[
family
random thoughts
rants
]
2002-11-07
Oy. Tired: Today, I went through the entire garage, moving around my bins and boxes full of stuff (well, crap) and generally improving the situation. I took one box of stuff to Goodwill, and have several more piles of the same sort of stuff to go as well.
It was grueling. I've been putting this off for a long time. I didn't just move stuff around, I sorted through it. Not all of it, mind you, just lots of it. And my back is killing me. Ugh.
I also set up my industrial shelves in the garage, the better to hold my oddly-shaped boxes and things. See, most of my belongings fit into my huge collection of Rubbermaid bins. I'm slowly moving everything over to bins from boxes, after a nasty episode a few years ago in which I lost a box of clothes to mold secondary to water damage in a Public Storage third-floor unit. And plus my boxes are showing wear and I just generally like the bins more. They come in all sorts of pretty colors, for one thing.
Which brings me to the point that I have a remarkable collection of bin colors, considering that I've been collecting the standard Rubbermaid Roughneck bins for many years now. I've got gray bins with orange lids, and in the category of "bins with the same color lid", I've got: hot pink, white, dark green, medium green, and four different shades of blue: bright blue, medium blue, medium-darkish blue, and dark blue infused with glittery stuff. And then there are two gray lids in there - I figure I must have been in an odd mood when I was bin shopping and picked contrasting gray lids. Oh yeah, and of the new Roughneck style of bin, I've got four of the blue ones with gray lids, but I don't like them - the lids don't stay on very tightly at all, so I'll be looking to pawn them off on a relative or friend one of these days when I can spare them.
More than you ever wanted to know about my Rubbermaid bins, but there's still more! Anyway, once I get everything under control, like items happily encased with their brethren, I plan to label, number, and inventory the lot of them. With the remarkable number of colors I have to work with, I will be able to tell at a glance which bin in which stack has got the item I need. Such as: the medium-sized medium blue bin with the hot pink lid holding office supplies, or some such thing.
Can you tell I've put an extraordinary amount of thought into this? This whole process has taken me years, mind you, so I've had a lot of time to ponder it.
My bin obsession, as it were, makes me horribly vulnerable every time I spy a new color of bin. I simply *must* have at least two of any new color I see. Occasionally I am able to exercise a tiny amount of restraint, but it's very difficult. These days I don't really have to worry, because I'm so broke I can't afford even one bin (the small ones run about $3.50). But the peril awaits should I wander down the wrong aisle at Wal-mart - the heartbreak of seeing a new bin color that I will never see again, and which I cannot afford to buy. This has already happened to me with the glorious ruby red and the silver with glitter, alas.
Yes, I'm a bin freak. So sue me.
Tomorrow I face a great deal more sorting, and I'll be taking a full carload to Goodwill. My fabric collection, which I typically refer to as my Fabric Problem, has grown yet again, and needs some serious culling and sorting. I find I keep running into the problem that the big bins are becoming unwieldy, because they hold too much stuff and it's hard to dig through when the thing you're looking for is way at the bottom. Someday I will be able to afford three medium bins to replace every pair of big bins, but I'm not sure how far off in the future that is.
I spent a lot of time today cleaning out bins, and in particular cleaning off the lids since most of them got horribly dusty during my stay over at David's. And one of my smaller clear Sterilite bins had been pissed in by one of David's cats, so I just threw it away. Attempting to clean cat piss out of the strangely-shaped nooks and crannies was just not something I wanted to go for, especially since I suspect it would still stink no matter how hard I scrubbed, and then the container would infect whatever contents I placed inside with that foul odor. No thanks, I think I can do without that bin.
Speaking of cat piss, since so many of my belongings were uh, "blessed" by David's cats, I have decided to get rid of anything that was so damaged. I really did try to get out the smell, even using his special enzymatic spray and so on, but it JUST DOESN'T FREAKING WORK!!!! And really I'm quite furious about it. If it were a one-time thing, fine, no problem, I understand animals can be like that, but here's the list of my items that have been destroyed due to David's cat(s) pissing on them:
- My papasan cushion (I abandoned the whole chair)
- My fancy travel backpack
- My nice rolling suitcase duffel thingie
- My sleeping bag
- The bag I sewed velcro on to customize it to attach it to my outrigger canoe
- The aforementioned Sterilite bin
- A plate with a seashell design on it
- And other stuff I already threw out that I can't think of right now...
It's just really disgusting, and I would be happy if I never have to smell cat piss on my belongings ever again, frankly. At least now the cat's pissing on HIS stuff, not mine. Harrumph!
I was actually stunned to realize that one of my duffel bags escaped being pissed on. I kept sniffing it and sniffing it, sure that it had also fallen victim, but miraculously, it survived intact. Hallelujah!
As long as I'm bitching about the yuck factor attached to my belongings after their stay at David's house, let me also bring up the huge amount of dog and cat hair that clings to EVERY COTTON PICKING THING. GAH!!! There. Okay. Got that out of my system.
So the overall point is, if it's not cat piss, it's dog and cat hair, and if it's not that, then it's dirt. Some items suffered a combination of perils. It's not pretty. I'm just glad it's freaking OVER.
Actually, my table got pissed on too, but I'm not ditching my table - it's very special to me, and is older than I am. And so did my elephant fountain. But that's also a one-of-a-kind item that's not replaceable. Can you tell I'm sort of bitter about all this? Trust me, you would be too. Oh, maybe not the first time, or the second, or even the third, but maybe by the fifth time your stuff got pissed on and you realized that nothing was safe, you might get oh, kind of annoyed. Ahem. Moving on...
So Richard has been laid up with this flu that's going around. His immune system is not as strong as your average person's, so he wasn't strong enough to escape the bed except for a couple hours this evening. I did manage to get a little bit of food into him, though, and I hope it does him some good. I sure hope he feels better soon - it sucks to see him so miserable and not be able to do much to help him.
So tomorrow is when I'm supposed to know whether or not I qualified for an IRS job or not... we'll see. I think the test was easy, but then again there were a couple hundred people there taking the test with me, and that was just *one* testing day. It's very competitive out there. People are getting desperate.
I didn't vote the other day. I decided they were all scummy and tainted with Enron (you should've seen all the negative ads they slung back and forth at each other), plus I just didn't feel like it. I'm so cynical about politics these days, bleagh. I think I'd rather have trained monkeys running things, to be perfectly honest. Odds are they'd do a better job.
I'm so sick of being totally broke. I really need a job. Sigh. It's not my fault no one's hiring. I keep trying, and keep not getting called. It's very frustrating. I'm just about at the point where I'll consider lying on my resume just so I can get *something*. Well, not really. I'm a horrible liar and I resent fiercely being put into any position where I have to lie. But I am starting to get really desperate. It shouldn't be this hard. Argh.
Oh. Back to the whole "bad smells" theme. Yesterday when I went to Spencer's house for my visit with Elena, a pungent and unearthly stench greeted me the moment I walked in the door. My best guess is that a raccoon has died underneath the house. It was positively *ghastly*. As in, I would sleep in my car rather than in the house, if that were where I lived.
Eventually Spencer's mom covered up the floor vents with blankets and towels, and that helped quite a bit, but holy freakin cow, it was still nasty. If it's still bad tomorrow, I might just raise a stink of my own about how I don't think it's the proper environment for my daughter to have to live with that kind of thing. I mean, really - if Spencer's not going to dive under the house and root out the problem, then he sure as heck better hire someone else to do so.
Elena is becoming more intelligent by the week. It's really pretty cool to see happening. She's already becoming a shrewd negotiator - I wanted to brush her hair after her bath, but she wanted to watch a movie, and I said no to the movie til after I brushed her hair. Then she brilliantly proposed that I brush her hair *while* we watched the movie. Clever girl. Okay, may not seem like rocket science to you, but the way she said it was just... masterful. The kid's going to be a great actress, I tell ya. And an Olympic athlete. And a Nobel Laureate. And then when she turns thirteen...
But seriously, her reasoning capacity is growing. She had me pretend to nurse one of her stuffed animals, and she asked me if there was any milk in my nanas anymore. And I told her no, that there hadn't been for a long time. She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, "Maybe if you drink some milk, then it will go to your nanas, and then you will have milk in your nanas again". I admired her logic, but told her that unfortunately it doesn't quite work that way.
She tells me about her dreams... apparently they're quite vivid. She dreamed she met Peter Pan and got to fight Captain Hook with him. She dreamed about a bunny and she put out her hand and the bunny licked it. Stuff like that. Okay, maybe it's small stuff, but I think it's amazing.
Elena's also getting more defiant lately. Oy, it's troubling to deal with, but I know it's a normal stage of development. She gets all unglued when she doesn't get her way, but she's learning.
She's got a friend at school, Emma, who was born on the same day as she was. When they both were old enough to pick a favorite color, they both picked blue, and there was peace and love in the world. Then Emma changed her mind and decided she liked red more. Elena responded by not wanting to be her friend anymore, and being very sore about the whole thing (and telling us all about it, with a very downcast tone: "Emma doesn't like blue anymore"). Elena took it as a huge betrayal. Time has passed, and dear Emma has learned the error of her ways and decided that yes, in fact, blue is the best color again. So now their friendship is restored and all is good and right in the world.
It's funny, but also kind of creepy. I'm wondering just how much of a cold shoulder Elena was giving her about this whole blue thing. I hope my child is not using emotional manipulation of her friends at such a tender age. Yeesh, that would be scary if she really knew what she was doing.
I'm not too worried though - Elena is a sweet kid and very sensitive whenever I'm sad. Some days I'm in a really sad and down mood, and if it shows to her and she knows about it, she'll say "It's okay mommy, I'll make you happy". The couple times that this has happened it just warms my heart and breaks it at the same time.
She's so happy... oh please, don't let her turn out like me. Don't let her suffer what I've gone through. Please, let it be easier for her. Please, let her only get my good genes, not the troublesome ones. Let her learn from my mistakes and do better. That is my mission.
I really miss her. She gets really sad when I have to explain that she can't spend the night with me. Last night, she asked if I could spend the night with her and I had to tell her that I couldn't.
It hurts a lot that I'm made out to be some kind of villain. I would never, ever hurt her. Yet I'm not trusted with my own child. And every day that I'm away from her, it eats me up inside, but I take it, because I have to.
Yes, I'm bitter and angry, *very* angry about the situation. But right now I'm powerless, so I just have to suck it up. But not forever. Not forever. I will be stronger someday. I will have money someday, so I can get a lawyer and go to court if need be and argue before a judge why I should get to spend more time with my daughter, and that I shouldn't be treated like a dangerous criminal with regard to her. Because I'm not, dammit.
I'm her mother, and I'm a damn good mother at that. From the beginning I have suffered for her sake, over and over again. I have given and given, and worked and strived to make sure she had what she needed, what she deserved, the best I could offer her. And I continue, even as my heart is ripped apart, as I'm sometimes sick and so often weary, and broke and unemployed and stuck in a situation I can't fix right now. And on and on it stretches in time, like a prison sentence. But I won't give up. Because I *can't*. I will not be pushed out of her life.
I do pretty well most of the time at keeping my feelings from bubbling to the surface, but it's hard work suppressing it. By "it" I mean the fury, the righteous anger that screams HOW DARE YOU neverending in my heart.
I miss my baby! I conceived her, I grew her, I bore her in extreme pain, my body ripped open. I nursed her as long as I could, and it hurt like pliers on my nipples for the first seven weeks. Just imagine that for a moment, if you can. I went back to work because he said I had to. I took her to day care, I pumped for her, I nursed her at lunch. I changed her diapers when he wouldn't be bothered, I made sure he wasn't disturbed at night when she awoke, and I bathed her and bought her clothes and did the walking up and down the floor while he watched tv. When it was over between us I let her stay in the house with him, because it would be easier on her (and yet he accused me of "abandoning" her).
And I get in return a restraining order, limited visits, restrictions, rules, nebulous references that where I live isn't good enough for her to visit (it's a nicer house than his - I still have NO CLUE why he objects, because he WON'T TELL ME). I'm just supposed to shut up and wait for him to feel "comfortable".
I want to scream. I'm so sick of it.
How dare he, mister three-DUIs, treat *me* like I can't be trusted. I had to drive myself to the hospital while I was in labor, because he had lost his driving privileges. When I was home, asleep, pregnant, he was out getting arrested. I want to talk about this in court, in front of a judge, someday. Nothing I have done is comparable to the sin of a single DUI, much less THREE.
There. I said it. I feel better now. I don't care what you might think of me, because I KNOW what I went through for that hateful, spiteful man. I tried and tried until I just couldn't take it anymore. I suffered through his rages, his vitriol, his self-pity about the consequences of his third DUI (I had quite limited patience for that crap, mind you). And now look at how he treats me.
I'm sick of living under his thumb. I'm going to save my pennies, and when the time is right, I'm taking his ass to court. And I am so much kinder than him, because I want only what is truly fair.
I'm sick of writing about this right now. I'm not sure what people will think, or if anyone will read it. I don't much care. This is how I feel, plain and simple. Deal with it.
