MY LIFE - FEBRUARY
Social Experiment #301 - Saturday, February 1, 2003
I fully realize that catching everyone up on everything that's happened over the last couple of weeks would take a lot of time. Plus it would require me to remember everything that's happened and that just ain't gonna happen. My memory has never been good and quite frankly, there's a lot of shit that's happened that I really don't want to remember.
Like how the workers dumped plaster down our drains and helped cause the main pipe to burst in our basement. Nothing like a mess of dirty water in your basement to make you feel at home. Then it takes a week for someone to come out and clean out the drain and replace the bad section of pipe? Talk about emergency service.
In affect, there was no water in this house for about two weeks. That makes going to the bathroom, showering, and other things that involve water a bit more challenging. It also meant keeping the hotel room just a bit longer.
How about the lovely job of tiling done on the steps leading to the basement? Let's not take the old tile off, clean the floor, and then put new tile down. No, let's save some time by just placing the new tile over the old tile and expect that to be no problem.
Nothing like going down the steps and realizing you have tile sticking to your feet because it didn't stick.
Another proud moment? The two inch thick layer of plaster that was in our bath tub because the workers failed to cover the tub up while they were working in the bathroom. Or the fact that they did absolutely nothing in the bathroom at all. They didn't fix the toilet, put the sink in, or put the floor in. They said they did, but I distinctly remember my mom painting, my mom tiling, and my mom and her dad doing everything else.
The slow drain was a good one. The fact that half the doors don't shut right is another good example of hard work. It took two hours of sanding just so my door would close, never mind that it still doesn't latch right. The bathroom door is a joke and the door to the dining room has its issues as well.
We're just getting started though. There was no seat for the upstairs toilet for a long time. None of the closets have any kind of pole to hang your clothes on (mine doesn't even have a ceiling for that matter), the bathroom upstairs is lacking a shower rod for a curtain, the sink and toilet are in the wrong places, the back door was busted by the workers, who also managed to break the deadbolt on the side door.
They put light fixtures in, but no light bulbs. Fixtures that had bulbs in them suddenly lost the bulbs from one day to the next. My lamp, which they had been using during construction, has gone missing. My mom's tools, well, we're not sure what happened there. The windows that took us weeks to open when we first moved in here because they were painted shut were repainted shut! Well, the ones that didn't have the ropes cut that helped them stay open in the first place.
There's no vent going into the living room. There's a floor vent where they put a new wall in, but instead of removing the vent and placing it else where in the living room, they just covered it with the wall. There happens to be an electrical outlet right above the old vent. Consequently, the living room is colder than the rest of the house.
If you can't tell, we're not exactly pleased with the job that has been done on our house. It's bad enough that we had to deal with a fire, but it's even worse when you look at what's been done here and see just how half-assed it's all been. It gets even worse when you realize that this is eight full months after the fire. It doesn't take eight months to build a new house from scratch the right way. How did it take so long to fix ours?
In talking with my mom and the man overseeing the work (who is a pretty mindless idiot of you ask me), it seems that the workers stopped giving a shit about halfway through, they were often pulled off this job to do other jobs, didn't seem to know what they were doing, then tried to rush to finish up what they were doing.
Small wonder why my mom isn't going to give them all the money from the insurance to cover the costs.
The thing that's most frustrating is most of the work going on now is to fix mistakes that were made earlier. They finally came in and fixed our drain so we could have running water again. It only took two weeks. It wasn't until my mom said they weren't getting all the money they wanted that they decided to come in and actually do what they were supposed to do.
Even then, no one showing up is a common occurence. Today two guys were supposed to come out and redo the the trim around our back door, which was just recently replaced last night. Hmm. Seems no one showed up since the door looks exactly the same.
The supervisor of all this tried to tell my mom that they fixed the second floor bathroom, toilet and all. My mom kindly reminded him that all his workers did was put up the dry wall. My mom painted and tiled the room. Her dad fixed the toilet that they couldn't fix. He put the sink in. He's going to help her with the bathtub. They did shit in that room and they tried to take credit for it.
Through all this I've kept my mouth shut, but that's not going to happen much longer. I'm not happy with the way this has been handled. They certainly don't deserve the $20,000 that they thought they were getting. I don't think they deserve the $15,000 that my mom's going to give them. We have pictures showing what was done wrong. They have no way to prove that we're trying to screw them out of money.
It's just something my mom doesn't need. She's been paying a $500+ mortgage every month for a house she couldn't live in for 8 months. She picked things out that didn't make into the house. The sinks, she didn't pick those. The workers did because they were the cheapest ones. She didn't get most of the things she wanted because the workers didn't want to do it the way she wanted, and yet she's supposed to be happy with this cheap-ass job they've done?
Sorry, but it isn't happening.
We finally finished moving stuff from the hotel to the house and we officially checked out of the hotel last night. There's one thing I've learned from this whole experience, something to keep in mind if we ever have to move again:
My mom has way too much shit.
We made three trips yesterday alone just to haul her stuff back here, and that doesn't include what was already here either from the recovery and storage centers and the other two trips we made earlier in the week.
In my estimation, about 75% of her stuff is books. Big, heavy, books. These are not your average books either. These are mostly medical books. I still can't get over just how many books she had. It's a good workout carrying those things around, but it's not exactly something I'd be looking forward to the next time we have to move, which at this rate I hope is never.
I'm serious too. I've moved enough the last three years. In March, 2000, we moved from Brunswick to Cleveland. In November of 2001, I moved from my house to my apartment in Lakewood. In February, I moved back from the apartment to my house. In May, we had our lovely fire and moved from the house to the hotel. And finally, these last few weeks, we've been moving back from the hotel to the house.
Through all of this, I've found that I get tired of moving boxes around. Three of the last four times, it's been a rushed move. The first of those came during my break-up with Tab. That essentially took about a day, since most of my stuff was crammed into my mom's truck the night of the break-up. The second of those was right after the fire. I won't soon forget that since I remember sorting through the things that were ruined and the things that weren't. This last one, I'll try to forget since most of the time, the weather wasn't cooperating and we were dealing with problems at the house.
In essence, moving sucks and nothing would make me happier than to stay in one place for a while.
I've been talking to Jessica again lately and the feelings that I had begun to develop for her have been returning. I just have so much fun talking to her and I love listening to her talk. Yet the same problems continue to come up. If she's home, she's usually in the middle of something and can't talk much, or her phone dies. If she's not home, she never calls me back. Generally, trying to find a time when we can hang out is like pulling teeth and so far, we've been unable to work anything out.
As much as I like her, I can't help but feel frustrated. This weekend has been a prime example why. Yesterday she spent all day telling me she wasn't going to be able to go anywhere, otherwise she'd have me come see her and hang out. I leave for a while to do help my mom move more stuff. When I get back home and call her, I find out she's gone out and no one knows when she'll be back. Today, it was the same deal. First time, she wasn't home. Second time, there was no answer. Now I couldn't have done anything anyway, but I still would've liked to talk to her at some point.
It's frustrating not just cause I haven't been able to hang out with her, but because she never calls me. When we went two weeks without talking, she told me she had just been thinking about me, yet she didn't try and call. When I tell her grandma to let her know that I called, she doesn't do it. I don't know if it's because she forgets or what the reason is, but it kind of makes me wonder if she really does like me the way she says she does.
Then again, there are certain things that come into play that I'm not at liberty to discuss here. So while I'm frutrated, at the same time I can completely understand why things have gone the way they've gone.
The thing that worries me most is that nothing will come to pass between us and in the time that I've spent trying to get with her, I'll have missed out on another chance with another girl. I've already blown enough chances in my life, so I'd like to avoid doing that again. At the same time, I feel if I give up now, I wouldn't be completely fair since she has tried to make things happen, they just haven't worked out yet.
Who knows. Maybe we will get to see each other some day soon and all this time and effort will be rewarded. That's what I'm hoping for. I've made enough mistakes when it's come to dealing with women.
Some of you may remember a girl named Katie. I really didn't mention her outside of a Come Again column that has long since been gone. In the few times that she was mentioned, one of them involved how I had found out it was her that had sent a very nasty e-mail to me, then signed my guestbook admitting it.
This has been something that I've very rarely mentioned, partly because of just how badly things ended up going, but because at the time, I didn't know how to handle the whole mess.
Well, not too long ago, I sucked up my pride and e-mailed her with an apology for how I handled things, that it wasn't entirely her fault. This came after I had seen her picture online and suddenly felt very guilty about it all. I figured if I heard anything back at all, it would be a minor miracle. Well, not only did I hear back from her, but I got the best possible response that I could have expected. My apology was accepted and we have since began to talk again.
I didn't do it though because I thought maybe I'd have another chance with her. While I wouldn't have exactly shied away from that sort of thing, I certainly wouldn't expect it to work out that way anyway. Too much time had passed and I figured by now she would have someone to call her own anyway. I was right in that regard.
No, I did it because I thought about what happened, how both of us handled it, and how I seemed to try and avoid the whole situation as much as possible. I must have been trying to convince myself that I did nothing wrong, but I knew I had. I knew I had handled the whole mess very badly and in refusing to acdept that fact sooner, could have done irreversible damage to any possible friendship we might have been able to salvage.
Luckily, that hasn't been the case. We've been talking again and at least I can sit her and say she's a friend of mine. The whole situation just bothered me though. I couldn't sit her and pretend that it was all okay. It wasn't. I handled it bad, she handled it bad, and I just felt I had to make how I felt known to her. Thankfully, I hadn't deleted that guestbook entry, otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to e-mail her.
In the end, it didn't feel shameful to admit I was wrong. It felt good to let her know how I felt and even better to know that she didn't want to poke my eyes out with an icicle.
I bring all this up because it was almost a year ago that Tab and I broke up. It's been a year since we've been together, and at least for me, it's been a very rocky year. I've yet to get in another relationship (not that I've helped my case in some instances) and she's on her way to being a mother (barring any unforeseen obstacles).
I think the biggest thing I still lack is the confidence to go up to a girl I might like and just talk to her. I still cannot do that. The worst part is I know a lot of girls like a guy with that kind of confidence, yet I can't get myself to go up to a girl and just talk to her and at least find out her name.
Part of me wants to get with Jessica because she's such an outgoing girl who's not afraid to say what she thinks. I feel that it may rub off on me and make me more outgoing, but that of course entails us actually getting together.
I guess in short this whole dating thing is still very challenging to me. It doesn't always help when a coworker of mine points out that I seem to only attract psychopaths, but I'm not really sure if it's fair to sit here and say that. I don't consider Tab a psycho, so that's one out of the loop. Nichole at work finally admitted she likes me and continues to ignore the fact that I don't like her, so maybe she's a bit psycho in that regard, but really, I think that was an unfair thing to say.
Of course, considering the source, I'm really not going to put much stock into that sort of thing.
There have been very few complaints among techs over the job I've done with scheduling, then again, most of the complaints at work center over the fact that we have practically no help at times to work with. I have run into some sticky issues though lately. For one, Nichole really can't seem to work on Monday. I need four techs Monday night, but if she can't work, that leaves me with three. Okay, fine, I can work with that. Well, one of my other Monday techs, Michelle (who's a bit of a nutcase herself), is trying to get out of working Mondays. I pretty much told her tough shit since that would leave just Cora and me to work. Cora doesn't exactly want to work Mondays either, but that's too bad too.
I don't exactly care for Mondays, but until we get more help, there's nothing I can do about it. As for any other complaints, I've already made it clear that bullshit reasons for not wanting to work will not be taken into consideration. I'm not going to screw around with the schedule because someone doesn't like working certain days. If you don't like it, that's just too damn bad.
I know I haven't mentioned anything involving the shuttle that exploded today, but that's mostly because I don't really know anything about what happened yet. I was at work most of the day and I just don't think I have the stomach to read about another disaster at this point in time.
I'm still not feeling that terribly great about the things that President Bush said the other night during the brief periods of time that I was listening. I know that Iraq is a threat, but all this seems to be with him and Iraq is a revenge thing for his dad. I just can't get past that. He's really going to make things difficult if he tries to go to war with Iraq, especially with so many countries against it. It just worries me because he seems to be doing this for the wrong reasons. If we're involved anywhere, it should be in North Korea. Those guys scare me. They're going to nuke someone at some point if we're not careful.
I just don't like what Bush is doing, bottom line. None of it makes any sense at all.
I've had a lot on my mind lately and it all revolves around what's been going on with the house, with Jessica, and with work. I know I haven't been on much and I know I've been hit or miss with this site, but it's not because I don't want to write, not because I don't want to talk to anyone, but because it's just so hard to find time anymore.
I want everyone to know that I haven't forgotten any of you and that I'll do my best to get back to writing the way I can, but for now, all I can say is I'll try. Try to understand.
Otherwise, I'll have to kick your ass. Thank you, have a nice day.
Bastards.
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