Bad BlogMom

Yes, yes, I know. For a blog that originally was about my move, my house, and my reasons for making those choices, it's pretty weak that I've not posted in going-on-a-month. Especially since there's been a TON of stuff going on that has made me expand upon the plans made according to those reasons--to say nothing of stuff that's made me need to kick some massive Tom-Slaughter-my-jackwad-seller ass.



To begin with: The Story of Why presents The Story Of Tuesday.



Having been ignored by a plethora of plumbers, who didn't call back after giving me estimates on installing the washer and dryer, I'd finally called someone a week or so back, got an estimate, and made an appointment for an install. So Tuesday morning, LJ dutifully stays home to wait on this guy (and the exterminator, called to get rid of the bees). The plumber shows up and runs the gas line, then calls me to tell me he can't do anything further because the main shutoff valve was broken. I knew this, of course, because Tom Slaughter's dumbass "contractor" had broken it off the day I moved in, in a vain attempt to fix the upstairs sink which only didn't work because its strainer was full of sediment. (I ended up fixing it myself.) The plumber said I'd have to call the city and have them locate my "water box", which is apparently a little doodad outside which is buried underground and is the main shutoff to the whole house. I'd then have to call him back and he'd come out and hook everything up.



Or at least, that was the plan.



Tuesday night I cooked dinner, did about half the dishes, and took a shower. Toward the end of my shower I noticed the water was a little cool, but I figured "oh well--must have turned it a little too far to the right." I went to bed and was joined a couple of hours later by LJ. A while later, I got up and when I turned on the hot water, all I got was ice cold water. I waited...nothing. I went back into the room and said 'We have no hot water." "Oh, I could have told you that," said LJ--to which I replied "Well, you DIDN'T, now did you." I put on my slippers and went down into the basement with a lighter and a twist of paper to reach the pilot.



I got down on my belly on the damp cold floor--thank god I'd swept the basement out the previous weekend!--and tried to read the directions on how to re-light the pilot. "Turn knob to PILOT," it said, and I did. "Locate the aluminum tube running from the right of the control box, extending next to the thermocouple. Push and hold red button while holding flame to the end of this tube. Hold for about 1 minute or until the pilot remains lit."



This was where things failed to work. I pushed the button, I held the button, I held the flame to the end of the tube--nothing. Not even a hiss. There was no gas going to the heater. I also noticed that despite the chill in the house, the furnace was also not doing anything. I read its directions--it's pilotless--and basically the directions were "It SHOULD work!"



So I went and got my wrench, and turned the valve on the gas meter, then went up to see if the stove was still working. It wasn't. I went up and down stairs repeatedly, turning knobs and then testing the stove til it worked again. So the main gas was on, I realized; but there was no gas going to the branch of operations including the furnace and water heater. I tried valves, turning them every which way--nothing. Not even a hiss of gas.



Meanwhile, it was heading toward 1:30 AM and I was supposedly getting up in a few hours; LJ, of course, was snoring. I called the plumber--it's a 24-hour service--and the poor woman on the answering service didn't know what to make of me! I was pissed to my core and barely civil; she promised to get someone to call me as soon as possible, and about 30 minutes later (as I tried again to light the pilot)--lo and behold, someone DID call. He offered to come out, but since he didn't know the area, I told him to wait til daylight and just take some money off my installation bill--he said OK, and I called off work, telling them I'd be in late Thursday morning, because I had to wait on the plumber.



Well--it was raining. And standing in the door of the bedroom earlier in the evening, I felt something cold on my head....cold and WET. I looked up at the ceiling and there it was--a perpendicular intersection of two damp lines with a droplet of water right at the point of the angle, poised to drop--and a fat, juicy blister filled with water, right in the paint over the door. I poked it with a Swiffer and it blurted rusty water right down the wall.



So my roof leaks. Now, it can't be MUCH of a leak, if HUD certified it--but it's still leaking, and I don't like it. But granted--that was a LOT of rain--like INCHES of rain, in a short time. So while I waited for the plumber for the washer and dryer, I called roofers, who--typical customer service--didn't call me back. And I waited, and waited, and waited, for the plumber. "Well, with the rain and everything, we've had a lot of emergency calls from people with flooded basements...."



He got there around noon and lit the pilot on the water heater--the button was just stuck, was all, and he leaned on it and it lit right off the bat--but if I'd left for work right then, it would have taken me til 2 to get to work, and where was the sense in THAT? So I called in and told them there was no way I was going to make it.



And then I used the downstairs bathroom.



Through a mechanism I'd prefer not to describe, the toilet flushed only halfway before backing up. It wasn't fully blocked, but it was very very slow, and I didn't have a plunger. I remembered, however, that I DID have a wire hanger in the closet, so I went to get it so I could push the blockage through the pipes.



Well, I had forgotten something, as I left to get the coat-hanger and wirecutters: The flapper on the toilet is leaky, and so even though the flush handle wasn't down, water was still coming into the bowl...

...and it had nowhere to go once it got there, except over and down.



I was gathering materials when I heard a strange noise--a splashing, but not from the bathroom...from the BASEMENT. I ran downstairs and water was POURING through the floor above, splashing everywhere. I could see the hole from underneath, and I could see light through the hole; I ran upstairs and realized that the toilet was overflowing out the back, where the water was running down to the lowest point on the floor, where the pipe came up through a rough hole in the floor, unsealed. The hole, around the size of a silver dollar, allowed the water to run through to the basement.



I ran around, swearing, til I could find my wrench--still downstairs sitting on the gas meter--to turn off the water to the toilet and stop the overflowing; I tried all my little tools (coathanger, etc) and nothing worked, and I realized I had no plunger. I walked to the hardware store on Pulaski, bought a plunger, and carried it home--where it ALSO didn't work.



At that point--at which everything had gone wrong-- I called my mom. I knew she had a plumbers' snake, though she couldn't find it, and so she said she'd bring it over. She hung up, and I went back into the bathroom to try the plunger once more...and it worked!!!!! But of course the floor needed to be scrubbed with bleach, and the basement needed to be cleaned up, and so on.



It was just a baaaaad house day.

And now it is tonight

And now it is tonight, eight years since I lost him. It was about now that I'd gotten off work and we'd driven to the West Side--the West Side which is now home, the same place which is about six blocks from the room I'm sitting in right now. And we'd come to the spot at Maypole and Keeler, and he'd gotten out of the car and scored and come back into the car, and we'd driven home, down the Ryan to the Stevenson and off to the offramp to Lake Shore south, off at 31st and then home to the parking lot. It was cold, I remember, and we'd walked along the east side of the building, through the front doors and into the elevator.



I remember in the elevator, doing our usual playing around--waiting til we were alone in the car and then JP taking the packets out of his pocket and throwing them to me one by one, our little game because we knew it would be my job to draw the water and fix the shots. Oh, it was nothing new, not to us; almost mundane except for the utter joy we took from it. Is it wrong to say we were happy?



And then we got off the elevator, ran into the house and into our room, locked the door. I remember what he was wearing--the blue shirt that matches the red one I still wear sometimes, nothing else. And he got out the box of needles and turned on the 10:00 news, while I set up the shots for the two of us. Dump the powder into the cap and add a syringe full of water, hold it over the lighter with the tweezers until it boils, draw it into the cotton and then split it between the two needles. And I handed him one.



I didn't know, of course. If I'd known I would never--does it even bear saying??? that I would never have handed him that needle if I knew it was cut with flour? if there was any tiny hint that it could have even made him UNCOMFORTABLE, much less sick and even more, that it could have killed him?



And it was now, nearly, with the news on in the background, that he took his shot. He put the needle in his arm the way he had a million times before, and then he...



My memory is not at its best, understand.



I remember the look on his face, and I remember him grabbing for his inhaler, and puking into a trash basket. I remember saying "was it a flour shot?"--it had happened before, but nothing like this--and he just gasped and nodded and started toward the open bedroom window, hitting his inhaler over and over. Halfway to the window he fell, face down.



I rolled him over, I remember, and I remember trying to breathe for him, and I remember calling 911 but I don't remember what I said. I remember going into his mom's room to tell her but I don't remember what I said there either. And then the paramedics came, and the police (so I must have said something about heroin) and I remember them coming into the room--the police, I mean; the paramedics had him on the hallway floor and they were working on him. I remember his mom crying "Is he dead?" and the paramedics--god, such assholes they were; I mean, I know we were junkies and I know it was a huge case of wasted potential and I'm sure the interracial aspect of things didn't help matters but they didn't have to treat his MOTHER this way--they looked at her, this crying mother watching her oldest son not breathing on the floor, and they said "Well, he's not breathing and he has no heartbeat, so right now, YES!" And they put him on the gurney and took him out in front of all the neighbors prying eyes...



ANd then the cops took me back into the room and made me show them all our stuff, show them our needles and the cards that said we could have them, asked about the candy spilled on the floor (as if we had a big bowl of pills by the hundreds, all with the letter M on them!) and then they took me out and put me in the car and took me to the hospital. And they put me in the little room and cuffed me, and that was where they told me. The cop came in and said to me "He did pass." And I remember opening my mouth--me, with my huge vocabulary and my 99th-percentile SATs--and all I could say was "He DIED?" Because that possibility, until that very moment, hadn't even entered my mind. He was sick, sure--he'd be in the hospital for a while, maybe, and after that we were in some deep-ass shit because NOW everyone knew we were junkies--it was out in the open--and we'd probably get kicked out of his mom's house and then we'd have nowhere to go and nothing to do except to get clean...for a while, anyway...but that was the worst that could happen. It hadn't even crossed my mind that he might not make it, until the cop told me that he was dead.



And then I remember thinking No, wait--this is all a big mistake. Somebody needs to do something about this, because this is not possible and so if it's not possible it's not actually TRUE, right? he's not actually DEAD because then...well, then, everything that's happened since. No guitars, no band, no JP. No more sleeping two to a twin bed and getting up at 6 AM for a wakeup shot; no more skipping work because we couldn't bear to be apart. No music, no fame, no glamorous suicide when the fickle world turned against us. No kids, no long life together, no growing old finishing each others' sentences. Nothing...just the rest of my life without him.



But of course it was true. They asked me if I wanted to see him; I remember going in, of course, but the details are what I've blotted out. And his mother was there; I remember her crying on the phone to JPs grandmother; and I remember calling my mom, on autopilot because who else would I call? And I--the rebel, the junkie, the independent woman, the one who had chosen her life and was willing to live or die by the consequences...I remember the first word out of my mouth: "Mommy?" I haven't called my mother that since probably first or second grade, and here I was at 25, just...giving up, I guess. Or maybe that's just how it seems in hindsight. I know now that going home was at once the stupidest and the healthiest thing I could have done under the circumstances; healthiest because if I'd stayed out there I could have very well died, either by my own hand or by accident; stupidest, because it was a knee-jerk reaction, done without thought, and because it made my mother feel she had somehow validated herself; that what she'd done by taking me in somehow made up for all the years of not caring what was important to me, only caring what other people would think, and pounding into me that need for other people's approval that has raised so much hell with my life before and since. In a way, she made me believe she'd done it too; I've felt beholden to her ever since, and when it's come to the arguments since, over CR and LJ especially, she's not let me forget about my prior "mistakes". She sees JP as a "mistake", and that to me is the LEAST forgivable part. I loved him with everything I had; he was the one person in my life who has EVER accepted me exactly as I was....including, particularly, my mother.



They told me he died at 11:10 PM. I don't know if he heard any of the things I said to him in the time before the paramedics arrived; or if he heard anything they said. I don't know when, exactly, death occurs; but I remember telling him that I loved him. He was the one who changed my life, the one who let me be who I was and stayed with me anyway--and so far, he's the only one who has.



I lit his candle tonight. No matter how good things are now, or how bad things have been in the past, I've never forgotten him for a moment, and if there's any justice in the universe, there will be an afterlife where no matter what eternity might have in store for me, I will at least be allowed to see him again, just once, just even for a little while....because I never had the chance to say goodbye, or tell him I was sorry, that I would undo it if I could.

Blog Neglect

Yes, I know--the BCFS should be on my case now for blog-abuse, but dammit, things are not going as I planned.



That's not entirely fair, I guess. I'm IN the house, about 65% unpacked; the other 35% is things I have nowhere for. I have--no exaggeration--a foot-and-a-half square of counterspace. Cabinets, not much better. I've commandeered half my bookcases to use for dish storage; and though I'd gladly get to work on shelving and cabinets and what-not, unfortunately the once-a-month pay-scale here has not been conducive to action. I get paid tomorrow morning.



What's not going well, though, is the thing with LJ. I've got to sit down with him and have a long talk about exactly what he expects; if I go by only what I see, he expects a housekeeper, a cook, and a porn star all rolled into one, and if I'm not fulfilling one of those three functions, I'm expected to stay the hell out of his way. I don't know if this is a fair perception, though--I'm willing to grant the possibility that he's just not used to being with someone, and that he's forgotten the little niceties and details like company, conversation, etc. I don't think he's intentionally being an asshole, but the net effect is unfortunately the same. And he really needs to start cleaning up behind himself--I don't think he's washed a dish since we moved in, and believe me when I say, a good half of the dishes are generated by his lunches!



And of course, the other possibility here is that I really AM being unfair--because this is The Bad Week. It was eight years ago tonight that I lost JP, and all week I've been really conscious of those memories. I seem to hear Nirvana on the radio a lot more, too--almost as if he's saying hello from the other side, or something. And I know that remembering that perceived perfection of the life JP and I had is NOT going to make it any easier to be fair to real, live, active, imperfect LJ....which is another reason I've tried to keep it to myself this week. I mean, christ, I know -I- need downtime at the end of the day--so what's to say this isn't LJ's "downtime"? I really gotta leave this poor guy alone, I think sometimes...but then other times, I feel like the only time I really see him and get to interact with him is when we're in bed. (Not that I mind--I still have NO complaints about THAT part of our relationship!)

Reality (thud)

First of all--I am HERE. Day Four. I moved in Saturday, it is now Tuesday, and the only reason for four days of silence is the absence of Internet access until early this morning.



Pieces of the house are beginning to resemble something approximating their eventual uses; our bedroom, for example, and the Guy Room (which is not the room I originally intended to USE as the Guy Room, but I'm nothing if not amenable to compromise.) The living room is...functional, if not organized; the upstairs bath is clean in all the important places, excepting the sink and medicine cabinet, both owing to the fact that the sink is not working. The kitchen is a work in progress, to phrase it generously. First of all: Ronald, who was a nice guy, unfortunately was also a man with some naaaaaaaaaasty living habits. It took a good 45 minutes just to get the bathroom remotely fit for human use; just the tub and toilet and floor, even.(more later--falling asleep)

:::VICTORY DANCE::::

I HAVE A HOUSE.



If I had an HTML reference-book handy, I would make that bold, underlined, in a bigger font. In fact, once I unpack my HTML reference book, I will update this post to do just that.



I HAVE A HOUSE I HAVE A HOUSE I HAVE A HOUSE I HAVE A HOUSE I HAVE A HOUSE. Tengo una casa, j'ai une maison, Ich habe ein Haus, Eu tenho uma casa. (Thanks, BabelFish. But why no Finnish? I bet that would look SO cool in Finnish.)



Those of you who are wealthy probably don't think this is as big a deal as I'm making of it. Well, it IS a big deal. It's a motherfucking HUGE deal, actually--not five years ago I was a fucked-up, grief-addled, nearly-unemployed, barely-employable and barely-functional heroin addict; two years ago I had stuck myself in a sick relationship with an abusive, faithless, amoral, manipulative asshole of a boyfriend who spent FAR more of my income than I ever realized and contributed nothing but drama, heartache, and enormous bills--and now I have a HOUSE, you bastards, and I did it ALMOST on my own--I can't ever say I ever did anything COMPLETELY on my own, because I have to consider where I got the ability and the belief to know I COULD do things on my own--but as close as one can come to doing something completely on one's own, I DID THIS. CR didn't stop me; my grief for JP didn't stop me; Tim didn't stop me and Dave didn't stop me and the bankruptcy didn't stop me and the heroin didn't stop me and my mother didn't stop me and her raggedy-ass judgemental pack-of-racists FAMILY didn't stop me and all the disapproval in the world didn't stop me and now that house is MINE, the keys are MINE, the roof and the walls and the windows and the floors are MINE and for those of you who never had to strive for anything or overcome anything or beat down the voices inside you and outside that said "You can't" and "you won't" and "you shouldn't", to those of you who have never had to fight to get what you want because all around you are people who say you're foolish to want it and inside you is a voice that says you don't deserve to have it--to all of you people who have no idea what that's like, you ALSO don't know what it's like to look straight into the face of that "you CAN'T" and to tell it "I DID, motherfucker." And to anyone who doesn't know that feeling, then I have to say I pity you--it's the best feeling in the world, better than heroin by miles.



I have a million things to do now, of course; pack up all my shit here, and pick out things in the garage to take with me--ladders and yard tools and the like--change my address on all my bills and mail and such, and figure out how I'm going to get mail when I have a locking gate and the only mailbox is attached to the house; and figure out how I'm going to survive when all my money has been spent. I'm entirely flabbergasted, really, by the number of things I have to do--particularly when I've been told that the odds are currently against my getting my week of half-days next week (How can they tell me I "can't" take vacation time? It's MY vacation time, isn't it? And there's no time any better or worse than now--it's not as if I have a "slow" season! But I digress...) BUT-- I have three more days living in this room with its twin bed, no storage space, and precious little ventilation; three more days in this cable-less house under a microscope, all my actions and words and intonations analyzed to the point of madness. Three more days, and I will be in MY house, with LJ, free to do whatever I want, whenever and wherever I want.



However, some insight into my personality: faced with an entire universe of freedom, an infinity of possible choices and the ability to do anything I please, my plan for Sunday is this: get some food in the house, plug in the TV and excavate an armchair, position A in front of B, a Pepsi in my hand and a bowl of popcorn at my feet, and watch the Winston Cup race.



I am entitled to be pathetic for one day, I believe. I have the rest of my life to be industrious and amazing.

Monster Magnet (in homage to the fact that I've got "Space Lord" in my head)

The closing is tomorrow--which accounts for the recent silence of my blog, and even of my normal e-mail correspondences. As of tomorrow afternoon, I will be the owner of my own home; along with the amazed feeling of total wonderment and accomplishment, I have to add the following just on G.P: I cannot...fucking...WAIT to move out of here.



Owning a house, or even being someone with the _capability_ to own a house, seems to change how you're perceived among friends. At least, that's how it's happened in my case...Today at work I got a call from Kya, telling me that Tim was having problems (big fucking newsflash, that!) and was going to give up his apartment (An aside--when I talk to either one of them, I'm going to do what I can to ascertain whether my suspicion is correct--Kya said something about his rent being $900, which is a lie of the purest order of bullshit. That mousehole Tim lives in is NOT a $900 apartment--MY old crib, with the same landlord, was $610 and it was at least three times as big. So either Mr. Wolf is absolutely out of his crotchety old landlord mind, or Tim is lying to Kya about what he's paying in rent so he can have the difference for booze. Either way, it is SOOOOOO freakin wrong as to defy explanation.)



So anyway, Tim is giving up that squalid little nest of his, and because I have a house (or soon will) he's going to ask me if I'll take his cats. And the answer is NO--I do NOT want his three bad-ass little furballs, and I refuse to be a five-cat house. I'm sure this won't go over well, when I tell him-- ("Act like you don't know anything, when he calls," said Kya--apparently she wasn't supposed to tell me)--especially since he thinks he and Kya and the baby should have dibs on roommate space. I'm sure he'll be none too thrilled to find LJ there.



Speaking of which...oh, god. Any doubts I've had about LJ, small though they were, have now absolutely vanished. I saw him Saturday, and he was...god, just amazing. That marks absolutely the first time in my life that a man has said to me "What's mine is ours" under such circumstances that I could actually afford to BELIEVE him. (CR said it, of course, but since he had nothing and was willing to do nothing, except take what had started out as MINE and give it to other women, obviously his was not a credible declaration. And Dave said it too, I'm sure, but he also referred to me behind my back as a "meal ticket". JP never said it--he just lived it.) I really think he intends to contribute; time will tell, of course, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.



Back to Tim and Kya, though--Tim is talking about going out of state, alone, leaving Kya and the baby behind. I feel so bad for her, and I really want to kick his ass for him; he had all the time in the world to "explore his opportunities" BEFORE he decided to impregnate someone. That baby is now the scope of his "opportunities"--not some out-of-state thing. I mean, this is like something CR would pull... I can't stop him, of course, but I don't have to babysit his evil stank-ass cats for him, either.



I can't believe that in less than 24 hours, I am going to have a house. I can't believe how much my life has improved--and how much of it has happened despite my refusal to give up what I believe. I've had to compromise on some things, of course, but I've done it without pressure. I quit heroin not because I was told to, but because I chose to; I have managed to get this far even though I've chosen men who others have thought were unsuitable (and in some cases, they were right!). I've been able to work at a job I enjoy, and even though there are things about it I can't stand sometimes, I wouldn't trade it for anything more "prestigious" or higher-paying. I haven't had to do anything that I don't believe in, yet I still have managed to accomplish one of my biggest goals; and I've done it in an entirely uncompromising way, even when other people have objected.



I am soooo excited--I feel like a little kid. I don't know WHAT is going to be the best part--holding those keys for the first time, moving in, or showing it to LJ for the first time...or decorating it, or living in it...EVERYTHING. That's what I'm excited about--everything.

Sunday night

Okay. I am now officially sick of the Cubs. I live in hope that Friday, when the trains will be full of drunk-ass Cubs fans riding to the playoffs, that I will be off work for my closing.



...which would be more of a miracle, come to think, than the Cubs winning the playoffs in the first place.



I don't ever remember being as lethargic or as gloomy as I was today; I just couldn't find a damn thing to make me happy, to distract me from this simmering anger inside me. It's like 1994 all over again--September imprisoned in this house again, held to a standard of behavior devised by someone else, my actions restricted. It's not as bad as it was then, of course; but something in me says it shouldn't be AT ALL. And of course, my patience is non-existent; not only shouldn't this situation exist, but even if it DOES exist, I shouldn't be IN it. I should already BE in the house; I should already have moved, should be unpacking, should be settling in. I'm so tired of being in this room, this bed; living out of a laundry basket and a suitcase....a suitcase packed for SUMMER, with late-AUGUST temps in mind instead of late-September.



I'm half-tempted to pull out of this deal, but I don't know if that's just cold feet because of all the opposition I've been encountering. I wish people would shut up, really...but THAT, I suspect, is just more of this pissed-off malaise.