Splash

I got to work this morning and the guy is spraying water from a loose hose all over the processor and nearby cubicles.  Some over spray hit me as I came through the door.

Then, to confirm this not a job I should be doing, he has to lift these gigantic roller units into the sink.

perhaps I am an ingrate

My first Friday at my new temp job and my first “Oh, Hell, No!” instance occurred. At the very beginning, when I was just interviewing, I told both this company and my placing temp agency that I am not a mechanic or big and strong enough (and far too desk-educated) to be a laborer. My first Friday, one of the guys there came up to show me how to do my new job - dismantling and cleaning the giant processors in the plate-maker. I have taken care of smaller processors and plate-makers 20 years ago for more pay than I am getting now but this is not part of my deal. He winces at my inability to align in one stroke the extra-long film containers that are beyond my wingspan. Then he tries to get me to dip my hands into the chemical tanks with no rubber gloves or tools - he told me to just wrap a shop rag around my fingers. I held up my hands, dangled my fingers and, as nicely as I could muster, told him I was not doing that without at least wearing rubber gloves and preferrably with an apron on as well. End of story.

We'll see what they expect of me and they'll hear what I expect from them on Monday.

empty

I really hate living like I am here, all alone, but at least I have a place to live and a temp job to occupy my days. I appreciate those things in my life. Now, I just wish they weren't the only things in my life.

Ghost Town

So, with nothing else to do here, I took the job I do not want that is a 35-minute commute away. We'll see how things work out. I have to be there by 8:00 a.m. and the first week will be just two days because I already told them I will be traveling on Wednesday for the holiday. At least, with a job I don't have any expectations of other than filling my time and maybe giving me a little pocket money, I don't feel bad at all at telling them how and when I will work. I am truly hoping I will be pleasantly surprised after I start work there. Meanwhile, I will try to look at other local options for at least keeping up a marketable skill set.

I am looking forward to spending time in Atlanta again next week. Wondering how much I can do while I am there.

The area we live in now is dead most of the year and is mostly a retiree community. There are two 2-week convention seasons in Spring and in Autumn. Between that, every business closes it's doors except the bars, which are rather unimaginative. There must be some hidden pearls here but I have not yet made it out enough to find them. That said, I know it means that I really need to work on making my own groove happen.

mirror mirror

With any luck, I will have a mirror to groom myself in front of by Thursday night and a bathroom sink again by Sunday evening. The job that is a 30-minute drive from the house, that I interviewed for and decided I had no interest, in will not take no for an answer and they want me to come in at least as a temporary employee this week. I still don't have my own house key.

Nothing is working out for me this month, so far.

Friends in Georgia have invited us to spend Thanksgiving with them and I look forward to the possibility of doing that in the old neighborhood with people I know and love.

There is no joy in my life this month.

I am tired of living without a single room that is functional here. I would at least like to have one complete bathroom and a real bed to sleep on. If I can't have a job to work outside of the house, at least I'd like to have a house that didn't feel like a prison.

I do not want to be a joy-killer to someone who is living their dream of home ownership for the first time but he is making bad decisions. Rather than concentrate on having a functional home first and then addressing surface and aesthetic issues later, he has decided to immediately start remaking every room at once and doing all of the work himself. This means there is not a single room here that is functional.

One bathroom now has a chunk out of the tub from replacing the tile and there are no plans to replace the tub - he just intends to live with it. In that same bathroom, there is no sink now because he took out the pedestal sink that was in it and does not have one that will fit the uneven walls to go in now. And there is a tiny and constant leak of water that slowly rises out of the detached pipes were the sink was.

The other bathroom has no hot water and a rusted, nasty medicine cabinet.

The only bed is an inflatable one. It is a very nice inflatable bed that my mother gave us a couple of years ago, because we did not have a guest room and I wanted something other than the floor to accommodate overnight company. It was okay for a few nights but now I am waking up with weird bruises. I assume that is because the air mattress is so hard.

The bedroom closet had a set of racks and shelves in it that he dismantled because it looked cheap to him. There are now shelves in the empty little room that was the bedroom closet now so the only thing in there is the cat's litterbox.

I am still living out of boxes for most things. There is no TV. Thankfully, there is WiFi so it's not all bad. My office, with the exception of my computer, is still in boxes. Somehow, my file cabinet was upturned in shipping and unloaded inches from the closet door. This means 1. I will need a handtruck and help to move the file cabinet enough to open the drawers to access all my folders, etc. 2. when I did manage to open the top drawer just a couple of inches, I could see paper was everwhere. I will have to empty both drawers and reorganize every scrap of paper in the cabinet when I can get inside of it.

I no longer have a food processor, blender, or slow-cooker.

The backyard is full of discarded moving boxes that I am still cutting down and putting in cans as they fit, week by week. We have three bins for city pickups: one to hold all household trash for the week,  one for recycling that they pick up every two weeks, and one for yard trash. They prefer leaves to be put in clear plastic bags in this city - not paper. I see no logic in this. I think everything goes on the same truck and ultimately into the same landfill regardless of what it is. If it does not fit in one bin, it does not get picked up. I am filling the bins as much as possible for each pickup until we can hire a service to pick up the large stuff that will need to be hauled off by professionals.

The rest of the house is in need of painting before any of the shelving and furniture can be set up in a useful manner. Every wall is covered with holes, putty, and primer.  Nearly every electrical socket is dangling out of the wall.

The back sunroom/porch is a dumping ground of tools and parts.

New Digs

The new digs are still a dusty shambles but I am slowly just going ahead and unloading boxes while just wiping things down with a damp cloth. As much as we tried to get rid of before the move, it seems as though the household possessions have doubled in size while the amount of space we have in a house has shrunk.

The cat is having trouble adjusting too but she's on the mend. After not eating, drinking, or pooping or coming out from under the covers on the bed for the first 36 hours in the new house, Ellie appears to be back to normal. She is up to her old tricks and appetite. 

My beautiful hair color has started to fade already because of the cheap shampoo I've had to use until I can find my color-safe shampoo. There are two large bottles of it somewhere in the massive maze of boxes and bags here. I am also doing a bit of Amazon shopping for things that I suspect were left behind, as I find I need them. Probably gonna go broke on Amazon but its so darned convenient and, with John's Amazon Prime sharing, most of it has free shipping.

I did not know we had an active phone land line into the house until I started getting political robot calls. I am kinda glad to be out of touch with the news and media a bit for now, at least until all is said and done with the elections. I'd rather not be sucked into the maelstrom of rage and propaganda on television and radio this week.

Last Supper with Cindi & John

John ordered fragrant rice with charcoal grilled lamb.

Last supper with Cindi and John at Com

Dinner at Com with Cindi & John  on the last night in Atlanta before the big move. I ordered Pho Ga.

this is not shaping up to be a good weekend

MonsterMustDie is in town this weekend. Yesterday was my birthday and between that and the move, I have an obligatory family visit starting this afternoon that he has agreed to accompany me to.

I am getting a strong indication that he does not want me in North Carolina with him. There is a sunroom in back that was once a back porch, now closed in and windowed. I had already put in dibs on that one room in the new house as an area for myself. Just as expected, he is already saying "The neighbors can see what's in there" as if to say he does not want me making a mess, which means he prefers I don't use that area for anything. This is a room that already houses the laundry machines and a big hole in the wall for an unplugged dilapidated window unit AC. His latest comments on things I like are "Great. Another expensive thing to sit around." I wonder if this is how he split with his first wife - through passive actions pushing her until she could not take any more.

Update:
In spite of good efforts to work in a trip to Home Depot on the way and still planning to arrive early, we got to my mother's house five minutes late of the absolute deadline she had given me at 2:05 pm. Or so we thought. There was no on at her flat but her and the dogs. She had forgotten to tell us that plans had changed. No one in the family was coming except my brother and sister-in-law, who would be picking up my mother (thank God she's not driving!) and taking her to a place my brother had picked out in midtown called "Poor Calvin's" for dinner. Reservations for dinner had been made for all of us at 7:30 p.m.

We had not eaten yet, planning on the late lunch/early dinner gathering, and had otherwise planned to do a lot of work on packing and meeting up with people who had purchased used items at the house in the early evening after time with the family. Those plans were now effectively trashed. We agreed that we would all just meet at the restaurant this evening. Then, MonsterMustDie and I headed back to the house to accomplish what we could at the house in the small amount of time we might have before heading out again for time with my family. On the way home, we stopped by Steak and Shake, where he got something he'd been craving for a while - chilli and a grilled cheese sandwich. Then we ran home. He got filthy working in the shed to pull things out and dismantle boards for a couple in the neighborhood to pick up later, and I pulled a few more things out to pack and did a tiny bit of laundry.

October 17

Birthday greetings from Google

no place for a woman

Thus far on the new house, I will not have my own fully functioning bathroom for a while. Instead, there is a second, smaller bathroom with a tiny shower and no shelves or counter space. In other words, there is no place for grooming or toiletries or makeup other than a medicine cabinet.

Yesteday, he told me the kitchen is not a priority for him and he has no need for a blender or food processor - but he forbids me from buy an affordable Black and Decker blender because he says they make poor quality products. The kitchen has an outdated electric stovetop and oven. The space is small. He brought the microwave oven, originally mine, to the NC house and that will be our main source of hot food.

He also keeps repeating that I should have no problem finding work after we move. Either he does not want me there and is passively pushing me out by making my life as restricted as possible or he really thinks I could find a job that would allow me to contribute equally if I wanted to. If I could find a job, I would not be moving. We are relocating to a low-income area that has been in a depression for the last 15 years. 

Things are not going well this weekend.

Treat for Ellie a.k.a. Tiny Dynamine

lost in the weeds

Talked to John today and he admonished me for buying small things and having them sent to the new house because:
1. I should not be shopping for anything now.
2. He does not want anything else he has to put into a cabinet.

In other news, the large bathroom - my bathroom - is not finished, will not be finished, and does not have a working toilet. I will have to make do with the small closet-sized bathroom for the foreseeable further.

Without checking city zoning and regulations, like I suggested weeks ago, he purchased a new wall-mounted mailbox for the house. Today, he got notice in the mail that mailbox will not be to code and must be replaced with a street-side mailbox per current postal regulations. Fortunately, he has time to return the large new mailbox he purchased and get his money back. He has already ordered a new mailbox to install at the street.

I believe his views may be changing on the importance of having sheltered off-street parking. This is a good thing, since I don't want to have to park under a tree at the top of the yard, blocked in by his car.

He is losing time by concentrating on every minute dent and scratch and crack in the wall while he still has not painted any room yet. There is no way he can make every wall perfect and he admits he has lost a lot of time by not being able to just let go of his quest for perfection. The OCD mind does not work well with tight deadlines.

He's working like crazy, to the point of breaking while trying to live his first home-owner dream.