Listening to Glen Hansard singing "Leave." God I love that man's voice...When I first saw the movie Once it was so hard because he looks a bit like my ex. But I can't help loving watching him sing. Marketa Irglova is also amazing. It's funny because while on one hand I agree that musicians are, as a breed, a difficult ilk, but they really are so sexy...the way they express themselves...the way they lose themselves in the moment.
Even someone as physically maybe not so attractive as BB King has a hold on my soul because of the way he sings and plays that guitar.
Now I'm listening to the two of them singing "Falling Slowly."
When I was a teenager, I was in love with John Lennon - an infatuation which is easily ignited by by a listen to a song.
The same way that a picture can reach in a pull out your emotions. A song does that, too.
I look at pictures of my dad from when I was a kid, and mostly I feel nothing, because that part of my life has been moved to a non-reaction section of my brain. But I look at pictures of my dad in the last 10-15 years of his life, and it makes me cry instantly, because I can relate to that guy. He's the one who tried so hard and wanted so much to be a part of our lives. The younger one...not so much.
Now I'm listening to John Lennon's "Serve Yourself." God I love him.
I don't know why I don't listen to more music. I love it, but I think what I hate about it is when there are other people around and I have to turn it off, or down, or the CD ends...LOL
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
It's Monday again. I'm sitting here in the mostly dark with just my candle burning. It's quite, which is nice after a long day enveloped by noise. I spend the day answering the phone. I got yelled at once, had the smoke alarm blaring in my ear because a caller burned his toast, listened to the "drums" of a child banging on pots and pans while his mom tried to transact some banking with me on the phone. I think probably I'll lose a large part of the hearing in my right ear because it's subjected to unrelenting loudness all day. And that's to say nothing of the coughing, hacking, drinking, smacking sounds eminating from the cube next to me.
But right now it's quiet. I'd like to go to the library and get a book on tape, but they close too early for that on Mondays. I'll probably head downstairs and work on some pottery in a bit. Stick in a movie or something.
I'm tired tired tired, but I have some pots that need attention before they dry out.
Well, that's all I have the energy for tonight!
But right now it's quiet. I'd like to go to the library and get a book on tape, but they close too early for that on Mondays. I'll probably head downstairs and work on some pottery in a bit. Stick in a movie or something.
I'm tired tired tired, but I have some pots that need attention before they dry out.
Well, that's all I have the energy for tonight!
Sunday, March 17, 2013
I'm very excited to have a new computer to work, write and surf the web on. It's SOOO much faster than the laptop, and so it's much more fun to get onto because I know it won't take me half my day to wait for it to get up to speed!
So here I am, just an hour or so after bringing it home, putzing away! I haven't plugged in the CD drive (they don't come with those anymore), and I haven't put any of the software that's extra onto it, but here it is!!!
I had a short day today, and took full advantage. I have a rental car because mine is getting fixed - painted tomorrow. The rental is a Dodge Avenger. It's up there with the coolest cars I've ever driven.
So here I am, just an hour or so after bringing it home, putzing away! I haven't plugged in the CD drive (they don't come with those anymore), and I haven't put any of the software that's extra onto it, but here it is!!!
I had a short day today, and took full advantage. I have a rental car because mine is getting fixed - painted tomorrow. The rental is a Dodge Avenger. It's up there with the coolest cars I've ever driven.
The kitchen floor was green linoleum, softly textured with what looked vaguely like a combination of shamrocks and the card suit spades. The walls were covered with bright wallpaper - floral patterns of greens and yellows. The wallpaper filled inserts in the cabinets so that the entire kitchen had a rhythm that said, "Hi 70s. We're here." This was where goulash came from. Where dishes were washed, dried, and broken. Where we ate tomatoes with sugar on them. Where one day a wind storm blew a 2x4 through the window. Those windows, which we would duck and hide below, skulking out of the room when we'd see Chuck Knoss, the neighbor, coming across the back yard looking for Dad. We didn't want him to know we were there because Dad owed him money and didn't have it to repay.
That's where the McDonalds glass broken when someone put their hand inside to dry it. It sliced their finger and the blood gushed. We ran to the neighbor's house because Mary Duffy was a nurse. Oddly, I can't remember if it was my finger or Lynn's. I'm checking my pointer finger, and there is a scar where I would expect to find it...but was it from that day or another? I don't know.
That's where Lynn and I would regularly fight about whose turn it was to wash, and whose to dry. Once this argument ended with me bent backwards over the kitchen counter and Lynn holding a knife over me. At that point Dad burst into the room - drawn by the screaming no doubt - and broke it up.
This is the room where I hyperventilated at the kitchen table because Dad was screaming at me and while he HATED it when I would hyperventilate, it was a technique that would usually make him stop his rant and keep him from hurting me.
This is where I sat at the table and was writing something when Jodi came running in and pinched me. My "Whaaaa?" was immediately followed by Dad thundering in to smack me because Jodi told him that I'd pinched her.
This is where we'd wait with anticipation for Dad to pull one pound Hershey bars from our ears, and unpack the banana split's and apple turnovers from the bags from Short Stop. Where we'd grab the bottles of Tab or RC to be secreted away and drunk later, when we could pull them out, pop the top off, and make everyone jealous because we still had ONE BOTTLE left when all the pop was gone.
This is where we would pile up the eight packs of empties to be returned to Short Stop for the deposit so we could buy more pop, comic books and Sno-balls.
This is where I found Dad on the floor. Where the paramedics tended to him and he refused to go in the ambulance. He was too dizzy to stand up. Sitting on the floor in a t-shirt and his underwear. He finally road with Kevin to the hospital where they held him for two days before declaring he had a severe ear wax build up that was giving him vertigo. God, was he mad. They'd done all these TESTS and it was ear wax? Well, I said, how were they supposed to know without doing the tests? Exasperating.
This is where the intercom was...we'd call out to the garage to let Dad know he had a call, or tell him dinner was ready, or just bug him. We could hear him yell back, annoyed that we were interrupting again, or we'd hear his muffled voice and know that he was in the paint booth. Or we'd hear the grinder and know that he could never hear us over all that noise and we'd put on our shoes and run out to the garage.
The kitchen cupboards were familiar and full of both the mundane: Dinty Moore stew, as well as the unexpected: a bottle of gin that was mostly used to melt the ice when we were out of salt, but also could be served in Dixie cups to remind Lynn and I how disgusting drinking was. Okay, that only happened once, and the lesson was learned well. I think we were about seven and nine years old, and must have taken down the gin to sniff it or something. Maybe we even tasted it. I don't remember. What I do remember was sitting at the kitchen table with this Dixie cup of gin. The idea was that we were supposed to drink it. Teach us a lesson. I don't remember if we actually did though.
I have a photograph of Lynn, my grampa, and myself with a northern pike. I must have been about three years old. The fish was about the same height as I was. Grampa was wearing his overalls and his cap - a round cap with a brim that was flat on top. My grandparents were in this kitchen. My parents. Friends.
I made zucchini bread in this kitchen with Jenny Sutherland. We put in WAY too much baking soda and it was disgusting and inedible. I think we must have been about twelve.
Mostly when I walk into the kitchen what I remember is following Dad into the house. The way the house smells like Bondo. And mold. How he'd always offer me a Diet Coke (no, thanks.) I remember when we were talking about a friend of mine who used to foster kids, and he cared for a baby whose father had broken both of this little babies legs. Like little twigs he snapped them. Dad started to cry, and got up and went into the other room. He returned with a folder in which was the transcript of his time at the Children's Home Society. Of his own disturbing childhood.
There are pictures everywhere now on boards. Pictures from the memorial service. Pictures that break my heart all over again every time I walk into the house. I look at the pictures, and I know what the era was in which they were taken. Whether they were from those years when Dad was so mad all the time. I know that look. The one that said you were in trouble for breathing. Some were later, when he'd been left alone by everyone and started to think about whether just maybe it was his own doing. Maybe he needed to settle down. maybe it was time to just stop and be a better person. From that time when he was a better person.
When he was older, he would laugh more. Smile more. Hug us. Tell us he loved us. he'd practically beg you to stay just a little longer. And you would, but it was never long enough for him. And I rarely took him up on his offer to make dinner. I never quite got to that place where I was comfortable just being with him. I never quite let down my guard. There was always this strain of fear I guess. Something that warned me not to get too close or sit too long.
I always thought that there would be another day when I could try again. But we ran out of days before I ever found that place where I could relax with him and not feel tense. As long as we were moving around the yard, digging in the garage, standing outside...I was okay. but sitting down with him was hard. because conversation would always go to what I should be doing. What the kids should be doing. I always felt like it went to his comfort zone, which was making me feel like I wasn't good enough. The kids weren't doing well. If only I had a garage, or fixed up the house, or cleaned, or could stand up to the people at work, or WHATEVER. Sometimes I would end up crying after talking to him, and I'd call my mom, who would commiserate because she, too, knew that he didn't MEAN to make me feel that way. he just DID. What he wanted to accomplish was the opposite...to tell me how I could make things better. To improve my lot, or I don't know... But it always served to make me feel small and alone. And like a failure. Which was what I grew up feeling like, and what I strove to get away from. When my marriage ended, Dad was quick to tell me what a piece of shit Michael always was. Which didn't actually help. I knew that he meant it to make me feel better, but it made me feel like I'd made all these mistakes all the way back 15 years earlier. I knew that he didn't like Michael. That was no secret. But I felt judged. And when he would talk about what the kids should be doing, I felt judged and again, like I'd failed. Which is how I still feel.
So when I go to Dad's house, I look around and I feel like a failure all over again. Look around. It's a pit. What was I doing trying to live my life and letting him live like this? I know that it wasn't like I could come over and change his world, but why couldn't I just come over and help a little? And I can answer that, too. Because he would drive me nuts.
So I would go over and we would joke around, and we'd go to Home Depot, or I'd get 2x4s or tile. We'd talk about other things...Marv and what HE should be doing. Which was fine mostly because I knew that Marv does whatever he wants to do, too, and he's just fine. So nothing Dad said bothered me on that score.
But after a while I would start feeling like I had to get away. It was that sense of fear or flight or fight or something that would just appear and drive me away. I loved him, but was afraid to love him. I was afraid to be loved by him. There'd been too many years of fear and pain. I just couldn't seem to put it all behind me.
And now, I go to the house, and that fear and pain is still there, but he's gone, and it seems like everything that was good went with him, and now I'm just left with this gaping wound of what's left behind.
I can't look at a dowel - which I've found several of - without thinking of being beaten with them. Ditto for the belts. At what point does that go away? I've spent more of my life NOT being beaten than I did being beaten, and yet, here I am again. In that place. Mentally and physically. I'd finally put it all somewhere in my head where I could deal with it. And boom, it's all right back in my face. The good, the bad and the ugly. The dichotomy that was my dad. that was our relationship. All sorted out at one point now thrown back up in the air like 52 pick up.
And I know that it will never be over. That you can't really ever completely settle this complicated of a relationship. You can put it somewhere else for a while and then come back to it later. But it's not gone. It's just over there. And I could deal with it over there. THIS, I don't know how to deal with.
So I'm depressed again. I spent most of my life depressed. And I really thought I'd put all that behind me, too. I forgave him. I moved on. I still forgive him. But now I have to be in it all again. Steeped in his world. And I finally loved him...from afar mostly...but I did. And I was good with our relationship as it was. So now we have this new relationship. One where he gets to write me letters from the grave and I don't get to respond. One where I feel like I wish we'd had something different, but I can't imagine how we could have, and if he were alive, how it would be different now. And just thinking about it, I feel uncomfortable again just as I would when he was alive. But I want him to be alive again. I want that relationship back. I want to be able to go see him, and then leave and know that he would still be there when I came back.
I want to be able to hang up after talking to him, and go on with my life, knowing that we'll talk again in a month.
I just don't want him to be dead anymore. I'm not liking this. And I can't change it any more than I could change things when he was alive.
That's where the McDonalds glass broken when someone put their hand inside to dry it. It sliced their finger and the blood gushed. We ran to the neighbor's house because Mary Duffy was a nurse. Oddly, I can't remember if it was my finger or Lynn's. I'm checking my pointer finger, and there is a scar where I would expect to find it...but was it from that day or another? I don't know.
That's where Lynn and I would regularly fight about whose turn it was to wash, and whose to dry. Once this argument ended with me bent backwards over the kitchen counter and Lynn holding a knife over me. At that point Dad burst into the room - drawn by the screaming no doubt - and broke it up.
This is the room where I hyperventilated at the kitchen table because Dad was screaming at me and while he HATED it when I would hyperventilate, it was a technique that would usually make him stop his rant and keep him from hurting me.
This is where I sat at the table and was writing something when Jodi came running in and pinched me. My "Whaaaa?" was immediately followed by Dad thundering in to smack me because Jodi told him that I'd pinched her.
This is where we'd wait with anticipation for Dad to pull one pound Hershey bars from our ears, and unpack the banana split's and apple turnovers from the bags from Short Stop. Where we'd grab the bottles of Tab or RC to be secreted away and drunk later, when we could pull them out, pop the top off, and make everyone jealous because we still had ONE BOTTLE left when all the pop was gone.
This is where we would pile up the eight packs of empties to be returned to Short Stop for the deposit so we could buy more pop, comic books and Sno-balls.
This is where I found Dad on the floor. Where the paramedics tended to him and he refused to go in the ambulance. He was too dizzy to stand up. Sitting on the floor in a t-shirt and his underwear. He finally road with Kevin to the hospital where they held him for two days before declaring he had a severe ear wax build up that was giving him vertigo. God, was he mad. They'd done all these TESTS and it was ear wax? Well, I said, how were they supposed to know without doing the tests? Exasperating.
This is where the intercom was...we'd call out to the garage to let Dad know he had a call, or tell him dinner was ready, or just bug him. We could hear him yell back, annoyed that we were interrupting again, or we'd hear his muffled voice and know that he was in the paint booth. Or we'd hear the grinder and know that he could never hear us over all that noise and we'd put on our shoes and run out to the garage.
The kitchen cupboards were familiar and full of both the mundane: Dinty Moore stew, as well as the unexpected: a bottle of gin that was mostly used to melt the ice when we were out of salt, but also could be served in Dixie cups to remind Lynn and I how disgusting drinking was. Okay, that only happened once, and the lesson was learned well. I think we were about seven and nine years old, and must have taken down the gin to sniff it or something. Maybe we even tasted it. I don't remember. What I do remember was sitting at the kitchen table with this Dixie cup of gin. The idea was that we were supposed to drink it. Teach us a lesson. I don't remember if we actually did though.
I have a photograph of Lynn, my grampa, and myself with a northern pike. I must have been about three years old. The fish was about the same height as I was. Grampa was wearing his overalls and his cap - a round cap with a brim that was flat on top. My grandparents were in this kitchen. My parents. Friends.
I made zucchini bread in this kitchen with Jenny Sutherland. We put in WAY too much baking soda and it was disgusting and inedible. I think we must have been about twelve.
Mostly when I walk into the kitchen what I remember is following Dad into the house. The way the house smells like Bondo. And mold. How he'd always offer me a Diet Coke (no, thanks.) I remember when we were talking about a friend of mine who used to foster kids, and he cared for a baby whose father had broken both of this little babies legs. Like little twigs he snapped them. Dad started to cry, and got up and went into the other room. He returned with a folder in which was the transcript of his time at the Children's Home Society. Of his own disturbing childhood.
There are pictures everywhere now on boards. Pictures from the memorial service. Pictures that break my heart all over again every time I walk into the house. I look at the pictures, and I know what the era was in which they were taken. Whether they were from those years when Dad was so mad all the time. I know that look. The one that said you were in trouble for breathing. Some were later, when he'd been left alone by everyone and started to think about whether just maybe it was his own doing. Maybe he needed to settle down. maybe it was time to just stop and be a better person. From that time when he was a better person.
When he was older, he would laugh more. Smile more. Hug us. Tell us he loved us. he'd practically beg you to stay just a little longer. And you would, but it was never long enough for him. And I rarely took him up on his offer to make dinner. I never quite got to that place where I was comfortable just being with him. I never quite let down my guard. There was always this strain of fear I guess. Something that warned me not to get too close or sit too long.
I always thought that there would be another day when I could try again. But we ran out of days before I ever found that place where I could relax with him and not feel tense. As long as we were moving around the yard, digging in the garage, standing outside...I was okay. but sitting down with him was hard. because conversation would always go to what I should be doing. What the kids should be doing. I always felt like it went to his comfort zone, which was making me feel like I wasn't good enough. The kids weren't doing well. If only I had a garage, or fixed up the house, or cleaned, or could stand up to the people at work, or WHATEVER. Sometimes I would end up crying after talking to him, and I'd call my mom, who would commiserate because she, too, knew that he didn't MEAN to make me feel that way. he just DID. What he wanted to accomplish was the opposite...to tell me how I could make things better. To improve my lot, or I don't know... But it always served to make me feel small and alone. And like a failure. Which was what I grew up feeling like, and what I strove to get away from. When my marriage ended, Dad was quick to tell me what a piece of shit Michael always was. Which didn't actually help. I knew that he meant it to make me feel better, but it made me feel like I'd made all these mistakes all the way back 15 years earlier. I knew that he didn't like Michael. That was no secret. But I felt judged. And when he would talk about what the kids should be doing, I felt judged and again, like I'd failed. Which is how I still feel.
So when I go to Dad's house, I look around and I feel like a failure all over again. Look around. It's a pit. What was I doing trying to live my life and letting him live like this? I know that it wasn't like I could come over and change his world, but why couldn't I just come over and help a little? And I can answer that, too. Because he would drive me nuts.
So I would go over and we would joke around, and we'd go to Home Depot, or I'd get 2x4s or tile. We'd talk about other things...Marv and what HE should be doing. Which was fine mostly because I knew that Marv does whatever he wants to do, too, and he's just fine. So nothing Dad said bothered me on that score.
But after a while I would start feeling like I had to get away. It was that sense of fear or flight or fight or something that would just appear and drive me away. I loved him, but was afraid to love him. I was afraid to be loved by him. There'd been too many years of fear and pain. I just couldn't seem to put it all behind me.
And now, I go to the house, and that fear and pain is still there, but he's gone, and it seems like everything that was good went with him, and now I'm just left with this gaping wound of what's left behind.
I can't look at a dowel - which I've found several of - without thinking of being beaten with them. Ditto for the belts. At what point does that go away? I've spent more of my life NOT being beaten than I did being beaten, and yet, here I am again. In that place. Mentally and physically. I'd finally put it all somewhere in my head where I could deal with it. And boom, it's all right back in my face. The good, the bad and the ugly. The dichotomy that was my dad. that was our relationship. All sorted out at one point now thrown back up in the air like 52 pick up.
And I know that it will never be over. That you can't really ever completely settle this complicated of a relationship. You can put it somewhere else for a while and then come back to it later. But it's not gone. It's just over there. And I could deal with it over there. THIS, I don't know how to deal with.
So I'm depressed again. I spent most of my life depressed. And I really thought I'd put all that behind me, too. I forgave him. I moved on. I still forgive him. But now I have to be in it all again. Steeped in his world. And I finally loved him...from afar mostly...but I did. And I was good with our relationship as it was. So now we have this new relationship. One where he gets to write me letters from the grave and I don't get to respond. One where I feel like I wish we'd had something different, but I can't imagine how we could have, and if he were alive, how it would be different now. And just thinking about it, I feel uncomfortable again just as I would when he was alive. But I want him to be alive again. I want that relationship back. I want to be able to go see him, and then leave and know that he would still be there when I came back.
I want to be able to hang up after talking to him, and go on with my life, knowing that we'll talk again in a month.
I just don't want him to be dead anymore. I'm not liking this. And I can't change it any more than I could change things when he was alive.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Well, I'm here puttering away on my new computer, and I just closed the window on the last blog that I wrote before saving. (Accidentally...I still don't quite know how to drive this thing...) So I'm starting over.
I had a short short day today because I worked last Saturday, so Marv and I hopped in my super cool Dodge Avenger rental car (my car is at Abra), and tooled all over Faribault picking up boxes. We then zipped onto the freeway, stopped at Starbucks and headed to Dad's to show off my accomplishments from last weekend and drop off the boxes. Then to Best Buy where I acquired this fancy schmancy computer, and then to Greenmill!
Now I'm home and after a super quick set-up time, I'm already surfing, writing and in general enjoying the world of speedy technology!
Not much to report really. Just kind of exploring this new computer and loading some stuff on it...I have a CD drive to connect still (they no longer make desktops with the CD drive in them! Apparently it's obsolete. Whatevs.) Gotta get the word processing stuff on there, too. But in the mean time, I'm just kind of enjoying the speed and the big screen!
I had a short short day today because I worked last Saturday, so Marv and I hopped in my super cool Dodge Avenger rental car (my car is at Abra), and tooled all over Faribault picking up boxes. We then zipped onto the freeway, stopped at Starbucks and headed to Dad's to show off my accomplishments from last weekend and drop off the boxes. Then to Best Buy where I acquired this fancy schmancy computer, and then to Greenmill!
Now I'm home and after a super quick set-up time, I'm already surfing, writing and in general enjoying the world of speedy technology!
Not much to report really. Just kind of exploring this new computer and loading some stuff on it...I have a CD drive to connect still (they no longer make desktops with the CD drive in them! Apparently it's obsolete. Whatevs.) Gotta get the word processing stuff on there, too. But in the mean time, I'm just kind of enjoying the speed and the big screen!
Friday, March 8, 2013
What I wanted to do today:
Work on some pottery
Write my blog
Watch a movie with Marv
What I did today:
Worked
Went to dinner with Marv
Did pottery while watching a couple of movies
Sketched in my blog
Did laundry
Pretty close.
The Five Stages of Grief:
1) WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?
2) Unbe-fucking-lievable.
3) This sucks
4) This really really sucks
6) It's never going to go away.
The dogs are out in the hallway scruffling about being left out of the room. But I sleep better without them and I have to be at work at 7:30am. Then I'm picking Grey up at Maelee's and heading to Richfield where I will drop off a debit card for a member before heading to Dad's house to further torture myself while I get filthy. Can't wait. I might stop at Best buy to look at the computer and/or go to Unique/Value Village because it's winter clearance time and I need new pants. I don't know WHERE the fuck my pants go. It's a mystery. How can they just disappear? And yet, they are gone. I'm missing a black pair of jeans and a blue pair of jeans.
Sunday after breakfast I'm going to go to Lynn's to do my taxes on Turbo tax - which apparently Minnesotans are not supposed to use this year. then to Dad's again.
Fun times will be had by all.
Work on some pottery
Write my blog
Watch a movie with Marv
What I did today:
Worked
Went to dinner with Marv
Did pottery while watching a couple of movies
Sketched in my blog
Did laundry
Pretty close.
The Five Stages of Grief:
1) WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?
2) Unbe-fucking-lievable.
3) This sucks
4) This really really sucks
6) It's never going to go away.
The dogs are out in the hallway scruffling about being left out of the room. But I sleep better without them and I have to be at work at 7:30am. Then I'm picking Grey up at Maelee's and heading to Richfield where I will drop off a debit card for a member before heading to Dad's house to further torture myself while I get filthy. Can't wait. I might stop at Best buy to look at the computer and/or go to Unique/Value Village because it's winter clearance time and I need new pants. I don't know WHERE the fuck my pants go. It's a mystery. How can they just disappear? And yet, they are gone. I'm missing a black pair of jeans and a blue pair of jeans.
Sunday after breakfast I'm going to go to Lynn's to do my taxes on Turbo tax - which apparently Minnesotans are not supposed to use this year. then to Dad's again.
Fun times will be had by all.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
I'm taking a long lunch today and it couldn't come a moment too soon. I'm actually having heart palpitations at work. This hasn't happened to me in a very long time. And it's not caused by my work, but rather by my work environment. Specifically, one person in my work environment who is driving me batty. Seriously. I need to bring in some soothing music or burn a candle or something before I go insane.
Marv told me that according to someone who did some study on annoying cubemates, I'm letting my reptilian brain control me, rather than using my higher functions like emotional brain or...I don't know what. Something that would make me NOT want to build a wall between my cube and hers.
She's loud. But she's not JUST loud. She talks to her self NON-stop in a loud voice. From the moment she enters the cube to the minute she leaves for one of her four hundred smoke breaks (each at 10 minutes), she TALKS. "Let's see...it's 2:30. So I just need to get this email set up and then..." ON AND ON.
But wait, there's more! She also coughs (because she smokes like a chimney - though according to her she smokes less...less than WHAT? I want to ask, but don't), she clears her throat (loudly), she blows her nose (loudly) all the time. She has this barking laugh that drives me insane, mostly because it's LOUD.
I try to separate out what she can control (loud talking) from what she can't (nose blowing?) and mitigate my irritation that way, but it's a losing battle.
This woman has it all. She's the total Annoying Cube Mate package. I was wracking my brain yesterday trying to think of something that she could add to her repertoire that would make her more annoying, but I failed. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's someone out there who is more annoying. But I can't imagine it any more than I could imagine what it would be like to sky dive out of a rocket ship.
But what can I do? So she takes long breaks - frequently. Does it bother me that she is essentially giving her self an extra 80 minutes a day not working? yes. But would it bother me MORE if she were sitting there making loud noises for that 80 minutes? Immensely! So I say, Smoke 'em if you got 'em! Let's see if we can't make that three pack a day habit four. I know it seems like a lot, but in this life, you have to push to reach that next level of achievement! Don't rest on your laurels!
I could go on with the annoying habits, but it's enough to just vent. And I have just spent 15 minutes of my break thinking and talking about her, so that seems like enough as well.
Soon enough I will be doing my version of Pee Wee Herman in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure." You know at the end where they are showing the movie of his life and he says, in response to his girlfriend who wants to watch the movie, "I don't have to watch it...I LIVED it." That's me. I don't have to write about it, I'm LIVING it.
Marv told me that according to someone who did some study on annoying cubemates, I'm letting my reptilian brain control me, rather than using my higher functions like emotional brain or...I don't know what. Something that would make me NOT want to build a wall between my cube and hers.
She's loud. But she's not JUST loud. She talks to her self NON-stop in a loud voice. From the moment she enters the cube to the minute she leaves for one of her four hundred smoke breaks (each at 10 minutes), she TALKS. "Let's see...it's 2:30. So I just need to get this email set up and then..." ON AND ON.
But wait, there's more! She also coughs (because she smokes like a chimney - though according to her she smokes less...less than WHAT? I want to ask, but don't), she clears her throat (loudly), she blows her nose (loudly) all the time. She has this barking laugh that drives me insane, mostly because it's LOUD.
I try to separate out what she can control (loud talking) from what she can't (nose blowing?) and mitigate my irritation that way, but it's a losing battle.
This woman has it all. She's the total Annoying Cube Mate package. I was wracking my brain yesterday trying to think of something that she could add to her repertoire that would make her more annoying, but I failed. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's someone out there who is more annoying. But I can't imagine it any more than I could imagine what it would be like to sky dive out of a rocket ship.
But what can I do? So she takes long breaks - frequently. Does it bother me that she is essentially giving her self an extra 80 minutes a day not working? yes. But would it bother me MORE if she were sitting there making loud noises for that 80 minutes? Immensely! So I say, Smoke 'em if you got 'em! Let's see if we can't make that three pack a day habit four. I know it seems like a lot, but in this life, you have to push to reach that next level of achievement! Don't rest on your laurels!
I could go on with the annoying habits, but it's enough to just vent. And I have just spent 15 minutes of my break thinking and talking about her, so that seems like enough as well.
Soon enough I will be doing my version of Pee Wee Herman in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure." You know at the end where they are showing the movie of his life and he says, in response to his girlfriend who wants to watch the movie, "I don't have to watch it...I LIVED it." That's me. I don't have to write about it, I'm LIVING it.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
So this weekend, I spent several hours working on Dad's basement. Saturday Mom was there with me and Marv, so we went out to Houlihan's - which has great brunch by the way - and celebrated her birthday. Then back to Dad's house where Mom continued in her quest to sort his thousands of videotapes. We worked on one tool bench, which consisted of emptying and sorting the contents of twenty drawers and the counter top into about fifteen boxes of assorted types of tools: electrical doo-dads, sockets, ratchets and their accessories, screws, washers and other non-nail hardware, painting supplies, compressor-driven tools, and more. After a combined total of about twelve hours, you can almost tell that we did something.
I washed my hands so many times that if one didn't know me, one might think I was prone to compulsive cleanliness. Even my FACE was filthy. But it was interesting. We were sorting hardware - bags upon bags of washers, screws, bolts and the like. I would pick up a little bag that contained about 50 or more of the said items, put the things that had fallen out of the bag back in it and hand it to Marv, who would patch the hole with duct tape. Holding out his hand to receive a bag and the other hand to give me the one he'd just patched, he'd say, "There's MORE?" Every time. Times fifty. But it continued to be funny because of the way he'd say it. Like he was astonished anew at each bag that appeared.
A thousand tiny little pieces of flotsam managed to find their way into boxes. One box of "miscellaneous" turned into two and then four. I had a box of "What the HELL is that?" tools. We moved some of the things that seemed worth cleaning up to sell up into the "selling room," which is a room on the main floor of the house where items that might some day land on eBay start their journey out of the darkness and into the light.
I'd find these random little tools that were just goofy, and somewhere in my mind I'd hear a distant memory speaking to me: "That goes with the torch." or "That's for the compressor." So many tools that I could remember from my teen years spent in the body shop fixing cars. I glowed with pride when Dad would tell me, "Wow! You really have a gift for painting!" And I remember the way that you are supposed to spray paint a car. The long smooth flow left to right with your finger on the trigger, and then the quick release and flick of your wrist that starts you back on your journey to the far left side of the car. The way that the next line of paint will feather onto the previous coat with an exactly perfect overlap. Too much, and you'll sag. Too little and you leave a paintless gap.
It brings up vast oceans of memories to be sorting through this random crap. Memories of working in the garage, of the way he would never throw anything out because everything could be fixed or re-utilized in some way. Not an environmentalist by anyone's standards, my dad truly was one of the first recyclers. He saved things not because he wanted to keep them from going into a landfill, but because you just never knew when you were going to need that seemingly useless thing. And I admit that even as I tossed items that were VERY clearly garbage, I could feel him saying, "HEY! What are you doing with that? It's perfectly good." But I knew in my heart that if *I* could throw it away, it's really garbage. Because I can't throw away anything useful either. Only it actually has to be useful in some real-life way, and not in some imaginary, if only there were pixie dust kind of way.
On Saturday, I looked in the binder that my mom started. She's been going through Dad's spiral bound notebooks and pulling out things that seem meaningful. There's a letter from Dad's dog Max...of course Dad wrote it, but Max signed it. It's written after Max died, apologizing for having to leave Dad. It broke my heart. Then there was another letter to us girls...I wasn't able to read the whole thing. But at the bottom, underlined three times, were the words, "I LOVE YOU SO MUCH."
I skimmed these letters, unable to read them, and started to sob. I walked out of the living room and into the kitchen, followed by Mom and Marv, and Mom hugged me and we cried together. She said, "It's so hard." What else can you say. It's so hard.
Last Thursday after work, Billie and I were walking from Depot Square down about a block to the long-term parking lot where those of us who work the late shift have to park. (The early birds get the close spots.) I don't mind because I don't get much exercise sitting all day on the phones, so it's kind of nice to get just that short walk. We're talking and walking and almost to the cars. We stop to talk a bit - finish our thoughts - and we watch a Ford F150 turn it's wheels and start to slowly back up...into my car. It crunches the back door, and then stops. I hear the passenger - a man - say, "I think you'd better go forward." I hear myself moan just a little as the big truck rolls forward and the rear driver's side door pops back out and releases with a crunching sound.
The subsequent exchange of information and the days of exchanged emails though aren't really the part of the story that relates to my whole state of mind.
On Monday, the driver's insurance company called me at work to ask me where I wanted to bring my car to have the damage repaired. What body shop do I want to use?
It's a seemingly innocuous question except that it started a cascade of emotions and questions. I'd NEVER in my life had to find a body shop. I GREW UP in a body shop. Resler's Body Shop. That's my body shop! Since Dad retired, I'd never had any car that had any body shop needs. When I was in my teens, I got in an accident that would, in another life, have totaled my car. It didn't occur to me to do anything but drive it home, put it in the drive way and pick it up later. Good as new.
When I got divorced and my out-laws insisted that they wanted the van back, Dad got me a free van. It just needed some work. Dad and Kevin fixed it up, put a new paint job on it and it was good to go. No fuss no muss. No wondering about body work, or worry about rust holes. All better.
I always knew that if I needed a body shop, it was right there at home waiting for me. I grew up with the vernacular of a body shop coursing through my literary veins. I could discuss DA's and bondo, fiberglass and wet sanding. I know what orange peel is and what sags are. I understand the process of stripping a car. I know how to get a candied finish.
What I don't know, apparently, is how to answer a simple question, "Where do you want to bring your car?" I was stymied. More than stymied. I was hurt by the question. Finally I just said that I didn't care. The very nice woman - who probably thought i was a lunatic - gave me the name of the nearest body shop - an Abra shop (previously known as "the competition" and "where the losers bring their cars.") She said that she'd contact them and have them call me. I hung up the phone and started to weep. At work. Over choosing a body shop.
Is it wrong that I want to watch them work on my car? And that I will hate them for doing it? And that I will hear Dad in my head also watching them and telling me that I should have gone somewhere else because he knows a guy who could do it for free because that guys owes him a favor?
Maybe I'll strike up a conversation with them and tell them about the sale that we'll be having. Selling lots of body shop things that they could probably use. There are new paint guns, and masks. There are cans of paint, thinner, adhesive...
Eventually we will have everything sorted out in the basement. Boxes of this and that. And it will go to new homes and the name engraved on the handle won't mean a thing. That buzzing engraver that distorted but never completely disguised Dad's handwriting - "RESLER" "RESLER" "RESLER" etched forever into my heart.
I washed my hands so many times that if one didn't know me, one might think I was prone to compulsive cleanliness. Even my FACE was filthy. But it was interesting. We were sorting hardware - bags upon bags of washers, screws, bolts and the like. I would pick up a little bag that contained about 50 or more of the said items, put the things that had fallen out of the bag back in it and hand it to Marv, who would patch the hole with duct tape. Holding out his hand to receive a bag and the other hand to give me the one he'd just patched, he'd say, "There's MORE?" Every time. Times fifty. But it continued to be funny because of the way he'd say it. Like he was astonished anew at each bag that appeared.
A thousand tiny little pieces of flotsam managed to find their way into boxes. One box of "miscellaneous" turned into two and then four. I had a box of "What the HELL is that?" tools. We moved some of the things that seemed worth cleaning up to sell up into the "selling room," which is a room on the main floor of the house where items that might some day land on eBay start their journey out of the darkness and into the light.
I'd find these random little tools that were just goofy, and somewhere in my mind I'd hear a distant memory speaking to me: "That goes with the torch." or "That's for the compressor." So many tools that I could remember from my teen years spent in the body shop fixing cars. I glowed with pride when Dad would tell me, "Wow! You really have a gift for painting!" And I remember the way that you are supposed to spray paint a car. The long smooth flow left to right with your finger on the trigger, and then the quick release and flick of your wrist that starts you back on your journey to the far left side of the car. The way that the next line of paint will feather onto the previous coat with an exactly perfect overlap. Too much, and you'll sag. Too little and you leave a paintless gap.
It brings up vast oceans of memories to be sorting through this random crap. Memories of working in the garage, of the way he would never throw anything out because everything could be fixed or re-utilized in some way. Not an environmentalist by anyone's standards, my dad truly was one of the first recyclers. He saved things not because he wanted to keep them from going into a landfill, but because you just never knew when you were going to need that seemingly useless thing. And I admit that even as I tossed items that were VERY clearly garbage, I could feel him saying, "HEY! What are you doing with that? It's perfectly good." But I knew in my heart that if *I* could throw it away, it's really garbage. Because I can't throw away anything useful either. Only it actually has to be useful in some real-life way, and not in some imaginary, if only there were pixie dust kind of way.
On Saturday, I looked in the binder that my mom started. She's been going through Dad's spiral bound notebooks and pulling out things that seem meaningful. There's a letter from Dad's dog Max...of course Dad wrote it, but Max signed it. It's written after Max died, apologizing for having to leave Dad. It broke my heart. Then there was another letter to us girls...I wasn't able to read the whole thing. But at the bottom, underlined three times, were the words, "I LOVE YOU SO MUCH."
I skimmed these letters, unable to read them, and started to sob. I walked out of the living room and into the kitchen, followed by Mom and Marv, and Mom hugged me and we cried together. She said, "It's so hard." What else can you say. It's so hard.
Last Thursday after work, Billie and I were walking from Depot Square down about a block to the long-term parking lot where those of us who work the late shift have to park. (The early birds get the close spots.) I don't mind because I don't get much exercise sitting all day on the phones, so it's kind of nice to get just that short walk. We're talking and walking and almost to the cars. We stop to talk a bit - finish our thoughts - and we watch a Ford F150 turn it's wheels and start to slowly back up...into my car. It crunches the back door, and then stops. I hear the passenger - a man - say, "I think you'd better go forward." I hear myself moan just a little as the big truck rolls forward and the rear driver's side door pops back out and releases with a crunching sound.
The subsequent exchange of information and the days of exchanged emails though aren't really the part of the story that relates to my whole state of mind.
On Monday, the driver's insurance company called me at work to ask me where I wanted to bring my car to have the damage repaired. What body shop do I want to use?
It's a seemingly innocuous question except that it started a cascade of emotions and questions. I'd NEVER in my life had to find a body shop. I GREW UP in a body shop. Resler's Body Shop. That's my body shop! Since Dad retired, I'd never had any car that had any body shop needs. When I was in my teens, I got in an accident that would, in another life, have totaled my car. It didn't occur to me to do anything but drive it home, put it in the drive way and pick it up later. Good as new.
When I got divorced and my out-laws insisted that they wanted the van back, Dad got me a free van. It just needed some work. Dad and Kevin fixed it up, put a new paint job on it and it was good to go. No fuss no muss. No wondering about body work, or worry about rust holes. All better.
I always knew that if I needed a body shop, it was right there at home waiting for me. I grew up with the vernacular of a body shop coursing through my literary veins. I could discuss DA's and bondo, fiberglass and wet sanding. I know what orange peel is and what sags are. I understand the process of stripping a car. I know how to get a candied finish.
What I don't know, apparently, is how to answer a simple question, "Where do you want to bring your car?" I was stymied. More than stymied. I was hurt by the question. Finally I just said that I didn't care. The very nice woman - who probably thought i was a lunatic - gave me the name of the nearest body shop - an Abra shop (previously known as "the competition" and "where the losers bring their cars.") She said that she'd contact them and have them call me. I hung up the phone and started to weep. At work. Over choosing a body shop.
Is it wrong that I want to watch them work on my car? And that I will hate them for doing it? And that I will hear Dad in my head also watching them and telling me that I should have gone somewhere else because he knows a guy who could do it for free because that guys owes him a favor?
Maybe I'll strike up a conversation with them and tell them about the sale that we'll be having. Selling lots of body shop things that they could probably use. There are new paint guns, and masks. There are cans of paint, thinner, adhesive...
Eventually we will have everything sorted out in the basement. Boxes of this and that. And it will go to new homes and the name engraved on the handle won't mean a thing. That buzzing engraver that distorted but never completely disguised Dad's handwriting - "RESLER" "RESLER" "RESLER" etched forever into my heart.
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