MY LIFE - JANUARY
Social Experiment #299 - Friday, January 17, 2003
Let me start by saying Happy New Year to everyone since I haven't been on my instant messengers since early December. I know, I know, it's terrible, and I profusely apologize, but my mom didn't want anyone making any kind of phone calls from the hotel room, which made getting online a bitch. In short, it didn't happen for three weeks.
In those three weeks, not a whole hell of a lot happened. I'm writing the schedule at work now, so that's new, but outside of running into Shelby at Great Northern Mall, nothing noteworthy has happened recently.
Oh, well, there is one little thing that happened.
We moved back into our house. Actually, it was two days ago, when I was writing the Come Again entry (#298). I went back to the hotel and everything was getting moved around and my mom told me that we were moving back that night. Well, she wasn't since her room wasn't completely finished, but my sister, her boyfriend J, and myself were.
So began a series of trips back and forth from the hotel, in Westlake, to our house in Cleveland. To compound matters, it began snowing about when we began moving things. Every time we left where ever we were, the snow was falling harder and it was getting real sloppy on the roads. Typical lake-affect snow for Cleveland.
Pretty much all of our stuff went back that night, but more of it was moved back last night after I got off of work. It wasn't completely smooth, since I managed to lock my mom's keys in her truck while it was running. About half an hour later, she showed up with her keys, my car, and I was able to get the hell out of the parking lot I was in and try and save face a little bit.
We also moved some of the cats last night as well. Kisa, Simba, Nermal, and Cricket came back. Lazarus and Boone are with Lori (who's not speaking to my mom at this moment) while Big Guy and Spooks are still in cages at the hotel. Should be interesting moving them. Spooks nearly took my arm off two years ago.
I'm pretty much settled back in. Kisa's in my room for now, the dogs are at the house, alternating between the room we trap them in and going outside. Teresa and J are almost settled in. I say almost because part of the main bathroom is parked in their room. Yes, there's still work to be done on the house.
One of the major issues we've run across already is that there's a problem with the plumbing. Sometimes the water, well, it doesn't always go down the pipe right away. We're not sure what the deal is, but my mom had some choice words for the workers who were working on it.
She also had issues with the phones not working yet, the tile on the steps to the basement falling off the floor, and the hole in one of the main pipes of the plumbing. Nothing like turning on a bathtub and hearing water dripping somewhere in the house. Oh, did I mention there's no hot water yet?
You know what though? I'm happy. I'm in my own house. I don't have to worry about being too loud and having someone in a room below me call and complain. Yes, Shade's been a little too rambunctious outside with his barking, but the fact that we can let him outside and let him and Anubis run around is more than satisfying. If you don't really understand how I feel (for all you "I can't wait to get out of this house" types), just try and imagine what it's like to have to spend 8 months in a hotel suite. You have no privacy, no room to put anything anywhere, you can't let your pets roam loose cause God knows they'll rip something up, you have to pay to do your own laundry in a bunch of cheap-ass washers, drive 45 minutes to go anywhere at all since you're way away from where you need to be, have to worry about accidentally breaking something there that's not yours, and it goes on and on.
Trust me, it sucks. I'll take living in my house over anything else.
I mentioned that Lori hasn't been talking to my mom lately. Well, my mom kind of told her that she couldn't move back in with us (not that she was going to live there anyway), that she wasn't going to have a room reserved for her. Evidently this didn't go over very well, which is fine. All Lori ever used my mom's house for was to store the massive amount of stuff that she possesses. She very rarely lived there, and when she did, she made a mess out of the place.
For now, all her stuff is going into the basement and she'll have to figure out what she's doing with it.
Outside of that, things are in good shape. My mom's stressed, but she's trying to balance working on her room, going to class in the morning, and working at night. She's also trying to take care of everything imaginable in the house, but that isn't going all that smoothly. It's hard on her and there's not much I can do to help since I have to work as well. Teresa and J could help by going through things and moving shit around, but we'll see.
All I know is that this weekend, I'm not going to be available at all. I work 4-12 tonight, 9-5 tomorrow, and after that, it's all about the house. I'll basically be exhausting myself this weekend to try and get shit done at this point, but there's a lot that does need to be done.
You know what though? I don't care how much needs to be done. It's just good to be home.
In the next few weeks, I'm going to be attempting yet another little experiment. I'm not sure if I can pull it off at this point in time since it's such a taxing experiment, but with a little hard work and some faith, I think I can do it.
I'm going to try and go a week without swearing. For anyone who really knows me, this is something worth noting since every other sentence contains at least one word of profanity. I swear a lot. I'm not exactly proud of it, but nor am I ashamed of it either. Most of it's for affect, although some of it's due to frustration with something, usually involving work.
I'm setting up the following conditions for this experiment: the word "crap" is not going to be considered a swear word in this case; whether or not "hell" is considered is based upon context; if I make it through the week, I'm to go as long as can without swearing and make note of the extra length; if I can't make it, well, I haven't figured that out yet.
I also don't know when I'm going to try and pull this off yet either. I'll probably just pick a day and start then and see how it goes. I'm really not sure how well this will go either since I have a bad habit of saying things without realizing it.
But it sure will be fun to try.
I'm in the process of trying to figure out a rumor started at work that I'm interested in Nichole, a girl that I work with. This rumor is of particular interest because I do not have an attraction towards her, plus I think she started it.
Let's start with the basics. Nichole has an attitude. A very big attitude. I won't even be accusing her of something and she's already defensive about her position. You try and point something out to her at work and she gets all mean about it, acting like you're trying to put her down.
She's not very pretty. Not that she couldn't be, but she's not exactly the smallest girl I've ever met. She thinks she's thinner than she is though, judging by her choice of clothes. I just don't have a physical attraction to her, something that does make a difference. Mix that with the attitude and you have a girl that I just can't get along with for the life of me.
I have to admit, I love messing with her head. She's just no challenge to me whatsoever. All she has to do is not respond to the things I say to her, yet she does and inevitably sets herself up for a future remark. It's so easy, yet so sad. She just doesn't help her own case too much.
The other thing she does is she doesn't shut up about things that really don't mean anything. Or she'll ask me something and get mad when I don't hear what she said, mostly because I was in the middle of something. Which is fine. I know I pissed her off the other night by not hearing what she said, and then saying to her that if she didn't want to repeat it, then it must not have been important and something I wasn't going to worry about.
She spent most of the night not saying anything to me. It was actually kind of nice. I usually can't get rid of her.
But evidently, people at work think something's going on. I went through the same thing with Shelby when she was working there (we were sleeping together at one point), but at least Shelby's a pretty girl that I get along with. Nichole and I don't really get along well. She thinks we do, but we don't.
Most everyone knows my stance on this issue now at work, so the rumor is dying a quick death, especially in light of me saying repeatedly that I'm still interested in Jessica and that coworkers dating is not a good thing, in addition to it not being allowed.
Hopefully I've heard the last of this one. I don't like my name involved with rumors.
I take a great deal of pride in few things (writing comes to mind), but one thing that I really am proud of myself for is my ability to keep a level head in most situations. It takes an extraordinary situation for me to be rattled and lose my composure. You will almost never see me flip out over something except in the rarest of cases.
I do have my moments when I start to lost it a little bit, but for the most part, I can keep a clear head and keep myself from getting worked up over something trivial. It just doesn't seem worth it to me.
One example occured during the final game for the Browns, which they lost 36-33. As Pittsburgh drove down the field to score the final touchdown, everyone at work was getting all worked up and was starting to panic. Me? I just walked around, did my job, occasionally glancing at the screen. I wanted them to win badly, but I wasn't going to go crazy over a football game. I save that for when they win.
I don't like getting worked up. There's just something about it that doesn't make sense to me, especially if it's something you can't control. Why waste that energy flustering yourself when you can try and work it out in some manner? I would much rather try and figure out what's going on then get all jacked up about something.
Yet so many people lose their cool so many times, and for what? To allow yourself to look stupid in front of other people? I know it happens because it has happened to me, but when it's something really small and stupid, why worry about it so much that you completely go bonkers?
I also can't stand listening to certain people complain about the drive-thru window right now. Yes, it's freaking cold outside, but that doesn't mean you get an exemption from working the window. Everyone in the pharmacy has worked that window when it's cold out, so shut up and deal with it. I don't think the bitching is making things warmer.
In any case, I take pride in being to stay calm even in the worst situation. It just works better that way.
I'm hoping that this year goes better than last year. Since I was offline for a good period of time, I wasn't able to take time and write an entry that reflected on the past year, look ahead to the upcoming year, and just talk about the things that have happened.
Quite frankly, I don't really need to elaborate on how shitty last year went. From the break-up, to the fire, to one delay after another with the house, to my sister's rocky relationship situation, to my own personal plights, it's been one year to forget.
With that said, my thought process right now is that this year is going to be much better. I have money in my account again (although it's about to be closed down), we're back home in our house, my family situation has tamed down a bit, and things seem to be going right for a change.
I'm hoping that the trend continues since I think we all deserve a break. With all the bullshit that's happened, the best that could happen to us is nothing at all.
Complacency never sounded so damn good.
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