for Stay of Possession. This required a substantial chunk of a morning, $163, and approximately eleventeen elevator trips from one floor to another in Daley Center, all of which resulted in a court date, scheduled for Monday, which will decide whether we get the house for another thirty days.

And by "we", I mean "Tim and Squeaky"; I plan to move sooner rather than later. The only thing that's holding me back even a LITTLE is this insane desire to be NICE, not to take away the stove and fridge and all the furniture and basically everything they would need in order to continue staying here after I leave.

My insane desire to be "nice", however, is rapidly dying, under the assault of Too Much Relationship Info, Courtesy of Squeaky.

Squeaky is madly in love with Tim. She got some money from an aunt, and promptly spent all of it on Sweetest Day gifts for Tim. I mean, she went OVERBOARD: candy, balloon, books, videotapes, a big whompin chocolate-covered apple...If he gets her anything, I'll be amazed. Because he, you see, is substantially LESS in love. And she knows it, but it doesn't stop her from bashing her head against the wall, doing every single thing he asks--and things he HASN'T asked, but which he might concievably ask for some day in the FUTURE. He totally takes advantage of it, treats her like crap, and generally makes me extremely glad that I don't find him the least bit attractive. I would feel sorry for her, if all the schmoopy-woopy-boopy-poop didn't make me want to scream til my lungs bleed. See, she has no way of getting around to do most of the pathetically-clingy stuff she wants to do for him--so guess who she asks?? "Would you do me a favor and get him some cigarettes/Aleve/cookies/etc? I'll pay you back..." (She hasn't.)


The most trivial thing, which is also possibly the most annoying thing of all: Tim's real name is one of those names which can be tweaked in spelling, to suit the preferences of its owner. (You know--like Britney/Brittany/Brytynie/ad nauseam.) Tim has, in recent months, adopted one of these exceedingly stupid-looking spellings for his real name. (I'm going to use "Christopher" as the base example, even though that's not Tim's real name and honestly, how he's screwed with his REAL name is even worse than the illustration.) I have scrupulously avoided going along with this silliness, because I'm weird about names--I can't even BEGIN to tell you how I felt about the name he saddled his DAUGHTER with--and so I've mostly began notes with either "C" or "Hey dude". But Squeaky...oh, she's more than happy to go along with this ridiculous spelling, along with every other whim of his. So every IM she sends me--and oh, sweet merciful Heaven, does she send me IMs?? YOU guess--aggravates me even more than it ought to, simply by assaulting my brain-cells with things like "Chrystofer is mad at me, I think..." It makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

I try to be charitable. I remember how I was at 19--Firefly, I'm sure, can second that; how I was obsessed with the wishes of my boyfriend at the time, and would pretty much move heaven and earth if he said he wanted something. I remember being goofy (Firefly--remember pissing off our next-door roomies by singing that BoDeans song every night for a week? hehehe...) and childish and silly. But...here's the thing: I only inflicted that goofiness on OTHER 19-year-olds. I didn't move into the house of an unrelated 37-year-old and expect her to be just as entranced with all my silliness as I was. (I may be an immature 37, but an immature 37 is still a hell of a lot more mature than an immature 19.) And frankly, her goofiness is WAY goofier than OUR goofiness was. Is that a self-serving, revisionist statement? Probably, yeah. But I'm standing by it--again, I never inflicted it one an unrelated 37-year-old.

And I know that my friends, over the years, have dealt with a lot from me in the realm of relationships. They've listened to me bemoaning the men that didn't love me, the ones who mistreated me, the ones who I kept around for absolutely NO REASON other than the fact that I didn't know how to get rid of them without feeling like an unconscionable bitch. So maybe this is karma; I don't know. But even karma has its limits...doesn't it?

So there's that, and then there's the fact that Tim is rapidly becoming King of the Asshole Frontier.

I discovered last night that they PROBABLY have an apartment. I found this out by asking Squeaky; she was in the kitchen getting another piece of pizza while I was making the latest batch of catfood, and when I asked her, "So have you guys got any prospects on an apartment?" she immediately dropped her voice to a whisper. "Tim doesn't want me to talk to you about it," she said, and promptly spilled all the beans. Apparently it's a studio, and her aunt is going to cosign, and her grandma is going to help with security deposits and the like, and...blah blah blah...

Okay, whatever. But "Tim doesn't want me to talk to you about it" ?? WTF? And yet...this isn't the first time I've witnessed it. He gets this way, all secretive and awful, when there are stressful things going on; I remember it from our final days with CR, but Tim always blamed the stress during that time on the way -WE- treated -HIM-. And I went along with it--there were things I did during that time which were not very characteristic of a good friend--but now, I'm seeing things he's doing now--things he also did back then--which are ALSO not very friend-like. And this secret-keeping, creeping around, playing one person against the other--oh yeah, I remember those too.

I can't wait to move.

I can't wait for peace, quiet, order. I can't wait to see how I'll do financially, with only my own worries to worry about, and no $8-a-pack cigarettes, $7 bottles of Aleve, cold medicine for Squeaky, Sweetest Day cookies, 12-packs of Old Style, and all the rest.

I'm moving on the 29th, I think. Better sooner than later; and once the move is done, I can relax and get on with my life. I may be losing my house, true....but a fresh start won't be the worst thing in the world, either.

Now That I'm Done Bitching...

...I'll have an update on the personal stuff shortly.

Things That Can Bite Me

Things That Can Bite Me, Tech-Support Edition:

1-347,325: Microsoft.

Microsoft can bite me because:

1. Office 2007. "Hey, Bob, here's a great idea! Let's take the normal, intuitive menu structure, the neat layout, and the uncluttered feel of Office 2003…AND CHUCK IT OUT THE WINDOW! We can make a…..a….I know! A BIG UGLY BUTTON where everyone has to click to do everything! And then? Get this…we can make cluttery, redundant TABS! EVERYONE loves tabs, RIGHT? And we can hide ALL the useful features."
   

   "Gee, Mr. Gates…do you think that's what the users want?"
   

   "USERS? Screw the USERS. They want what we TELL them to want!"
   

1. So I get this ticket at work, see. We just upgraded our people to Office 2007. Most of our users also have some form of Adobe—generally Adobe Professional 7 or 8. About a week ago, one of the users said she could no longer create or combine PDFs with Adobe 7. She would rather not update to 8, but she would if she had to.
   

   I spent hours on this ticket. I spent hours at her desk, I spent hours at MY desk, I spent hours on Google and on Adobe's website, trying to find out what the problem was. At one point I printed out a list of about 15 pages of steps to take, in order, to solve the problem.
   

   Today, as I was discussing it with my cube-mate, who claimed that updating to Adobe 8.1 would definitely solve the problem, I got an e-mail from the guy in the next cube, who'd heard us talking. It was a forward of an e-mail one of the OTHER techs had sent out a couple of months back, in which she explained a solution. I read it, and thought "That is SO not gonna help. Something that simple, that ridiculously unrelated to the problem—nah. It's not gonna help. But I'll try it…maybe it will help something else."
   

   I had another call for the same issue, by this time. I went to this user's office and tried all my usual steps, the ones which hadn't worked for the first user; they didn't work here either. I told her I'd be back tomorrow when I had a chance to do some more research.
   

   As I walked away, I thought of the e-mail. "Let me try this one more thing," I said. "I doubt it will work, but…"
   

   I clicked on the big stupid Office button—the source of all menus—and clicked Word Options. There was an item on the list that said "Popular", which I clicked. There, at the bottom of that screen, it said "Personalize your Copy of Microsoft Office", followed by a space for the user's name and a space for the user's initials. I filled them in—Jane Doe, initials JD--clicked OK, and clicked the Acrobat tab to create a PDF file.
   

   
   

   And damn it all –it WORKED. The lack of a stupid NAME and stupid INITIALS was causing a whole myriad of "unexpected error"s across two entirely unrelated applications. If that is not the STUPIDEST, most outstandingly DUMBASSED thing I've ever encountered in my ENTIRE LIFE as a tech-support person…
   

   
   

   I think I need to calm down.
   

   
   

   (But I mean, SERIOUSLY!)
   

   
   

2. "Um, Mr. Gates, sir??"
   

   (sigh) "What is it now, Bob?"
   

   "Got a question. I'm setting up the updater for the new version of Office for the Macin…"
   

   (Turns on him, eyes narrowed)"What did I tell you about saying that name in my almighty presence!"
   

   "Sorry…sorry, Mr. Gates. Anyway, I'm working on Office for…well….you know, that other company's computer….and I've noticed that after they install it, there are like ELEVEN individual updaters they have to run, one at a time. They've got to click on each, then enter their name and password…I was just thinking, couldn't we create a cumulative update? I mean, it would save them time…"
   

   "They don't NEED time. What they NEED…what they NEED is a good LESSON. Eleven individual updates? It's a small, small penalty for their betrayal. Let them suffer."
   

   "Yes sir, Mr. Gates."
   

   
   

I love my job—truly I do—but oh, how I hate Microsoft.

Aughhroo??

That title, should you wonder, is the transcription of the sound made by a large dog as it cocks its head and looks at you in confusion after you've done something perplexing. It implies total bewilderment, which is what I'm experiencing here.

So someone, tell me this: How, if an individual has extraordinarily-limited English skills, does that same individual expect to understand the content and subject-matter of an English-taught class in a highly-specialized, exceedingly complex field?? If your English skills are so weak that you can't translate the contents of an error window on your computer, how on Earth are you going to understand what's being said?

Also, not to show any disrespect to my younger readers, but...seriously, some of these people? Raised by wolves. By RUDE wolves, in fact. If your print job is in the middle of a stack of other people's print jobs, and there are names on the cover sheets in an effort to assist you in sorting them, and there is a rack LITERALLY next to the printer so people can find the jobs that belong to them, WHY would you dump EVERYONE ELSE's job on the side of the printer, taking only your own? And why would you ALSO leave your cover sheet on the printer table, instead of putting it into the recycling file?

They won't let me hang a sign that says "We've Fired The Maid--Clean Up After Yourself!" Nor will they let me hang one that says "Your Mama Doesn't Work Here Anymore".

No one EVER lets me have any fun.

I'm beginning to worry about the future, though--if this is the cream of the crop, I'm thinking we've got an EXCEEDINGLY curdled crop here. And everything I see reinforces my already-pretty-well-reinforced decision not to have kids.

You've simply GOTTA wonder about some of these parents, though.

Obligatory

Oh, Cubbies.

What happened?

I can has "next year"?

Captain Cranky's Bitch-O-Rama

I am really, really conflicted.

After all the go-around with Countrywide Bastard People (my former mortgage company and the current owner of the former Chez Gladys), it became evident that I needed to get my portly butt in gear--getting an apartment, packing, and moving--as soon as possible. So I started squeezing in apartment visits at every available moment--before work, after work, lunch. I went to look at a studio with my old landlord, in the building where Tim and I lived with CR; not only did the building itself give me the screaming heebie-jeebies, thanks to its CR memories, but the apartment itself was a)beyond teeny, and b)just barely north of squalid. Not dirty-squalid, but please-strangle-your-decorator squalid. I would have died a trillion deaths trying to live with that kitchen for a year.

The same night, I had an appointment to look at what sounded like an AWESOME place. One bedroom, garden apartment, sunny, good area...I get to the appointment (which required juggling my schedule, leaving work an hour early, and driving to the entirely opposite end of the city during rush hour) only to be informed by the assclown owner that "oh, THAT apartment has been gone for MONTHS...All we have is this two-bedroom." Which was nice, but: no. Too much opportunity for unwanted guests. I was really, REALLY disappointed--more than I thought I'd be, and definitely more than strictly necessary--and so I walked around the neighborhood, which I liked very much, taking down numbers. There was one place that had a "for rent" sign out, so on a whim I called the number and asked if there was anyone who could show me the apartment; it turned out to be a tinier-than-tiny studio in a building with a WHOLE lot of problems, including exposed electrical wires ("Enrique is an electrician!" the custodian enthused. "We do ALL our own wiring!") and an alley view containing one of the largest rats I've ever seen. I went home with a headache.

The next day, I started looking, just for fun, at the area around my job.

(Here's where I get ambivalent, part one. See, to go into more detail about the neighborhood will pretty much be to reveal where I work; it's one of those neighborhoods defined by something within it. It's like, if I say "Evanston", everybody thinks "Northwestern"; if I say "Northfield", everybody thinks "Jewel" or "Dominicks"...well, if I say the neighborhood, every Chicagoan will instantly know the institution for which I work. But if I DON'T mention the neighborhood, it's gonna be really hard talking about WHY, exactly, I'm conflicted. )

I found a building (one of those managed things, with the move-in incentives and the elevator and the fitness center and the nice video presentation on its website and all that) walking distance from work.

WALKING distance.

As in, "I need to be at work at 10 AM and it's now 9:05 and I can hit snooze three more times before I even have to THINK about getting up."

So I went to look at it. It was a one-bedroom, fourth floor, pretty nice place. It was about $80 a month more than I'd hoped to pay, but again: WALKING distance. No need to burn gas driving to work, no need to keep my bus-pass deduction, no need for ANY transportation-related expense, really, over and above......

And here's where I get REALLY ambivalent.

See, this neighborhood has no grocery stores.

That's not an exaggeration--that's a fact. There is the This Neighborhood Co-Op, which has had a monopoly on groceries in This Neighborhood since approximately forever; from everything I've read and heard, it's apparently very pricey and very understocked, and it's also fairly distant for a quick grocery walk. But there's no Jewel, no Dominicks, no Food-4-Less; no Treasure Island or Meijers or ANYTHING, for at least a twenty-block radius on all sides. (This is due to the political activism of the denizens of This Neighborhood; they're a pack of rabid liberals, which is all well and good since I'm one of those myself, but my liberalism ends when my inability to buy groceries cheaply begins. They don't want Big EEEEEVil Capitalists encroaching on their happy little Utopia, and apparently they're willing to forego groceries in favor of this principle. (Or at least, they'd have you believe they would. Actually that's 100% bullshit--either they shop at the Co-Op and pay extra for a smaller selection because they can afford to support their principles, or they subscribe to Peapod and get their expensive groceries delivered because they can afford the convenience, or they drive their Volvos and their minivans to Whole Foods or wherever they go. So the only people inconvenienced by this piece of liberal quixotism are the students (oops!) and/or the disadvantaged of the neighborhood. Gee, THANKS, wealthy liberal folks! I'm beginning to see why we're not well-liked...))

Politics aside, though, one of the reasons I'm actually almost GLAD to leave my current 'hood is just exactly that: no grocery stores for miles. So for the new neighborhood to have EXACTLY the same deficiency, albeit for a totally different reason...disappointing.

But that can be surmounted. There are two car-sharing services I can subscribe to, where I can rent a car for a couple of hours to go to the store on a Sunday or whatever, and not have to worry about keeping a car for myself. So the grocery thing: irritating beyond belief, but not the end of the world.

However, there's the OTHER thing: the thing I'm totally not proud of, the thing that's got me questioning "Who are you, and what have you done with Gladys?"

I don't know all that much about This Neighborhood. I mean, in terms of the important stuff--like, what is there to do for fun? Where do I go on the fourteenth boring afternoon, when I've exhausted all the very obvious stuff and don't feel like making the trip downtown? (There's plenty of that--but eventually you can't GO to the same bookstore for another day. Eventually you exhaust the museums.) What, other than Place Where I Work and the politics and the architecture and the landscape...other than that, what makes this place special? And what about the other considerations. For example: where is it safe to walk after dark, and where isn't it? (Of course, there are those who would have me believe that NOWHERE is safe after dark. I'm definitely not one of those, but I AM aware that around my potential new abode, there are some pretty rough spots. I'm just not sure exactly where they are.) Up in Edgewater and Rogers Park and Andersonville, I KNEW where all those places were. I even knew it where I am now, although the answer was a very simple blanket statement: "I wouldn't." But in my new neighborhood, I don't know the boundaries as well. I've been told to avoid Stony Island south of 60th; anything near the Green Line tracks after 55th; stuff like that. (Yeah, that's right. I'm moving to Hyde Park. Which means you now know where I work, if you're a Chicagoan, or know Chicago very well. I'm associating with, shall we say, People of the Maroon Persuasion. This is the closest-together that I've ever allowed my "real life" identity to get to my Gladys-ness, and it's scaring the crap out of me; I feel like Clark Kent would feel if he mistakenly walked out in tights and a cape one morning on the way to work at the Daily Planet.) But safety's generally something I'm good at--I've lived HERE for four years, after all! But as far as FUN--Okay, there's the Museum of Science and Industry--that should be good for the first six months of weekends!--and the DuSable, and I know the University has a lot of movie fests and whatnot--but other than that, I know JACK about Hyde Park, really, and it makes me nervous. That's the point I'm making here.

Normally--and by "normally" I mean "several years ago"--the element of surprise and new adventure would have been exciting. Now? It's just...daunting. And that scares me. When did I get old and scary about new experiences?? What the hell? When did that happen, and more importantly: WHY? And even more importantly than THAT: How do I make it stop happening???

That fear, though, may just be an indicator of how godawful stressful this situation is for me right now. I have just--in putting down the deposit on this apartment, which I did (at the rental agent's behest--"I have a lot of people looking at it," he warned me)--in putting down that deposit, I have accepted the necessity of taking the contents of a seven-room house with basement and garage, and deciding which of my entire collection of personal belongings are important enough to merit squeezing them into three tiny rooms, and which can be exiled to my mom's basement. I am coming face-to-face with the fact that this is all actually HAPPENING, and it's happening NOW, and I have anywhere from twelve to nineteen days to get my shit together and haul it out of there. I am not happy about this. I have coordinated moves before---many, many, many times!--but never quite this fast, and definitely nowhere NEAR this big. Really, the two parts of the process which are giving me the most anxiety are: one, the contents of the basement and the garage; and two, dividing and marking everything according to its eventual destination. And the speed at which this needs to happen is not in any way helping.

"But you have roommates to help you!" you say. And I laugh.

To be fair, Tim offered to help. But his "offer" seemed to be a blatant attempt to use helping me as a completely transparent excuse for why he couldn't go looking for a job, which could later be used as a very good reason for why I would have to help him after the move. "If I hadn't been doing YOUR packing...." I can just see it now. So I told him "Worry about your own well-being first: go get a job. If I need help packing, I'll ask for it. In the meantime, take care of yourself."

Well, THAT possibility evaporated anyway, because ever since I said that, he's been ministering to Squeaky, who we took to the emergency room last week. Again. This time, it was for seven large boils on her butt and legs, which at one point had been ONE boil, a few weeks back when I told her she needed to get that looked at and get some antibiotics before it got worse. Nobody listens to me. Anyway, she ended up with stitches and packing and multiple doctor appointments and Vicodin, which she and Tim fought over non-stop til it was gone, because HE has a sore shoulder and he can't do anything because it keeps him awake.

(If there are two things I hate, they're these: hypochondriasis, for one; and for the other, people who talk and talk and talk about their infirmities, real or imagined, but then never actually do anything to take care of them until the situation is so bad it requires an E.R. visit. I have had so many of BOTH kinds of people in my life that it makes me nuts. I recognize that I have been blessedly healthy, especially considering the amount of crap I've done to my body, but the one time I required an E.R. visit for a non-drug-related reason, it was because the actual PROBLEM--my gallbladder--had been previously misdiagnosed, not because I didn't TRY to get it dealt with! Tim won't go NEAR a doctor; he just crabs about this pain and won't get it looked at. And Squeaky, had she gone to the E.R. back when it was ONE boil, could have avoided a WHOLE LOT of pain...but she didn't want to go by herself, and she didn't want to wake Tim up to make him take her, and... I am SO GLAD to be getting away from their relationship!!! I may be a low-self-esteem-having, low-maintenance woman, but I don't think I ever neglected my own medical needs to avoid pissing off a GUY!)

Anyway, Tim HAS managed to put out a few job applications, and so has Squeaky--but neither of them has any promising leads. I worry about them--but I would worry more if I wasn't so mad at Tim for the way he's been treating me. For the first time in our friendship, I actually FEEL taken-advantage-of. Not because of anything financial, but because he's treating me like an irritant, whereas with Squeaky (when he's not pissed at her) he's fun and chatty and enjoyable to be around--the Tim I know. I try to talk to him, I get monosyllables and eye-rolls. (Unless he needs something.) And forGET trying to actually spend any time with him. The other night, he was watching TV in the living room while I was playing on the computer. We were actually having a conversation for the first time in a while--nothing important, just chatting. Squeaky was in their room, watching something else. She comes out and starts wheedling him to come into the room to watch TV (because she cannot STAND to be alone, even just in a separate room, for even a short time--last week, when Tim went out to put out applications and she was stuck at home healing, she IMed me at work repeatedly, about nothing, even though I told her I was busy). He follows her, and for the rest of the night I can hear them laughing and giggling and talking. Hey, whatever, you know? But it's like that all the time now. I am the least high-maintenance person I know, but one of my unwritten rules is: if you're living in a house with me, be prepared to at least have conversations. I don't require entertainment or company, but I cannot STAND being actively ignored for a long period of time. And this is a person who is supposedly my friend. Well, the past couple of months--since Squeaky appeared--have really injured this friendship, from my standpoint. I'm sure we'll talk it out, eventually, but right now I'm pissed and hurt and can't wait for this move to be over, so I can get some peace and quiet.

As for my fear of a new neighborhood, I keep reminding myself: this is NOT Scientology; I'm not signing a billion-year contract on this apartment. (Actually, I don't think I'm even signing a one-year lease; I think it's a month-to-month thing, given that they cater to so many students.) If I hate hate hate it, I can move. And then I think about going through all THIS again, albeit on a smaller scale...

I really hope I like it. But anything's better than THIS.

Countrywide

Countrywide Mortgage Co. (or whatever their official name is) can SUCK IT. (I have several "it"s in mind, none of them pleasant.)

I got a letter a few days back, in legalese, telling me basically what I already knew: my house was sold. The letter said that there had been a motion made to take possession of the building (okay, fine) and it contained the following phrase:

"The Sheriff cannot evict until 30 days after the entry of this order."

The order was dated Sept. 18th. I had been told on several occasions that it takes approximately forever to evict someone; when Tim was evicted, it didn't actually happen til nearly 6 weeks after the date he was originally given. So figure, October 18, plus an unknown period of time. Not un-doable, but I was hoping to leave at the end of the month--and that's saying nothing for Tim and Squeaky, who don't have JOBS yet, let alone a place to go. For them, I was thinking December 1st would be more reasonable.

So I called the lawyers. "Well, we don't handle the evictions," they said. "You'll have to call Countrywide." (They're the original lender; they apparently got the building back in the sale. Dunno how that works, but after today I can only tell them Good luck to you, bastard people.)

I called Countrywide. The first department gave me the number of a second department. The second department advised me to call the REO department, who in turn advised me to call the Foreclosure department, which turned out to be the department I'd spoken to first. Needless to say, this did not improve my attitude at all. But finally I got a person. I explained the situation to her. "Well, how long would you need?" she asked. I told her "I'd prefer December 1st, but I'll settle for November 1st."

She went away to consult with someone. Ten minutes later, she returned.

"They said you need to move out. Today."

I informed her that no, that was NOT the case; I had before me a letter saying clearly that I had 30 days.

"Well, you need to move out by October 18th, then," she countered. "They're not going to extend it."

I explained to her the history, as follows:

I was out of work for ten months.
When I lost my job I told them "I need to make arrangements."
I was told "We can't make arrangements unless you have a job."
I told them "If I had a job, I wouldn't need arrangements."

When I finally GOT a job, I called and said "Okay, I've got a job; I'm ready to make those arrangements."
They said "We can't make arrangements unless you have $10,000 to get caught up."
I told them "If I had $10,000, I wouldn't BE in foreclosure."

So finally (I said) the house was sold, and now I'm asking for thirteen stinking days, and you can't give me THAT? And this from a company whose name has been all over the news as one of the WORST offenders in the subprime mortgage crisis--from the SAME company who encouraged me to exaggerate my income so that the loan would go through--and this SAME company now can't even work with me so that I have the time to find a place to stay now that they've got their building back and have the power to put me on the street?

Needless to say (I told her) I will not be speaking positively of Countrywide in the future. In fact, I will make it my business to tell everyone I know, and possibly total strangers in the street, about my experience with your company, and its total lack of empathy or corporate accountability.

"Have a good day, ma'am," she said.

At this point, aside from being wrathfully pissed, I was also having a minor freakout. Seventeen days is not a long time to find a place to live, to pack all your worldly belongings, and to find a moving company--particularly while working what, when commute time is added, amounts to a ten-hour day.

I took a few deep breaths.

Then I called the Sheriff's Department. I picked the "Evictions" option, and after letting the phone ring one hundred times, I hung up. Next I tried the "Operator" option. After eighty rings, I was fairly sure that everyone there had been overcome by poison gas and were sitting at their desks, slowly decomposing.

Next I randomly picked a department; miracle of miracles, a HUMAN answered. "I really don't NEED this department," I told her. "I need Evictions, but I can't get them to answer the phone for love nor money, and I have a really general question but it's REALLY important," I said.

"Let me transfer you," she said.

After three rings: success. I asked what the real situation was, and finally got a little good news: Apparently the Countrywide Bastard People Co. cannot even FILE for an eviction til thirty days after that order--so, October 18th--and from then, it takes between one and eight weeks for the actual eviction to take place. The odds are in my favor, at least.

She also told me I could go downtown and talk to a judge, who might be able to give me a little wiggle room. So the proverbial wolf, although he is quite near the door, is not quite breathing through the peephole just YET. Small favors, and all that.

The last thing I did was to call my old landlord, to see if he had any studio or one-bedroom places available. And so Wednesday morning before work, I'm going to go look at a studio in my old building--$535 a month, all utilities included.

As for Tim and Squeaky--I told them the whole story later, since they didn't roll out of bed til nearly 3-- and if that's not a wake-up call, nothing ever will be. But right now, I can't worry about them--thanks to Countrywide, I now have QUITE enough to worry about on my OWN account.