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are you a left wing wacko?
2001-08-16
1:23 am
i've gone another week without updating. part of the reason is that my computer situation is a bit wonky. normally, the only time i feel like sitting down & writing is late at night. and if it's late - i'm going to be in here using my computer, which is without any net access. so i write at night, and then the next day i end up lugging my CPU into the bedroom with my parents' computer. i can then network the two together and get whatever i've written and post it at that time. it's really not that big of a deal, but it is annoying and often seems like more trouble than it's worth. so i get lazy and don't write. i keep thinking that i'll go use their computer & write, during the day, but that never happens.
since my parents' decided to take the loans to fix the houses, they've been trying to get bids from contractors. they're finally having some luck, with people actually returning their calls & coming by to estimate the job(s). so far they've only received one actual bid, from a company who is working on a house two houses over from me. some other guy came by earlier this week and looked at all 3 houses, but they don't have a bid from him yet. i know everyone is anxious to get the work done so that we can all go back to something resembling a normal life, but at the same time we don't want to rush into anything.
the contractor that's doing the work down the street commented on the painting i did in my bedroom while doing his walkthrough on my house. "wow, who did this painting? the faux finish looks great!" i told him that i'd done it, and that it took me forever - but mostly because i was lazy about it. he responded with "you did this alone? you want a job? wow, very creative." of course he wasn't seriously offering me a job at that moment, but i must admit that the praise felt nice. i don't know why i thought it was going to be so easy. once i got started however, and realized it was actual work, i often cursed myself for making that choice. of course now that they're going to have to rip out the old sheetrock & replace it all 3-4 feet up every wall, i'll have more painting to do. argh.
since the money will be coming for the work now, we've been trying to decide what to do about the floors in the house i was renting. the bathroom was standard bathroom tile, so it's fine. the kitchen was just some ugly sheet vinyl stuff. the living room/dining room area was carpeted and the rest of the house (hallway & 3 bedrooms) was some ugly wood parquet floor. actually it wasn't really ugly, the color was just too dark for my liking, and since it was pretty old, it didn't look all that great. i've been renting that house for nearly 6 years and all that time i kept saying i was going to do something about the floors but i never did because you can quickly get into some serious money. now we don't really have a choice, as some of that parquet just up and started floating during the flood, and the rest of it is just trashed now anyway. the vinyl crap in the kitchen is all trying to come up now, too.
i had already thought about the kitchen. there's a hideous cabinet that some previous tenant built in there. it's just chipboard or whatever, with a counter top. i'm sure it looked nice when it was first built, but it hasn't held up well. one of the doors had completely broke off and the counter top wasn't in great condition, either. i was going to rip that old counter out and replace it with the new kitchen stuff i'd bought. this is the stuff that i'd brought in from my garage the wednesday before we got flooded. when we actually did get flooded two days later, it was spread out all over my living room, but i managed to get it all up high enough before the water took over my house, so it's safe. that old counter was obviously built in there before the sheet vinyl was laid in the kitchen, because the flooring stops at the edges. if i tore out that counter, i was going to have a big area of floor with no covering. my plans had been to make a decision about the flooring first, rip out the ugly beast of a counter, put in new flooring, and then finally put in the new kitchen furniture. all i'd decided was that i wanted ceramic tile or something - no more vinyl.
so my parents have asked me what type of flooring i'd want in the house. i keep telling them to do whatever they want, as it's their house. i don't own it. they didn't give it to me. i just rented it. it's their loan that's going to be buying new flooring, so i think the decision should be made by them. my mother knows that i hate carpet, though. actually, i don't really hate carpet, but i get annoyed with carpet. it's always dirty and after you've had it for a while, it just starts looking old. i imagine if you buy really nice (read: expensive) carpet, it will hold up much better, but they don't really want to spend that kind of money. i don't blame them. you can buy & have porcelain tile, or hardwoods, or laminate flooring installed for the same amount or less than you'd spend on buying really nice carpet & having it put in - and i'd opt for any of the other choices before i'd pick carpeting. my mother & i went out last weekend and looked around at several stores for flooring choices. i think they're leaning towards tile in the entire house now, rather than carpeting. i have several rugs i'd bought for the parts of the house that had wood floor, so they'd sit on tile just as well.
i keep feeling like i shouldn't be involved in any of their decisions about this. if i can't get my shit together & get a job by the time the houses are done, i'm not going to move back in there anyway. if i don't have a job, i don't want to move back in and try to scramble to find ways to pay the rent like i was doing right before all this happened. i also don't want them to let the house sit there empty while they're waiting to see if i want to go back. they'll really need both houses to be rented since they're going to be paying back this stupid loan now. of course it's not like this work is going to be done next week or anything. it's going to take a while. so i have some time, but if my financial situation doesn't improve by that time, i'd just stay here for another month or so until the finances were back on track. i'm living here now because i don't have a choice, but once i had a choice i think i'd be much more motivated to get my ass in gear. with the way things stand now, even if i was currently working and had no problems with the finance, i think i'd still be staying here as it would benefit most involved in one way or another. i could live here rent-free while waiting for my house to be ready again, and i think it's good for my mother's emotional well-being right now because it seems like once we get past one nightmare, there's another one waiting to happen. she's under a lot of stress. my father is just not much help to her in that department and i don't think he can even understand that, much less do anything about it.
so ... what else happened in the past week? i got a free sandwich the other day. i went to schlotzsky's and ordered my small cheese original on wheat and some chips and the cashier guy tells me 89 cents. i'm thinking that maybe he thought i only wanted the chips. so i gave him a buck to cover that, but said "i still need to pay you for the sandwich." he just shook his head no at me. i gave him a confused look and he told me that they get a free sandwich during their shift, but he wasn't going to eat his - so he was making my sandwich his free sandwich. hooray for nice people!
i took my kitty in to have her teeth cleaned. sheesh, why do i always call my cats 'kitties'? they're 12 yrs old. anyway, i kept putting it off because she understandably hates going to the vet. the last time she went to the vet, in january, they amputated most of her right front leg. she had a cancerous tumor underneath her pad, but it was all wrapped up in her joints and there was no way to just remove the tumor. apparently they most often do amputation because there's a better chance at getting all of the cancer out. i believe that whole mess was much more difficult on me than it was on her. my vet kept telling me that their quality of life with 3 legs is nearly as good, if not just as good, as it with 4. i just didn't like having to make that decision. "ok, cut off her leg." if she'd been hit by a car or something where it felt like i wasn't in control of the situation, i guess i could have handled it better. the vet was right, though. other than those first two days after her surgery, when she was all doped up but i knew she was still in pain, she's been fine. she runs, she jumps, and she sleeps a lot. she's just as she was before all this happened. anyway, i felt like a horrible mom putting her through all that so i was having a hard time making myself take her back in again to get her teeth cleaned. i finally realized i'd feel like a much worse mom if i let her teeth fall out. she survived her teeth cleaning day just fine. she came home and her brother slapped her around a bit, as he always does. i don't know if he smells other animals on her and that's why he does that, or if he's just a bastard. probably the latter.
fema gave me around $2000 for all the stuff i lost in my house. i heard from my mother that the couple that lives in the other rent house also got around the same amount. i don't want to sound like i'm complaining about that, because if they want to give me $2000, i'll gladly take it and use it to buy furniture & stuff. it just sucks 'cause that certainly won't replace everything i lost. it's free money, though. i don't have to pay it back. all of the people i talked to out at the disaster recovery centers kept telling me to not be so proud & honest. not as in they were telling me to lie, but they were saying that i should quit being like "oh, this thing got all wet and it's all nasty, but i bet i can clean it up and still use it." they just kept telling me to state everything i lost or that got damaged and quit feeling guilty about it. they would remind me that i pay taxes and that this is money that the government puts aside for this purpose, so if i'm entitled to some of it - take it - because if i don't, someone else who may not be so honest will. i finally decided to not feel guilty because i realized that my problem was that i was worrying about other people. i kept thinking about how i don't really need a new couch when there's people who've never even had a couch. it's not like our government is an entity who truly cares about people, they're just a business. if everyone was like me, the government would end up with money left over and do you think they'd do anything with it that i'd actually approve of? hell no.
that reminds me of a funny strip i read in the paper last week. i'll see if i can find it online. yep, here it is.
random movie quote:
"now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that."
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