another whirlwind tour

We returned home yesterday around 6:30 pm from a weekend trip to the old neighborhood, with very little notice ahead of time for planning any schedule of visits and activites. We spent the weekend staying in the old neighborhood with John & Cindi again, who are excellent hosts every time we are able to come for a visit. I had two very good dinners with them that included things I can not get at home - good Vietnamese food and Indian food. I had been craving curry this week so I was happy to go to one of our favorite Indian restaurants on Saturday night.  Sunday, we were able to have an impromptu lunch meetup with Chaz and Sandra & her mother at So Ba in EAV. I would really love to be there on a late night some time when it metamorphs into the Octopus Bar, an after-hours hangout for bar & restaurant industry employees. Kinda reminds me of how everyone would meetup at Back Street on late nights after the clubs and restaurants closed years ago.

We needed to accomplish two things on the trip: 

1. Deliver a very large piece of hard-to-ship furniture to the Atlanta showroom from his company facility in North Carolina (the main reason for the trip).

2. Visit my mother, who is in declining health.

The only thing we accomplished was the delivery. I kept the rest of our time in the city on hold, trying to schedule a visit with my mother, but she would not see me. She has no energy to do anything for herself because of a combination of kidney disease, diabetes, and anemia. She refuses to let anyone visit her at home because it is a wreck, including anyone in the family (again) who might want to help clean and maintain her home because she is so ashamed of it. The anemia leaves her so weak she doesn't want to get out of bed. So she refused to let me come to see her. After waiting all weekend to visit her and being otherwise without a car of my own (I drove MonsterMustDie's car down to meet him at  the U-Haul lot), I spent most of the weekend just hanging out and waiting on everyone else to do something.

MonsterMustDie was too exhausted to do anything after loading, driving and unloading the truck. There was one birthday party involving a group of friends I have not seen in a very long time that I wanted to join in but I could not make that happen. Everything else would have needed more long-range planning with people who have active lives in circles I am no longer a part of. And then, I have no real budget for entertainment, anyway.

I never felt so much like a ghost.

Cause for concern

... so I was talking to John tonight on the phone at the airport in Atlanta, waiting for his 10pm flight to Greensboro, and it is obvious that he is quite drunk.

I said I wanted to pick him up at the airport but he insisted he would be fine to drive home when he arrives. 

Update: Yeah. He made it home okay without having to phone me. Quite late. 

Locked doors lead to broken windows.

We had an impromptu dinner with Mr. Pitbullpotpie and a business associate last night. The forecast was for ice from the sky but we decided to make the rendevous in Greensboro anyway and I am very happy that we did. The visit and dinner at US Sushi was good and the business associate we met was a very nice guy, who we would enjoy seeing again. MonsterMustDie had dumplings and beef while I shared a sushi boat with our companions. When we returned home, he parked his car on the street just in case the driveway was iced over in the morning.

As it turned out, while there were flurries as we drove north last night, nothing else fell and there was just a light frosting on things this morning. While MonsterMustDie was getting ready for work, I heard the bell at the back door. Our neighbor across the street had walked up to let us know his car had been vandalized and broken into overnight. She had heard something in the night, around 12:30 a.m. and saw what happened. A couple of guys in a two-tone, dropped down Toyota Celica that had been checking out houses nearby and took advantage of his car parked on the street. The Drivers side window was smashed but nothing had been taken from the car. The change that was still sitting in the holder between the seats and his Ray-Ban sunglasses were untouched. There was nothing else of any value kept in the car.

So, this morning was spent waiting for Police officer and a crime scene investigator to come buy and make a report, then driving to work a few hours before taking the car into a dealership to replace the glass and make any small repairs that were necessary. This also means this will likely be a very long work day for him to catch up on all the time he missed this morning.

Someone, please give me work or send me pocket cash

I need money now for this:

 - Groceries when I want to do something creative in the kitchen on empty days.
 - Continuing my online education.
 - Taking some local studio classes to feed my head and heart.
 - Automobile Insurance policy payments. 
 - New prescription glasses.


I need money in the near future for this: 
 - Dental hygiene appointment and x-rays (maintenance). 
 - New MacBook Pro.
 - Software updates (another part of my ongoing education). 

If I had a job, I would have money. While I would like to work in my field (Graphic Design) or something related to it, I would  be happy to take a retail, general office, or customer service job. I would not have to make that much money - I would work at nearly any rate if it was close enough to home not to cost too much in wear on my car, fuel, or hours of my life lost in travel.

PayPal donations are perfectly acceptable.

This is not to say I am at all ungrateful for what I have - a place to live, online access, a car that works, my health, etc. but I need to do so much more. This would be a huge relief for MonsterMustDie, also, if I could contribute to the household or at least be more independent.

Home improvement

Pizza for dinner and a new toilet paper holder. 

MonsterMustDie is quite proud of his new Arne Jacobsen chrome toilet paper holder and we tried Lubrano's Pizza delivery for the first time tonight. 

 

They managed to fill the entire box with a square thick crusted pizza. 

 

Behold the new mid-century designer tp holder.  

Snow

Lots of white outside this morning.

Winter flowers

lost week

Between cold temps, icey driveways, icey streets and lack of work or money, I spent most of the week after my niece's wedding indoors doing nothing. The weekend that was supposed to be filled with working on the house was instead spent with one grumpy old Dutchman sitting at his computer twittering on facebook and pinterest.  The house stayed stagnant. I still have no full bathroom or large mirror for dressing in this house. Valentines day was spent with MonsterMustDie watching TV or staying on facebook. That's another week of my life I'll never get back.

This week, I had one day of temp work and one day of volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. I had two calls from companies out of town asking if I would drive 30 minutes or more to work for $10 an hour at industrial sites. One was at a place that required me to regularly lift 50 lbs or "just a case of paper" on a regular basis. I have tried to raise my base salary requirements for something not so pathetic when I am required to drive more than 30 minutes and do physical labor that I am too small to do. I am not an athlete. I will do anything within my physical capacity even if it is outside my job description with no worries. If I am adequately compensated, I will drive any reasonable distance to work anywhere in this area. Otherwise, I actually lose money on fuel and wear on my car at the end of the day. Every job and location has a negotiable payscale.

It looks like I'll be doing the one-day volunteer and one-day work schedule for a while but I could always be wrong and pleasantly surprised by an opportunity close to home doing what I do best.

Some progress on the house was made this weekend. Yesterday was dedicated to painting one wall of the den.



Also, as a make-up for last weekend, MonsterMustDie bought flowers - something he never does - and made a nice arrangement for the mantel in the living room, which has an overall Japanese modern theme.

Frozen

We had our first "winter storm " here last night.  I appear to to stuck at home for a couple of days until things melt.

System is down

It is hard to break out of a powerful funk some times, rather than savoring it as long as possible.  I came back to North Carolina sad to leave Atlanta.

I dealt with one angry person raging against the machine last night keeping the entire household up until 1:00 a.m. Someone had hacked MonsterMustDie's website and he and Fun Lisa were working remotely to try to fix the problem, which probably elimated what was left of his online followers & customers. That, and he could not log onto his email from his computer because now iCloud did not recognize his password from that machine.  Then he could not remember any of his passwords for any of his accounts to reset them - and he still has accounts that list his email address as the outdated one (closed account) so the option of having sites email his login and password was not available.

... Fortunately, I was not the one who had to wake up for work at 6:00 a.m. this morning. One advantage to being unemployed is sleeping in every day. 

By lunch today, Fun Lisa had the site back up and functioning as it should. 

Even the cat was angry when we got home yesterday. She wanted nothing to do with us and was overly aggressive when we came near. I think the cat sitter might have been playing too rough with her of some other dysfunction was caused by the lack of our presence. Today, she spent most of the late morning and afternoon under the covers on the bed. However, she is now sitting and purring in my lap as I type this.

Rachael married Bobby

We are now  heading back home from Atlanta after my niece 's wedding.

 

 

back problems

I've got a soar back again today. I don't know what's up with my constantly hurting my back this week. It was just starting to get better from whatever I did to it last Saturday and now I've messed myself up again, probably trying to help lift bookshelves yesterday before I was completely recovered.
Or maybe there is something completely different going on with my back. I did have a doctor at an urgent care clinic look at it and he said it was a muscular injury involving an area that is a common problem for people with scoliosis like myself.

Yesterday, we spent the earlier part of the day at various antique malls before going to IKEA to buy two more bookshelves. A lot of walking around was involved, like last weekend, but trying to wrestle the boxed shelves into the car might have caused me to over-extend something. The boxes weren't even THAT heavy but they were long and awkward and had to be puzzled into place.

in gratitude

My mother is out of the hospital now and back to her normal routines. My sister-in-law and uncle did a great job, I am told, cleaning and organizing her entire home. All clothes were washed, folded or hung, and organized in her closets and dressers. Beds were made. Everything in the kitchen was cleaned and put away. Both refrigerator-freezers were completely cleaned out, washed out, and slightly restocked. Her rugs were professionally steam cleaned. Only one rug, in the office, had to be thrown away because it was too far gone. Her floors were cleaned. The door that had to be broken into was replaced. Now, I hope things stay a bit in order for as long as possible. It took her completely losing control for a while for things to get better.

I still don't know what became of the mother of my nephew's girlfriend but I assume that nothing has gone further downhill since no one has said anything about it to me.

Another day when everything is broken

I have been on the phone all day with various tech support from my website hosting service and Time Warner Cable.  MonsterMustDie is mad at me every time I try to move or set up anything here. I put a couple of stereo components on the cart purchased for the TV and cable modem, carefully as I could, and he blew up over the possibility of me scratching the finish, exclaiming “Oh, I'll just buy ANOTHER one!” 

I got a phone call from my mother between tech calls to tell me she is back in the hospital again in  Urgent Care.  She is having fainting spells because of her anemia. She stopped taking her blood medication, despite her doctor saying she should stay on it, because of the blood clots she developed. She is still on blood thinners for the clots. My guess is she will stay on blood thinners from now on. She is also actively having dialysis three times a week now. All of this has left her very weak. This time EMCs had to break down her door to get her out. 

The mother of my nephew’s girlfriend is in the same hospital now in ICU in a medically induced coma for a mystery illness. She is in the same building, on a different floor from my mother. This came out of the blue, from what I am told, to a presumably very healthy middle-aged woman.