2690 Sweetie annoying me again

[evile]

Dec. 7, 2004

 

 

1) Mom & stepdad here the 27th. In austin thru 31st. No idea if they
plan to stay at our house the whole time. Must get house presentable.
Sweetie may or may not be going to FL to visit family, AMD shut down 1
week around Xmastime.

Got up this a.m.--a bicycle in the entryway, and one in the living
room. Both Sweetie's? Plus he ordered a unicycle. Now, since the garage
and his work room and the bedroom are already full of shit, where are
all of these going to go? The living room? He did this with computers
the first few years--first saturday, hauling back tons of garbage
which he has never used as far as I know. Then with the cars--the
checker, the ghia, the blue trooper he won't sell and doesn't drive,
the vanagon, and his trooper/daily driver. He says the blue trooper
is unreliable, so that's why he keeps the blue one, which btw, he
promised to sell after the blue vanagan came home...over a year ago
now.

And now he's collecting bicycles. hu fucking zah.

I want new furniture, which I feel it would be unfair to choose
without his OK (but then again, did I choose any of the computer or
car or bicycle stuff all over this house? no?)

I want new flooring, which I also feel It would be unfair to pick out
without his input & cannot have installed without his help in moving
shit OUT of the rooms to be floored (or can I?)

I want the hedges trimmed & backyard masonry fixed, which I could do
without him, BUT...goddamnit, should I HAVE to make arrangements and
pay for it all myself, when he owns this fucking house too?

And of course I can't bring any of this up without him getting pissy,
telling me I'mmanipulating him, blal bla blalblalallalallal! This
rant was inspired by:

-------------------------
Onyxlynxx (onyxlynxx) wrote,
@ 2004-12-06 18:30:00

Current mood: okay
Current music: All That We Let In by The Indigo Girls

I woke up this morning feeling pretty overwhelmed. I had been having
a dream where my fence was falling down. I took the day off from work
to deal with it and then promptly forgot that was why I had stayed
home. At some point my roommate, who happened to be nikiyoy,
suggested that I should call Scott so that he could come home and fix
the fence.

It is pretty bad when my subconscious resorts to something that
obvious. I didn't need a book of dream interpretation to tell me what
was going on. I have always wanted to own a house but it has turned
out to be a lot more trouble than I ever could have imagined. I also
never thought that I would have to be handling everything by myself.
There is so much to fix that I don't even know where to start. The
shed outside needs to be painted before it rots to the ground. I need
to winterize the pond and cover the dog trails with gravel. A couple
of weeks ago, the tile in my bar cracked. I need to fix that. At some
point, the door bell quit working. I figured out how to turn the
furnace on and I didn't die. Then I kept thinking that I was smelling
gas so I turned it back off until I could have someone come look at
it. Yes, I understand that I was probably just being paranoid but I
wanted to be sure. Then as I was doing dishes this morning I heard
the distinctive plunk, plunk under the sink that meant that I had a
leak. Usually, I am listening to music so the house had never been
quiet enough to hear it. A leak is something that can cause serious
damage so it went to the top of the repair list after the furnace.

I grabbed my stuff and hurried out the door to work because I was
already late. When I got to work, I realized that I had left my
wallet at home. That meant that I had been driving with an expired
inspection sticker, no driver's license and a burned out reverse
light. Great…just great. The only way I would have been a bigger cop
magnet is if there had been donuts taped to my car.

I took the first couple of calls and I could tell it was not going to
be a good day. I was anxious enough about all the other crap in my
life that I was having a hard time focusing. The finally straw was
some jerk from a school calling to say that they had made the report
on the wrong child. A little boy had been hit on his face and had a
bruise. Say this child's name was John Doe. They had called in the
report on John Smith and his mother. They didn't even realize what
had happened until John Smith's mother called the school. They didn't
even seem to care that it meant that John Doe had been being smacked
around for an extra week. What an idiot. It was time to take my break
so I thought I would make a list and start trying to get control back
of my life. I decided to start with the potentially most dangerous
first. I called Strand Brothers and they said that they could send
someone out between 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM.

At this time it was 11:00, in between my morning calls and everything
else, I decided that I had enough work for the day. I went to see a
supervisor so that I could leave. Even though I was too distracted to
work, I didn't really want to spend lots of time in a house with a
possible gas leak so I decided to run some errands. I took my glasses
back to get softer nose rests. Then I took my car and dropped it off
to get it inspected. I figured that it would fail because of the
break light but that then I would have the receipt showing that I
tried to get it inspected. That keeps you from getting a ticket for
like a week while you try to get it fixed. I walked down Guadalupe in
the rain. It suited my mood. I tried to imagine all the anxiety
washing off of me and down the storm drains with all the other toxic
stuff. I walked from the Groovy Lube at about 30th down to Toy Joy
and back. By the time I got back, I was feeling some better. I was at
least feeling less freaked out and anxious about all the stuff I
needed to do. Then I got the bill for the car. I don't know what
happened but it actually passed inspection. I can't tell if they
fixed the brake light or just didn't notice that it was out or what
but it was a nice surprise.

I went home. I didn't smell any gas with the line turned off. That
seemed to be a good sign. I thought I would catch up on all the
cleaning that I had been avoiding while I was waiting for the repair
man. I even called Mom so that she could come hang out while I
cleaned. She has been feeling a little ignored and this was a good
way for me to spend time with her and still get some things done that
I needed to accomplish like dishes, laundry and dusting. We talked
for a couple of hours and I got my house almost clean again.

The repair man finally showed up. I explained to him what was going
on. I kind of expected him to laugh at me. See the silly hysterical
female. I left him alone so he could examine the unit. It took him
about fifteen minutes and then he came to find me. There was not a
leak. The gas flex line was loose. It could have indeed leaked enough
gas to have ignited if I hadn't turned it off at the valve. It is all
fixed now. I am really glad that I listened to my intuition and
turned it off. I am even gladder that I listened to Meg's concern and
called someone today instead of waiting.

I feel a lot more grounded. Cleaning my house does that for me. I am
sure that part of it is holding all of my rocks. Another part is
restoring the sense of order to my space. I am trying to learn to be
less OCD about how I keep my house but I am truly much happier when
everything is straight. I guess I am still trying that perfect
balance between the house being neat enough for me and maintaining it
not being so time consuming that I resent it.

-----------------------------------------
beli1738
2004-12-06 18:17 (link)
I'm sorry that you had such a stressful day and glad that it seemed
to get better as it continued on. Thank goodness you did get the gas
looked at so quickly. It may have made you feel a little silly about
having to call initially, but sometimes it's better to leave things
to an expert especially when it's something with such potential for
danger.

I know having a house can be a major stress and burden, and it's got
to be hard handling all that on your own. It's hard too when there
are several things that need doing, and it all seems overwhelming --
especially when you consider the stressfulness of your job. You did a
great job of handling it one at a time though and managing it into
better proportions. *HUG*

In other news, if you're still interested, we do have an extra full
size mattress and box springs available. My mom badgered my aunt
about it, and she decided she didn't want them after all, so you have
dibs on them. I talked my mom into agreeing that my aunt is not
allowed to change her mind.


onyxlynxx
2004-12-06 20:18
I am definitely still interested in the bed. That will keep me from
putting one more thing on my credit card. I would really like to have
a functional guest room so I probably would have bought a mattress.

:(
bramblekite
2004-12-07 08:35 (link)
I guess there was no dinner/tennis with the gals last night, then? In
a way, I'm sorry but then selfishly since I wasn't there anyway, I'm
kinda glad I didn't miss anything good.

*hugs* I am glad your house didn't blow up. You're right, home
ownership is very stressful sometimes, there is always stuff that
needs done. On the plus side for you, at least everything in the
house is yours. So cleaning becomes easier, since you're not cleaning
around another person's stuff/clutter/projects-in-progress/collection
du jour (it was computer stuff the first years, then it was cars, now
it's bicycles).

I'm starting to feel like if I'm doing everything and paying for most
of it, I wish I didn't have the other person and their crap in my way
so I could do more...