May

What happened to my May? What the hell?

School ended, work started, we found a new apartment (have to move from the lovely place we're in now because the landlord is becoming a slum lord), and life life life.

Work's good. It's necessitated a change in schedule though - I've gone from being an evening person in all ways to needing to be at work (over 15 mostly country miles from my place) at 8:30 AM. Ugh! But I'm proud to say I managed to do it, mostly. I overslept a bit today but made it in on time with some rushing about. I had been expecting this to be just a short term summer job but I guess they like me because my boss mentioned that she was looking into hiring me "during the semester". I need to follow up on that. At the time, I was on my way off to do something (work related) and so all I had time for was a quick "Oh that'd be great....especially since I am in need of employment".

I like and am good at what I do, which is also a relief.

The down side - there's always a down side. The temporary negative right now is that we're moving, like NOW. My fella's been awesome, as usual, and so he's taken care of much of the move stuff. His diligence, as wonderful as it is, happens to be taxing my "gimp-guilt" as I call it, which relates to potentially more enduring down side of my post-graduate school, employed life my new smaller life on account of having less than stellar health. I swear to god my warranty ran out at 31. Since then I've had more health shit than you can shake a stethoscope at, none of it fully resolvable (by which I mean "curable"), and some of it only marginally treatable. I hate giving the full list of ailments but the highlights includee the endometriosis/adenomyosis and the shitty immune system which is better at attacking me than it is at doing its job on viruses, bacteria, or even (as I've recently learned) fungi. Now that I've put this miserable body to work for normal work hours and something approaching a full work week (so far it's been more like a 30 hour than 40 hour work week), I am confronting the question which was hinted at by my soon to be former advisor when she asked so casually "are you healthy enough to have even a regular job?" I found this question to be rather insulting for a number of reasons but I knew even then that while the context was fucked up, the content is in many ways legitimate. And the answer is...it's hard to know. Perhaps this is just denial, but for now I'm going to say the jury's still out. What I tell myself is that I need to give it more time to know for certain whether the massive fatigue I feel throughout the day even after plenty of sleep and no strenuous activity is just a by product of changing my schedule or if this is a permanent and fixed aspect of my life post 31. If it turns out to be the latter, then yeah, I'm kind of fucked.

For now, there won't be lots of posts here because I'm either at work, asleep, moving, unpacking, or sick and exhausted. The moving and unpacking should be done by mid June and hopefully, the daily sick and exhausted will let up as I adjust. If not, well, there could be lots more posts later while I chronicle the apparently wretched process of filing for disability.

boys part 2

I mentioned I have boys. The infestation is still ongoing. I've had many opportunities to hear and even interact with them because I've been home a lot this week fighting off a steroid enhanced throat/sinus thing. Which by the way, feels fucking awful. What does it feel like? Like a viral infection, on steroids. Get it?

Anyhow, I'm home lots and feeling shitty lots and the kids are here, not lots but loudly when they are. Last night featured kids in the hall, then kids down in the basement. I have to wonder, what possible appeal can it hold for them? Is it a throwback to when they were still living at mom and dad's house, 3 months ago, and they had to hide out in the basement to smoke their weed? I was going to say "to smoke a joint" but I'm doubtful these kids smoke out of anything other than overpriced glass bowls or vaporizers.

I found out this week that my landlord helpfully told the boys that "the people downstairs called the police on them". He told them this, he claims, to try to stress upon them the gravity of the situation (the situation being my landlord's inability to consistently and place screen tenants).

Here's who called the cops on whom. I called on people in the parking lot last weekend. The lady across the hall called specifically on the boys several weeks ago, and either the guys down the hall or the lady in front called on the boys as well two weekends ago now I think (I wasn't here for that one). But it turns out the boys assumed "the people" who called the cops were me and my fella. Why? My best guess is because my fella and I have spoken to them in person when they are being loud. Alone that's not really great reasoning, certainly wouldn't be sufficient for me unless I was 8. I think the rest of it goes something like "and the boys are not very smart thus they assume things like the 50 something year old disabled woman who had the misfortune to move in below them last month would not have called the cops on them for any one of their post 1 AM beer fueled fun-fests. Why would she? Afterall, she never came up, knocked on their door, and asked them to keep it down in the middle of a party".


Tonight's been quiet so far. Aside from some very occasional thumping and bumping, and the sounds of someone running down the stairs, a slam of the door which sounded like it was going to take the side of the house off, and then more running all the way across the porch and onto the pavement around the house and past the window just next to my desk, it's been peaceful.

And hey, my temperature is finally down a bit. I'm going to go celebrate by reading on the couch.

rumblings

I woke up to hammering. It took a while to identify the location of the origin of the sound as probably my upstairs neighbors' apartment. I don't think is is a peculiarity of my apartment, although the high ceilings may do something to scatter the noise. Rather, I think it's just a 9 AM on a Sunday after several aborted post midnight attempts at sleep.

The boys had some company over last night. I found a little intoxicated girl in the hallway around 1 AM. I had come out to ask them to kill or at least stop revving the engine on the monster truck idling in the parking lot. We're ground floor facing the parking lot so any gunnings of engines, squealings of tires, and slammings of doors are done in a space about 4 yards from my not highly insulated bedroom wall.

9 AM is certainly a reasonable hour. The sounds of well shod feet hustling across the floor every Sunday morning tells me the younger woman directly above us probably goes to church when she's not hammering a bed apart. She was testy when I went up to ask if the noise was coming from her apartment. I'm not sure she realizes that she's been quite noisy in fact. She's one of those people who leaves their shoes on inside, and she is a "hard sole woman" too. Then there's the dogs, who after an initial quiet period started the occasional fits of barking for little reason.

But then it could have been worse. Although my current but soon to be former upstairs neighbors were not quiet, I could have someone like The Boys up there, and man that would suck.

The landlord is still trying to sell the place. Meanwhile, he tells A_____ he's got a job as a manager in training at a chain restaurant. I guess the finances didn't work out as he'd hoped. I still don't really know what happened with all that. I'm not sure I want to know, just so long as my rent doesn't go up and he's contactable for things like the driveway being an ice rink.

The upstairs neighbors' moving a reminder that it's the season for moving. Regardless of whether my landlord rents the upstairs apartment to more of The Boys type, A_____ and I will probably be moving within the next few months. Partly because when the landlord DOES sell, it seems at least plausible that whoever buys will want to raise our rent, and we can just barely afford this place as it is. It's too bad. I've liked this place. I think of all the rentals where I've lived here in this wretched state, the current one has been the nicest.

lynch the landlord?

My landlord started painting the kitchen in the apartment upstairs at midnight last night and finished at 3:30 AM. He was here last night too but finished much earlier.
When I went up at 1:45 to ask when he'd be done and to tell him his bumping and thumping around was keeping me up he whined "But your bedroom isn't under the kitchen!"

"It's intermittent noise...at 3:00 AM. That's the worst kind because everything else is quiet and that intermittent thudding and banging and scraping is so intrusive" my fella noted. Indeed.

Landlord will be back tonight. He told me this last night in his, what? excuse? Argument? He always debates. I'm not looking for tail between the legs obsequiousness. Just not a debate about how he didn't think he was making that much noise or where my bedroom is or that he "just opened a restaurant" The restaurant is relevant, he believes, because he's "been working 18 hour days. I don't want to be here at 2:00 AM either, but I have to. It's just economics."

Ok, so here's a guy who can barely manage this building - and he opens a restaurant. The upstairs apartment has stood empty for months - he's been losing rent for MONTHS while there are plenty of folks who'd have painted it for a song, during the day, months ago. And this is the way of doing things that makes the most sense. This let it stand empty for months then paint it at 2 AM shit.

T.G.I...fuck

On the cusp of a migraine, this morning I woke up to the sounds of my musically inclined neighbor. She plays the harp and her name is something that sounds like a name you know but is not. She was not playing the harp. From her apartment was some kind of wind instrument. I like strings of pretty much any variety. I fucking hate wind instruments. Some more so than others, but pretty much the entire set is bothersome to me.

And what was being played on this wind instrument?

It was christmas music.

Continuing to sleep was out of the question, but a little dead kennedys on the ipod at least took the edge off being awake. This is not how I wanted to wake up. I had already realized 10 minutes before that (a) we had no coffee left (b) I couldn't go get any because my car was in the shop and A____'s is a stick and (c) Neither one of us had any cash left on us so even if I did wake A_____ and ask him to go get coffee, the mission had just become more complicated than the drive through down the street.

Flutey christmas music was like salt for my wound.

And I am noticing this is starting to look unpleasantly like a pattern. Oh say it isn't so....

Last Friday, it was the carbon monoxide detector. While I am glad it works and got me out of bed, several things surprised me about it. One was how easily I could have stayed in bed.
The other is how hard it is to do what you know is right (e.g. call 911, pack up your cat, sit on the porch with laptop and kitty and no coffee) when there is no immediate sensable evidence that you should.

See, it turns out there was a good reason for the CO detector to be going off last week, and that would be the presence of CO. It seems the unseasonably warm weather shut off our oil burner, which, when it restarts, causes a build up of gas. At least this is how the landlord explained it a day later when he called back - that it happened once before when the weather was warm (hey don't bother telling anyone, I mean it's just the carbon monoxide alarm and all). Landlord fixed it later last Friday by coming over and opening the windows to air out the basement.

Good. Meanwhile, I guess most of the night at least, it was wafting up....up into the spaces around the furnace, spaces like my apartment and the hallway where the CO detector was.

I'm not saying I narrowly escaped death. I don't think there was that much gas. I think though that I might have escaped a rotten sick head feeling for the rest of the day. And I think I had my ability to actually respond to an alarm tested. I discovered that when there is JUST an alarm going off, when it doesn't say what it is (see this isn't the old school bat cave, not EVERYTHING has a label on it), when you have people standing around saying "oh my I wonder what that is?", when one of those people is a man who talks like he's taking charge and going to deduce what is causing this based on whatever, his fucking Y chromosome and male pattern baldness (not loving guys this week), it's really HARD to go into your apartment, pack up your kitty, and call 911. Maybe it's years of conditioning based on meaningless latenight false fire alarms in my dorm as a younger woman, but I discovered there was almost a physical force to overcome to take the alarm seriously.

So that's my Friday so far, this one and the one before. This one has resolved...the dead kennedys/pixies shuffle seems to have done the trick.

I really gotta get me an mp3 player of some sort if I'm going to get through the holidays (wait, I mean the birth of jesus christ. Related - do you think these (self) righteous media sluts will start a campaign to boycott people who don't say "god bless you" when someone sneezes?).

Moving and meth

New landlord Steve called tonight to tell me it's ours. Woo hoo!

Immediately after the rush of "woohooness", I had the "oh boy is this the right choice?" This is something that happens to me EVERY time I settle on a new place. Each and every time, so I'm trying not to let it consume me. I'm relieved to be done searching, hoping it will all work out, and looking for all the bright sides to bask in whenever I sense the doubts I always have about moving crowding in to lessen my joy.

I've had a pretty suck ass day so this is really welcome good news.

Suck ass? Why? you might innocently ask. Well any day with a doctor's appointment in it is sucky by definition. Then there was another call from my mother. Fortunately, I didn't pick up. I thought "Oh look, a 617 number I don't recognize....it seems strangely familiar though, maybe I should answer it?" Then I remembered she's called once a week for the past two weeks and I let it go to voicemail.

I have now programmed the number so I'll know it's her and not risk picking up. She is listed under "Douchebag".

Mere seconds after I had listened to some of Douchebag's message (I'll play the rest in my shrink's office), the phone rang again. This time it was my parents' house phone. I let it go to voicemail, thinking it was my mother again. Turns out it wasn't. It was a tearful call from my brother who did meth again and who broke up or was broken up with again. He was speaking of life and the relationship with the same pronouns with no distinctions between them "It's over. It's really over this time. There's nothing left..."

All of this was while I was on the way to the doctor's office. Usually I am more worried and sad for my brother. Today, my very first reaction was anger.

Also, I think I caught "the stomach thing" my advisor and half my lab have had. Either that or tag team mom and brother are giving me a hell of an ulcer. I have felt like total ASS all day.

Home after the doctor's appointment - still feeling horrible, but I managed to finish the midterm for my class. I don't think it's too bad although I suspect that it might have benefited from a less foggy and sick head. A___ looked it over for me and helped correct the stupid mistakes. While I was working on it, a student wrote to me to tell me that she's been kinda sick and wants to reschedule the midterm. Oh this was just so not the night for that. I mean, I am empathetic but just tonight....not tonight. I told her the makeup exam would include an oral or essay section.

As I was finishing up the exam, formatting it so it's not confusing or riddled with mistakes, my brother started text messaging me. Last we talked, I thought he was going to the hospital. See, meth makes you fucking psychotic when you come down and he's already on antipsychotics. So when he comes down, he usually needs restraints.

Nope. Not at the hospital. At home, alone, freaking out. I'm stuck over 2 hours away and I want to help but I want this to stop, for me but mostly for him.

I really am tired of this - it's not that I don't want him to contact me. What I'm tired of is him not taking care of himself. I told him when we talked that he needs to keep fighting this, and that sometimes it's hard but that doesn't mean you've stopped fighting, that fucking up sometimes is part of it - providing you take care of yourself. God it's so hard to help from down here. I remind myself it's not much easier to help when he's local either. But I can't help feeling if I were closer I might be more help - maybe not at these acute times but on other occasions which could help avoid the crisis at all. At least some times.

Last night, whenever I asked him what he was doing NOW, he would start talking about where he could (and couldn't) live, what his options were (and weren't) for longer term stuff. He couldn't or wouldn't talk about NOW, tonight, about making a plan so he would be safe just for now....and, to be perfectly blunt, so he wouldn't do anything really fucking stupid. Which he does when he's on or coming off meth.

It's frustrating that he doesn't think he's worth taking care of, and that goes for when he's fucked up or sober. That is the biggest thing that I see needs changing. And yeah, when you do the shuttle from bus station to ER, when you get 2 AM crazy fuck text messages from your sketchy brother, and when this is not as rare as it should be (say like never) you've sort of earned the right to at least voice some comments on what needs changing in that life.

omMFg

A___ and I saw the coolest apartment today. It's a little pricey although still cheaper than us living separately and certainly normal for the market here in fuckville nowhere CT. The biggest con is that it's far from campus, about 18 miles, which translates into probably about a half hour of mostly country road commute. This will be difficult to adjust to since I've been living only 5 miles from campus for over a year. Being closer to campus means more independence for me. I'm a little squirrely about that since, well, it's been an issue with the health stuff.

However, the amount of time I have lost due to home disaster related stress and mishaps has been considerable since I moved into the 5 miles from campus rat trap where I currently reside. A___ and I knew that looking further out to try to find a nicer place to live would mean a longer commute. I can't say the prospect doesn't give me a little pause, but I've really deliberated on this for a while.

The apartment is on the first floor of a converted mansion. It is just great. 3 fire places, two big bedrooms, a big kitchen with a fucking pantry (yes, a pantry...I haven't had one of those since I lived in my parents' house), wood floors, wood paneling in the living room, did I mention the fucking fireplaces? And the porch? The private entrance on the first floor (no more rickety open wooden steps to climb with groceries)? The washer and dryer in the basement? The heat and hot water included? The fireplaces? Cats are ok, smoking wasn't even raised as an issue, it's walking distance to a downtown (a real town) and a short drive to things which count as urban here in buttfuck nowhere. Contrast this with a picture of a place A___ and I looked at during our last housing hunt a few weeks ago:


The place that we were being shown (the crappy one from a few weeks ago in the picture above, not the cool mansion apartment from tonight) is the lower level "unit" off to the right. It was $1200, no utilities included, and situated under two sets of "bachelors" (the landlord's word for it, not mine). It took about four calls to the landlord to get him to call me back and set up an appointment. When we did finally get there, he was late. When he showed up, it turned out he had the wrong key. A___ and I waited, swarmed by bugs from the farm pond out back, while the landlord went home to get the right key. Except it turned out that was the wrong key too.

The landlord then showed us the apartment, a converted two car garage, from the outside, pointing out key interior features we could see through the big sliding glass doors which were the only means of egress. We had plenty of time to note some of the more remarkable exterior features as well. For example, we noticed the collection of discarded lawn mowing devices lined up near the house, clearly an homage to a bygone time of giving even a sliver of a shit about the redneck jungle that was threatening to engulf the house, shack, and lower portion of the driveway. We saw several garabage cans with packed trash bags not far from them. The top driveway/front yard had a wrecked car parked in one of the two occupied spots. The side driveway, where A___ and I were told we would park, had a huge truck and another wrecked car. Presumably these vehicles were courtesy of the bachelors.

So, I wondered to myself as I looked around the beautiful, well maintained and cheaper but further away mansion apartment this evening, do I pay more than I would to live in a fucking mansion with three fire places, a porch, beautiful woodwork, and room enough for me, A___, the cat, and heat and hot water included in order to live 10 miles closer to campus?

I think the answer is a big fat no.

Now, will we get the place? Having spent all that time teaching my students about mimicry and behavioral convergence, I was going to try to imitate the landlord a bit to foster a sense of happy-good-people like me-ness. It turns out I didn't have to. I was amused and happy to note that the potential landlord kept adopting my posture while we were talking and touring the apartment. Depending on what he finds in A___ and my credit records and bank accounts (you know, the usual checks and shit), I think it's a go. I hope so at least.

We had gone to the mansion place on a sort of whim, but we went with checkbooks. We left a deposit with the applications and hoped all thirteen miles back to our local rat traps with mold encrusted holes in the ceilings, broken windows, and a convicted sex offender neighbor whose entire family communicates through only screams, yells, and hollers.

We reached the rat trap around 8:30. It was dark. It was Something or Another Booze Special Night at the bar on the other side of our driveway. The bar used to be cool, a nice little local bar and restaurant with outside eating and casual charm, but then it was bought by a dickhead (who happens to also live in my current apartment building). The dickhead parties with teens on a regular basis. He's my age, playing beer pong with kids and trying to pick up girls who still talk squeeky voice even when they are buying from their drug dealer (who lived downstairs from me). Since the dickhead acquired it, the bar now caters to undergrads and bikers. Wow. Fun.

As I walked up the driveway, listening to the sounds of drunk idiots misparking their cars and bikes in the bar parking lot behind me, I saw the landlord had left up several of his ladders from today, the latest round of playing "Ropes and ladders" (aka fixing the roof) which involved ropes outside my bathroom window this morning while I was showering and the sound of my landlord not quite breaking through the ceiling.

"Look...his ladders are still up. Maybe he's still up there," A___ and I joked to one another.
"Maybe he fell off."
"Yeah maybe he's around back."
"Fuck. I hope we get that place."
"Me too."

swan lake

(is what is playing in my head* Probably because I watched Top Secret recently and there's that whole ballet scene, although what triggered my recall of this now is a complete fucking mystery to me)

It is BEAUTIFUL out today. Unfortunately, my yesterday got derailed, leaving me with too much to do today. I desperately want to go out and enjoy September. I can see orange and pinkish peach leaves in the distance, beyond the clump of summer which remains in the field immediately outside my window. Out there, Fall is happening and I really want to be part of it.

I'll have to find a reason to not sit in here all day preparing the week's lecture notes. See, I know if I fuck off today, I will seriously regret it Monday and Tuesday if not all week. So I can't just give myself permission to get out there for getting out there's sake. I need a good, solid reason. Anyone thinking I'm an uptight rule oriented freak? Yep. Sometimes. It would just be so easy....to take off, eat apples, find a porch or otherwise unleafy, nongrass covered shadey area to sit in while I watch the light change.

It's hard to be disciplined about this since yesterday's derailment wasn't due to fucking off but rather to a big fat somewhat unexpected migraine. I guess the vertigo on Thursday and Friday was a harbinger...I blew it off, took meds, whatever. And then early yesterday afternoon, just as I was about to leave to meet the white van landlord, SMACK, a big fat fucking sparkly twisty edged hole in my vision. If I hadn't felt so damned bad already, I'd have put a hole in the wall. Unless your body routinely betrays you like this, my guess is you won't fully understand just how extremely frustrating this can be. What makes it worse is that I was finally feeling like I was getting the swing of the lecture prep (a little), working out a rhythm. I had already lost some time this week with the vertigo but thought I was still doing well. Lost some more time being mopey about the worsening leaks Friday night (I came home to a flooded filing cabinet), but figured I put in a good chunk of time Saturday and today and still be ahead of the game on Monday. Now I'll be lucky if I get the minimum done - which is why I really (really) should stay in and work. And why I really really feel fucking robbed.

On the plus side, there is migraine sex which was quite good (coudn't really do much else so why not?) So my yesterday was disjointed mix of lying about in dark rooms trying to borrow into the pillows and synesthetic migraine sex, which did seem to help a bit. I didn't get much productive done until after 5:00PM when the photosensitivity was reduced enough that I could work providing I wore my sunglasses. I made a good start at an outline of the upcoming section of the course by working late into the night, but if I don't work most of today and tonight, I'll have some seriously disorganized lectures this week.

The migraine meant I (sadly) missed the visit to the "rental". The ambiguity of the term "rental" is fully appropriate here. It wasn't an apartment but the units sure weren't houses. What would you call them? Cottages? Cabins? Shacks? From the pictures A____ took, they look as if they could be considered cute if you were staying in them on a camping vacation. They'd make a somewhat civilized alternative to a tent or leanto or whatever the fuck camping sporty people sleep in when they go commune with bugs and and nature and shit. But living in? Hell no.

When I look at the picture (top right), I start thinking of the theme to Little House on the Prairie (the closing credits theme, which is a bit more up tempo and frolicksome than the opening). It's not that this place is remotely musical or inspiring (although what inspiration underlies 70s family TV show closing credits music is questionable). * Lately my brain is a near constant soundtrack of made up and/or existent melodies. And not always or even usually ones I'd like to hear much less get stuck humming for HOURS. It's sort of fun sometimes but mostly it's fucking annoying. I think this phenomenon is an artifact of me being stressed out.

But I digress.

A___ described the rental property thusly (very close paraphrasing):
The first thing I noticed was lots of grass, more grass than you would be ok with, a long dirt driveway, and a child playing in a puddle. There were several small brown houses all back behind one big white house.
(Me: What's the set up? I mean, why do you think they were built?)
Probably, they might have been farm hand housing, converted bunkhouses maybe. They went way back, down a dirt trail. It would be horrible to shovel. The guy was over in a side field, shirtless, working on something like an antique tractor. The entry lights on the units were all extension corded and looked pretty rigged up.

There's more. A___ mentioned something about a pile of mattresses outside. They are not shown in a picture, but that sounds perfect. I wonder if Martha Stewart could be persuaded to do a feature on the quaint rural charm of Northeastern CT ("the quiet corner!") where she can talk about the proper arrangement of bedding, appliances, and electronic equipment to give your property that old yankee junk yard feel.

I think one of the selling points of this place would be the light fixtures. I mean, look at that sconce! Isn't it adorable!?










Is it me or does that look like FIRE damage?











And then there's the kitchen. Arguably, one of the most important rooms for me. I like to cook, A___ likes to cook. This is what I call the "walk through" kitchen, it's sort of more of a hallway than a kitchen. The arrangment of everything in a nice row against the one wall enhances the all important intimacy of food preparation. Also, again note the lovely fixture. This time its the classic brass and plastic candle chandelier. Nothing says "welcome home" like that familiar, brassy smack on your head.

squished

I had been writing a post when poof, I lost power. It's back on again, but who knows for how long. If I were a lesser person, this would be really trying my patience.

Hey, wait, it is trying my patience. I guess I'm lesser.

Poor A___. He came over before we were planning to head up to campus only to find me nowhere near ready to go, stomping from room to room inspecting the leaks, and pondering whether or not I should move my bed. My mood was not swell, and possibly the resulting argument was unavoidable. I want to believe there is a good way to deal with me when I get like this, but I often suspect there isn't.

Moving anything, even contemplating moving or doing anything that involves physical strain, puts me in a foul mood. I'm not a large person and was never terribly strong. Now that I have whatever it is I have, it's just that much harder. So I'm here pondering moving shit, which would involve asking him to move it for me mostly, and thinking that I don't want to be so dependent, and thinking that if I weren't so freaked out about dependency and independence we probably could have moved in together when A___'s lease was up, which would allow us to afford to live somewhere that doesn't feature gaping moldy holes in the ceiling.

But I am very reluctant to move in with him. The reluctance alone is enough to make me think I shouldn't. I worry I'll sabotage the relationship out of fear and insecurity. Since that is the case and since there are so few decent and affordable single apartments around here, I remain in this one. But this is a catch 22, right? Because by remaining in this one, I continue to be dependent when one of the problems with this apartment manifests in a physical way.

While A___ was out (he went out shortly after we had a fight), I decided I could manage to move my bed by myself. I did. It's moved, however, after I moved it I realized three things.
One - The only placement where the bed fits and where it will be clear of the leaks requires that several other pieces of much heavier furniture be moved.
Two - I have hurt myself moving the bed (ow).
Three - There is yet another dark spot forming on the living room ceiling directly over where I have stacked my DVD player, VCR, and stereo. If that becomes an active leak, all of that will need to be moved as well.

Sometimes when I was younger, I would rearrange my furniture for a change of pace. It was a little tiring and sometimes sweaty work which I saved for when I was in some kind of manic cleaning/housekeeping burst. It was ultimately very satisfying to do this when I lived in larger quarters and had more energy at my disposal. This though, this is not fun and it is not satisfying. It is soggy, annoying, frustrating, and very tiring.

I have bad luck with water. That's what it comes down to. I used to joke that it is because I have a lack of water in my birth chart so water is like my kryptonite. In every single place I have lived, I've had some kind of destructive water related event.

Ann Arbor - at the end of my first month in my new apartment, my (then) fiance Bob and I woke one morning to the sound of water in our bedroom. It was pouring down the wall behind the bureau, soaking everything on and in it. Turns out the neighbors upstairs were leaving on a trip to Europe and had decided to wash everything at once in the small washing machine. This threw it off balance and resulted in the machine pulling out of the wall, with water gushing uncontrollably out of the pipe.

Ann Arbor - my last year there we moved to a house. I was in my basement office (it was very pink) working when I realized that I could hear water hitting cement in the unfinished part of the basement. I ran upstairs to find that although I had closed the window to Bob's office on account of a nasty rain storm, the water had filled up inside the window frame like dam. The dam had finally broken and a small spill off pond had formed under the window. In this pond, the power strip for my husband's computer floated, still plugged in and on. Before I could get back to the basement to turn off the power, something shorted and we lost Bob's brand new printer/scanner/fax machine.

Connecticut - within the first week of buying our house, we discovered the roof hadn't been finished properly and a retaining wall in the basement were cracked. We discovered this because during the first rain storm, water came in through both. The roof water ruined a sizable chunk of the ceiling and wall in my office that I had just finished painting.

Connecticut - One of my friends flushed the toilet in the guest bathroom and it got stuck. it ran all day, draining the well. It took several days to recover, during which time my siblings were down for a holiday. My brother refused to crap in the house since we were conserving flushes to one a day. He was so concerned that someone might see his waste that he decided he would shit in the woods. This did result in one of the most amusing moments of tormenting him I have ever had, but it did suck a whole lot too.

Connecticut - Very shortly after moving into my new apartment in 2000 (middle of separation and end of the semester), I got sick. I went to my doctor on a Friday afternoon, and he sent me straight to the hospital for an ultrasound. When I returned to my little apartment much later that night, I found a note from my insane landlady saying that the hot water heater had exploded in the basement and that I would not have r cornered me in the hallway with a barrage of questions about what I was doing earlier thatunning water for a day. She later evening since she swore she could hear water running in my apartment. She all but said I had somehow broken the heater. This woman eventually threw me out because of this and other imagined offenses (i.e. that I was running up and down the stairs pounding on the other tenants doors).

Connecticut - Various problems with the well in another apartment. It ran out, cracked, was contaminated, and the pump blew, all on different occasions. We also had a tenant whose dishwasher broke loose much like the washing machine at the first place in Ann Arbor. The tenant wasn't home and hot steaming water was flooding the basement and coming into the kitchen of her next door neighbor, Karen. Karen pounded on my door (why me?) and we spent the next few minutes in the basement while my landlord begged me by cell phone to just turn all of the faucets I could find until it stopped.

Connecticut - This place has just been chock full of water problems. Really it's the same problem. This place is like a sieve and my landlord and apartment manger are cheap bastards who have tried to get away with cheap quick fixes for too long.

So what's the upshot? The upshot is I have to find some way to make this tolerable so I'm not cranky with people like the nice sexy man I essentially just chased out of my apartment today for the crime of what, being too quiet? Jeez.

I am thinking of offering a barbie doll in ritual sacrifice to Tlaloc, the scary Aztec rain god (that's him up there on the left).

Sure, she's plastic and the Aztec gods are more the flesh and blood types, but she's a symbol of so much that is revered in our society. I think that it is fitting, plus, apparently Tlaloc likes the smell of burning rubber.

Rainfall data for my area (for yesterday):

	Actual	Normal	Record	Last Year
Precipitation	0.70 "	0.12 "	1.50 " ( 1944 )	0.00 "
Month-to-date precip.	7.02 "	3.13 "	--	1.36 "
Year-to-date precip.	27.41 "	22.06 "	--	20.16 "

(from wunderground.com)

Classifieds

So it is that time again. When I consider which is worse in terms of housing - the devil I know or the devil I don't know. The place I live in now has some serious pros and some serious cons. Hence, I've been ambivalently browsing the classified sections every so often the last few months, wondering what to do, when to do it, and whether or not to do it with someone or on my own. That is a whole other post. For now, I wanted to share some of the absurdities I have seen in my searches. This is a composite, taken from real housing ads in my area:

Unexpected summer vacancy in much sought after campus area! 1 and 1/2 bedroom historic cottage (i.e. some slanting floors, low doorframes in places, etc.) on owner occupied property available in May at earliest. Possible extension for year. Walking distance to woods and cows. Newer carpeting. Paritally furnished. Kitchen opens into eating/living area. Full bathroom w/antique fixtures. $950 a month. Security deposit $2000 and $75 non-refundable application fee required in advance. No smoking. No pets. No subleasing.

Warmth

I woke up this morning to the sound of a beer truck unloading below the window. I think they slam the flats extra hard because they are beer truck drivers. I'm not sure the one follows from the other for all, but for me it is a completely valid implication. It's cold outside. Not bitter, I remind myself as I retrive my coffee from my friend A___'s apartment. Just cold. It smells like it will snow.

Yesterday I got my electric bill for mid November through mid December. It's $129.89. Let me write that out a different way: My electricity bill is one hundred and twenty-nine dollars and eighty-nine cents. Nope, it still sounds bad. Keep in mind that I live in a three room apartment folks, that's three counting the bathroom.

So what do I want for christmas this year? I think a nice toasty barrel fire.

Can we get someone working on that? Fuck the development stage, we can go straight to marketing. First thing we'd need is a nice name for it. The chimenita? A barrelorro? Barreletta?

I think this could be a big money maker. Look at the popularity of those outdoor fireplace things. There wasn't even a functional need for those, certainly not a need as dire as what people will be experiencing this winter when it does get bitterly cold out. Ah, chimineas, that's what they were. My ex's brother got one for their dad last year. Perfect present for the manly manlike man on your shopping list, btw. Hey Dad, do you long for the summertime when you have a socially acceptable excuse to start a fire outside? Do you miss being able to burn trash or piss into a fire on any given night? Then you need a chiminea!

But I digress.

Oh there's the snow. It's snow globe snow, hovering slow swirling dots.

Spins

I am so DIZZY!!!! At first, I thought I hadn't woken up correctly. My wake up call from the maintenance guy (fixing toilet tomorrow) was abrupt and early for a person who routinely is most awake between 9 pm and 2 am. Left some of my brain asleep. So I snoozed in bed for another few minutes. Tried it again. This time I thought "maybe I just need to get up". That really hasn't worked out so well for me.

I'm waiting for my sister to come over so I can shower. I figure it's the responsible thing to do since if I fall over when I'm here by myself, it would suck. The collapsing shelves with 50 lbs of perception papers flying over my head last week was an unpleasant but firm reminder of how stupid it is to do dangerous things that you're really just not physically fit enough to do. I am not accustomed to a lower level of ability, and I do sometimes push things too far. But today, well, apparently showering and going up and down stairs will be big fucking events.

I'm trying not to be too pissed off about this. Being pissed doesn't help me and it only makes my head hurt. Better to think about....um...feeling better? I'm going to make some ginger tea and go look at the "Dress the supreme court justices" section of the America book.

Note: While I've personally found ginger to serve me well for things like menstrual cramps and nausea (never tried it for dizziness but I'm about to find out), I have read that Ginger may interfer with blood clotting.
Further, relative to this and all posts relating to health on my blog, understand that I'm not a health care professional. Just someone who is sharing her personal experiences with illness, treatments, and recovery charge of her health. Therefore, none of what I write here should be interpretted as a subsitute for professional medical advice.