Things may be calming down

[Charisma69]

Heather called me the other night and told me she was moving out. Seems she had a talk with her Mom and they decided it would be better for her if she moved back in with her Mom.

See, Heather has to have surgery on her back now. She has bone fragments floating around in her back. She's having a really rough time and she'll be out of work for another 6 weeks - possibly more.

She didn't even last 24 hours with her Mom though. They got in a fight shortly after she moved in. So now Heather is staying with her Grandma.

It was really sudden having her move out but it's nice having my house back again. I decided that since the spare room is cleaned out it was a good time to remake my office area.

See, once upon a time, back when we first moved here, I had my very own office. As time went on various people stayed here so my spare room became a bedroom and my desk went into my bedroom - which made it very cramped.

I figured since we've already moved the bed out into the garage I might as well leave it there. I need to take back my room.

Of course I wasn't thinking about how much of a pain in the ass this was going to be.

I have way too much crap, and some of it is very heavy. First I had to move a bookshelf out of my room - only to get it out of the way. I actually had to put that one back in my room when I was done moving the desk.

Then I moved my other bookshelf into the spare room. I have some really heavy freaking books.

Moving the desk was the worst part. For one, it has so much crap on it. You can't even imagine the amount of stuff I manage to keep on this desk. It has lots of shelves, and it was a mess since I've been so busy lately. I've basically just been throwing all my mail, pocket change, etc on my desk. I moved several boxes just full of crap into the spare room. That didn't even cover all the cds, notebooks, magazines, and knickknacks I have. Then there's all the computer equipment.

After all that I had to take the desk apart to get it out of the room.

See, my son volunteered to help me do this when he got home from school. It was actually his freakin' idea. Well, I mentioned how cool it would be to have my office again and he said he'd help me out.

Well, instead of helping he decided to go play Guitar Hero at his friends house.

So this left me to move a heavy ass desk all by myself. I was actually swearing at the desk at one point. I was having trouble getting the top to come off. You have to turn the cam bolts a certain way to loosen them. I could get some of them right but the others didn't want to work. It took forever to get it off.

I guess it was good that I was pissed since I was actually able to lift the top and carry it into the other room. It's always been too heavy for me to lift before.

Then I had to put the desk back together again. That wasn't quite as bad, well except for getting the top back on. It was hard to line all the bolt slots up by myself. I'd get some of them in and go to fix the rest and it'd mess up the other ones.

Then I hooked all the computer equipment back up. First the dsl wouldn't work but after fiddling around with it for awhile it suddenly started working again. I guess I had a loose connection or something. I'm not sure what happened.

I was going to get online but it was getting really late and I still needed to put my bedroom back in order.

I put the bookshelf back in my bedroom and put the TV/DVD player/playstation II on top of it. I would have put the TV in the office but I didn't have the satellite ran into that room when I had it installed. That and I use the television as a backup alarm clock in the morning.

Then I moved the bed, or tried moving the bed. I had a few things under it so I had to move those things out of the way. Then the headboard came apart. It's one of those fake brass headboards. One of the posts came off, then some of the slats came off. I tried removing the other post but the screw was stripped so I just moved it with the headboard in pieces. It can be fixed, I just need the time and the energy. Oh, and I have to find new bolts. I don't know where the actual bolts disappeared to.

So my bed looks rather silly right now. The headboard is leaning on the one side. You can't tell if the pillows are propped up though.

Then I had to get stuff off my bed. I piled things on there when I was moving things around. It was the easiest was to move things considering the lack of space at the time.

Then I had to go to bed since I had to be up early for work. I hadn't even gotten around to eating dinner. I was so tired, and dusty. I had to take another shower. I made the mistake of taking a shower before I started doing all this crap.

Today I was really, really sore. Especially my upper thighs. I felt like I'd done one hell of a workout. Going from standing to sitting is hell on my upper thighs right now. See, with my back I have to bend at the knees whenever I need to pick something up or put something down. You try doing that over and over again for several hours and then tell me how you feel later.

I had to work 9 hours today, but today was actually a pretty fun day at work. Courtney and I got to laughing all afternoon. He had me laughing so hard I almost pissed myself.

For one, anytime the ranch sauce or honey mustard sauce bottles are nearly empty they make a farting sound. So that always gets us to laughing because of the farting preacher thing on YouTube.

On top of that, Brian is an idiot. Not the Brian Collective of course, just this guy we work with.

It would take way too long to explain all this but trust me, it was so very funny.

Courtney asked Brian what his IQ was at one point. Brian told us, "40/20".

Courtney tried to explain to him that that's not an IQ, that's your eyesight but Brian didn't get it. He said that's what the Doctor told him.

It just kept getting more and more comical. I so wish I wasn't so tired so I could really go into detail.

Anyway, after I got home I ate my leftover Mexican that I got yesterday when I had lunch with Heather. Very tasty stuff. Oh, and I watched the latest ep of Jericho with Enzo.

Then I began the task of cleaning up my room. I got the other dresser out of the closet so now I actually have room to hang up all my clothes. I got most of my clothes hung up, but I ran out of hangers. I had to clean out the closet - which totally sucked. Especially since I'm so sore. I threw away so much crap. I filled up a ginormous trash bag - I'm talking larger than a 30 gallon trash bag. I'm not sure how big it actually is. The trash bags are Heathers. She used them when we were helping her move. You can fit a person in them.

I probably need to go through and get rid of some more stuff but I'm too tired for all that. I just got rid of stuff that had to be gotten rid of. Now my room is mostly clean, except for the laundry I haven't put away yet. I still need to sort through my socks too. Oh, and my big dresser is a total mess. I need to do something about that one of these years.

Then it was time to fix the office area. All my papers, books, notebooks, disks, cds, etc. were scattered about the floor.

Now everything is in it's place, mostly. There are a few odds and ends on my desk. But the room looks like a room now. I even hung up some posters and stuff.

Without my television on my desk there is more room to organize my little odds and ends. I have the cute little Buffy tins with little pieces of stake shaped gum. They've basically been piled up on my desk for years since I had no real place to put them. Now they are neatly organized across the top of my desk. They look so nice up there. Especially with the Neon Schlitz beer sign hanging on the wall behind them.

It feels good to have all this stuff done, but I still need to put together my new computer. The boxes are sitting on the couch in the living room. I wanted everything arranged before I started that.

Now I'm not sure when I'll have time to do it.

I work all day tomorrow, I'm not off until 7, and then I have to be in early Saturday.

I guess I'll mess with it on my next day off. I want to be able to fully concentrate on what I'm doing so I don't mess anything up.

That and it will probably be much easier to concentrate if my entire body isn't so freakin' sore. I just hope I can get out of bed tomorrow.

Speaking of which, I'd better go to bed. Goodnight everyone - if anyone is still up.

[tjaman]

Wow, this must've been the week for it. I spent a good portion of yesterday reconstructing my headboard.

See, I don't actually have a headboard. I got a double bed about two years ago and I didn't have enough dosh to get the mattress set, the bedding and a headboard, so I just provisionally set up a half dozen smallish shelving units underneath a bookshelf and draped a cloth over the whole thing. And I'd put an increasingly useless many-years-old stereo on it and over time a number of books and candles and pens and whatnot sort of accumulated there.

Well, I got rid of most of my CDs and I had absolutely no use for a mostly useless CD player there so I yanked that out and replaced it with a little docking station for my tjPod. Which was significantly smaller than the big ol' CD player had been so now everything had to be reorganized.

And yesterday, I reorganized it.

I set up a couple of bookends and collected my bedside reading -- it did begin its life as a bookshelf, after all. I scattered the candles around that and set the little iDock to one end.



It's not too awful looking, imo -- especially with the cute little Janeway bear I got in Vegas.

And I collected the CDs I decided to keep into one unit (they used to take up so much more space than they do) and I've got a staging area for my VHS tapes when I start converting them (I've still got a bunch more to go through). The apartment is looking a lot cleaner in the wake of the tjPod, and I'm terribly, terribly pleased about that.

Congrats on getting your space the way you want it, Cordy! Office space is a great use for that room. Enjoy! ;D

[Aunt Arlene]

My IQ has to be at least 45/20.

[quantumcat]

I think the top number is book learnin' and the bottom is
horse sense....

All these home improvement stories were sent to goad me
into working on my home sweet hovel.

I loved your descriptions and pics but next time have a film crew
record the makeovers for posterity-and cash!!!

I know I ought to hit this place one bit at a time.

Sweep,mop,pick up clutter,sort,rearrange.....

I'd like to have my rooms look like rooms and do
something about the kudzu-like spread of the various
ten percent finished projects we have.

I loaned out my vaccuum cleaner and the little steam
blasting critter.

(It looks like a pulp fiction ray-gun but it's perfect for
pressure washing greasy ovens,vents,refrigerator coils,gutters,
patio furniture,cars and tedious evil demons with scalding vapor.)

In theory,I could clean all this up,take out the items thrown together
and try the 'place for everything' bit.

I could gain a lot more space and better access to what I have even
if I kept some stuff I don't need.

But I fear a week would go by and I'd have a new litter of chaos bred
and I'd fill the extra space with foundlings from yard sales,book stores
and other chatchke havens.

Besides,I can't spend a month soaking in a tub of sea salt and essential oils.

The bath's been taken over by a band of doughty Victorian explorers who
are surveying terrain (and getting sprayed with primer) before lunching with
missionaries from Innsmouth and Dejah Thoris.

This brings to mind a helpful beauty tip: Don't mistake the Krylon for the Pantene
hairspray.

It will cover the gray and has good holding power but the texture leaves something
to be desired.

Maybe one day I'll get work brittle and tidy up-or maybe someone from HGTV will
figure out how the Time Lords do the temporal orgami necessary to horde all their stuff!

[tjaman]

Hit the place hard enough and you might find you have more pets than you thought you did.

[quantumcat]

(does a medley of Willard and Joe's Apartment )

We have cats,bats,mantises,ladybugs(native variety),daddy longlegs,dogs,
sugar gliders and an orc.

No meeses,roaches,waterbugs,flies,fleas,birds or horses-except on the outside.

I wonder if I could sneak in a llama or some ducks or ponies and convince Jim
they were in the linen closet

[Charisma69]

auntarlene said:

My IQ has to be at least 45/20.

OMG, I so love you Auntie. I really needed that after my day at work.

Courtney is really cranky, he's considering never coming back. Laura really pissed him off today. She wrote him a bitchy sounding note in the ISP (the managers computer) about how she put up the POP that she had told him to do.

I guess he tried talking to her about the tone of her note and she told him to get over it. That she was his boss and she meant the note to sound bitchy.

So he's really upset right now. I tried telling him to at least show up tomorrow since I work. I don't want to work shorthanded.

He asked me not to say anything about him possibly not coming in so I won't. He is my friend and I feel bad for him right now.

Also, I can't say I blame him. I don't think I'd want to show up tomorrow if she'd done that to me.

I'm already pretty pissed at how they're giving me so many mid shifts. Sure, it's nice to be able to sleep in but I don't like not being home when my son gets home from school. I know he's 15 now but there's all sorts of things he could end up doing without supervision.

Having me work so many mids makes it to where I hardly get to spend time with him at all since he's usually at his Grandparents house on weekends.

I tried explaining this to the Store Manager and she looked at me like I was insane. She didn't seem to get what my problem was.

I told her that I'm a single parent. I don't have a husband to depend on to take up the slack - not that my ex would have picked up the slack but you know what I mean.

She finally said she'd look at my schedule, but she probably won't.

I really need a new job.