In the interest of not having to defend myself, which is one of those EXTREMELY non-enjoyable tasks which got old almost immediately after I became old enough to hold an opinion, I will say only the following: A conversation was had; issues were cleared up. Most plans have been suspended pending various people's unrelated decisions. And I still totally adore their cat. (Not QUITE as much as my Snicker-kitty; just NEARLY as much. Seriously: adorable freakin' cat, with a purr like an outboard motor.)
Right now, my main problems are twofold: technical problems, and dental problems. (Well, threefold, if you count the fact that the dental problems will lead to financial problems, most likely....even WITH insurance!)
Technical problems first: Foolishly, I accepted a recommendation from one of my colleagues to work on a computer for one of the staff where I work. The person who owns the computer is a very nice lady, with a very nice husband who works for the same employer in a different department; and they live about a mile from me. So after work one evening, I walked to their house thinking "This should be easy enough..."
I had forgotten about the doctrine of Famous Last Words, alas.
The problem: their computer, an old-ish machine custom-built by a friend of theirs several years ago, could no longer connect to the Internet. They had AT&T/Yahoo DSL service, and a quick (hour-long) phone call to their help desk revealed that the problem was not on their end. So at about 9 PM, I said: "I think I'll need to come back tomorrow and try a few more things." And they said "Sure, fine, what do we owe you?" and I said, "Nothing, til I fix it."
I tell you, for the next four days, I did every single solitary thing that one could possibly do to get a computer to connect to the network, and it would NOT do it. I restarted the machine; I restarted the router. I tried IPCONFIG and received an error message telling me that "this command is not supported" (huh??? This was where I knew I was in deep weeds.) I talked, each day, to all of my colleagues, brainstorming possibilities. "Blow away the TCP/IP stack." "Reset the WINSOCK." "Try this link here..." "Did you try what they recommended on that site there?"
And each night, I did it all. I uninstalled every single client, service, and protocol related to networking. I ran NETSH. I ran CHKDISK to make sure it wasn't the hard drive. I even, as a last resort, recommended a new network card. None of it did a damn thing.
Finally at the end of the fourth night, I had to admit that I was completely out of ideas. They were very nice about it; they said they had known for a while that they'd need a new machine soon anyhow, but they'd been trying to stretch the life on this one, and so on and so on. I wouldn't take their money--I hadn't, after all, solved the problem, and in fact I'd taken up their time for about ten hours. So the net result was a loss of ten bucks--I had to take a cab home one night because the rain was coming down so hard I was afraid I'd drown just trying to cross the street.
Needless to say, this did nothing for my self-confidence.
And somewhere in this block of time, I also had a dentist appointment. This is a new dentist; my old dental clinic closed down unexpectedly, and sent my X-rays--done a few months ago--to be photocopied or microfiched or whatever it is they do now. So my x-rays were unavailable, and my new dentist had to take a whole new set, which my insurance refused to pay for because apparently they approve only one full set of x-rays per three years. Whatever.
Then, after the X-rays, the doctor went over the treatment plan. Just by the numbers: Four root canals. One (possibly two) extractions. Six (possibly seven) crowns. Fillings in all but two teeth--this is in addition to the fillings already there, and in some cases replacing those fillings. End cost for the whole shebang? $14,000. Now, granted: this was meant as a three-year process, with the big costs coming now and at the end (root canals now, crowns at the end); I have dental insurance and a flex-spending plan which, in foresight of all this, I ramped up to the full amount allowable. But all the same: can you imagine the amount of time I'm going to have to spend in the dentist's chair? Or the amount of novocaine I'm going to take on board?? Or what I could have spent that $14,000 on? (Hint: I really want a car!)
So: yeah. I have OTHER concerns too, you know. Currently foremost among them: will I break my now-two-week-old streak of picking the WORST cabdrivers in Chicago for my ride home from downtown on Saturday? The last two weeks I've practically had to kiss the ground after slamming the door behind me; seriously, I've never felt so much like I was taking my life into my hands, even when I used to shoot heroin. I didn't used to wear seat belts in the back seat of taxicabs; the past two weeks have TOTALLY changed my mind about THAT.
Wish me luck...
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Circling
I am not having an easy time of things, mah peeps.
Okay, fine, YES it's spring and YES to some degree that makes me happy; but spring carries with it a certain burden of expectations, and if there's one thing I can't live up to anymore, it's expectations.
I was watching a movie the other night on TCM, and Robert Osborne (Mr. Voice of TCM, and what they'll do for a host when HE's gone I'm sure I don't want to see) said something about an actress who "lost the will to live, and died shortly thereafter..." And I thought to myself How, exactly, does one go about doing that? Losing the will to live, I mean; it seems like the sort of thing only actresses would have the luxury of doing. If you're an actress and you just wither away and die, you're instantly a glamorous heroine for the ages; if you're NOT an actress or any of the other pretty things, withering away is seen as a self-indulgence. Oh, I'm swimming in an EXTRA-special pond THESE days; if you're feeling brave, try to wrap your brain around the notion that I'm taking my nonfunctionality as a sign of laziness and bad character, and my sadness as quantifiable proof that I'm NOT the wonderful person I wish I was--because if I was wonderful, I'd be able to just blaze on through the sadness without a flicker. Beat yourself up much, Gladys?
There's a lot of crap floating around in my life right now. I'm basically supporting, in whole or in part, four-point-three human beings and four cats--there's me, Tim, Squeaky and the Fetus, CR; Snick, Bad, Cassidy, and Tangerine (the last two being Tim and Squeaky's cats. Cass is a veteran of my various residences; Tangie is an absolutely precious little ball of fluff who literally followed Tim to Squeaky's one night a few months ago. I would resent Tangie's presence more if she wasn't so damn freaking ADORABLE and if her presence didn't make me smile at least once or twice a day. This is a seriously cute kitty, folks--almost, but not quite, as cute as my Snick was when he was a teeny kitten.) I've been sending CR money on my own--he only asked once, but I know he's in a baaaaad place right now, maybe even more bad than I am, emotionally speaking. At least HE appreciates it, which is currently more than I can say for the Tim-Squeaky unit.
See, Squeak has a part time job, and what with various delays and red tape, it's taken a while to get her paperwork to go through and blah, blah, and everytime she's borrowed money from me she's promised me: "I'll pay you back when my check comes." Now I don't expect to be paid in full by any means, but just throw me $30 and say "hey, this is all we've got but I do appreciate it..." etc.
Her check came yesterday. Last night when I got home I said something about having to get up early today, and she said "yeah, us too!" I said "Really? Where are you going?" and she replied "Just out."
I knew immediately something was up; this is the same woman who talks my ear off about every infinitesimal crumb of trivia she experiences through the course of a day, but now suddenly "we're just going out." Yeah, okay.
So this morning, I get up at 6:10 to get ready for work, and the two of them were up and dressed and moving around. "Hey," I said to Tim. "Where are you guys off to so early?" "Oh," he said. "We're just going to Great America." (Hint for my non-Chicago readers--Great America is a big amusement park about 50 miles north of here. When I was in grade school, tickets cost $40 each; I can't imagine what they cost now, to say nothing of what the food costs (and the Fetus dictates that Squeaky needs to consume her own weight in junk-food every six hours or so, apparently.)
So, let's see. $40 x 2 = $80 for tickets (though they probably got a discount); plus food for at least 1= about $20 at the least; transportation (I'm guessing they took the train) = $15 or so...what are we up to now, $115? They're going to spend a third of her check and I have not seen, nor even been offered, a DIME, despite the fact that I have boarded them for the entire spring thus far. Like I said, I don't expect to get a big wad of cash from them--just a token and a fuckin' ACKNOWLEDGEMENT would be plenty.
Tim told me where they were going as I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth; by the time I finished, they were gone--without so much as a "have a good day!" I sent a couple of mildly pissed-off text messages, but basically the response was "this was a spur of the moment thing, you have to work, and anyway you've been too busy to talk lately." Uh-huh, I have been busy--with my FUCKING JOB, which goes to support YOUR no-money-having, jobless pregnant asses!!!
I can't wait til the next time "Tim needs cigarette money" or "man, I'm really craving (whatever)". My reply is going to be very simple: "Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. Hope you work something out." I'll spend it on myself instead, or --this would REALLY smoke Tim's hindquarters--I'll send it to CR and then tell Tim I sent it! (And yes, I know I don't need to be helping CR, either, but there's a difference; unlike Tim, I trust CR will actually GET a job and not just TALK about paying me back someday.
There's a lot of other crap going on too--computers which won't work and which I've been trying to fix for someone after-hours; too damn many things in the world changing all at once, and other things staying the same no matter WHAT I would wish for; and this crushing sense that I am doing precisely NOTHING with my life--but the roomies were the sprinkles on the Chest Hair Cake of disaster. (Welcome, my friends, to the OTHER thing that's kept all my cracked little bits Scotch-taped together for the past few weeks: CakeWrecks. Go to the search box on that site and type "Falker Satherhood", and read the whole post, and snort beverage through your nose.)
God, I try so hard not to just be a draggy bag of sad...it's just a hard, hard road to walk. Cats and cakes and blogs and Froot Loops, and sometimes all four at once...they help, I guess, a little, but sometimes it's just hard to smile and act like everything is fine--especially when so much of my world is populated by people who either a)don't know me well (or shouldn't know me well), b)people who know me well but find me difficult; and c)opportunists who claim they appreciate the things you do until they're actually supposed to SHOW their appreciation--all those people to interact with every single day, and not a JP in the crowd. (Oh yeah: according to my shrink? I'm "idealizing" that relationship--apparently in her opinion, this isn't "real" grief at all, it's just a lack of a social life. I HUGELY beg to differ, but like any other crap I encounter, I just shrug it off and go along my way. It would be nice if even the people who are PAID to understand me would acquire a clue.)
Okay, fine, YES it's spring and YES to some degree that makes me happy; but spring carries with it a certain burden of expectations, and if there's one thing I can't live up to anymore, it's expectations.
I was watching a movie the other night on TCM, and Robert Osborne (Mr. Voice of TCM, and what they'll do for a host when HE's gone I'm sure I don't want to see) said something about an actress who "lost the will to live, and died shortly thereafter..." And I thought to myself How, exactly, does one go about doing that? Losing the will to live, I mean; it seems like the sort of thing only actresses would have the luxury of doing. If you're an actress and you just wither away and die, you're instantly a glamorous heroine for the ages; if you're NOT an actress or any of the other pretty things, withering away is seen as a self-indulgence. Oh, I'm swimming in an EXTRA-special pond THESE days; if you're feeling brave, try to wrap your brain around the notion that I'm taking my nonfunctionality as a sign of laziness and bad character, and my sadness as quantifiable proof that I'm NOT the wonderful person I wish I was--because if I was wonderful, I'd be able to just blaze on through the sadness without a flicker. Beat yourself up much, Gladys?
There's a lot of crap floating around in my life right now. I'm basically supporting, in whole or in part, four-point-three human beings and four cats--there's me, Tim, Squeaky and the Fetus, CR; Snick, Bad, Cassidy, and Tangerine (the last two being Tim and Squeaky's cats. Cass is a veteran of my various residences; Tangie is an absolutely precious little ball of fluff who literally followed Tim to Squeaky's one night a few months ago. I would resent Tangie's presence more if she wasn't so damn freaking ADORABLE and if her presence didn't make me smile at least once or twice a day. This is a seriously cute kitty, folks--almost, but not quite, as cute as my Snick was when he was a teeny kitten.) I've been sending CR money on my own--he only asked once, but I know he's in a baaaaad place right now, maybe even more bad than I am, emotionally speaking. At least HE appreciates it, which is currently more than I can say for the Tim-Squeaky unit.
See, Squeak has a part time job, and what with various delays and red tape, it's taken a while to get her paperwork to go through and blah, blah, and everytime she's borrowed money from me she's promised me: "I'll pay you back when my check comes." Now I don't expect to be paid in full by any means, but just throw me $30 and say "hey, this is all we've got but I do appreciate it..." etc.
Her check came yesterday. Last night when I got home I said something about having to get up early today, and she said "yeah, us too!" I said "Really? Where are you going?" and she replied "Just out."
I knew immediately something was up; this is the same woman who talks my ear off about every infinitesimal crumb of trivia she experiences through the course of a day, but now suddenly "we're just going out." Yeah, okay.
So this morning, I get up at 6:10 to get ready for work, and the two of them were up and dressed and moving around. "Hey," I said to Tim. "Where are you guys off to so early?" "Oh," he said. "We're just going to Great America." (Hint for my non-Chicago readers--Great America is a big amusement park about 50 miles north of here. When I was in grade school, tickets cost $40 each; I can't imagine what they cost now, to say nothing of what the food costs (and the Fetus dictates that Squeaky needs to consume her own weight in junk-food every six hours or so, apparently.)
So, let's see. $40 x 2 = $80 for tickets (though they probably got a discount); plus food for at least 1= about $20 at the least; transportation (I'm guessing they took the train) = $15 or so...what are we up to now, $115? They're going to spend a third of her check and I have not seen, nor even been offered, a DIME, despite the fact that I have boarded them for the entire spring thus far. Like I said, I don't expect to get a big wad of cash from them--just a token and a fuckin' ACKNOWLEDGEMENT would be plenty.
Tim told me where they were going as I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth; by the time I finished, they were gone--without so much as a "have a good day!" I sent a couple of mildly pissed-off text messages, but basically the response was "this was a spur of the moment thing, you have to work, and anyway you've been too busy to talk lately." Uh-huh, I have been busy--with my FUCKING JOB, which goes to support YOUR no-money-having, jobless pregnant asses!!!
I can't wait til the next time "Tim needs cigarette money" or "man, I'm really craving (whatever)". My reply is going to be very simple: "Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. Hope you work something out." I'll spend it on myself instead, or --this would REALLY smoke Tim's hindquarters--I'll send it to CR and then tell Tim I sent it! (And yes, I know I don't need to be helping CR, either, but there's a difference; unlike Tim, I trust CR will actually GET a job and not just TALK about paying me back someday.
There's a lot of other crap going on too--computers which won't work and which I've been trying to fix for someone after-hours; too damn many things in the world changing all at once, and other things staying the same no matter WHAT I would wish for; and this crushing sense that I am doing precisely NOTHING with my life--but the roomies were the sprinkles on the Chest Hair Cake of disaster. (Welcome, my friends, to the OTHER thing that's kept all my cracked little bits Scotch-taped together for the past few weeks: CakeWrecks. Go to the search box on that site and type "Falker Satherhood", and read the whole post, and snort beverage through your nose.)
God, I try so hard not to just be a draggy bag of sad...it's just a hard, hard road to walk. Cats and cakes and blogs and Froot Loops, and sometimes all four at once...they help, I guess, a little, but sometimes it's just hard to smile and act like everything is fine--especially when so much of my world is populated by people who either a)don't know me well (or shouldn't know me well), b)people who know me well but find me difficult; and c)opportunists who claim they appreciate the things you do until they're actually supposed to SHOW their appreciation--all those people to interact with every single day, and not a JP in the crowd. (Oh yeah: according to my shrink? I'm "idealizing" that relationship--apparently in her opinion, this isn't "real" grief at all, it's just a lack of a social life. I HUGELY beg to differ, but like any other crap I encounter, I just shrug it off and go along my way. It would be nice if even the people who are PAID to understand me would acquire a clue.)
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Catastrophic Decompression at 50,000 Feet
Recapping, for those innocent of this blog: Tim, my male roommate, and Squeaky, my female roommate, are now expecting their first child together. (It's actually the second child for each, but as each of their other-parents-of-the-first-child won't let either of them see their respective offspring, I guess we're consigning them to the category of "starter children" and walking away until the wee ones are self-supporting.) Both of them are my roommates only in the sense of "friends who live in the same place"; in terms of financial contributions to rent and incidental expenses, they are both woefully non-participatory by reason of joblessness. Sadly, I see no likelihood that this will change, and so I have accepted their presence as Just One Of Those Things despite their constant bickering (which invariably causes me to wordlessly pick up my belongings and retreat to my room).
Tuesday afternoon my mother called me at work. This is unusual; usually we talk in the evening. It was made more unnerving because I knew she had a doctor's appointment early that morning. Long story short: the doctor wanted her to go in ASAP--in this case, Friday morning--for an angiogram, which would then be followed immediately, if needed, by admission for an angioplasty or possibly more--up to and including open-heart surgery. Needless to say, she was scared; needless to say, so was I.
On Wednesday when I arrived home, I had several voice mail messages. All of them were from CR, all marked "URGENT". When I called him back he told me: he had lost his job. They had run out of hours to give him, they said; "cutting back" and "the economy" and all the rest of the crap they tell you, and then the real truth: "well, you only have a cell phone, and you're living in hotel rooms and with friends, so you're unreliable"--this, though he hadn't missed a single day's work, nor been late, since The Woman put him out. People suck, you know?
You would have to know CR to understand: you can take literally EVERY SINGLE THING away from him--his money, his family, his friends, his place to live, his car, his weed, his cigarettes--and he will survive, and in fact he'll fight all the harder for those things being gone. But if you take his work away from him--particularly if it's work that he's good at, work that he takes pride in--and you will unstring him completely. As long as he can earn a paycheck, he is largely all right; take that ability from him and he crumbles. When I talked to him Wednesday night, he was crumbling.
"I want to come home," he said, several times. Since he's basically the last black man in his part of the state, I don't doubt it; even before The Woman put him out, he would talk to me about how much he missed his city. He wants to be on his own; wants to be able to get an apartment for himself ("I really don't care if I've got no furniture--if it's like, a blanket and a pillow and a TV and a lamp, and I'm sleeping on the floor--as long as it's MINE and I got it for myself") ....which is good, beyond belief, as it's the first time he's ever said that. Losing the job was an even harder blow to him, I think, because for the first time he'd realized that he needed to be independent for real--no woman taking care of him, and in exchange controlling his life.
He wants to be independent, yes...but he also wants me back. I wish I could say I was entirely indifferent to that option, but...The things that went right, when he and I were together, went right very thoroughly (no, I'm NOT being all euphemistic about sex; that was always a bit of an issue, what with all the cheating and the like.) One thing about CR and I--we could TALK. I mean, we were like the People Who Wouldn't Shut Up. Movies, TV, the news, music, politics....one of the things I missed most about him was our conversation. Fortunately we can talk even if we're not sleeping together--an ideal balance, if ever there was one.
But before any of that can even be considered, he needs a job, money, an apartment, a place to live til he gets the apartment (and my place is right out, since he and Tim would shred each other to bits at first sight, like angry wildcats.) I'm gathering information for him but that's really all that I can do.
As you can tell, between the Bicker Twins, CR and his catastrophic decompensation, and Mom--well, let's just say I didn't sleep much this past week. I still have no adequate response for the first two, but at least Mom is okay; her angiogram came back with no blockage whatsoever, and there was much happiness and wOOt-ing on my part. She may be sneaking up on eighty years old, but we've been getting along fairly well lately, and I'd like to keep her around for a while.
Meanwhile: if any of you Chicagoans have connections to any sort of emergency transitional housing; jobs for people with felony convictions in their past, even if it's over fifteen years ago; basically, anything I can access to help this guy (I've already poked around at work, and gotten a few names and phone numbers)...any and all help would be GREATLY appreciated.
Tuesday afternoon my mother called me at work. This is unusual; usually we talk in the evening. It was made more unnerving because I knew she had a doctor's appointment early that morning. Long story short: the doctor wanted her to go in ASAP--in this case, Friday morning--for an angiogram, which would then be followed immediately, if needed, by admission for an angioplasty or possibly more--up to and including open-heart surgery. Needless to say, she was scared; needless to say, so was I.
On Wednesday when I arrived home, I had several voice mail messages. All of them were from CR, all marked "URGENT". When I called him back he told me: he had lost his job. They had run out of hours to give him, they said; "cutting back" and "the economy" and all the rest of the crap they tell you, and then the real truth: "well, you only have a cell phone, and you're living in hotel rooms and with friends, so you're unreliable"--this, though he hadn't missed a single day's work, nor been late, since The Woman put him out. People suck, you know?
You would have to know CR to understand: you can take literally EVERY SINGLE THING away from him--his money, his family, his friends, his place to live, his car, his weed, his cigarettes--and he will survive, and in fact he'll fight all the harder for those things being gone. But if you take his work away from him--particularly if it's work that he's good at, work that he takes pride in--and you will unstring him completely. As long as he can earn a paycheck, he is largely all right; take that ability from him and he crumbles. When I talked to him Wednesday night, he was crumbling.
"I want to come home," he said, several times. Since he's basically the last black man in his part of the state, I don't doubt it; even before The Woman put him out, he would talk to me about how much he missed his city. He wants to be on his own; wants to be able to get an apartment for himself ("I really don't care if I've got no furniture--if it's like, a blanket and a pillow and a TV and a lamp, and I'm sleeping on the floor--as long as it's MINE and I got it for myself") ....which is good, beyond belief, as it's the first time he's ever said that. Losing the job was an even harder blow to him, I think, because for the first time he'd realized that he needed to be independent for real--no woman taking care of him, and in exchange controlling his life.
He wants to be independent, yes...but he also wants me back. I wish I could say I was entirely indifferent to that option, but...The things that went right, when he and I were together, went right very thoroughly (no, I'm NOT being all euphemistic about sex; that was always a bit of an issue, what with all the cheating and the like.) One thing about CR and I--we could TALK. I mean, we were like the People Who Wouldn't Shut Up. Movies, TV, the news, music, politics....one of the things I missed most about him was our conversation. Fortunately we can talk even if we're not sleeping together--an ideal balance, if ever there was one.
But before any of that can even be considered, he needs a job, money, an apartment, a place to live til he gets the apartment (and my place is right out, since he and Tim would shred each other to bits at first sight, like angry wildcats.) I'm gathering information for him but that's really all that I can do.
As you can tell, between the Bicker Twins, CR and his catastrophic decompensation, and Mom--well, let's just say I didn't sleep much this past week. I still have no adequate response for the first two, but at least Mom is okay; her angiogram came back with no blockage whatsoever, and there was much happiness and wOOt-ing on my part. She may be sneaking up on eighty years old, but we've been getting along fairly well lately, and I'd like to keep her around for a while.
Meanwhile: if any of you Chicagoans have connections to any sort of emergency transitional housing; jobs for people with felony convictions in their past, even if it's over fifteen years ago; basically, anything I can access to help this guy (I've already poked around at work, and gotten a few names and phone numbers)...any and all help would be GREATLY appreciated.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Ten Thousand Brain Cells--In Memoriam
Paraphrase: A Conversation with Squeaky
"Pregnant. Pregnant preg pregnant, nauseous pregnant pregnant, pregnant pregnant. Pregnant, preg pregnant, preggers preg preggo preg gestate. Pregnant? Tim's an asshole, pregnant pregnant, asshole not-enough-attention, pregnant pregnant, preg preg McBoobs-Hurt. Tim's an asshole. Preggo preg preggo, pregnant pregnant preggers, preg hungry nauseous nauseous, preg preggo pregnant Tim's an asshole Pregnant."
Seriously. Every single topic, from the time of day to the basketball scores, can SOMEHOW be brought back to the fact that she's expecting. It's like she's the only woman in the world who ever carried an embryo. If this was even HER first time, I'd have more empathy, but she has a 5-year old son (who lives with his father--because when the baby was born, Squeaky was a 15-year-old ward of the state and the dad was 27 and had a job. If I ran the world, any 27-year-old male who impregnated a 15-year-old DCFS kid? Would get custody of his own testicles in a jar of formaldehyde, not custody of the resulting BABY. But--again, to my everlasting dismay--I do NOT run the world. I do often wonder, though, assuming there is a God, whether or not he/she/it/they are paying attention.)
So, as I said, pregnancy is not entirely a new experience for Ms. Squeak; one would think, then, that she might be able to complete a sentence without referring to her gravid state. Alas--not so. Any sentence barely about to escape a pregnancy reference will immediately be used to hold a "Tim's an asshole" commentary. The combination of these two things--one in which I am interested only in passing, the other with which I have, if not complete disagreement, at least a conflict of interest--makes it really, REALLY hard to talk to Squeaky right about now.
And why, should you wonder, is Tim an asshole?
(Hey! I heard that! Stop listing reasons, over there. I'm serious--don't make me turn this blog post around and come back there.....)
No, dear visitors to Gladystopia, Tim has not been doing any of his usual asshole things. He has been drunk but once in my presence, recently; he's not spending all his time out of the apartment hanging out with his male and otherwise non-pregnant friends; really, in the past weeks, the most time he's intentionally been away from Squeaky is the past couple of days, when he was helping his friend move. So what could be wrong?
Apparently, Squeaky feels that every moment of his attention should be focused on herself and--to a lesser degree--the fetus. Instead, Tim has been doing--sit down, my friends, for the horror should not envelop you while in a standing position--OTHER STUFF. Watching SPORTS. Playing on the computer--talking on Facebook--playing Farm Town and YoVille. (I am ambivalent at best re: YoVille; Farm Town, on the other hand, is Teh Awsum, without a doubt.) In other words: not paying 100% attention to HER. Apparently, one of her pregnant friends has a hyper-attentive man--fluffs her pillows and massages her feet and brings her any strange pregnant-food concoction she desires. Personally I think this is a large bag of lies with a side order of "you CAN'T be serious", but That's Just Me--and regardless of its truth, Squeaky has embraced this fable as the ideal for her pregnancy.
Now, there are several reasons this sort of expectation is doomed to the annals of Epic Fail. One, Tim is nobody's ideal guy. I'm not talking about all the things you probably think I'm talking about--the joblessness, the drinking, the bouts of irresponsibility--that's not what I mean. That's the same Tim she got pregnant by--Tim the unemployed, irresponsible alcoholic--and if that wasn't what she expected then she should have thought about the Pill. No, what I mean is this: Tim is not--is not now, has never been in my experience--Mr. WarmFuzzy McCuddlePuss. It's not his way. He's matter-of-fact, alternately serious and goofy, with a skewed sense of humor, not a lot of patience, and a fierce sense of independence and his own personal space. When Tim doesn't want to interact, you don't interact with Tim, and everybody's happy. When Tim doesn't want to talk, he won't; all attempts at conversation will be met with monosyllables at best, grunts and mumbles at worst. I can live with this because I, in my more-depressive moods, am much the same.
Lately Tim has, for the most part, not wanted to talk. For one thing, he claims he's in a great deal of pain; his back and particularly his neck, he says, are killing him, and no amount of Advil or Tylenol or anything seems to help. I wonder how much of it is tension-based; he's confided to me that he's really nervous as to how everything is going to work out once there's a third mouth for them to feed. I have kept my commentary to myself, but he has good reason to be worried. The other thing--and one I understand--is his constant sense of inferiority and persecution by fate. Tim is one of those guys who feels like he cannot get a good break to save his life; while some of his attitude is pure paranoia, some of it actually seems plausible.
(Stopping here, since I'm not going to have much more time to post today...)
"Pregnant. Pregnant preg pregnant, nauseous pregnant pregnant, pregnant pregnant. Pregnant, preg pregnant, preggers preg preggo preg gestate. Pregnant? Tim's an asshole, pregnant pregnant, asshole not-enough-attention, pregnant pregnant, preg preg McBoobs-Hurt. Tim's an asshole. Preggo preg preggo, pregnant pregnant preggers, preg hungry nauseous nauseous, preg preggo pregnant Tim's an asshole Pregnant."
Seriously. Every single topic, from the time of day to the basketball scores, can SOMEHOW be brought back to the fact that she's expecting. It's like she's the only woman in the world who ever carried an embryo. If this was even HER first time, I'd have more empathy, but she has a 5-year old son (who lives with his father--because when the baby was born, Squeaky was a 15-year-old ward of the state and the dad was 27 and had a job. If I ran the world, any 27-year-old male who impregnated a 15-year-old DCFS kid? Would get custody of his own testicles in a jar of formaldehyde, not custody of the resulting BABY. But--again, to my everlasting dismay--I do NOT run the world. I do often wonder, though, assuming there is a God, whether or not he/she/it/they are paying attention.)
So, as I said, pregnancy is not entirely a new experience for Ms. Squeak; one would think, then, that she might be able to complete a sentence without referring to her gravid state. Alas--not so. Any sentence barely about to escape a pregnancy reference will immediately be used to hold a "Tim's an asshole" commentary. The combination of these two things--one in which I am interested only in passing, the other with which I have, if not complete disagreement, at least a conflict of interest--makes it really, REALLY hard to talk to Squeaky right about now.
And why, should you wonder, is Tim an asshole?
(Hey! I heard that! Stop listing reasons, over there. I'm serious--don't make me turn this blog post around and come back there.....)
No, dear visitors to Gladystopia, Tim has not been doing any of his usual asshole things. He has been drunk but once in my presence, recently; he's not spending all his time out of the apartment hanging out with his male and otherwise non-pregnant friends; really, in the past weeks, the most time he's intentionally been away from Squeaky is the past couple of days, when he was helping his friend move. So what could be wrong?
Apparently, Squeaky feels that every moment of his attention should be focused on herself and--to a lesser degree--the fetus. Instead, Tim has been doing--sit down, my friends, for the horror should not envelop you while in a standing position--OTHER STUFF. Watching SPORTS. Playing on the computer--talking on Facebook--playing Farm Town and YoVille. (I am ambivalent at best re: YoVille; Farm Town, on the other hand, is Teh Awsum, without a doubt.) In other words: not paying 100% attention to HER. Apparently, one of her pregnant friends has a hyper-attentive man--fluffs her pillows and massages her feet and brings her any strange pregnant-food concoction she desires. Personally I think this is a large bag of lies with a side order of "you CAN'T be serious", but That's Just Me--and regardless of its truth, Squeaky has embraced this fable as the ideal for her pregnancy.
Now, there are several reasons this sort of expectation is doomed to the annals of Epic Fail. One, Tim is nobody's ideal guy. I'm not talking about all the things you probably think I'm talking about--the joblessness, the drinking, the bouts of irresponsibility--that's not what I mean. That's the same Tim she got pregnant by--Tim the unemployed, irresponsible alcoholic--and if that wasn't what she expected then she should have thought about the Pill. No, what I mean is this: Tim is not--is not now, has never been in my experience--Mr. WarmFuzzy McCuddlePuss. It's not his way. He's matter-of-fact, alternately serious and goofy, with a skewed sense of humor, not a lot of patience, and a fierce sense of independence and his own personal space. When Tim doesn't want to interact, you don't interact with Tim, and everybody's happy. When Tim doesn't want to talk, he won't; all attempts at conversation will be met with monosyllables at best, grunts and mumbles at worst. I can live with this because I, in my more-depressive moods, am much the same.
Lately Tim has, for the most part, not wanted to talk. For one thing, he claims he's in a great deal of pain; his back and particularly his neck, he says, are killing him, and no amount of Advil or Tylenol or anything seems to help. I wonder how much of it is tension-based; he's confided to me that he's really nervous as to how everything is going to work out once there's a third mouth for them to feed. I have kept my commentary to myself, but he has good reason to be worried. The other thing--and one I understand--is his constant sense of inferiority and persecution by fate. Tim is one of those guys who feels like he cannot get a good break to save his life; while some of his attitude is pure paranoia, some of it actually seems plausible.
(Stopping here, since I'm not going to have much more time to post today...)
Saturday, April 18, 2009
You Are Here. You Probably Ought To Think About That.
So, um....yeah.
WackyWackyWerld, aka Gladystopia, has done some of its expected and usual things. Tim has been playing Floor-Hopper, rotating between my living room floor, his friend Chuck's living room floor, and whatever it is he sleeps in at Squeaky's place-with-the-roommate. But that pool of potential stopping-grounds decreased by one the other day; apparently between the two of them, they decided that the remaining thirteen days on Squeaky's lease with the hell-roomie were just not worth the effort. (Apparently this woman--the roomie, not Squeak--is a wee bit of a beeyatch. I don't know her, and I've experienced enough time with Squeaky to be aaalmost inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt because: annoyy-ying!--but seriously, there are some birds that just don't fly, as in "you agreed on $400/month for rent on a room the size of a small pantry, but in mid-lease you demand $500/month instead, 'for utilities'." I cannot imagine how many appliances one would have to run to rack up $100/mo in utilities, but I'd be willing to bet they wouldn't all fit in Squeaky's room. It's pretty clear to all three of us--Tim, the Squeakster, and myself--that Wee Beeyatch is trying to use Squeaky's living situation to pay her OWN past-due bills. Which wouldn't be a problem if it had been agreed in the beginning, but you just can't change terms like that. So in this case, painful as it may be, I'm gonna have to side with Squeaky.)
They have been trying to find a place to live. They have been failing rather spectacularly, thanks to their combined lack of/abysmal state of credit. And last night, when I was on Facebook, Squeak IMed me to ask if she could just stay here for a while.
Now, who the hell would I be to turn a pregnant kid out on the street? (Yeah, yeah, I know--someone perfectly within her rights to do so. But sometimes just because it would be acceptable to do something doesn't make it seem right--and this, to me, is one of those cases.)
And I actually kinda like having Tim around, if we're being honest. He's a neat freak; he does housework; and when I'm not hiding out in my room (which I do when nobody's around, as well, so that can't be blamed on the two of them either) we have a lot of fun. It may not be the most equally-balanced friendship in the world, but...Look. It's fairly clear to me that there's a good chance I will spend my "golden years" having to look out for myself, in the absence of any husband or children or extended family to count on. I'm not as okay with that as I wish I was; I have to admit, seeing all my grade-school classmates on Facebook, married and procreating, with sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law and a string of family stretching out the door, I feel like a failure at living. Mostly I can combat it; after all, in the absence of JP, this is my choice. And if it's not my favorite choice to make, I do recognize that it is the fairest choice for everyone concerned; looking back over the past few years, the things I liked about everyone I dated have been the things that reminded me most of JP. I never thought I was comparing, but yeah--I was. And I still am; it's unfortunate, but there it is. Everyone's better off this way.
But anyway: if I'm not going to generate a family, and since I don't have an original family to speak of--there's me, there's Mom, there's my dad's sister-in-law and her sister, and my mom's youngest sister who lives a billion miles away--and that's the lot of them, unless I want to count my mom's other two sibs who send her anti-Obama wingnut e-mails ten times a week, and I abso-freaking-lutely do NOT wish to count THOSE two, nor their spouses nor their spawn... anyway, since THEY're not there for me, I've got to create my own family. And I guess this is what I'm doing. Tim is like the irresponsible little brother with a good heart and not much in the way of sense; Squeaky's the little brother's bedraggled girlfriend who shows up pregnant one day. There ARE less-fucked-up or not-fucked-up-at-all people in my life; Debbie, for one, and Firefly; Debbie being a wee bit more fucked-up than Firefly (okay, actually a lot LOT LOT more, but since it's not her fault and hasn't completely compromised her ability to make a good life for herself, it's not so bad.) And honestly--let's just get to where the bear crapped in the woods now--seriously, who the hell am I to judge someone else for their fucked-up life? My record for keeping a job is not-quite-five-years; I'm stuck in an entirely different decade than most people currently inhabit; I've got an incredibly warped perception of time, and thanks to the illustrious Ms. China White, there are large blocks of my late 20's of which I have no recollection. I am in DIRE need of a really excellent grief counselor; I'm constantly harassed by the thought of the afterlife, and wondering if I'm living right--constantly moving between "there is a heaven, so I better get my shit together" and "there's nothing, so believing in some grand reunion is foolish denial of the truth". I have no house; I have no car; my credit is fucked to a high degree (although at least THIS time I'm in good company, and can blame no one but myself....oh, and the subprime mortgage industry); I am now officially Completely Miserable in my job, but I've also come to realize that I will probably be Completely Miserable in ANY job which requires working for someone else, or accepting arbitrary orders, or acting in ways which don't make sense to me--in other words, any job anywhere at all. I can't even start a relationship, let alone sustain one, and I've given up on the possibility of anyone ever finding me attractive again. So again, I ask: WHO the hell am I to judge anyone ELSE's life?? Mostly I want to run away and do exactly the things I want to do, nothing else; buy my little farm and put a "Baked Goods For Sale" sign out by the road, and spend my mornings baking and my afternoons in the barn doing all manner of art--pottery, and glasswork, and painting and quilting and writing and crochet (and maybe even learn to knit, even though I've never been able to get both hands working at once so far). And at night, just lay out in a hammock slung between two trees, and pull a sheet of mosquito net over me and go to sleep. It's not that I want a simpler time, exactly; I want a time that's MINE, where no one is controlling me but me, and where every action moves toward a goal; where rules make sense and exist for a REASON, and don't change randomly at someone else's whim. I want to live an orderly life--not a life without chaos, exactly, but a life where I UNDERSTAND the chaos. Honestly? Right now, Tim and Squeaky are the least of my worries.
And if from this you take the conclusion that my work is really screwing with me, please accept my applause for your excellent deductive skills. Last evening, upon walking into my apartment, I unleashed such a storm of profanity and invective regarding my boss--touching on issues including--but not limited to--her ancestry, her sexual practices, her hygiene, her mental state, and her predilection for inter-species mating--that even Tim, who has heard me at my peak, was surprised. It would have been one of my proudest moments of vulgar inventiveness, had I not been SO DAMN PISSED-OFF at the subhuman stinking pustulent piece of ....Oops....there I go again.
(Yeah, I know--what made me so mad, right? Let's just put it this way: When I am reprimanded for a violation of a policy --a violation which involved an interval of TWO MINUTES, against a policy which, although I was told in the beginning that it was perfectly acceptable to do what I did, has apparently changed, of which change neither I was EVER informed, nor were the two OTHER people who perform the same task...I do NOT remember EVER seeing, ANYFUCKINGWHERE in my job description, "reads minds/displays psychic ability". That was NOT in the qualifications, and so to be reprimanded for what is essentially my failure to read that crazy-ass whoreslut's degenerated parasite-raddled mind...
I am perfectly calm, now.)
Seriously, though, I am never going to accept a job working for another female boss. I told myself that when I left Other Place Where I Used To Work; my resolve was strengthened by Ill-Fated Short-Term Employment; but I needed a job so badly, and I thought there was going to be a buffer zone between myself and her (and there was, til they demoted Best Boss Ever--I should have started slamming out the resumes right there and then)...It's not a mistake I'm going to make again. I don't care HOW desperate I am...it's NEVER worth it.
Oh. And then, after all this--Squeaky asking for a place to stay, ElMo (which is what I have dubbed The Crazy--I have my reasons!) giving me nothing but shit because I couldn't read her mind, and a bunch of other crap into which I haven't even gone--after all that, last night the phone rang: After seven years, CR's been put out of the girlfriend's house. (Short form: She asked him if he loved her; he gave an honest answer. Next sentence: "Get out of my house!") He's trying to work out how to get a place of his own; even though apartments are SUPER-cheap there, so are wages, especially when he can only get 25 hours a week. I was really impressed, actually, with most of what he said; seems like all the things I said so long ago, about standing up and being a man and living on his own, may have sunk in after all. Seven years late, mind, but any progress is good progress.
And that, my friends--all those bits of wonder, and an exploding toilet too--is what my little life is made of, right about now. Strangely enough, I'm almost happy; there's something to be said for realizing that you are no longer willing to be crapped on for the privilege of drawing a paycheck. Obviously I've gotta hang on til the economy gets itself together, but that's okay; the important thing is KNOWING it's not forever, that I'm not going to let it be forever, and I'm not going to spend the rest of my life scared of some bitch's opinion of me. That's no way to live, and even if I have to do it temporarily, I do NOT have to do it permanently. I may not be able to see the light at the end, but at least now I recognize that it is, in fact, a tunnel I'm standing in.
WackyWackyWerld, aka Gladystopia, has done some of its expected and usual things. Tim has been playing Floor-Hopper, rotating between my living room floor, his friend Chuck's living room floor, and whatever it is he sleeps in at Squeaky's place-with-the-roommate. But that pool of potential stopping-grounds decreased by one the other day; apparently between the two of them, they decided that the remaining thirteen days on Squeaky's lease with the hell-roomie were just not worth the effort. (Apparently this woman--the roomie, not Squeak--is a wee bit of a beeyatch. I don't know her, and I've experienced enough time with Squeaky to be aaalmost inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt because: annoyy-ying!--but seriously, there are some birds that just don't fly, as in "you agreed on $400/month for rent on a room the size of a small pantry, but in mid-lease you demand $500/month instead, 'for utilities'." I cannot imagine how many appliances one would have to run to rack up $100/mo in utilities, but I'd be willing to bet they wouldn't all fit in Squeaky's room. It's pretty clear to all three of us--Tim, the Squeakster, and myself--that Wee Beeyatch is trying to use Squeaky's living situation to pay her OWN past-due bills. Which wouldn't be a problem if it had been agreed in the beginning, but you just can't change terms like that. So in this case, painful as it may be, I'm gonna have to side with Squeaky.)
They have been trying to find a place to live. They have been failing rather spectacularly, thanks to their combined lack of/abysmal state of credit. And last night, when I was on Facebook, Squeak IMed me to ask if she could just stay here for a while.
Now, who the hell would I be to turn a pregnant kid out on the street? (Yeah, yeah, I know--someone perfectly within her rights to do so. But sometimes just because it would be acceptable to do something doesn't make it seem right--and this, to me, is one of those cases.)
And I actually kinda like having Tim around, if we're being honest. He's a neat freak; he does housework; and when I'm not hiding out in my room (which I do when nobody's around, as well, so that can't be blamed on the two of them either) we have a lot of fun. It may not be the most equally-balanced friendship in the world, but...Look. It's fairly clear to me that there's a good chance I will spend my "golden years" having to look out for myself, in the absence of any husband or children or extended family to count on. I'm not as okay with that as I wish I was; I have to admit, seeing all my grade-school classmates on Facebook, married and procreating, with sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law and a string of family stretching out the door, I feel like a failure at living. Mostly I can combat it; after all, in the absence of JP, this is my choice. And if it's not my favorite choice to make, I do recognize that it is the fairest choice for everyone concerned; looking back over the past few years, the things I liked about everyone I dated have been the things that reminded me most of JP. I never thought I was comparing, but yeah--I was. And I still am; it's unfortunate, but there it is. Everyone's better off this way.
But anyway: if I'm not going to generate a family, and since I don't have an original family to speak of--there's me, there's Mom, there's my dad's sister-in-law and her sister, and my mom's youngest sister who lives a billion miles away--and that's the lot of them, unless I want to count my mom's other two sibs who send her anti-Obama wingnut e-mails ten times a week, and I abso-freaking-lutely do NOT wish to count THOSE two, nor their spouses nor their spawn... anyway, since THEY're not there for me, I've got to create my own family. And I guess this is what I'm doing. Tim is like the irresponsible little brother with a good heart and not much in the way of sense; Squeaky's the little brother's bedraggled girlfriend who shows up pregnant one day. There ARE less-fucked-up or not-fucked-up-at-all people in my life; Debbie, for one, and Firefly; Debbie being a wee bit more fucked-up than Firefly (okay, actually a lot LOT LOT more, but since it's not her fault and hasn't completely compromised her ability to make a good life for herself, it's not so bad.) And honestly--let's just get to where the bear crapped in the woods now--seriously, who the hell am I to judge someone else for their fucked-up life? My record for keeping a job is not-quite-five-years; I'm stuck in an entirely different decade than most people currently inhabit; I've got an incredibly warped perception of time, and thanks to the illustrious Ms. China White, there are large blocks of my late 20's of which I have no recollection. I am in DIRE need of a really excellent grief counselor; I'm constantly harassed by the thought of the afterlife, and wondering if I'm living right--constantly moving between "there is a heaven, so I better get my shit together" and "there's nothing, so believing in some grand reunion is foolish denial of the truth". I have no house; I have no car; my credit is fucked to a high degree (although at least THIS time I'm in good company, and can blame no one but myself....oh, and the subprime mortgage industry); I am now officially Completely Miserable in my job, but I've also come to realize that I will probably be Completely Miserable in ANY job which requires working for someone else, or accepting arbitrary orders, or acting in ways which don't make sense to me--in other words, any job anywhere at all. I can't even start a relationship, let alone sustain one, and I've given up on the possibility of anyone ever finding me attractive again. So again, I ask: WHO the hell am I to judge anyone ELSE's life?? Mostly I want to run away and do exactly the things I want to do, nothing else; buy my little farm and put a "Baked Goods For Sale" sign out by the road, and spend my mornings baking and my afternoons in the barn doing all manner of art--pottery, and glasswork, and painting and quilting and writing and crochet (and maybe even learn to knit, even though I've never been able to get both hands working at once so far). And at night, just lay out in a hammock slung between two trees, and pull a sheet of mosquito net over me and go to sleep. It's not that I want a simpler time, exactly; I want a time that's MINE, where no one is controlling me but me, and where every action moves toward a goal; where rules make sense and exist for a REASON, and don't change randomly at someone else's whim. I want to live an orderly life--not a life without chaos, exactly, but a life where I UNDERSTAND the chaos. Honestly? Right now, Tim and Squeaky are the least of my worries.
And if from this you take the conclusion that my work is really screwing with me, please accept my applause for your excellent deductive skills. Last evening, upon walking into my apartment, I unleashed such a storm of profanity and invective regarding my boss--touching on issues including--but not limited to--her ancestry, her sexual practices, her hygiene, her mental state, and her predilection for inter-species mating--that even Tim, who has heard me at my peak, was surprised. It would have been one of my proudest moments of vulgar inventiveness, had I not been SO DAMN PISSED-OFF at the subhuman stinking pustulent piece of ....Oops....there I go again.
(Yeah, I know--what made me so mad, right? Let's just put it this way: When I am reprimanded for a violation of a policy --a violation which involved an interval of TWO MINUTES, against a policy which, although I was told in the beginning that it was perfectly acceptable to do what I did, has apparently changed, of which change neither I was EVER informed, nor were the two OTHER people who perform the same task...I do NOT remember EVER seeing, ANYFUCKINGWHERE in my job description, "reads minds/displays psychic ability". That was NOT in the qualifications, and so to be reprimanded for what is essentially my failure to read that crazy-ass whoreslut's degenerated parasite-raddled mind...
I am perfectly calm, now.)
Seriously, though, I am never going to accept a job working for another female boss. I told myself that when I left Other Place Where I Used To Work; my resolve was strengthened by Ill-Fated Short-Term Employment; but I needed a job so badly, and I thought there was going to be a buffer zone between myself and her (and there was, til they demoted Best Boss Ever--I should have started slamming out the resumes right there and then)...It's not a mistake I'm going to make again. I don't care HOW desperate I am...it's NEVER worth it.
Oh. And then, after all this--Squeaky asking for a place to stay, ElMo (which is what I have dubbed The Crazy--I have my reasons!) giving me nothing but shit because I couldn't read her mind, and a bunch of other crap into which I haven't even gone--after all that, last night the phone rang: After seven years, CR's been put out of the girlfriend's house. (Short form: She asked him if he loved her; he gave an honest answer. Next sentence: "Get out of my house!") He's trying to work out how to get a place of his own; even though apartments are SUPER-cheap there, so are wages, especially when he can only get 25 hours a week. I was really impressed, actually, with most of what he said; seems like all the things I said so long ago, about standing up and being a man and living on his own, may have sunk in after all. Seven years late, mind, but any progress is good progress.
And that, my friends--all those bits of wonder, and an exploding toilet too--is what my little life is made of, right about now. Strangely enough, I'm almost happy; there's something to be said for realizing that you are no longer willing to be crapped on for the privilege of drawing a paycheck. Obviously I've gotta hang on til the economy gets itself together, but that's okay; the important thing is KNOWING it's not forever, that I'm not going to let it be forever, and I'm not going to spend the rest of my life scared of some bitch's opinion of me. That's no way to live, and even if I have to do it temporarily, I do NOT have to do it permanently. I may not be able to see the light at the end, but at least now I recognize that it is, in fact, a tunnel I'm standing in.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
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