My Monday, so far
Jan. 9th, 2006 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynOne of the few good things about my job is not commuting. I don't have to stand out in the rain or bitter wind waiting for a bus, nor drive in torrential downpours. Which, the past few weeks, I have been very glad about, as we've had insane weather here in the northwest for weeks and weeks now -- unceasing, pouring rain for days on end, no breaks whatsoever, high winds (enough that the other night, I moved my car, fearing the garage roof was going to come off since it is already crumbling away into rot), and the resulting landslides all around. My neighborhood, being on cliffsides and near the sound, and with lots of old-growth greenbelts everywhere, is rife with shut-down streets and warning tape.
And so it's not the best day to wake up to a broken furnace, again. You'd think that $600 would have provided a longer fix than two years and three months, which I pointed out when I called, but damn it's cold in here. Then I had to run off to the dentist to get two fillings taken out and replaced, and dental work has become such a nightmare for me. This went a little better, but there was a point where I was so tense I thought I was going to vomit, and the numbing shots don't seem to last on me very long, so I worry the whole time that it's going to fade right when that drill hits my tooth. I picked up an Egg McMuffin on the way home since I was out early enough (I am helpless in the face of an Egg McMuffin) and eating it was a rather comical experience.
The dental work I could kind of wrap my mind around, but the furnace thing... I just am at the end of my rope, which is one reason I am having so much trouble focusing on fanfic. It's easier in some ways to write the one-off stories in Numb3rs or Band of Brothers or what have you than it is to focus on my WIPs, because I'm such an emotional wreck. A while ago, I went on this buy new furniture kick, and I got all this nice new stuff from Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Kasala (a hipster furniture store here in Seattle) and other places. The living room looks great in some ways, more crowded, but it's different, and for me the past few months have been all about different. I had to replace my fridge last Christmas, so I was going to get a matching range in stainless steel, but the furniture project sort of blew all my cash and I overtextended myself (which is okay, I knew what I was doing, and it's not like a lot of people I know who spend and spend and then act surprised and whine about how they have nothing). I am, as they say, acting out. ;-)
But in between all this, I kept having to call the plumber for various disasters, which was a couple hundred here, three hundred there, and it seems like it will never end. Dale, the plumber, has become my new boyfriend and I've even thought about adding a special room to the house just for him. He comes up to my biceps but I think we should get married anyway because he's always here, and he's very nice and always takes his muddy shoes off. I decided to hold off on the range and just repainted and updated things in the kitchen after my sister died, because somehow paint and stuff seemed like a thing to do to be industrious and push it away. Then last week it started fritzing out on me, so that meant the annual holiday-time appliance meltdown was happening, and I went and got a new range, to be delivered tomorrow.
It was very disappointing. It's hard to find a coil-element range in stainless, for one thing, and the only one they offered was so chintzy I knew it would break down way too soon. They didn't have the all-important storage drawer, either, and when you live in a 700 sq. foot house with everything crammed into your kitchen and only a crawlspace underneath, you really don't want the warming drawer nonsense. Unless I was willing to pop a few more thousand dollars into getting the gas piped into the kitchen, I was stuck with ceramic glasstop cook surface, which I really didn't want. The cleaning and scratching issues are not appealing, but especially the breaking issue. I can just see one of my friends coming in and plunking down their bag of eats for a bash, replete with bottle of wine, bam! on that thing and then a $500 repair bill coming my way. I am going to buy police caution tape and tape it all over the stove for when guests come in.
There are plumbing problems again -- too bad Dale doesn't do heating and furnaces as well as plumbing, I'd be set -- but I'm just trying to ride them out. Dad is getting bids on the garage demolition/rebuild, and that is stressing me out as well. I have tons of meetings, classes, speaking engagements, and preparing for this practicum they want me to do, and I feel like my head is going to explode. This is all without Escapade being in the mix, and I've been trying to jump start the vid show information but am getting nowhere and have had no responses, which is intensely frustrating. My writing group is dissolving and somehow I've become tasked with finding new people, which is beyond me right now. I have to meet with all these financial people to figure out what to do with my sister's estate. I feel like I'm wound so tight that I could just implode. Maybe it's good that it's freezing in here, maybe it's keeping things so cold that I can't. It is so hard for me to write in this kind of mental state.
I know I'm disappointing people -- I have had five "when are you going to finish this/why haven't you updated" whines in the past three weeks -- but it seems like it just doesn't end: repair or delivery people here all the time, spending what little money I have left after my irresponsible extravaganzas on stuff going wrong at least once a week for the damn house, meetings up the wazoo every time I turn around, so many I can't keep track. I want to carve out creative time, but sometimes it's like I'm on autopilot, and I just keep squirreling around, worrying, wringing my hands and rending my garments. I don't think it's going to end, either, because I still have the full copper repipe looming over my head (and how I wish I were Buffy and could bash someone's skull in over that), but hey, one day at a time, right? Bleh.
At least I don't have to communite in the biblical rain. And at least there is Battlestar Galactica.
And so it's not the best day to wake up to a broken furnace, again. You'd think that $600 would have provided a longer fix than two years and three months, which I pointed out when I called, but damn it's cold in here. Then I had to run off to the dentist to get two fillings taken out and replaced, and dental work has become such a nightmare for me. This went a little better, but there was a point where I was so tense I thought I was going to vomit, and the numbing shots don't seem to last on me very long, so I worry the whole time that it's going to fade right when that drill hits my tooth. I picked up an Egg McMuffin on the way home since I was out early enough (I am helpless in the face of an Egg McMuffin) and eating it was a rather comical experience.
The dental work I could kind of wrap my mind around, but the furnace thing... I just am at the end of my rope, which is one reason I am having so much trouble focusing on fanfic. It's easier in some ways to write the one-off stories in Numb3rs or Band of Brothers or what have you than it is to focus on my WIPs, because I'm such an emotional wreck. A while ago, I went on this buy new furniture kick, and I got all this nice new stuff from Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Kasala (a hipster furniture store here in Seattle) and other places. The living room looks great in some ways, more crowded, but it's different, and for me the past few months have been all about different. I had to replace my fridge last Christmas, so I was going to get a matching range in stainless steel, but the furniture project sort of blew all my cash and I overtextended myself (which is okay, I knew what I was doing, and it's not like a lot of people I know who spend and spend and then act surprised and whine about how they have nothing). I am, as they say, acting out. ;-)
But in between all this, I kept having to call the plumber for various disasters, which was a couple hundred here, three hundred there, and it seems like it will never end. Dale, the plumber, has become my new boyfriend and I've even thought about adding a special room to the house just for him. He comes up to my biceps but I think we should get married anyway because he's always here, and he's very nice and always takes his muddy shoes off. I decided to hold off on the range and just repainted and updated things in the kitchen after my sister died, because somehow paint and stuff seemed like a thing to do to be industrious and push it away. Then last week it started fritzing out on me, so that meant the annual holiday-time appliance meltdown was happening, and I went and got a new range, to be delivered tomorrow.
It was very disappointing. It's hard to find a coil-element range in stainless, for one thing, and the only one they offered was so chintzy I knew it would break down way too soon. They didn't have the all-important storage drawer, either, and when you live in a 700 sq. foot house with everything crammed into your kitchen and only a crawlspace underneath, you really don't want the warming drawer nonsense. Unless I was willing to pop a few more thousand dollars into getting the gas piped into the kitchen, I was stuck with ceramic glasstop cook surface, which I really didn't want. The cleaning and scratching issues are not appealing, but especially the breaking issue. I can just see one of my friends coming in and plunking down their bag of eats for a bash, replete with bottle of wine, bam! on that thing and then a $500 repair bill coming my way. I am going to buy police caution tape and tape it all over the stove for when guests come in.
There are plumbing problems again -- too bad Dale doesn't do heating and furnaces as well as plumbing, I'd be set -- but I'm just trying to ride them out. Dad is getting bids on the garage demolition/rebuild, and that is stressing me out as well. I have tons of meetings, classes, speaking engagements, and preparing for this practicum they want me to do, and I feel like my head is going to explode. This is all without Escapade being in the mix, and I've been trying to jump start the vid show information but am getting nowhere and have had no responses, which is intensely frustrating. My writing group is dissolving and somehow I've become tasked with finding new people, which is beyond me right now. I have to meet with all these financial people to figure out what to do with my sister's estate. I feel like I'm wound so tight that I could just implode. Maybe it's good that it's freezing in here, maybe it's keeping things so cold that I can't. It is so hard for me to write in this kind of mental state.
I know I'm disappointing people -- I have had five "when are you going to finish this/why haven't you updated" whines in the past three weeks -- but it seems like it just doesn't end: repair or delivery people here all the time, spending what little money I have left after my irresponsible extravaganzas on stuff going wrong at least once a week for the damn house, meetings up the wazoo every time I turn around, so many I can't keep track. I want to carve out creative time, but sometimes it's like I'm on autopilot, and I just keep squirreling around, worrying, wringing my hands and rending my garments. I don't think it's going to end, either, because I still have the full copper repipe looming over my head (and how I wish I were Buffy and could bash someone's skull in over that), but hey, one day at a time, right? Bleh.
At least I don't have to communite in the biblical rain. And at least there is Battlestar Galactica.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 07:11 pm (UTC)Yeah. Whatever.
Take care of yourself.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 08:35 pm (UTC)Just my opinion, but... you do not owe other people your creativity/updates/writing. Take care of yourself first. If the whiners had your schedules, and hassles, and grieving to deal with, they'd shut up in a hurry.
take care,
--g
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 11:14 pm (UTC)Please totally forget I asked you for the beta work, okay? I had no idea things had gotten so insane. I ask for many pardons.
For the stove: maybe you can get a pad or cloth to cover the range when it's not in use, so people don't mar it accidentally? I'm not sure if my parents' stove is ceramic, but it is glass-top, and I've never seen a scratch on it. Not too hard to clean, either; in fact, easier than a traditional range imo unless you spill some nasty shit right onto the burner.
On Wednesday I'm finishing my first homework project for my Video class. Will email it to you. It's dumb.
Also, I saw myself on video for the first time today. I cannot begin to describe the level of cognitive dissonance I have now. The person in my head is 98% different from the person people see.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 01:09 am (UTC)It's not wonder that the worst torture anyone remembers in movies is always Marathon Man.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 03:55 am (UTC)You know, the main thing is that you take care of yourself. Don't expect all these things of yourself right now - esp. in fandom, which helLO is supposed to be FUN, relaxing, an escape - not another obligation, not another thing to worry about, beat yourself up over...
Chris hot. Vin pretty.
{{{hugs}}}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 02:17 pm (UTC)