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January 2014

 

bullet January 31, 2014

The end of a month that barely existed and with today begins tax season and the craziness that comes to out tax agency as a result. Let's hope that, in my rare hours away from the office, I can wind down quickly and get some sleep.

Posted at 6:52 AM
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bullet January 30, 2014

... yet for all their potential they failed at each turn, hopelessly caught up in their own self-importance.

Posted at 7:03 AM
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bullet January 29, 2014

I watched the State of the Union speech and all I could think was, "I really need to get more sleep."

Posted at 7:23 AM
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bullet January 28, 2014

... and this is life ...

Whoop. Dee. Doo.

Posted at 7:04 AM
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bullet January 27, 2014

Haroldine died yesterday afternoon.

I have written briefly in the recent past about Haroldine, my sister's mother-in-law, and her battle with a returned and aggressive cancer. She was so much more than just a mother-in-law or a distant relative - she was an important part of our fairly small family, and she is irreplaceable.

Haroldine was thoughtful, generous, and kind, a great friend to my grandmother (who loved her dearly) and to our whole family. She was to my nephew and niece what my own grandmother was to me - a close, beloved grandmother who lived ten to fifteen minutes away who was very involved in the lives of her grandchildren while not there everyday and a stable, wonderful, dependable source of love and support.

I am very upset that I did not get to see her once more before she died, but I knew this is what would happen when it was decided I couldn't go to my sister's at Christmas. I feel very bad about not being able to give her a solid, loving hug, and now I won't even be able to get away to attend her funeral. I can only hope she is at peace now, no longer having any pain or discomfort or disorientation. She lived a good life, and she will be missed.

Rest well, Haroldine. You will never be forgotten.

Posted at 7:15 AM
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bullet January 26, 2014

More snow and cold had arrived yesterday and today, pushed by back-to-back Alberta clippers, bringing in an expected eight inches of snow by the end of today. Yesterday the front rolled in and literally changed the sky from sunny to black in a matter of minutes with snow falling so hard and fast it was instantly white-out conditions. Fortunately this only lasted an hour or so even though it did snow more later. Tuesday the prediction is for temperatures to drop to nearly forty degrees below zero (and that's not below freezing, that's below zero Fahrenheit! (perhaps we should start using thermometers on the Kelvin scale)).

Posted at 7:53 AM
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bullet January 25, 2014

I'm earning money and supporting myself. I'm also interacting with people in the apartment building and at work. But I'd still rather be dead and done with all of this, so as I had suspected - and pointed out to her - my mother was wrong and "things [won't] be different if I [have] a job and [am] out interacting with people." Life for me is still misery, society and most individuals are still hugely disappointing in their selfishness and cruelty, and I see no hope for anything really better (despite what to me seems should be great ease at making life better and more pleasant for everyone).

Now rather than being able to spend time talking with my grandmother and losing myself in listening to her tell me a detailed memory or rather than losing myself in a book where this reality isn't a part of things, I'm stuck living in this horrible world and having nothing to distract me from seeing the raw ugliness of it or to keep me from remembering the pain of my life from the past. This is in no way "better" than where I was when living in Sandusky with the exception that I can't be accused of 'taking advantage' of someone or 'leeching off of' someone (neither of which were ever true or fair statements to begin with, but at least now there is no possibility at all of making those outrageous claims). That hardly matters anyway - I'm sure my sister will find new ways to degrade and demean me; she's always done that since we were little kids.

Yes, life is like a bowl of cherries: rotted, moldering, maggot-ridden cherries with huge pits, set in a filthy bowl. Yum.

Posted at 8:00 AM
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bullet January 24, 2014

Sorry to those who chew tobacco, but there is no excuse for you havin' a chaw while you're at work - ever! This is unappealing and unsanitary. Do it on your own time. And to the employers: if you have a no smoking policy, you should also have a no chewing policy, even if chew doesn't cause second-hand smoke. It's still just not something your employees or customers want to be exposed to.

Posted at 7:45 AM
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bullet January 23, 2014

The guy next door to e (a late-teen-to early-twenties guy who is in the army reserves and seems a pretty upstanding guy) stopped me last night as I was getting back from work to tell me his apartment had been broken into over the weekend while he was away. The burglars took his TV and PS3 and apparently everything of value. I immediately felt bad for the guy and told him so. I'd feel bad for anyone that this happened to, but this guy is (as I noted earlier) a really nice guy and certainly deserves better.

Of course I also very quickly felt worry and paranoia for my own apartment and its contents. I may have renter's insurance but that doesn't mean I want to use it. And to be honest, while I have renter's insurance, I would never get enough from it to replace all of the most valuable items if I were thoroughly cleaned out.

My neighbor told me it look like whomever broke into his apartment tried to break in through the window first but only broke through the outer pane of the double-paned window, and then they broke in through his door, I guess by jimmying his deadbolt. His door didn't at the time have a wrap-plate of metal around the deadbolt area of the door and someone must have been able to use some tool to jam in there and wiggle the deadbolt loose. He now has one of those plates on his door - a bit late, sadly. My own apartment already has such a plate in place, but I am nonetheless worried and trying to figure out what to do to better protect my belongings, particularly since I'll be working long hours away from the apartment, every day for months.

Honestly, my life sucks enough. The last thing I need is to be robbed. I've had it happen twice in my life, but over twenty-five years ago both times. I had no renter's insurance then but I had far less stuff to be stolen and a much better chance of replacing things. As it stands now I couldn't replace everything even with the renter's insurance, and some things would be irreplaceable even if I had infinite money.

Let's hope that the universe doesn't follow the normal path and give me this less-than-wanted situation. Because the universe has always done so well at responding to my hopes ...

Posted at 7:25 AM
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bullet January 22, 2014

Instead of being so tired at night that I'm falling asleep an hour before I'd prefer and then waking an hour before I'd care to think about, I'd prefer to have a little more control over my waking hours. It would make it easier for me to operate ... but of course after running into this problem for the past week or so I guess I don't have a lot of control over it.

I suspect the bitter cold is part of the sleepiness issue because I was working full-time before this was a problem and also doing my second job unpacking and setting up the apartment. Perhaps my body is just finally trying to catch up on sleep it missed over the past month, but if that's the case then why do I wake up at 5:45 AM and not be able to go back to sleep for an hour?

At least I am sleeping a fair amount per night. Those nights a month ago when I was only getting a couple hours of sleep a night for every night a couple weeks straight, when I first had to start finding an apartment and packing, were very wearying, so my current situation is not a real problem so much as an inconvenience and an annoyance. But that's the description of everyday life (an inconvenience and an annoyance), so why even say anything?

Posted at 7:28 AM
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bullet January 21, 2014

The single-digit, sub-zero-with-the-wind chill temperatures that have been happening for the last few weeks and are set for every day this week are something I can't ever say I've experienced - on a given day here or there over the years yes, but not day after day for whole weeks at a time, no. I don't mind the cold - in fact I prefer it to being hot - but this kind of cold cuts through you in no time at all, and it makes even the best snow plowing and ice melting useless or less-than-satisfactory. As with most things, we'll live through it, but it will be unpleasant and troublesome (and for teachers and kids I can't imagine how bad this will be considering they've already taken twice the allotted snow days off for the year and there's still a lot of Winter left to go).

Posted at 7:50 AM
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bullet January 20, 2014

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization... The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
1967 (The year I was born ... and things are as bad as ever or worse)

Posted at 8:03 AM
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bullet January 19, 2014

I made it through the first night with the shelf in place in my bedroom and it didn't fall and brain me in the noggin'!!

Steve helped me set up the anchors and put up the shelf, and although we were both not fully satisfied with the results we are fairly certain it will indeed hold. Of course the proof will be in it not crashing down on my head while I sleep, I suppose.

Following the shelf project I took Steve to a long-overdue dinner at my treat. I wanted to try someplace with good Chinese food and Steve chose a Chinese buffet just in the strip mall across the street. It was a good choice as there was a very wide selection, a reasonable price, and best of all - good food! As with most buffets, the stuff fresh from the kitchen was best, but I can honestly say there was nothing I didn't like. Some things were better fresh from the kitchen than if they'd been under the heat lamps for a while, but even the slightly older stuff was good, just not as good as it was fresh. Both Steve and I ate more than we had at any meal in a while, but we enjoyed the meal and talked casually for over an hour. It was a nice, relaxed time.

I had some cleanup to do at the apartment when I returned since putting up the shelves had made some mess, but after cleaning the detritus from that and replacing the box springs and mattress in place, I did a little more cleaning and then read a little online to wind down before heading to bed - and I was out within minutes.

Today I have more cleaning and some projects to do, but with any luck I could finally declare the apartment fully and properly set up. That would be nice. I'll be back to work tomorrow and I'd like to see what it's like to get up and get ready for work, work through the day, and then just come back, settle down and relax with dinner and TV or a book, and relax into sleep rather than forcing it after a night of trying to get more apartment set-up done. I think it should leave me feeling less exhausted and harried, and I'm anxious to see if I'm right (almost as much as I'm anxious to actually have a few hours each night to just relax, something I haven't really had for a month and a half.

Posted at 8:31 AM
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bullet January 18, 2014

It's cold and snowy again as we head into the weekend today, Saturday, and I plan to mostly stay in the apartment.

The main task today is a thorough cleaning from top to bottom (as possible around the last things to be moved and placed). Steve is supposed to come by this afternoon to help me put up the big shelf on my bedroom wall, hopefully in a way that it won't come crashing down on my head at night and leave me a vegetable, fully aware in my head but unable to express myself outside of my mind (that's what would happen. A quick death after a bit of pain would never happen, just something to make me more miserable or, at the minimum, something that would do incredible medical trauma that could be repaired but at some astronomical cost that for some reason or other I couldn't escape through bankruptcy. It's never the simple or preferred result, whatever happens).

I told Steve I'd take him out to dinner at his choice of a local Chinese place in the area as a thank you not just for helping me today but for everything he's been doing to help. It will be nice to give back to Steve and it will also be nice to finally have some good Chinese food (Sandusky's idea of Chinese food is something served with rice, and there were simply no Chinese places to eat in Sandusky that were worth anything (in fact, I wouldn't have eaten in a Chinese place in Sandusky for free ... possibly not even if you had paid me). So that should be nice.

Tomorrow I may go out to stock up on groceries, checking out the nearest Meijer rather than the nearby Kroger I've used a few times now. Mostly, though, I hope to plan on more cleaning, some laundry, some more set-up of the apartment, and repairing an antique chair so it is usable. If I can get these things done then the apartment might just be fully moved in and set up and ready. It would be nice to have it done, but I have a lot to do today and tomorrow to get it there. Hopefully I can get everything done.

Posted at 8:07 AM
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bullet January 17, 2014

Finished the IRS training presentation set yesterday and have a better idea of what different things mean and how to determine who qualifies for what. I even have a better idea of which forms to use for what although I must admit that there are too many forms to keep straight until I've actually used them some - I hope (expect?) that the tax software pulls up the required forms for me under most circumstances, but I have yet to see that for sure.

Today I'll be taking samples out of last year's filings and entering the source information by myself and then seeing if I come up with the same return as the tax preparer that did the work last year. That will put my training to the test and will also answer possibly all of my questions about what the software does and does not do and how it does it. I'll be doing this re-creation of last year's taxes for a while (a couple weeks possibly - even a month has been suggested, although we really don't have that kind of time left before tax season), and I expect after today I'll have a very good feel for things. Hopefully by the end of next week I'll feel ready to do a proper new return. I guess I won't really know until today's over and I've put in the time with the program, but I feel more confident about it now than I did even a few days ago.

The tax man cometh!

Posted at 7:53 AM
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bullet January 16, 2014

Getting up early, cleaning up for work and trying to do a half hour to an hour's work at sorting and unpacking and such things to get the apartment set up, then driving to work and working there a straight eight (imminently to be s straight twelve hours), then driving back to the apartment, setting up clothes for the next work day and making food for the next work day, then fixing food for the evening, then getting back to working on stuff to get the apartment set up - maybe half-watching something on TV at the same time - and then trying to wind down enough to go to sleep before I have to wake up early again and repeat the whole thing ... it's tiring.

For anyone out there who read this and thinks, "Oh, boo hoo, he has to work eight hours a day like everyone else and he's whining about it," well, first - go fuck yourself - but second, I'm not just working eight hours a day -- that was the whole point of writing this. If I were just working an eight hour day - or even the twelve hour day that's coming - I'd be fine. I'd get up and get ready and go to work and when I came back to the apartment I'd wind down and relax and eat and watch TV, maybe even read a little, and by the time it was time to go to sleep I'd be relaxed and have no trouble going to sleep and the next day I'd wake up rested and refreshed. Instead I'm jamming in all of this crap for the apartment in every waking hour that I'm not working, moving boxes and books and furniture and everything else involved, bending, stretching, lifting, and all without any time sitting down to rest. It's wearying. It will end soon enough (I hope) but while I'm doing these full days like this it's like working two jobs for sixteen hour days with just an hour or so for getting showered, dressed and fed and seven or less hours for sleep. There are some people who do work two jobs for this long, but even they generally have a day or two off during the week rather than having it be every day, day after day. I can see an end to this mess as the apartment does come together, but just as I get it done I'll switch to those twelve hour days in seven day work weeks, and I'll have no rest days ever until May. It's just tiring. I'm hoping I could have at least one or two evenings of rest to just read or watch TV from a prone position on the couch. Right now it's hard to see it happening.

Things could be worse, of course, much worse, so I'm not unaware of that and do appreciate that I do have a job and I do have a place to live. I still feel the fear and worry I had of being homeless and jobless, and the potential for that to still happen is -irrationally - still strongly gripping my mind to some extent. Seriously, I can't get the apartment set up soon enough because I really do need to have time to wind down after work, not just for my physical well-being or even my mental well-being, but very much for my emotional well-being. I need to soothe the terror and worry and sadness and frustration and get my whacked emotions calmed. I might even feel better about things if I could do that ... because right now I'm feeling anxious and exhausted and paranoid and depressed. It's no fun and it's in some ways a dangerous combination of feelings to let just keep building and building. I know from past experience, pushing aside this combination of powerful negative feelings inevitably has bad result if I let it go until it builds up to an explosion. I don't want to see how that expresses itself again. It's never anything good.

Posted at 7:40 AM
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bullet January 15, 2014

Today's the day.

My parents were able to sign all of the paperwork at the title office yesterday in advance of the closing so that they could leave early today for their home in Florida, so once the title office opens today - or at least sometime before the end of their work day today - my grandmother's house, a huge and wonderful part of my life for my whole life, will leave the possession of my family forever. I feel as though I've failed my grandmother by not protecting the home she cherished so much.

I am sad, very sad. Yes, the memories in my head, but physical objects in a way do hold memories - they spur on memory better than anything else, looking at a curve or a detail or a way a certain place looks in just the right light. That sort of thing doesn't come just from your memory, doesn't spring up with memories sparked by visual or audible or other sensory cues - you have to make the effort to bring up memories on your own, and without regular reviewing or the aid of those sensory cues they become less clear and precise. I hate the idea that the most wonderful and happy memories out of my life will become less clear and less likely to spring up just because of looking at a table or the leaded glass in those wonderful old front windows. I've lost something special.

And while it will seem silly to others, I suppose, I've lost the only thing I ever felt was close to being 'home.' Yes, the house I grew up in over nearly seventeen years was also home, but it had a lot of bad memories and was not as difficult to discard as home over time, but my grandma's house always felt more like home than anyplace else. And I've been very decided about this and never have referred to any of my apartments as 'home.' It has always been "my apartment" or "the apartment" or "the Arts Center" or when I was caring for my grandma, "the house" or "your house" or "your home" when referring directly to my grandma. A 'home' for me means a place you live - even if only some of the time - but that feels peaceful and has good feelings and/or memories and - most importantly - feels secure and in some sense permanent, someplace where you can't just randomly be shut out or evicted by a landlord that doesn't like you or a board of directors that wants to preserve the building but wants to do so without people living there (meaning you). No matter how much I've liked the various places I've lived over the years, none of them have ever been 'home.' My grandma's house was the closest I've ever had to that, and while I was caring for her it would have been 'home' except that there was constantly the threat that my mom would take my grandma to live with her and sell the house, thus negating that sense of security and permanency. And of course my mom did inevitably sell the house, and now I have no home and probably now never will. It may seem silly, as I said, and it may seem like it shouldn't mean much, but it is truly a big deal to me. Everyone should have some place they can call home. Everyone.

So today is a very sad day. It still hasn't hit me fully yet, as things like this always work with me such that I push it down and push it down such that it will come back in force later, much more emotionally, for me to have to inevitably face and mourn. I can honestly say I'm sad enough now that I'm glad not to have to fully deal with this for a while. It's just too much.

I'm sorry, Gramma. I would have kept hold of the house if there had been any way I could have done so.

Posted at 8:28 AM
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bullet January 14, 2014

I had a busy day at work yesterday but I did none of the training materials I had expected to do and I did nothing that will inevitably be any part of the job I'm supposed to do. Still, I was busy and helpful, and the day passed fairly quickly.

Part of what I did was place ads for the hiring of additional tax preparers, finishing up work I started on Friday with a local newspaper group, and then setting up accounts with every university or college in the area and posting the job listings through all of their career services departments (this was an idea that occurred to me this past weekend which, when I mentioned it to Steve, was very well-received).

Steve had me place a Craigslist ad for some fluorescent bulbs that were in storage for the business but the wrong size for what was needed, and I also helped clear out the desk of an old worker and try to figure out what she was doing with various tax filings (seriously, she had boxes of filings with no notes to indicate whether they were done or what was left to be done or if they were even started ... it was (and will remain for a short while) a mess). I sorted them and set up an alphabetized project grouping for review by Ron (the owner) or Mr. Kinsey when he returns in the next few days. It would be good to get those things out of the way before fresh new filings start stacking up.

The other major thing I did was a suggestion of mine that I ran with and which should make things a little easier in the office. I set up a Google Calendar for office scheduling. The current/previous method has been all on paper in a folder that simply had sheets for each week and new entries were placed in the next available space, not in a slot for the date or time; thus you would have to scan through every entry for that week to see that you didn't double-book a given tax preparer (right now Ron is the only worry, but he has whole days booked already, morning, Noon, and night, back to back with similarly full days, and we haven't even gotten to the end of January yet, when people will really start calling in appointments. The calendar I set up is much better at showing you visually who is booked when, and it's easy to peruse and to enter in new items. We'll be using both the computer and the old paper system for now, but Steve is pleased with the calendar program, and I feel it will be a benefit to everyone.

I started t scheduling appointments myself today, which was good for both Steve and myself because now when I answer the phone I can simply do scheduling myself rather than putting the client on hold for Steve, and that makes me more directly useful to the business and frees Steve up to do the myriad things he works upon during the day.

It seems to me like there's all sorts of things to do before tax season soon hits us in full swing (for instance, a new computer server is being set up for the entire office by Ron's son Tim, and while it will be a great upgrade for the office, it will be ready just in time for the season to tart without any extra cushion of time). I expect to be busy, and maybe today I'll even get to do some more training for what I'll actually be doing!

Posted at 7:51 AM
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bullet January 13, 2014

Back to work today and back to the training thing Steve had me start on last week that's available on the IRS's website. I learned a bit last week when I started so I should learn even more this week since I'll be able to cover more.

On the apartment side of things I am happy with the progress I made yesterday, but I must say that each task/thing I worked upon took much longer than it should have and of course that kept me from working on some things I had planned to knock out entirely yesterday. Some days are like that, though, and things just drag out for no good reason. The trick now is to have enough energy after work, dinner, and setting things up for the next work day, to be able to push myself to work on some of the things that remain to be done. Hopefully I can make myself work at it because I don't have much time before we go to the 9 AM to 9 PM schedule when nothing will get done in the apartment, and I'd like to have a sense of order and ideally some sense of cleanliness by then (the dust build up from opening, unloading, and breaking down boxes in itself is strong, combined with things going in and out of the apartment and moving things around. Once things are done there will of course be a build up of dust over time but it will surely be more gradual and probably unnoticeable for quite some time. Right now it's very noticeable.

So anyhow, a new week begins and there's much to do. Someday I may take a day to rest or read or something nice, but who knows when that will be.

Posted at 7:59 AM
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bullet January 12, 2014

Yesterday went well. Steve and I had our road trip and had a good time. It wasn't a day of thrills but it was nice. I pulled the last things I'm taking from my grandma's house (and Steve took some things for himself as well), and I saw that wonderful house for the last time ... it feels like losing an old friend and never getting to see them again, a friend who, every time you see them, reminds you of happy memories, good times, and being loved. It's hard to have to let that go.

I also visited my grandma at the cemetery, laying a rose and miniature daisies on her grave and clearing away the leaves and snow. This, too, feels like leaving her forever, which is weird since she's been dead for a year and a half now.

When we got back to town, Steve and I moved the last of the things into storage at his building that I can't find place to keep in the apartment, and I pulled out the boxes of things from Steve's that I did have room for - some in the form of three large boxes I knew I wouldn't be able to put up until everything else was done (and these big boxes would have just taken up space in the apartment until that time) and some other boxes that had been misplaced at Steve's and should have been at the apartment from the beginning, and even a few things that I found I could fit in here and there so that I had as much of my stuff with me as possible, both for my own access and so that I had the least amount possible taking up space in Steve's building. I managed to put away a lot of the stuff I brought back from Sandusky and Steve's, but those three big boxes are left, waiting until I've finished rearranging the books and hopefully getting everything to fit. Only then can I unbox my board games and large items from those boxes and see how (if?) I can fit them into the remaining available space on the shelving. Hopefully I'll get that far today because if I get that done then the next step is a full and proper clean sweep and placing nik-naks here and there throughout the apartment, largely finishing off the set-up of things. We'll see if I can make that much progress today or not.

Posted at 8:05 AM
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bullet January 11, 2014

Achy and tired today after a long night putting together shelving and muscling it into place and moving some books. A full day of work clearly wasn't enough for me.

Actually I did do those things, and despite putting in a full day at the office I was anxious to get the additional shelving after days of delays (once I knew last Saturday that I would pretty likely need it and by Saturday that I definitely needed it (but the snow and cold that brought on the Snow Emergency didn't care what I knew)).

The day at the office was interesting as Steve directed me to an inline training presentation offered by the IRS for a program they used to (but no longer offer) where they trained people to be tax preparers to help the public have free tax prep services. The training stuff is still there and still appropriate, and it is helpful filling in little details about how to decide who files, how, on what form, and who they can claim as dependants and what as exemptions and so on. I'll be doing more with that when I go back next week.

Meanwhile, today in fact, I'm taking Steve with me on a road trip to Elyria to get my car serviced, then to stop at Sandusky on the way back to Toledo so I can see my grandma's house one last time and so I can visit her at her grave site and give her a rose to say, "Goodbye." I kind of dread both of these things ... letting go is very difficult.

Steve and I will move some things to storage in his place and out of storage at his place for the final swap of things that should and shouldn't be in my apartment, and he may help me put up a shelf that is of concern to me (it's big, somewhat heavy, and will hang on the wall above my head when I lie in bed, so I'm trying to see that it doesn't brain me during my sleep).

It will be a full but not rushed day, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Posted at 7:54 AM
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bullet January 10, 2014

I learned more at work today, working a full day, but what I learned was from my own searching.

Ron was busy with appointments throughout the day, having not been in the office for two days during the snow emergency, and he had no time to get me started with any training on the new tax software. Instead, I dove into last year's tax program files and tried to see everything the program had to offer, asking questions of Steve here and there throughout to fill in unknowns. I feel much better about how well I can do with this having seen what the program itself offers. But of course until I fill out the first one or two tax filings I won't be totally sure and comfortable; once I have the actual experience of properly using the program and seeing I can indeed get through, I'll feel immensely more confident. I do feel more confident already, though, after what I learned yesterday.

Even with what I learned, though, I still had a lot of extra time, and I made clear to Steve I felt that I was not earning my keep during those times, but Steve assured me it would balance out and I would get busier as time progressed. And in truth I did answer the phone quite a bit while Steve and Ron were on other lines or with clients during the day, and while I wasn't able to do much more than take messages or put people on hold for the most part, I did help out in a small way ... and as I learn more I'll be able to do more even in this small aspect and resolve phone queries or set up appointments in a way that Steve can accept. I hate being new and feeling like I'm not helping enough, but I will be able to do more as I get more familiar with things.

By the time I got home I was hungry but not tired - until my car got stuck in the parking lot as I was trying to park. I took a full half hour to extricate my car and get parked in a spot that wouldn't trap me (I think (and hope)), and by the time I was so upset and exhausted I never really bounced back all night and was nodding off through every TV show I watched, pretty much getting nothing out of any of them except the Big Bang Theory at 8 PM. After that, well, I was in and out of consciousness. What will be like when I'm working 9 Am - 9 PM six days a week and Noon - 6 PM on Sundays? Will I be able to stay awake at all? Will I get anything else done at all around that, even shopping or laundry? I wonder, and it'll be three months of that without a break.. Fun times.

Oh well. I can't complain too much because it is a proper job. I could have done a lot worse (or I could have still been unemployed had Ron not hired me), so it's not too much to bear.

Posted at 8:07 AM
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bullet January 9, 2014

Spent a whole day at work yesterday but doing very little ... except getting cold around mid-afternoon and later since Ron opens the front door to smoke and leaves it open until he's finished his cigarette, which is good to pull smoke out of the building but bad in that it takes any warm air with it!

Today Ron plans to bring in the new software for this year's tax season and have Steve install it so that we can go over some things, hopefully building some confidence in me that I won't be constantly having to ask questions to complete anything but the most basic tax returns. We'll see. I'll be happy just to be actively doing something. Yesterday's cleaning and then reading and reviewing employee handbooks and procedure lists did not take very long and was boring, and while I enjoyed talking to Ron nd Steve throughout the day it felt wrong to just be standing around so much not working so much as socializing.

If nothing else we have officially gotten me started and I believe my employment is now properly started for full-time every weekday from now through Tuesday and from that point for every day of the week at the extended hours sets for tax season, 9 AM - 9 PM Monday through Saturday and Noon to 6 PM on Sunday, plus any run over finishing up any of those days. Initially I may well get sent home early if not many people come in, but I suspect from the way both Ron and Steve talk that by the end of the month and certainly buy the start of February it will be all we can do to keep pace with everything that will come in. That's fine by me - more hours means more money, and with this job having a limited life-span, ending when tax season ends, every bit of cash I can get while I'm there is great.

So we'll see today how it goes, and then we'll go from there.

Posted at 7:54 AM
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bullet January 8, 2014

I need a day to relax and ... read or something - something simple and non-taxing and relaxing and distracting from the mess and chaos of the apartment. Having been packing, moving or unpacking for the past full month, every day, morning to night, with breaks being to drive to Sandusky or back or spend three hours at the office or spend an hour here or an hour there at the grocery store or something similar ... it's exhausting and mind-numbing. Of course if I stop for such a day - or even part of such a day - then that's time I didn't spend working on getting the apartment more sane and orderly and useful and acceptable, and I have very few days left before I'll be working seven days a week in 80+ hour weeks and have to live with whatever is left in the apartment. Of course I also will have no chance for any day or part-day of rest either once that starts, at least not for three months .

Maybe I'll get lucky and have an aneurysm (probably not, though ... I've never been that lucky).

Posted at 8:27 AM
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bullet January 7, 2014

Still cold, so cold it's still got everything shut down - to the extent that we're on day 3 of a Level 3 Snow Emergency (which means only emergency vehicles can be on the roads or you're ticketed with a fine over $250!). I've gotten a bunch of stuff done around the apartment, but I've been stymied in more than a few areas because I need certain little things that I can't get: taking small things to Steve's for storage, getting a few things from storage at Steve's, finding the missing boxes of stuff I hope are at Steve's, getting small items at the store (like toggle bolts) that are necessary for a small project,and getting the additional sets of shelves (2) that I had originally turned down when I accepted the others but now have decided I want/need.

I still have stacks of boxes full of stuff and now also stacks of books from boxes that were fully emptied but only partially shelved. There is still a huge amount of chaos and I've been getting some serious headaches from it all, but despite all appearances otherwise I am making progress. I just wish this were done and I could be relaxing my aching, stiff muscles during this forced confinement and perhaps even read ... and in all fairness I suppose there's been nothing keeping me from doing just that, but I'm compelled to try to get this mess more organized to the best of my ability because seriously the chaos is really upsetting to me and my OCD. No matter how much progress I make it's still a crazy mess, and I wonder if there will ever be a proper sense of order (let alone cleanliness). <Sigh>

Posted at 7:59 AM
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bullet January 6, 2014

Record cold temperatures (record cold for yesterday by the date and set to very possibly break the all-time record today for any low ever recorded in the area since records began being kept in the mid-1800s) and record snowfall for most in a short period and most in years (there's over 30" of snow so far this Winter, only a couple of inches from the entire recorded snowfall for ALL of last year (and this time last year snowfall was at about 7"). It's ugly out there and it has shut down everything. One has to wonder what the rest of the Winter has in store ...

Posted at 9:06 AM
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bullet January 5, 2014

I got the longest night of sleep I've had in a month last night but I still feel exhausted and stiff and achy.

I decided to go to bed around a quarter after 10 PM last night and not even watch TV in bed. Unlike past nights over the past few weeks I went immediately to sleep! I woke at about half past Midnight and peed then went immediately back to sleep, and I woke again at about 5:30 AM and, not really needing to pee still got up and went anyhow, and went immediately back to sleep (just this ability to go right back to sleep after waking up in the night has eluded me for weeks). I finally got up just after 7 AM, the time I've generally been getting up every morning, and I was pleased I'd slept so long and well but displeased I still felt so tired. I still feel tired even after having been up a while. I wonder if I'll ever feel rested of without pain again.

The snow and bitter cold hitting the area over the past few days and in the coming days is unpleasant and I don't plan to leave the apartment today. Tomorrow the high is expected to be -2 F at best! With wind chill it's expected to be simply horrible. This experience is making me glad I never got any feedback from those jobs in Alaska I applied to get.

Exhaustion and cold are slowing me down immensely but I have plans to work more at unpacking all day today. It may well be the last chance I have a full day to work at the apartment so I'm going to try to get the most out of it. After this I'll be working on the apartment after work hours or after trips out of town (next weekend) that will take most of the day, and in just a week-and-a-half work hours will extend into proper tax season hours and I'll be either working or getting ready for work from waking to sleeping due to the longer scheduled hours. That will clearly leave no time to do even the most important thing like shopping and laundry, and unpacking and arranging the apartment will be unthinkable. So hopefully I can make a good dent today, although even a good push today will only get me so far.

I need some rest and I need things to be more orderly here. The chaos is killing me. Hopefully I can make some progress. We'll see.

Posted at 8:47 AM
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bullet January 4, 2014

Clearly the past two or three weeks are catching up to me. I've been more achy, exhausted, and just plain weak over the last couple of days than I've been through all of this. Mind you, it's not that I've become sedate and my muscles aren't getting a good stretching and workout - I'm still moving and unpacking boxes and hauling books and CDs here and there and everywhere trying to make this work. I've also been borrowing a few tools from Steve to fix this and cut that off to the right length and tighten that other thing and seal that little area ... a variety of little tasks that have gone on one of my many lists needing to be done. I'm certainly making progress, but it's still very chaotic here, and my OCD is screaming at me to get it arranged and orderly - it honestly makes me upset and slightly sick-to-my-stomach most of the time to be part of this menagerie. It gets worse the longer I'm still in the chaos, even as it gets better and less chaotic. I can only hope I can get this mostly done before work gets going and ramps up to the 12+ hour days I've been told to expect.

Today I'll be driving back to Sandusky to go through some last items, mostly CHristmas ornaments and decorations. My sister was supposed to be there as well but I'm told won't arrive until tomorrow, but with a snow storm predicted to be coming in tonight I'm keeping to plans and have no intention of driving at all tomorrow if I can help it. I'll have to sort through stuff myself and be as equitable as possible to share my grandma's cherished items.

I've been good about trying make sure there's a balance of who gets what when it comes to these items, but as I've written before my sister feels she somehow deserves more than me or at least that she should have first choice above me. I was told yesterday by my mother that my sister feels I have already gotten so much from my grandmother that my sister should get more for herself to balance things out, and I suppose she's right. By moving to Sandusky to help my grandma I got more debt, more problems finding work in a workplace that didn't value caregivers, more isolation, and more indignity from those who (like my sister) treated me as though I were simply a leech on my grandma rather than being an aide. And of course my sister never got anything from my grandma ... except all of those furniture items she took while my grandma wa s still alive and all of the money and gifts and support for school and camp she got for her kids (and this isn't fair, I suppose, because my grandma would have done the same for any kids I'd had - except for the fact that I was taking care of my grandma for a decade rather than being able to develop a relationship with someone and/or have children ... but clearly that must be my fault, so too bad for me). I try not to get too upset about this, but honestly no matter how hard I try to do right by my sister I end up getting scorned and made out to be some horrible person.

I could have gone through those CHristmas ornaments any time over the past ten years and taken what I wanted - heck, I could have done it since I knew the house was selling - but I didn't because I wanted to go through it fairly with my sister. I did the same going through the house with my mom to try to decide what my sister would want and what I would want and what my mom would want. And once again it comes down to the 'way of the world' - which is not to do the right thing or be charitable or equitable or fair or thoughtful but to look out for number one and, if necessary, be selfish and determined and spiteful if necessary. It's helped my sister get ahead throughout her life so I can't say it isn't a successful approach to life, but it's not the kind of person I want to be, so I'll continue to suffer under my sister's abuse (because that's what it is - abuse, as was pointed out to me last night), and try to still be the better man and do the right thing, no matter how much I end up suffering for it.

Posted at 8:04 AM
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bullet January 3, 2014

I got to work, plowing and sliding through snow to get there (and on time!) and learned a great deal about the company and the overall process for caring for customers and their documents during the season, but I have yet to start training on what will be my job focus - actually preparing individual taxes. I've had a glimpse of the software used and by understanding the processing-in procedure and the filing process I have a pretty good idea of how things will work and what I'll be doing, but the actual details of which schedule to use for what are still to be learned ... and it's unclear when exactly that will happen, although it will surely be soon.

As it happened, Steve was showing me the workings of the office. Ron, the owner and head man, doesn't usually come in until an hour or so later but that morning called in to find out about the roads, had an update from Steve on the poor quality of things, and said he'd call back. Steve and I continued with the orientation until just before Noon when Ron called back and said to shut down at Noon and leave. There was a Level 1 Snow Emergency declared (which means you are not supposed to be on the road), so Ron wanted us to go home.

Today I am supposed to wait until 11:30 AM to call Steve to find out what to do. If the weather permits and Ron is ready to get me started I could go in for training on my tax preparation skills this afternoon. He might decide to start on Monday. He might decide something else. I don't know. If I work then great - glorious income! - but if I have the day off then that's fine as well as there's still much to do here in the apartment.

I was strangely tired yesterday after returning from the office, lethargic and nodding off. I don't know if the cold had affected me or what. I slogged through it, though, getting less accomplished than if I'd been less sluggish but still getting things done. Nothing big got done yesterday but a number of small items were done and a number of smaller boxes ended up getting stored away (some as a result of the things I got done and some just because I found room to store them). I spent a lot of time thinking about how to arrange the books on the shelves to fit, and I have a couple ideas on how to proceed, but I'm still concerned about how well things will fit, and I expect I'll be unpacking books and then moving them a few times around the shelves to get things sorted in a manner that works for me. I'll be happy when (if?) I get this stuff done and can actually clear the apartment of the final boxes and clean it and be fairly well done.

Ah, always theDreamer.

Posted at 8:15 AM
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bullet January 2, 2014

My first day of work at the new job and not only do I have the normal nervousness and uncertainty but I also have over a foot of snow to deal with!

I just went out to brush off the drift of snow from the car and shovel around the whole car and it was building back up where I'd finished since the snow is still falling (and is supposed to still continue until mid to late afternoon). I decided to go out and clear the build-up from yesterday and today before eating breakfast or taking my shower and it was a good idea - my pants and shoes were quite wet from the drifts I had to wade through.

I got more done yesterday than I'd planned - possibly the first time that has happened in a week or more - and emptied and cleared away a lot of boxes. I also finally pulled the boxes from the last of the closets, scrubbed the closet clean, and started arranging/stuffing it with what I'd planned to store there. Now all of the boxes that are left are stacked and ready to unload onto the shelves which are waiting for them, and there's not very many things left to find a place to put once those boxes are done. I do still have concerns about how much of the books/CDs/DVDs will fit on the shelves, but I'll just have to see. I never fit everything on the shelves I had for years, and even with the newly-added donated shelves I'm not sure I'll have enough (although I'll be much better off and much closer to having everything on shelves). The big question is what I will do with any boxes of books that remain; I simply don't have room for any more, and I don't want to keep them at Steve's if at all possible. Again, though, I'll just have to see how it comes out when the last shelves are filled.

So ... off to work!

Posted at 8:17 AM
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bullet January 1, 2014

Another year arrives and with it reflection on the past year and years further passed.

My mom called yesterday asking if I had found a packed box of stuff she had misplaced and thought might have accidentally made its way into my stuff (I'm 99.9999% sure it's not here). During the call I said, with some feelings of depression but with feelings of resignation, that I had lost any relaxation or joy from Christmas and it looked like I wouldn't have any rest or joy from New Year's either. Her response was, "I guess you'll just have to think of this as the lost year." That has left me thinking since.

Certainly 2013 was a lost year, not because I didn't get any joy or relaxation out of the two biggest holidays but because I wasted that whole year looking for jobs with no returns for my effort, using all of that time instead of doing something else more productive (i.e., doing what it would have taken to get into grad school, written stories or poetry, volunteered, etc.). I saw very few people, lost no weight, did no personal improvement projects, and really have nothing to show for it. The previous year I was fairly useless during the first half of the year while my grandma was in the hospital and the care facility, and while I helped my mom with the estate afterward, the second half of the year was the same waste of time looking for a job and getting nothing for my efforts. That was a whole year-and-a-half that could have produced so much more - anything more ...

And while the nine years prior to that were valuable in that I made my grandma's last years healthy and happy, my only reward and satisfaction from all of that time is that happiness. In every other tangible way those nine years were lost years, lost to education, lost to work history, lost to income, lost to socializing, lost to potentially building a family, ... lost to everything. I feel upset at myself every time I think about this because it almost feels like I'm dishonoring my grandma and what I did for her, but I think it's fair to see both sides, the good I did for her by doing the right thing but also the harm I did to myself in the process.

And go back further. I loved my time back at college before I moved to help my grandma, and I did get my two bachelor's degrees, but without the Masters degree I had planned to proceed into those two degrees do nothing for me. So that leaves five more lost years. Then back before that the business I started with Thor, da Vinci's, and the fiasco that saw that disintegrate. That was a lost year or so.

Back before da Vinci's I was in Chicago at Kinko's, and I was productive and earning decent money. I wasn't happy - I was very powerfully feeling depressed from Ken's death then even more than now - and my management job was being turned into a stressful mess by new corporate management who expected us to work 100 hours a week if not more and to be two places at once.

So how far back do I have to go to find a year that wasn't lost? Twenty, I think; back to before Ken died while I was still enjoying my successes at Kinko's in West Lafayette. Twenty years. Twenty lost years. That's almost half my life.

Happy New Year indeed.

Posted at 8:38 AM

 


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Journal, by Paul Cales, © January 2014