With the start of the business thing still being one week away

We are down to one hundred dollars. Okay, maybe a hundred and twenty, cause he gave me some of it. But we went and paid the car insurance (which was more than he told me it was) and then we took what was left of the money out of the bank. Just before we went to pay the car insurance, the bank charged us another fee of about forty dollars for being overdrawn, even though at the time the fee went through we actually had several hundred dollars in the account. So we ended up with a hundred and twenty dollars instead of the almost two hundred he said that we would have.

Yesterday, he actually asked me if I wanted to go to the movies. We had planned to see Julie & Julia this week, and then later see The Time Traveler's Wife and District 9. Even at our cheap theater, that is still twenty-one dollars. We can't spend twenty-one dollars watching movies when we are behind on a car payment and don't even have enough money to go on the trip next week. But yesterday morning, like the first thing he asked me was when does the movie start.

Okay, so we went to pay the car insurance, and then we went to the grocery store to get some sodas so that we could get the hundred and twenty dollars out of the account. Only, the store would only give us forty of it. It has been so long since I tried to get more money than that, I forgot there was a limit now. And then we remembered where there was a bank ATM that wouldn't charge us any fees, so we went there to get the other eighty dollars. Then we went to another store and spent about three dollars on food, half of that being for potato chips.

We are this low on money, and he still wants potato chips. I feel bad about the little bit I still spend on soda, but I have a bit of a caffeine addiction. Potato chips are just flat out unnecessary. And of course, since we have potatoes, he could just try to make his own chips, but he hasn't done that yet.

Okay, so we went someplace to buy cheap potato chips, and we bought him a six-pack of root beer, and I bought some spaghetti or something. He already had sandwich stuff. So now he's all set for lunch for the next few days, and if he still goes on that trip.

He finally had to call and tell them that he didn't have enough money to go on the trip, if they don't have some way to advance him some money, which he new that they didn't from the last time we were in trouble. So he called, and they said that it didn't look like they would have enough business for a two day trip anyway, so if they changed the schedule so that it was just the one day could he still work? So he thinks that a hundred dollars would pay for just one day, and he agrees to do that, and now we are just waiting to hear back from them to see if he is working Wednesday or Thursday, or if they are going to leave it the way it is and get someone else.

I have mostly cleaned the living room enough to make room for the equipment. The room still needs to be cleaned properly later, but for now I have moved enough stuff around that there is floor space.

It was too hot yesterday to go out and do actual garden work, but I did water the plants and just go out and look at a few things. And of course, while I was out looking, I was attacked by fire ants. And I haven't really recovered from the last time. But this time really upset me, cause after a time you figure out where they are, and you stay away from them until such time as you can poison them or something, but this time I wasn't anywhere near where they had been, and I wasn't even standing in one place for a long time. I was just walking around and turning on the hose, and they got me anyway.

Stupid fire ants. I would leave them alone if they would leave me alone. So instead of hiding so that I don't know that they are there, they come out and bite me, so now I have to kill them.

I have three yellow squash in my fridge and one left on the plant. I thought that I was going to get more than that, but some of them died. Not sure why, cause I was pretty sure that those got pollinated this time. Maybe not. Anyway, I have four squash, which is twice as many as I've had the whole rest of the season.

The sweet potato plants are really nice looking. This probably means that I have watered them too much and that the roots will end up being too small to be worth eating, but I don't really care too much. They are still nice to look at. I think I'll grow more of them next year. On the other hand, the best thing to eat is the asparagus, which pretty much just looks awful. Not that the plant is actually ugly, but it just sort of gets too tall and then falls over. I didn't remember that it did that, or I wouldn't have planted them right in the middle of everything like I did. Anyway, next year I need to build something so that the plants can be contained somewhat and not fall over onto the pathway like that. Trailing sweet potato vines are attractive, but falling over asparagus somehow are not.

Anyway, I cannot wait for the next two weeks or so to be over. There is all this stuff going on, and I can't do anything cause I don't have any money. Like there is a party at the end of the month, and I would need at least fifteen dollars to go, plus I'm not sure that I have anything to wear. And tomorrow a lot of my friends are going to dinner, which is sort of a send off for a couple of them as they are leaving next month and they are not sure if they will be able to see us next week. I'm not particularly close to these two, but I would have gone to say goodbye anyway. I don't get to see them much, but they are a lot of fun when they are around. So I hope that they make it next week, cause I can't go out tomorrow.

So in a week or so it will either be really good, or it will just be okay and get us out of the current difficulties, or it will be a total disaster and leave us being even more in debt. But the not knowing is starting to get to us, and I will be glad when it is over.

Stuff must all be done by Tuesday

Today we will have to go and see about paying the car insurance, and then we will have to withdraw whatever is left in the account and pay cash for everything. My husband has canceled the overdraw protection on the account. I am thinking that is a mistake, but he did it anyway.

This could get ugly.

So he will take cash with him on this trip (if there is even enough money left for going on the trip), and I am still not sure if I am going with him. The originally planned three night stay is now only a two night stay, cause there just isn't enough money left to drive up there the day before. It is unpleasant to have to make a long drive before having to put in a full day of work, but he has done it before. The reasons for me going with him are now down to possibly having a swim (if we can get a motel with a pool), going to a free museum, and looking at a historical building Thursday morning before lunch, which he might not feel up to anyway after all the work and the driving on Wednesday. The motel without the pool is ten dollars less, so we would probably not bother with the pool anyway.

Maybe I will just stay here. I don't know.

I have now had a look at the scheduled week after next, and it involves two days in Oklahoma, but not two consecutive days. This usually means that we would just stay in the motel for the extra day and find something fun to do. But with the way things are now, we might just have to drive all the way home and then drive back the next day, cause we might not have the extra money for the extra motel stay.

In fact, if the business thing does not work out, I'm not sure we will have any money at all. I know that we don't have anymore paychecks coming in before then, and I'm not sure that any expense money would be reimbursed by then either.

And of course one of the days he is supposed to work in Oklahoma is the day before the second thing with the new business. So that is bad anyway.

For my part, I have to clean the living room area.

Of course, I am always having to clean something and making a big deal about it, but this is different. It isn't so much that I have to make anything clean, and it certainly isn't about making anything look neat and orderly. It is about just needing some temporary floor space. When my husband goes to pick up the rented equipment, he will need to put all of that stuff in the minivan, which means that all the stuff that he normally carries around in the minivan will have to go someplace else. So I'm trying to make room for it in the living room, which means not only doing the normal cleaning and such (which needed to be done anyway), but now I'm also pushing stuff against the wall and stacking things on top of each other.

I made a start on that yesterday, so I hope to get finished with that today. If I don't finish with it by Tuesday, I will have to stay home from the trip whether or not I want to go.

The good news about the cleaning is that I did find the weedblock fabric that I had misplaced earlier. And it wasn't even under a pile of stuff, it was just leaning against the wall in a dark corner where I didn't see it. So now I can go out and finish that little piece of the garden path and see how it looks before I buy anymore gravel.

Not that I will have any money for buying more gravel anytime soon, but it would still be nice to see how it looks.

So that is what I am doing today. Anyway, I should feel a little bit better after we go and pay the car insurance. I have gotten behind on bills before, but never on the car insurance, and the idea of being without it really makes me nervous.

My husband has aphasia or something

And so does my mother, but that is another story.

But my husband says one word when he means another. It was especially bad about three years ago, so if is getting bad again, can I infer...

Never mind.

Anyway, he is saying the wrong words. So yesterday we did some stuff. First, we went to the "business meeting" with his co-worker. He had to meet the guy somewhere, like a restaurant, so that they could talk about some stuff and play with the computer for a bit. So a couple of days ago they were on the phone trying to figure out where they should meet. And I suggested Arby's, cause it was going to be on a Wednesday, and on Wednesdays you can get something free at Arby's if you buy something else. But they didn't want to try to find an Arby's that was a good place for both of them. They wanted to meet someplace in Irving, and they decided to meet where they met last time, when I didn't go with them.

So my husband hung up the phone and said that we were going to meet the guy in Irving at one at a Burger King.

Since I had to go to Irving some time this week anyway, I said that I would go too and that we would eat the cheap lunch at Burger King (which would not be quite as cheap as eating at Arby's where we would have gotten a free sandwich for buying a soda, but close enough). If we both got a hamburger and a small soda off of the dollar menu, that would cost four dollars and some change. I am really against using a place of business if you aren't a customer, so we have to buy something, and four dollars and change isn't too bad. So I made sure to put aside four dollars and some change. We spent almost four dollars Tuesday, but I knew I still had four dollars and some change left.

So yesterday head off to meet this guy, and I forgot and left my cell phone on the charger. And of course, my husband still hasn't activated his. I'm not even sure where his is. Anyway, we're in Irving, and we drive past a Burger King, and I guess that wasn't it. But there are a lot of Burger Kings in Irving. And then we drove some more, and we drove past a Whataburger. And then my husband says that he thinks he has past the place, and we turn around and drive back to the Whataburger.

And I'm like, this is a Whataburger, not a Burger King.

And he is like, whatever.

Is this where you are supposed to meet, cause you said Burger King, not Whataburger.

I think this is it. This is where we met last time.

You told me Burger King, so I put away just enough to get us lunch at Burger King. I don't think that I have enough to eat here.

My husband drives around the parking lot and doesn't see the other guy's car, so he drives away.

I totally don't get what he's doing now.

He says he wants to go to Jack in the Box and I can buy us something off the dollar menu there.

No.

What do you mean?

I mean no. Where are only spending a little money on lunch because you have to meet with this other guy there. We aren't going anywhere else for lunch. If you think that we are supposed to meet the guy at Whataburger, then go back to Whataburger. We just might not have enough money to get what you want.

Then he asks for my cell phone, and I remember that I put it back on the charger in case we had to call anyone, and I forgot and left it on the charger.

So he stops at a gas station to use the phone. I think that is a waste of fifty cents, because we should probably just go back and wait at the Whataburger. We were a bit early. But the guy answers and says that he is at the Whataburger, we just missed seeing his car.

So we drive back to the Whataburger. My husband counts out some change that he had in the car, cause he wanted some fries with lunch and he didn't want what I was going to spend the four dollars and change on at the Burger King anyway.

So he and the other guy play with the computer while I count out all the change he gave me and all the change I have. So we have almost ten dollars in cash, and that is enough to buy two of the smallest combo meals. So we had fries with lunch, which cost eight dollars, and we had two dollars left over to get a couple things we needed from the 99 cent store.

I have a bit of money on the card too, but I first have to buy pills with that. I'm not touching the card until after I have my pills. If the change hadn't been enough, he would just have to do without something.

So we all ate lunch, and my husband and the other guy play with the computer. And then the other guy leaves with our new laptop so that he can practice stuff. And I'm really worried about it, enough that I felt physically sick for a bit. This guy is going to have our new six hundred and something dollar computer, and he might drop it or forget and leave it in a motel room or I don't know what. And then not only would we not have our new computer, but this whole business thing would be for nothing.

The business thing starts a week from Saturday, so the guy will have the laptop for at least a week and a half.

Okay, so then we drive some other places in Irving, and I pick up my pills, and we get shampoo and a bag of potatoes from the 99 cent store. And then we go to the mall to see about fixing my glasses.

About a week ago I lost a nose-piece. I've just been wearing the glasses with a missing nose-piece, cause I didn't know if I would have enough money left to get them fixed. So I go to the place in the mall and ask if they do repairs. And someone asks me if I bought the glasses there, and I say no. And I tell her that I really have no money, so I might have to come back later anyway, but could she please tell me how much it would cost to fix. And I show her the problem, and she goes to ask someone else if they are still allowed to replace nose-pieces on glasses that were purchased somewhere else. And they talk for a bit, and they decide that they can fix it if I will buy some kit for seven fifty. And I don't have much money left, but I think that I can handle seven dollars and fifty cents. So I get out my card, thinking that I'm buying some little repair kit that has nose pieces and screws and such.

I sit down, and the girl replaces both nose-pieces, which is good because they were starting to look a bit green anyway. I was really impressed that new nose-pieces made the glasses look that much better. So then I give her my debit card, and she sells me a lens cleaning kit, not a little repair kit like I imagined. And both girls remind me that I can get free refills on the lens cleaner any time I bring in the bottle.

So that was great. I guess the actual repair was free as long as I was a customer, and buying the lens cleaner made me a customer.

Okay, so now we have everything on my list, and we can go home. We've had lunch (and given our new six hundred and something dollar laptop to someone else for the next week and a half), I have my pills, we have shampoo and a bag of potatoes, I have my glasses repaired, and I still even have a bit of money left on my debit card.

As we are driving home, I ask him if he's working tomorrow, which he says he is.

And do you have stuff for lunch?

He says that he can just take a peanut butter sandwich.

And do you have bread and peanut butter?

Well, we both know that he has peanut butter, but he probably doesn't know if there is much of it left. And he didn't check the bread to know if that is still edible either.

He spends all of his time on the computer. The real world just doesn't exist for him most of the time. He would probably starve if not for me.

So we stop at Kroger's, where I buy the cheap store brand bread and peanut butter, and there is cheap salami on sale too. I don't eat salami, but he does, and when he hasn't had it in a while he will even eat the cheap stuff. So I spend about four dollars on that stuff and we go home.

The other time this week when he said the wrong thing is when he was telling me that next week's schedule was changed, and did I want to go out of town with him?

Sure, that might be fun.

He told me where he was going, which is a place north of here. According to Mapquest, it is six hours away, but I'm thinking it will take closer to eight hours.

And I have the big debate with myself on whether or not I should go on this little trip, especially when we are so short on money.

Reasons for going to this place would include getting to sit around a motel room all day watching cable (and maybe getting to go for a swim if there is a pool), getting to go to the zoo, getting to visit a certain park (can't remember if it is state or national), getting to look at a certain historic building, getting to look at a certain art exhibit, and getting to eat at a certain famous steak house. Of course, since we have so little money, we couldn't afford to go a day early to visit the zoo and the park (and we might not have enough money to buy the tickets anyway), and the famous steak house would cost somewhere in the forty to fifty dollar range, which we certainly do not have. If we don't have money, if we might even end up trying to survive on nothing but peanut butter sandwiches, the reasons for going to the place are down to getting to sit around a motel room all day watching cable (and maybe getting to swim for only the second time this year if there is a pool), getting to look at a certain historic building, and getting to look at a certain art exhibit.

So I was really having a hard time deciding whether or not I should go. I would really like to go, but I was having a bad feeling about it.

Anyway, I said something about going to the tourist info place to get a map and coupons and a brochure for the place, and he said that wasn't the place. He says he's going to a different place that is west of here (according to Mapquest, about three hours away, but I'm guessing that it might be closer to four hours).

I'm sure that he did not say this place west of here, and I'm sure that he said this place north of here. But he insists that isn't what he said. And I know that isn't what he said. We have this little joke about the place west of here, so if he had said that, I would have immediately made the joke. It is just an automatic response. There is no way that he said the place west of here and I misunderstood. He said the place north of here.

Okay, whatever. Now I have to decide if I want to go to the place west of here. I'm a little less stressed out about trying to decide about that trip. It isn't as far to drive and such. I can decide this one with a coin toss if I want.

So I go online and see what there is to do in the town west of here. Reasons for going there include getting to sit around in a motel room all day watching cable (and maybe getting to go for a swim if there is a pool, but that is less likely in this town), getting to go to the zoo, getting to go to various museums, getting to see a certain historic building, and getting to eat at a not so famous steak house.

Turns out that the not so famous steak house closed two years ago, so at least I will not be tempted to spend forty to fifty dollars on lunch.

The zoo is cheap, and there is a coupon, so we could both go for four dollars if I read this right. And there a museums, some of them cheap, and I think some of them are even free. So I am starting to get interested in going to the place.

And then we learn that we won't be getting that money from unemployment. I'm starting to think that there just won't be enough money to go on this trip at all. We will have to see how much money there is tomorrow and do some math, but it doesn't look good.

More crap about the unemployment thing

Okay, so we are out of money, again.

I thought we had finally gotten some things sorted out, and that my husband would keep his current job (while trying to get his own business started), even though they only have him working half of the time or less, and that the other half of the time he would collect unemployment.

This whole unemployment thing has been annoying me for years, mostly just cause he couldn't be bothered to go and apply for the thing. He said that they "made him feel bad." I am not sure when they "made him feel bad", since I could never get him to apply. When did he ever talk to them? And how could they have "made him feel bad" if he hadn't talked to them?

Before I knew him he did stupid stuff like get a job washing dishes and then quit a week later because he didn't like to wash dishes. Maybe he tried to get unemployment then. Maybe they told him he was a bum and he should quit bothering them and go get a job.

Anyway, when I met him he was an out of work nurse's aide. He was out of work because the old person he was taking care of died. So he was sitting at home just waiting for the agency to find him another patient, and they never found one. Maybe he tried to get unemployment then, but I don't know.

I used to work with this annoying woman who was always saying how she should just quit and apply for unemployment. She said that unemployment paid more than the fast food job that we had. I said that I didn't think you got paid unemployment just because you quit your job, and I really didn't believe her that someone would give you more money for staying at home than for working. But if she really believed that, why didn't she do it instead of complaining about the job (and not doing her share of the work most of the time)? She did eventually leave, but I never heard if she got that unemployment or if it really was more money than her paycheck.

But a few years later, I quit a job and applied for unemployment, just to see what would happen. I was told that I quit my job and that I didn't qualify. That's okay, I was just wanting to see what would happen, just in case I ever really needed to apply. So I didn't get any money, but I don't remember anyone trying to "make me feel bad" about applying.

So for the last five years or so I have had these discussions with my husband about filing for unemployment, and that first year he just wouldn't do it, because they "made him feel bad." So he had a job, but everyone was laid off for the summer. Everyone else filed for unemployment and/or found a temp job. My husband applied for a lot of jobs but not unemployment. By the the time he was going on interviews and such, the summer was just about over, and it was nearly time for him to go back to work anyway. So no summer job, and no unemployment checks.

To make up for not having a job or unemployment checks, we maxed out my credit card and borrowed money from my mother. The card is still not paid off, and he hasn't paid back my mother.

The next summer, he did apply for the unemployment. And there was nothing to it. He asked what his co-workers did, and he did what they did, and we got checks in the mail. No one "made him feel bad" or anything like that. I don't even remember it taking that much time or being put on hold forever or anything like that. About a month later he got a better paying job and the unemployment checks stopped.

But that was three years ago, when there weren't that many people out of work. Now everyone is out of work, and getting the unemployment is a hassle, and if there is a problem and you call for help you get put on hold forever.

So even though he has had this job with at least a seasonal lay-off for three years, and he should have at least been getting unemployment around Christmas time, he hasn't gotten any unemployment until about a month ago. The first year we really just didn't think that we needed it. He probably didn't apply because the month before he was laid off he made a lot of money.

The second year was not as good. And there was a seasonal lay-off, and his co-workers applied for and received unemployment. My husband was told that he didn't qualify. That didn't make any sense if his co-workers were getting it. The same job and the same company and the same seasonal lay-off. How could some people qualify and some not?

But he never would find out what the problem was. He didn't like being put on hold forever, and he wouldn't ask his co-workers what they did. So we didn't get any money.

Now people are getting laid off for a week or two, and then working for a week or two (or maybe they work half the week), and again his co-workers filed for unemployment. And some of them got it, and again he was told that he didn't qualify.

Sorry, we are out of money. Find out what the problem is and apply again.

Okay, so after talking to co-workers and calling and being put on hold forever, he finally learns that the reason he didn't qualify is that he said he was not available to work. He was just trying to be truthful. Since it is just a lay-off, and it is supposed to be temporary, he wouldn't be available for work except for the week or two that he is laid off. The only way that he could really be available for work was if he quit his job (which would then not only make him not qualify for unemployment, but also cost us our health insurance).

Okay, so he applies again, and this time he says that he is available for work. Whatever.

So, great, he is now going to get unemployment for the weeks that he doesn't work. And he didn't work for two weeks, and the unemployment people sent him a debit card that had about four hundred dollars on it.

Where is the other four hundred dollars for the other week that he didn't work?

They hang on to the first week until you qualify for four or five weeks, and then they send you the money for the first week.

That doesn't make any sense. He's out of work now, the bills need to be paid now. But whatever.

So then he worked a week and then he worked half a week, and then he didn't work for a week and applied again.

And then his password didn't work or something. He had to call someone. He had to wait on hold forever.

And then they tell him that if you don't apply for a couple of weeks you have to start over again. So he has to wait another two weeks and apply again, etc....

Okay, that almost four hundred dollars that he was supposed to get for that first week, it's just gone.

So if he files again for this week that he didn't work, he will qualify, but they won't send him that money until he has been on unemployment for four or five weeks, which he won't be, because he is supposed to work half of this week and half of next week, etc....

So he's never going to get paid, except when he is not working for two solid weeks, and then he will only get paid for the second week. The first week that he doesn't work he will never get paid for unless he doesn't work for a whole month.

It's like, a scam.

Anyway, we are overdrawn, and he missed a car payment and an insurance payment. The car insurance has to be paid by the tenth. We will have some money by the tenth, but we aren't sure how much. There probably won't be much left after the car insurance is paid and the overdraft is taken care of. He might not even have enough money left to go to work that half week next week.

Of course, if he declines to go to work, he won't qualify for unemployment.

Catching up, and should I go out of town

Has it been a whole week since I've posted anything? I meant to come back and write about how some of us got together for someone's missed birthday or some such thing. I don't remember what I was going to say about it, except that the baby now eats solid food. So we spent a lot of lunch cutting off small pieces of things and seeing if he would eat it. Most of the time, if you put something in front of him, it goes in his mouth. Interesting. He doesn't much seem to have preferences. Just cut something down to the right size and he'll eat it.

I'm told he does not always do that at home.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I mentioned that I got one of those complaint letters from the office. I'm to clear away stuff stored under the carport and clean up in general, or else. Now, just a couple weeks before I got this letter, I was trying to clean a few things, so I took some stuff outside. But I was actually trying to be considerate and didn't take out just everything all at once, because that does look rather frightful. But I don't see how else to clean the stuff properly, so I did take stuff outside, but that stuff went right back in as soon as it was clean and dry. And then I took out some other stuff and left it under the carport, thinking that I would take a little bit of it back inside everyday (or perhaps toss some of it out everyday) and that eventually I would figure out where all of it was supposed to go, and that some of it was just supposed to go away.

And then there's this other stuff that just always seems to be under the carport, some of it long term. And you are not supposed to store anything under the carport. But it is the only dry (somewhat dry) place that I have outside, as I don't yet even have a storage building, and there is no garage either.

So, of course the first thing that I do when I get this letter is put a bunch of crap out in the yard itself, rather than under the carport. Really, whenever I get one of these complaint letters, I take the opportunity to do some serious cleaning. But since I had just done the serious cleaning of the important stuff in the kitchen, I didn't really have any reason to do it again. I'm sure that there was something elsewhere in the house that I could have taken outside to wash, but I really wasn't up to that.

Anyway, the stuff that I was trying to sort out, I ended up just pulling back into the house and it is now on the dining room floor. And then the other stuff from the carport is on top of that, except for the clay and the lumber.

I finally decided to throw away some of the clay. Now, I had about decided to do this anyway, but I would have done it a little bit at a time. Not put a hundred pounds or so in the trash all at once. I think that is a rather nasty thing to do to the men who come to collect the garbage, and as far as I know they have never done anything to me, so I shouldn't like to do something so ugly to them. I somehow have it in my head that there is a weight limit to what they are expected to pick up, like maybe thirty-five pounds or so. I don't know where I got that number, and it is probably the wrong number, but I don't like to leave them just really heavy trash bags. So I did try to divide the clay up between four bags of other trash, so maybe it wasn't too awful for them.

While that was going on I broke one of the buckets that I had the clay in, so I threw that away too.

And I did find several broken planters that I decided I should part with. Unfortunately about half of them had dirt still in them, and the planters of course completely fell apart when I tried to move them. So in some places where I once had a broken planter with dirt I now just have a pile of dirt.

But of course the real problem I am having is with the lumber. I bought the lumber, mostly from the Home Depot scrap bin, and when I get enough of the right size and shape I make something with it and paint it. But it has been rather hot, so I hadn't built anything or painted anything recently. So I had to take the lumber from under the carport and put it in the backyard. And after looking at some of it, I decided that I had enough of the right stuff for one project, and that I should go ahead and paint the larger pieces anyway.

So I nailed four boards together and put the larger pieces in a place where it would be convenient to paint them the next day.

And then it rained. And it has pretty much rained all week. So the lumber is all wet, and possibly not left in very good shape. One of the larger pieces is warped, and I have to decide if it is worth keeping, though I don't think it would be that noticeable in the finished project.

Anyway, in between the rain, it has been almost pleasant outside, so I did start on another project of working on a pathway between two garden beds. The idea is to put down a lot of newspaper, and then a sheet of weedblock fabric, and then on top of that some gravel and a few stepping stones. Only the thing is that when you have a lot of time to do something, it is usually because you are not employed, which usually means that you don't have a lot of money. So I had put down some of the newspaper, and I'd already bought some weedblock and put down some of that, but then I didn't have any money to spend on gravel and stepping stones. So I had just put down a few rocks on top of the fabric to keep the wind from getting it. Only it seemed to have moved anyway.

So it turned out not to be the wind that moved the fabric and the newspaper. There were claw marks in the paper, so either a cat or some squirrels moved it. Anyway, I put everything back the way that I had it, and then decided to go ahead and buy just two bags of gravel, just to see how it would look.

The bags of gravel come half filled with dirt. Not really, but it did seem to have enough dirt that I thought I'd better wash off the gravel before putting it on the fabric. So that took a little while, but I think it was worth the effort. So I then put down some more newspaper and went to get another piece of the weedblock fabric, only now I can't find it. It isn't anyplace logical, and I don't see that I've left it outside anywhere. So that is a bother. I've either lost it, or it was stolen when I was last working with it and left it out, or else it is buried under something.

I'm thinking that it is most likely buried under something. With the serious cleaning that I was attempting to do and then the complaint letter, I've got several piles of just stuff here and there. So the weedblock fabric will probably turn up eventually, which is fine because I will eventually need a whole bunch of the stuff. But the problem for now is that I don't have any money to go buy another roll of fabric to finish up what I was doing.

The good news about the garden is that I've seen a very few bees, but they do seem to have found my squash plants. This whole summer I have had two squash plants, one that was a bit stunted and didn't produce any squash, and the other was a nice big plant that only produced two squash. Both plants had plenty of flowers, but they weren't getting pollinated. But now the stunted plant has caught up to the other plant, and the bees seem to be interested in them, and I expect to get maybe four or five squash this week.

And that is good, because we are really short on money this week, and should do the whole eat down the fridge thing again. I spent seven dollars on groceries this weekend, and that will be about half of the food that we eat for the week. The other half I hadn't quite figured out yet, but now it will probably involve yellow squash.

The husband will be working three days at the end of this week, and then next week is the beginning of the business thing. So we expected that he would not work next week since he had asked off on Saturday. But instead they seem to have forgotten that he had asked off, and they had scheduled him the whole week. So he called to say that he couldn't work that.

So now there seems to be a different schedule that would require him to go out of town for four days. He would only be working two days, but he would have to leave the day before to drive there, and he'll be driving home most of the day after. Only we seriously do not have any money, and we seem to have missed paying the car insurance, so whatever money does come in must go to paying the car insurance first.

Then there is this odd bit about the unemployment. We are not to be paid for the first week until we have been paid several other weeks. And as he works some about every other week, we do not get paid the unemployment every week anyway. So we are not sure when it is going to be paid, and we do not think that it will be before we take this trip.

And I have to figure out whether or not to go with him. While this is not a very exciting place, it is a place that we do not often go. We have not been that direction in a while, and this place is not usually a destination, more of a place that we stop before leaving the state. So it might be interesting to go there, if we had more time, and if we had any money, which it appears that we do not.

We will just have to wait and see how much money comes in and then figure it out from there.

And then Friday he'll have to hurry home anyway, because he's supposed to pick up the equipment around three, and I'm sure that it must be done by five or they will close for the weekend. And I can't help by staying behind to pick up the equipment, as I'm sure that it would not fit in my car anyway.

It is a lot to think about. This four day trip will require gas for almost four hundred miles and back, three nights in a motel, about ten meals (twenty if I go), and he's only guaranteed a hundred dollars pay and some gas and motel reimbursement. This company does not pay for meals.

So as nice as it sounds to get out of the house for a bit, I have to consider stuff like the extra money it would cost for me to go, and that the plants wouldn't be watered for a few days (and I really don't want to lose my plants now that they are producing food again), and maybe I should just be here in case something goes wrong with the plans to pick up the equipment at three on Friday.

Like I might have to ask mother if we could borrow the truck for a bit.

I'll have to give this whole thing some more thought.

Love the new purse

I may have mentioned that I am not so much what you would call a girly girl. Not that I was ever really called a tomboy either. I didn't like sports enough to be called that. And I am way to old to be called a tomboy now. But, still, compared to the rest of my sex, I don't spend a lot of time shopping for clothes or looking in the mirror or getting my nails done, etc....

At some point, I decided that carrying a purse was too annoying for everyday use. My keys and ID and money could go in my pockets, along with maybe some lip balm, and I was good to go. This did not please my mother, as she could see all this stuff in my pockets, and it did not look lady-like or something. But I find that carrying around a purse is annoying, besides the fact that I might forget and leave my purse somewhere, and a couple of times that I've had my purse stolen. So most of the time I would rather do without one, unless I am trying especially hard to look nice, or I need some stuff that I don't want to carry around in my pockets like a brush and a bunch of medications and extra cosmetics.

So it is sometimes necessary to carry a purse, and I do have one or two. I'm just not often seen carrying them around.

A couple months back I found a purse at a Goodwill. It was black and it had dark purple or plum flowers glued to the top. In my opinion, this was rather tacky. I thought that it would look good with a Harry Potter costume, as at some point I hope to have a hat with black or dark purple flowers on it, and the purse would match the hat, sort of.

I had a look at the purse and found that it was in good shape and had a magnetic clasp. So it wasn't an old purse. It was four dollars, and I decided to buy it.

A bit more than a month ago, I was going to wear some of a witch costume to a Star Trek club meeting. I didn't want to wear the costume all day, as it was rather warm. So I took the costume to change into. And as long as I would eventually be in the costume, I thought that I might as well take the purse too, even though I did not yet have a hat with flowers, I thought the purse still looked good with the witch costume. So money and ID and cell phone and keys and brush and medications and extra cosmetics all went into the new purse, and off I went to the meeting, not yet in costume otherwise.

And then a lot of my friends were saying how much that they liked my new purse, and did I glue the flowers on myself or did it just come that way, etc....

Okay.

I had expected that maybe after I got into costume some of them might say how well the purse went with the costume. But I wasn't in costume yet, I was just in regular clothes. So I thought that was a bit weird.

Maybe they are like my mother, and they hate that I stuff everything in my pockets, and they are just happy that I have a purse. Any purse. Or maybe they are just happy that I decided to act like a girl for a change. I don't know. But it was hard for me to think that they really liked this tacky purse, other than for it's costume potential.

About a week ago I was going to see my mother, so I took the purse to get her opinion.

Mom, do you like my purse?

Um, well, let's see. Not particulary. It's okay. I wouldn't like it for me, but if you like it, I guess it's okay.

So it is not just the coolest purse that you have ever seen?

Um, no....

So I tell her about my friends all liking the purse, and she thought that was funny, and she agreed that they might just be saying that to make me feel better, and that it might not really be a great purse. But she really isn't the expert on such things. Better ask my sister.

So my sister agreed that it was a nice purse, though she did not all go crazy about it like my friends had. But she did say that it was a good purse to have, and not just for costume potential. My mother still thought it a bit on the tacky side, but it was a major improvement over stuffing everything in my pockets.

So I have somehow managed to buy a cool purse on accident, when I was intending to buy something tacky. How did that happen?

I had been looking forward to Tuesday

At first I thought that I would go with him. It was just one day out of town to no place special. But I haven't been away for a very long time, and I thought that maybe just the one day would be nice. And one day away wouldn't hurt the plants or anything. A week away would be bad for the plants, cause I really cannot trust anyone to come and water them. Unless it is raining already, and then I have to worry about the house flooding. Not that the house might not flood if I stay, but at least I would be there to make sure that the pump is working properly (once it wasn't even plugging in). So I don't even think that three days in Waco is a good idea for me, but one day in the middle of nowhere might have been okay.

On closer inspection, we decided that it would be best if I didn't go. In fact, it would probably be best if he didn't get a room at all and just came back home that night. The place where he would have gotten the room was about two hours away, but the place he would actually do the work was just a little bit closer, and while I would rather not make that drive at night after working all day, he has done worse. And we are very short on cash now, even for motel rooms that they eventually pay him back for. We have to actually have the cash first before we can spend it on stuff that they pay back.

So I had been looking forward to getting out of the house for a day, but gave up on the idea. Then I got over it and starting looking forward to having the house to myself for twelve hours or so. I could sort through some clothes or do other work that I don't usually do when he is here. There's some stuff that I don't do when he is here, cause we will just end up getting in each other's way.

So we have a little bit to eat (which in fact was even food that he cooked), and then he leaves, and I take some time to do a few things on the computer before I get started doing any work.

And then my mother calls.

Now, I should know better by now. I just cannot talk to my mother one on one. But she calls and asks if maybe I would like to go and get something to eat.

Now, my mother has it in her head that the reason I don't talk to her very much is that I only spend time with her when there is something else in it for me, a bribe of some sort, like she is buying me something, usually lunch. And that isn't true. But lunch at a restaurant is usually the safest time and place to spend time with my mother, but I don't have any money, and I have to eat something anyway, so if she is offering to buy me lunch I usually go. But the truth is that now I usually don't want to go, even though she is buying me stuff, but I end up going anyway because I just feel like I should see her once in a while even when I don't want to.

She is still my mother, even if I don't like being around her and we really don't have that much to talk about anyway.

But I think to myself, this isn't so bad. She has called to invite me to lunch, and I've already had lunch. If I just go with her and have a soda, she won't have to buy me anything, I'll spend an hour or two with her in a public place, it probably won't get ugly cause it is in a public place, and then I can leave and I'll still have about ten hours to myself before my husband comes home.

And maybe since she isn't buying me lunch she'll get it out of her head that the reason we don't talk very often is that she has to buy me stuff before I will talk to her.

So we pick a place and agree to meet there in ten minutes. And I get there before she does, and I even manage to pay for my own soda. Now she doesn't have to buy me anything.

Now, most of the first hour or so goes well enough, and if I had just managed to stick to the original plan and leave, it would have been fine.

I am halfway through reading a book about why the bees are disappearing. This is very serious stuff. If the bees all die, we won't have any food. Well, maybe not literally no food, but a lot of the cultivated food that we take for granted just doesn't grow without bees.

So I try talking to her about the bees. She doesn't care about the bees. She is not one little bit interested that most of our fruits (and this includes a lot of stuff that we don't think of as fruits like tomatoes and almonds and squash and cucumbers), just won't be around anymore. I might as well have tried to start a conversation about Star Trek or Harry Potter. She just doesn't get it.

Anyway, she won't stick with the unimportant small talk. She has to talk about stuff that is important to her, and bees don't measure up, even for talk over lunch. So eventually it gets to some subject that I don't want to talk about. So the talk gets ugly, even though we are in a public place.

At some point she says something like if you say you will do something you can always change your mind and not do it.

Sometimes I wonder where I get my morals from. And I said so. If you say that you are going to do something, you are committed to doing it, except in the most extreme circumstances when something more important comes up.

Now I have seriously hurt her feelings, and I have to stay longer and smooth that over, even though she is the one who said what she said.

By the time things are better, I figure that I have wasted most of the day anyway, so I might as well go to her house for a bit.

Big mistake.

We played with the dog for a bit and mostly didn't say anything ugly. And then at some point she noticed that it is past when she usually eats dinner, so she invites me to dinner.

So much for getting through the day without her buying me anything. But I really did not plan to stay this long, and I do have to eat something and I don't have any money. If I had just had the sense to leave before that, it would have been okay.

After dinner, it gets ugly.

I really just cannot talk to my mother anymore. I felt fine Monday, or at least, what passes for that now. I just never feel really good anymore, and I suppose that I am never going to feel really good ever again. But Monday wasn't so bad. I didn't get anything done Monday, but I had plans to do something Tuesday and felt okay about it. I wasn't spending days at a time in bed feeling sorry for myself. I had the idea that things would eventually get better, even if they would never really be good again. But Monday I was okay, and then Tuesday I spoke to my mother, and usually after speaking to my mother I come to the conclusion that I can't do anything. I can't get a job that is worth having. I can't even get a job that I don't like that might eventually be useful. I am a drain on my family and I don't even deserve to have the car that I drive because I don't drive it to a job. Nothing that I will ever attempt to do is worth doing.

After talking to her I think that I might as well do nothing. I can't do anything. It isn't even worth getting out of bed to wash the dishes and such that I can do.

So I not only wasted Tuesday, but now I feel bad right before I have three days to myself, and I really should be getting something done then. Now I don't have any energy. Now I just don't see the point.

I eventually leave my mother's house and walk to the car. I cannot take anymore. She follows me. There is just no getting away from her. I try to be nice.

She finally allows me to leave. I think that I might have finally gotten through to her that I don't want to talk about things, but no. Her parting words were something like, we'll have to talk more about this later.

I go home. I don't even have an hour to myself before my husband comes in. It was a totally wasted day and I feel awful. He even mentions that the laundry isn't done. I don't even bother telling him that I've been gone all day.

Wednesday we went to see a movie called Moon. I only just heard about it a few days ago, and it isn't on a lot of screens, and it wasn't at our usual place. To get a reasonably priced ticket we had to go to a theater we had never been to before. It was okay. Moon is mainly about this one man who has agreed to work alone on a station for three years. If Silent Running or Solaris is your thing, then you would probably like this movie. But most people won't be really crazy about it. Then we went to lunch and did some shopping.

I should have stayed home instead of going out and spending money, but I felt so bad after Tuesday. I just needed to do something to feel better.

All of us are probably going to lunch Sunday, so I will see mother again, and I don't want to. Probably nothing bad will happen with everyone else there, but after Tuesday I am not looking forward to it.

Stuff from this weekend

Well, I had been debating whether or not I should make an appearance at the movie theater that my friends were hanging out at. I wasn't up for a long drive and being on my feet all night, but just maybe I could go for an hour or two on Saturday, after I had already driven halfway there to get to something else anyway.

First thing that I did was email three of my other friends who had not yet made an appearance at the theater. Maybe they would like to go there too.

One didn't even return my email. Another didn't return my email, but we had already discussed the situation somewhat. Miss Allergies said that she did not want to go to the theater, not even just to see the other people all dressed up and not dress up herself. Going to the theater would interfere with our usual plans for going to dinner.

Our usual plans of going to dinner are already interfered with, as some of our friends were already committed to being at the theater all evening anyway.

Miss Allergies insisted that people do have to eat, so that maybe they would take a break and go with us.

Well, they might, but they aren't going to drive all the way back and forth from the usual place. Maybe if we pick another restaurant closer to the theater. So we discuss a few places and pick one. The other two guys are easy and will usually go along with where we want to go.

Only after we discuss the idea of taking a break with the people who are committed to being at the theater all night, they insist that they really must be at the theater all night, even during the hour and a half between shows when they aren't really doing much. At that point, Miss Allergies wants to go to the usual place rather than driving all the way to the other restaurant.

So I decide if we are not going to the other restaurant I really don't need to go to dinner. I really do want to hang around at the theater, even if it is just for an hour or so. And hanging around at the theater will only cost me a bit more gas, while going to dinner will cost me more money. If we could have done both that would have been nice, but I don't see being able to do both if we don't go to the other restaurant. So I'm off to the theater.

Except that Miss Allergies is begging me to go to dinner instead. And then while she is trying to talk me into dinner instead, she mentions that she wants to go to the bookstore first.

I don't want to go to the bookstore at all. I spend enough time in that place when I have money, so I don't want to waste any of my time there when I don't have money. I'm off to the theater again. Miss Allergies complains that we never get to see each other anymore.

Well, I am hardly to blame for that, but I don't say so. I've about had it with Miss Allergies.

She thinks it is all about me not having money. She offers to buy me dinner. It is partially about me having no money, but not entirely. And I really do want to go to the theater for a bit. She still wants to go to dinner at the usual place, but she still wants to go to the bookstore first.

I think why don't I just go to the theater now, and then I'll see how I feel about going to dinner afterward. That seems to make everybody happy. I check to make sure that I have their cell phone numbers, and again I am off to the theater.

I actually get out the door this time and really do drive to the theater.

Last month I had all these plans for making new costumes and such, and then decided not to bother with it. If I really want to go, I can wear the old stuff that I wore last month. Only, at about the time that I decide that, I realize I don't know where the old stuff is. As it turns out, I had left it in the car from last month. So I had looked it over and then put it back in the car and added a scarf.

So I get to the theater, and I'm rather late for one show, but I can help out with two others and then leave in an hour. Perfect. I get changed.

Besides our group being dressed as Tonks and Dumbledore and the elder Malfoy and Snape, I see a group of girls who is not part of our group. They have come wearing school uniforms and neck ties and such. And one of them had a toilet seat around her neck, cause she was moaning Myrtle. And there was another girl with that group all dressed in brown with this sort of grass skirt thing around her knees, cause she was a broom. Silly girls.

So that was fun, but I didn't get into costume soon enough to have my picture taken with them.

So I go and change. Now, the nice thing about dressing up for Harry Potter is that you can still wear your glasses, and you can even carry a purse if you want to, and I found one that looked eccentric enough to work. So after an hour or so I called my other friends, who were just then getting to the restaurant. I change out of the skirt but keep the rest of the costume on, and I'm off to the restaurant.

So I get to the restaurant maybe twenty or thirty minutes after they did. So I think that worked out pretty well. Then Miss Allergies still wanted to buy me dinner, which I thought was weird, cause I assumed that she just offered because she thought that I wouldn't go otherwise. After I'm already at the restaurant and starting to order the soup I didn't think that it mattered anymore.

But she still wants to buy me dinner, apparently because she'll taking the others somewhere later this week and I'm not going.

Okay. I'm not sure why I'm not going, but I don't ask. Maybe it is because she thinks that I don't want to waste the gas going to Fort Worth. I don't know. I didn't ask, and I'm not going to.

We stay at the restaurant three hours. We get ready to leave, and again Miss Allergies is going on about how we don't get to spend enough time together anymore.

And whose fault is that? But I don't say anything. But it is weird that she keeps going on like that. And here I am right now, without a job, and I could meet her any Saturday that she wants, and I might even meet her on a weeknight if she would ask. But I already know that she'll never invite anyone to her house (which I know cause we have both said that we never have anyone over) and she won't want to meet me anyplace halfway, and she would never say meet me at the mall or at a fast food place to just have a soda. She has to go only to certain restaurants because of her allergies, etc....

Sunday, I get nothing useful done. I watch Sunday Morning and then spend about three hours watching stuff about Apollo missions. I would have liked to watch The Dish, but I seem to have misplaced it. I thought I knew where most things were before I started cleaning, and now I can't find anything. And we didn't even go to my brother's place as I had already watched Eureka on Hulu Saturday morning, cause I didn't want to hear any of my friends talking about it before I watched it.

Anyway, Sunday started out pleasant enough, but it soon got back to normal. And now it is Monday, and I got up later than usual and haven't done anything. I suspect it will be another day of not doing much, though later I should get to watch True Blood. Today we have to sit here and wait for someone to deliver a computer. That's always fun.

This week would almost be a good time to do some gardening, if I would get up early enough. We expect only low to mid nineties, rather than high nineties and over a hundred. But I probably won't get around to that.

My almost planned day away isn't going to happen tomorrow. And then the husband will go out of town for three days at the end of the week. I should plan what I am going to do before then so I don't waste the time.

A month ago

Last month at about this time I was getting ready to hang out with my friends. I was working on a new witch hat, which was supposed to be for the Harry Potter premiere, but I had also hoped to wear it that Saturday to show off to my friends while we did this goofy thing at one of our usual get-togethers. I didn't get finished with the hat and wore one of my old hats that Saturday, still thinking that I would finish the new hat in plenty of time to wear to the Harry Potter premiere.

And I asked for details on the Harry Potter premiere, but there didn't seem to be any solid plans to do anything specific, other than we were committed to being at a particular theater. No one really seemed very interested in getting an early start getting ready for the thing. We went to dinner or something.

And that same Saturday, I picked up some DVDs that my friend from the great white north wanted, only he hadn't seen any, while around here they were for sale at a discount. So I was supposed to buy the DVDs, and then I would send them to him and he would send me the money for the DVDs and the postage. Before sending them on to him, I was going to watch them, in part to make sure that they weren't damaged, as you can only get refunds or exchanges a week after purchase, and if he found out that they were damaged after I sent them it would be too late to do anything about it.

So it is a month later, and I still haven't sent him the DVDs. I did watch most of them that first week, though to tell the truth the last two disks were more skimmed through than actually watched. They didn't seem to be damaged, though I did notice that they sometimes didn't show the main menu when asked. So not so much damage, more of a glitch, and for all I know it has more to do with my VCR than the DVDs themselves. Anyway, it didn't seem like something that was worth going to exchange for another set, since next set would probably have the same problem (if in fact there was a problem at all and not just a quirk of my VCR), and this set had already been inspected for damage. So I should have just said that the first week that I had them, but I forgot. And now I realize that I have had these things three weeks longer than I planned to, and I just forgot to ask about sending them.

I never finished the new witch hat. I never made any additions or repairs to any of my costumes. I didn't go with my friends to the Harry Potter premiere, and when I went to my local theater, the only part of my costume that I wore was the scarf. I had changed my mind from wanting to go all out and be at the movie theater with my friends all four days to thinking that maybe I just wouldn't go at all.

Okay, so today is the day of one of our usual get-togethers, and afterwards they will be going to that theater. So I'm thinking that I would like to go just this last day, just to see if the decorated the theater and what everyone else is wearing. I shouldn't waste the gas, but I'll be going almost halfway there anyway, so it wouldn't be that much. I am trying to decide if I want to get all dressed up, or if I just want to wear my regular clothes and look around for a little bit.

In either case, some of my friends will want to go to dinner, and I have to decide about that. I shouldn't spend the money. So, should I go with them and just maybe buy a soda, or should I eat with them, or should I make excuses and not go at all?

This has just be the strangest month around here with the money problems and me constantly changing my mind about things.

The power went out

Not for very long. The power just sort of blinks off once in a while, mostly during storms. Yesterday it blinked off without a storm. No big deal.

Except that the clock goes off, and the answering machine goes off. Now, I think that you are supposed to put back-up batteries in the clock and the answering machine, only I keep forgetting to do that. So I have to reset the clock, and the answering machine never has a clue what the date and time actually is. So according to the answering machine my brother left me a message at 2am on Tuesday when it was actually about 6:30 pm on Friday. Stuff like that.

And the VCR goes off, which isn't too bad unless I was actually in the process of recording something, which at about lunch time yesterday I was not. I barely even had to fix the clock. And with these new converter boxes on the TV, I have to turn on four remotes instead of just two to get the TV back on. Sometimes the converter boxes have to have the channels reset, but this did not appear to be a problem at lunch time yesterday. Maybe that has to do with the length of time that the power is out, and it was only thirty seconds, so I don't think anything happened to the boxes, or at least if there are any channels missing I hadn't noticed them.

Another thing that happens when the power blinks off is that the crockpot (which is usually still plugged in even when it is turned off) then has a blinking light to tell you that it is now off and that if you were using it (which most of the time I am not) you need to turn it back on and such. So if the power goes off, the crockpot will have a little blinking red light, which might go unnoticed for days if I wasn't actually cooking something in it at the time the power went off.

Except that yesterday at about lunch time, I was actually using the crockpot. I was heating milk to make yogurt. Making yogurt is not brain surgery, except that you have to heat the milk to a certain temperature without scalding it, and then bring it back down to a certain temperature before adding yogurt to it, and then you have to keep it warm at a certain temperature for about twelve hours while the milk actually turns into yogurt. So while it isn't hard work, and you can do something else like watch TV or even sleep during different parts of the process, you do have to keep going over to check the temperature of the milk.

Anyway, you can make yogurt in a crockpot and have little worry about scalding the milk, though heating the milk in the crockpot does take time. And now that I have the crockpot with the digital readout that automatically switches from high heat or low heat to warm after a certain amount of time. So I was going to attempt to make yogurt with a much longer process, but it requires a lot less going to check it's temperature.

So that is what I was doing at about lunch time yesterday, when the power went off and turned off my crockpot. Now, I did remember that I was using the crockpot so that I went to turn it back on. Except that I wasn't sure how long the crockpot had been on, so I wasn't quite sure how much longer I should leave it on high temperature, so I guessed about an hour. So that seemed to be about right, and after checking the temperature a couple of times I turned it down to warm and went back to what I was doing and didn't check the temperature again until after seven.

So that should have been everything put right that wasn't right (except for the time and date on the answering machine, which is never right), and after about an hour or so from the time when the power blinked off I thought everything was okay. And I went back to alternating cleaning with watching stuff on Hulu. And it was rather warm, which is to be expected when it is about a hundred degrees outside, even if you are not actually outside yourself. But it seemed more so than usual, as I have a window unit air conditioner in this room, and another one in my bedroom, and those two cool this end of the house. I have a third unit which would cool most of the rest of the house except that it isn't working at the moment and I don't have the money to have it fixed. So it is usually noticeably cooler in this end of the house than in the front of the house, except that yesterday after lunch it was noticeably cooler in this room and not so much anywhere else.

At a bit before seven I went in the bedroom to set up the VCR for something, and that was when I noticed that the air conditioner was off. That particular air conditioner has a digital readout, while the other two have knobs, and so the air conditioner in this room came right back on after the power blinked off without me doing anything, and the air conditioner in the bedroom with the digital readout went off and stayed off until someone noticed to turn it back on. Only it had been like seven hours without me noticing to turn it back on.

Okay.

So, there is the odd occurrence of the power blinking off just now and then, which is a bit more often in the summer, because it is Texas and everyone is using their air conditioners. But maybe it tends to be a bit more often here, maybe because my house and the neighborhood itself is about seventy years old, and maybe it wasn't built so good to begin with. But of course the time when the power really blinks off often is during thunderstorms, and we had one of those last night. Not that there was a great downpour of rain, just enough to make a bit of noise and get everything a bit wet. And then power blinked off a few times, just for thirty seconds or so, which is just enough time to turn off everything with a digital readout.

The first of these happened at about one in the morning, after I had been asleep for just a couple of hours. And I guess that the noise was enough to wake me up and notice the blinking clock and that the air conditioner had gone off. So I got out of bed and turned the air conditioner back on. I did not bother putting the correct time on the clock as I did not want to go to find out what the actual time was, and I would rather just get back to bed as soon as possible.

Remember that I was making yogurt?

Okay, during the part of the process that requires the milk mixture to be kept warm for about twelve hours, I am usually sleeping while the crockpot is set on warm. Except that when the power blinks off like that the crockpot is actually switched to off, not warm. So right after I get back into bed I remember this and walk to the front of the house to turn the crockpot back on and switch it to warm.

The power blinked off at least a couple of times after that, and twice it made enough noise for me to notice and get out of bed to turn on the air conditioner and walk to the front of the house to switch the crockpot back to warm.

So I did not get much sleep last night, but the last time I did get almost four hours, so I guess that was enough at one time so that I do not feel just awful this morning. But it was still rather annoying.

There is stuff to do, but today I'll just watch Harry Potter instead

I was reading someone else's blog, how she thinks that she is going to feed her family with her new garden. There's a picture of her garden, or some of her soon to be garden anyway. If the picture shows most of it, then it probably is a bit smaller than mine. She is proud of how she used recycled stuff to make the path around the garden to save money. But then most of her garden is raised beds, about half made from bricks that must have cost several hundred dollars, and the other half being made from heavy lumber that I do not think they found in the scrap bin.

In any case, I am wondering if the garden will feed her family. She is in California, while I am in Texas. Maybe in California they are not having this problem with the bees. Or maybe there is just something about my house in particular that the bees do not like. I saw a bee yesterday, but she was out in the field, not in my yard.

A neighbor who usually has a nice garden has mostly given up for the year. Half of his garden has been dug up and made ready for next year. I don't talk to this particular neighbor, so I don't know what happened to the other half of his plants. He has left the tomatoes, and the sweet potatoes aren't ready to be dug up yet, but most everything else is gone.

I tried to grow some more beans, but again there were no sprouts. I think that maybe they did sprout, but the pill bugs ate them before I saw them. This is getting annoying, as there are pill bugs everywhere that I did nothing about, as all the books said that they were harmless and only ate dead plants. Now I will have to find a way to protect new plants from them.

With all the water I give to the garden plants, the grass around the plants has grown tall. We will have to cut it more often. I wish I had money to cover the rest of the yard with stepping stones and such.

Note to self: in the future do not plant turnips and radishes in the same bed. I have trouble telling which is which, and after the rain some of the seeds moved so that they got mixed in together.

While I am not getting anything done in the garden because of the heat, the front part of the house has improved enough for my husband to comment about it.

August will be here soon. I don't look forward to it. I would like to work really hard for a few weeks and then maybe be in a coma for a month or so. It would be nice to skip the entire month and just wake up one day and find that it was already September and time to do fall planting if I'm going to do that.

Later today we will go and watch the Harry Potter movie. I looked at the emails from last night, and there was no mention of the sneak preview that my friends should have gone to. So I'm glad that I decided not to worry about all that. Maybe I will go with them Saturday night, but I won't decide before then. I'll just see how I feel. I would like to see what they do, but I don't really want to get that into it myself. I have cleaning to do, and I shouldn't stop working right when I am starting to see real progress.

The card came from the unemployment place. We were told it would be three eighty a week on weeks that he qualified for a whole week, and it has four hundred dollars. So that is a bit odd. Not enough for two weeks. So did they decide the didn't qualify for a whole second week, or is more coming later. Anyway, it is a bit annoying about it being a card and not a check. I'm not real sure how to get it from that account to the account that we pay our bills from. Though at this rate we may just end up spending the whole four hundred on stuff and not have any left to transfer to the other account. I wonder why they don't just ask for your regular account information and make a direct deposit to that?

The new business experiment will be in about a month. I keep forgetting things that have to be purchased, or things end up costing more than I thought they would. Like we had to go and buy extra ink cartridges and colored paper for the printer, cause we need about a hundred each of a couple of things. For the black and white stuff we might have gone to a copy place, but color copies are still very expensive, which doesn't quite make since if color ink cartridges don't cost more than black ones. Maybe it is just assumed that color copies use more ink. Anyway, we did not use the copy place this time. Maybe next time, if there is a next time. We bought a frame for a poster, but we haven't ordered the poster yet. We have reserved rental equipment for next month. And if the business doesn't go well it will cost at least another two hundred or so in supplies that we are now committed to spend at the end of next month. The four hundred something dollar computer became a six hundred something dollar computer. By the time next month is over we will have spent over twelve hundred dollars on this thing. I am starting to get nervous about it again.

But today I am just going to enjoy watching the movie and then coming home to eat the expensive cheese that we bought yesterday from the surplus store.

Back to the usual stuff

Well, I had my three days alone and ended up not doing much of anything different than I would have done if he had still been here. But I do have a much cleaner dining area, though it still needs some work. I have made enough of a dent in it that I will probably move some more furniture and clean behind that. That is a great bother but it should be done once in a while. I am even thinking that while I am in the mood for it I should try and clean behind the major appliances in the kitchen.

In any case I won't be doing much of that today, but maybe tomorrow. Today we are going to go and have lunch with one of his brothers. That would be fine, except for the reason for the visit. Last week, since the unemployment check still hasn't arrived and he needed expense money if he was going to go to work, my husband borrowed some money from this brother. So the brother gave him a check, and my husband went to our bank and cashed it and put half in the checking account and half in his pocket. Then he went out of town to work.

After that, the brother calls to say that we shouldn't cash the check. He has the money, but he didn't put it in the account soon enough to cover the check, so we should wait a couple of days before cashing it.

First, if we could have waited a few days, we probably wouldn't have needed to borrow the money in the first place. So of course we took the check to the bank the day after he wrote it. Second, if he had more money in his pocket than in his account, why didn't he just loan the cash instead of writing the check?

Okay, so we are going to meet up for lunch so that he can give my husband some cash so we can deposit the cash in the bank to cover the check before the bank finds out that it isn't good.

Recently, we got another account at another bank, so that if this business thing works out my husband would have a different account for that. And that account also comes with another personal account, and that bank is the bank that we have the car loan with. So we thought it would be easier to transfer funds from that account to pay the car loan rather than mailing a check or going to the bank every month. So my husband did the payment online, and he didn't see the usual stuff like a confirmation number or action pending or anything like that. So after a few days of not seeing any evidence that the car payment had been made, he tried again. So now they have taken two car payments and say that we are overdrawn and have been charged a fee for that.

So that's been fun.

After lunch and hopefully straightening out some of the banking stuff, we are off to run some other errands. Like, I've run out of birth control pills. And the husband needs some stuff to do with the business thing, like he needs to rent some equipment and put a reserve on that, and he needs some Spanish translations of things and he needs copies of that.

I might have some more time to myself next week, or I might go with him somewhere, or both. In either case we will need expense money, and we are still waiting for the damned unemployment checks.

Harry Potter premieres next week

Next Wednesday to be exact. There's a midnight showing on Tuesday, and a sneak preview for some of us either Monday or Tuesday. My friends and I have been planning to go in costume to help promote the movie and our club. It will be like the Star Trek premiere back in May.

I'm not going.

Or, at least, I don't think that I'm going. I never got around to finishing the new hat, and I didn't even start on the cape. Not that I don't have plenty of that stuff already, I just thought that another hat would look better, and that a lighter cape would be cooler and better to wear in July in Texas. But still, I have plenty of other stuff to wear, and most of what we are planning is in the evening and indoors, so it wouldn't be terribly hot if I decided to wear the old stuff.

I just don't think I'm going to have any money. The theater is almost an hour away, and would require at least two round trips if I participate at all, and four round trips if I did everything that I had planned. So that would be nearly a tank of gas, and the tank is nearly empty now, and I really don't have the money to waste on a movie.

I would feel really bad about letting everybody down, except, in my opinion I haven't yet commented to doing the thing anyway.

Oh, I'm sure that everyone knows that I had planned on doing it, but back in May when I wanted to get serious about planning this thing and possibly building some props, no one else much seemed to be interested. After all, they were tired from just doing the Star Trek thing, and Harry Potter was months away.

Only now it isn't months away, it is only days away. They are just now getting around to making a final list of who is going to be there and when, and who needs to bring what, etc.... I began to lose interest after no one wanted to do anything in May, and again when not that many people wanted to firm up the plans in June. So now that it is time to do something and it is too late to do anything about it if we don't have enough props just already in our closets...I am thinking that I have more important things to worry about than promoting a movie. Like is that unemployment check ever going to get here, and if my husband goes out of town again in two weeks do I want to go with him, and now that I have a mostly clean dining room do I want to move the appliances around in the kitchen so that I can give that a serious cleaning too.

I have to spend money on important stuff, like food.

Not that we won't go and see the movie, but the two of us can see the movie, probably on opening day, for about seven dollars. It will cost about three times that much for gas (or, that is how much it cost last time, and I'm thinking that it is more now), my husband might not get a free ticket, and then of course if I go spend a lot of time at this theater that isn't nearby I shall have to either buy dinner out with the gang or take a peanut butter sandwich.

Right at the moment, the idea of not going isn't bothering me that much. What is bothering me is that no one seems to have noticed yet that I'm not going.

Well, it's not like I actually announced that I wasn't going. There isn't an official sign-up sheet yet. But I thought by now that they would have either noticed that I hadn't sent an email about it or maybe they would have sent me an email asking what they could borrow for the event. Neither has happened.

I did tell one friend that I probably wouldn't go to anything for a while because of the money situation. Maybe he said something to them.

One more odd thing about the Harry Potter movie is that one of my friends is refusing to see it. She was probably the first person to tell me that I needed to read these books, she has costumes, and she was more into Harry Potter than most people I know (and I know a lot of people who are into this stuff). But apparently the sixth book upset her so much that she nearly didn't read the seventh one.

NO SPOILERS, PLEASE. I have only read the first book for something at school. I like to read books after I have seen the movies.

Anyway, so my friend refuses to go, and I don't think that I should go because of the money situation. Me, with the scarves and the costumes and the year round Halloween decorations all around the house.

I mean, I will still go see it someplace, but not with my friends, and not doing the whole weekend event thing.

I may end up not seeing my friends this week at all, and this is the week that we would normally see each other anyway.

This is just all a bit weird.

Yesterday

So I had a day by myself. Nothing exciting happened. I didn't go out and do anything crazy. I didn't start any new projects.

On the other hand, I didn't feel so bad that I had to spend the day in bed. Next month I will probably not be so lucky, but today was okay.

The bad husband didn't call yesterday. He did check in several times this morning, but I was outside the first couple of times. Nothing exciting happened to him either.

Oh, well. fifty bucks is fifty bucks.

I've been having some problems with blogspot lately, so I'm not even sure if anyone will be able to read this. Just sometimes I go to my blog, and I don't see the last thing that I posted. But I know that it is there, so if a click a few things I eventually find it. But, of course, I know that it is there to look for it. Other people don't. So if you don't see it right away, I assume that you go somewhere else and read someone else's new post. It's weird.

I am very slowly getting around to cleaning the kitchen and what is supposed to be the dining room. We rarely dine in it. It is usually just full of boxes and other stuff that gets in the way. It usually doesn't occur to me that this is a problem. When we first got married, we didn't have a table anyway, and we very quickly got into the habit of eating dinner while watching TV in bed. So what did we need a dining table for? We have a table now, but I haven't gotten back into the habit of using it to eat on. So it becomes a place for art projects. Or, at least, it becomes a place for art projects when I have an art project and I don't have too many boxes in the way.

Right now the table is full of canned goods that I am trying to sort through. I've had some of it a long time. I can't find dates on some of them. I wonder if some of it isn't good to eat anymore.

Anyway, this is the serious cleaning that involves moving a bit of furniture. I rarely do this at all, and I don't think that I've done it this late in the summer before. It is too hot to move furniture. But, at some point I got seriously into moving the boxes around, and then scrubbing the floor, and then I thought that I might as well move some shelves and clean behind them. And now that I've started that process, I should probably go ahead and finish it.

I now have three of the Kellogg's Star Trek t-shirts. I still didn't take a picture of any of them. I will have to do that after my husband gets back. I think that I bought forty-two boxes of cereal. But that's alright. I got a good deal on most of it, and we are actually eating the cereal. We still have a lot of it, but I doubt that it will last all year like I first thought.

My mom hasn't called yet. Hopefully that will last another day or so. Though it won't last for much longer, as there is a family thing that should be coming up soon. It has just occured to me that we will probably go to lunch or something, and I don't have any money.

This sucks.

Some time to myself

I have three days to myself. It has been a long time. I can't remember how long it's been since I've had a few days to myself. In fact, it has been a while since my husband had any work at all, so I'm not even sure when I last had even an afternoon to myself.

So I am debating should I do anything that I wouldn't normally do if he were here.

Of course, I have no money, so I really shouldn't do anything. I should stay here and clean house.

Now, there are parts of the house that are easier to clean when he is away, so maybe I should do that. But on the other hand, I already started something before he left, and I should finish up with that before moving on to something else.

To tell the truth, the timing is bad, and I probably won't do either. I will probably spend tomorrow or the next day mostly in bed. I hope not, but it is a possibility.

And, with the computer all to myself, I'm going to watch all of the nineties version of Dark Shadows on Hulu. Assuming that I don't spend most of tomorrow and the next day in bed. And assuming that my mother doesn't call and ruin my whole weekend.

Another problem with being an apprentice

So I've had this friend for about ten years, and I think that I knew her somewhat even ten years before that. And from stuff that comes up in conversation, I knew that she had gone to college and that she had taken a lot of art classes.

And I also knew that she did not make a living as an artist, and nothing had come up in conversation about her once having been able to do that. There were a few different possibilities.

She could have been in exactly my situation. She could have started out as an art major and been ordered by her parents to switch to something else.

She could have started out an art major and switched to something else on her own.

She could have had an minor in art.

She could have been an art major and just ran out of money and had to drop out of school.

She could have been an art major and had to drop out of school for some other reason, like maybe her health, and then she just never got back to it.

She could have been an art major, graduated, and just not been able to make a living as an artist, or found a "real job" that paid more and just gave up on the whole art thing.

I got the idea that it was the last one. I wondered how long a person with an art degree tries to actually make a living as an artist before giving up and getting a "real job." So one day I asked her about it.

I kind of got the short version of it. She did graduate as an art major, but she didn't stay with the painting and the ceramics. Her last year she studied stuff about making film. The specific job she was supposed to get with her degree had to do with lights. So she should be working the lights on some TV show, or making comercials, or maybe even making movies.

Only after graduation, you are supposed to apprentice for a year. She didn't even mention getting paid minimum wage during the apprenticeship. She couldn't work for free for a year, unless she lived with her parents, and there wasn't any place to do that where they lived. So she had to get a "real job".

She didn't give any more details than that. I'm not exactly sure how she ended up in this area, which is not in the county her parents lived in, and it's not in the same county that she went to college in either. I know that her dad worked not exactly the same job, but in the same field and for the same employer, and I am thinking that when the art thing didn't work out he helped her get a job where he worked, and then she transferred to this area when a better paying position became available.

And she hates her job. I don't know if she's always hated her job, but I've never heard her say anything nice about it. Okay, that's not entirely true. I'm sure she likes some of the people she works with, but I'm sure that would have happened anyway. Mostly, she talks about the revolving door of managers, and how she doesn't like any of them.

Anyway, she did answer my question, but she didn't offer much in the way of details. It just sounded like she went to school, decided to get an art degree, decided to specialize in TV/film because working the lights is a "real job" as opposed to just making art and hoping that someone will buy it, and then she didn't get that particular "real job" because she didn't know about the unpaid apprentice thing.

Afterwards, that didn't quite make sense. Surely somebody told her about this apprenticeship thing before her last year of college, and she would have had time to specialize in something else or maybe even switch majors entirely. Having once had a major in something that would have had an unpaid apprenticeship year (almost a year anyway), that was often the topic of conversation among the students. People were nervous about the "fifth year", or really excited about it, or whatever.

Me? I was really ticked that we were expected to work for free for most of a year. Not only that, but since we were techically still in school, we actually had to pay for the privilege of working that year. It was less than half of what most of us paid in a normal year, but still, we had to pay. And it was pretty much a full time job in addition to having a few things that we still had to do at school, so it probably wasn't going to leave enough time to even get a part-time job to pay some of the bills.

But, back to my friend. I can not believe that she just didn't know about the apprenticeship until it was too late. I can believe that she thought that she would get a student loan for that year and then couldn't get one. Or, I can believe that she thought that she would spend the year living with her parents, but the place she intended to work that year went out of business. Maybe she thought she could drive between the place her parents lived and the place she lives now, but she decided not to do that after her car broke down in the middle of nowhere. Before cell phones, driving by yourself between towns could sometimes be a frightening experience.

Anyway, I have yet to ask her for more details. I don't think she likes to talk about it. She is seriously in "my life sucks" mode, and reminding her that things could have been different is probably not a good idea.

I'm an American, not a scientist

Okay, it would have been better if I could have thought of something that sounded more like--I'm a doctor, not a brick-layer. But I'm not a doctor or a brick-layer, so this will have to do.

Anyway, as I did not do all the cool stuff on the 4th, and in fact I forgot to even go in the backyard to see if the fireworks were visible, I wasn't doing much that I don't normally do. I went to my brother's place where we had some hotdogs and hamburgers, and we ended up talking about dumb stuff for a couple of hours, and then we went home.

And then it was the usual stuff that I do around here, watching TV and playing around on the computer, minus stuff like trying to get any work done.

And I read a couple of the news stories that pop up when I go to read my email. And while I was doing that, I was invited to take a few quizzes.

So I thought that I would see how I'd do taking the citizenship test. Only, it wasn't really the citizenship test, cause the real test is longer and doesn't help you out with multiple choice answers, but those are easier to do for the purpose of taking these little quizzes on the computer.

After that I got some questions on recent news stories concerning space and science. Before I took either quiz I expected to do better with the science quiz than the American citizenship stuff. After all, the American citizenship stuff would have been stuff that I might have studied to take tests back in college twenty years ago, and not stuff that I was really that interested in other than to pass those tests. On the other hand, science stuff in the news tends to get my attention.

On the citizenship test I scored 85%. Welcome to America. You know more about the place than most people who live here.

I get the openings of the different documents backwards. And I got the number of amendments wrong. And I didn't know which one was the chief justice of the supreme court.

But I knew all that other stuff. Or, at least, I thought I knew all that other stuff or I made a good guess.

As for the science quiz, I got a flat zero.

It was all really recent stuff that I either hadn't heard about or couldn't remember. I couldn't remember the name of the recent Mars probe. Other questions didn't seem to be about science at all. One question concerned finding a nude picture of the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa was painted by a scientist, but other than that I don't think that the picture itself has anything to do with science.

Still, it was a bit odd. And I guess that some of my college studies stuck with me more than I thought they had.