Two paychecks from being homeless

It has been a while since I posted anything. There were a couple of things I wanted to write about that turned out to be very long projects, and somehow, I just never got around to writing them. And then I missed blogging about a couple of trips I took (and a few trips that I wanted to go on but missed). And then there were a few more things that I meant to write but somehow didn't.

I guess this just isn't my routine anymore. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and actually have something to do. Or, sometimes, I manage to get back to sleep for another hour or so. Or, maybe, I wake up early and watch whatever it was that I missed on TV the night before.

Mostly, not being obsessed with the blog is a good thing. Last month I actually had time to both get the house clean before the bug guy came and put up about half of the Halloween stuff. And I wasn't even home all of the time, having gone on a trip to middle of nowhere Texas and attempted to go to the Texas Renaissance Festival.

Still, I have forgotten to blog about a few things, and I regret that. It's good that right now I don't feel the need to bitch about every little thing that happens to me, but I like to look back and see what I did the year before and other things that I would like to look up, but I can't do that now, cause I didn't bother to write anything down.

Okay, so the big thing that I have to write down now is not our little trip to Houston, but I will talk about that for a bit. Earlier there was a planned trip to Houston, which was scheduled and then unscheduled and then rescheduled, but I got sick and didn't get to go. I really wanted to go. We had paid for a room in Webster, a bit south of Houston, about half an hours drive from Galveston, and if I had gone there would have been many trips to the beach and probably long soaks in a hot tub. But I didn't get to go then, and this trip didn't seem to be as good, being on the north side of Houston and much to far away for morning trips to the beach. But we could at least spend Sunday afternoon in Galveston, and I always have this thought that I shouldn't turn down any trips to places I like, no matter how dull I expect most of the trip to be, it might be my last chance to go for a while.

And I think maybe this is it, no more trips, even mostly boring ones.

The big news this week is that the company my husband works for was bought by another company. The second company is one that my husband has worked for before, two or three times, so we already know what to expect. More work, less pay, and no insurance.

The holiday season is already a tough time for us, not only because of the extra expenses that most people have, but also because of the expected two or three weeks off with no pay. But most years we have thought that if we didn't do anything too stupid that it would all be okay again by February. This year we don't think that it will all be okay again, and that if he even still has a job it will be with a much smaller paycheck.

So half of the time my husband talks of gloom and doom, and half the time he acts as if things are really good, and we go out and spend too much on lunch. I rather think that we should start getting used to peanut butter sandwiches, but I don't argue with him, and we go out and eat seafood or barbecue instead.

The new company is saying that no one should worry, and that there will be no major changes until 2012.

Like we can't all look at the calendar and figure out how soon 2012 will be here.

So I don't know what we are going to do. It will be a while before we learn anything useful.

A few weeks ago I was happy that we had been able to pay off one of the cars a few months early. And then we had to pay for some car repairs. And now this.

Monday Morons--Company Shirts

So my husband and his coworkers have mostly been working extra hours for less pay--when they are actually working. The new plan that was supposed to help everyone make a little more money and have steady work has not actually resulted in steady work. So while there have been a few good paychecks, we are now about to be back on unemployment for a bit. Last week he worked four days, this week he isn't scheduled to work at all, and next week he's scheduled to work one day (in Oklahoma, which will actually take up three days of his time--the day before to drive there, the day he actually works, and the day after to drive home). We don't know yet if he will work the week after next.

So, while the employees have more work and less money, you would think that maybe the company would do something to make life a little more pleasant. Like maybe they wouldn't be so strict with the dress code. Like it's bad enough getting laid off for weeks at a time and then when you do work you work extra hours for less pay, and on a bad day the pay ends up being close to minimum wage (even less than that when you figure in the hours of drive time that you are not paid for), but it really sucks that you have to dress up and wear a tie and such. Can't you maybe just wear a polo shirt instead?

Sure.

So someone at the office got the brilliant idea that the employees should be able to just wear polo shirts instead of dress shirts and ties. Only, it can't be any polo shirt, it has to be a certain color. And it can't just be a polo shirt of a certain color, it has to have the company logo on it. Not a shirt with a company logo pin stuck on it, but a shirt that has the logo embroidered on it. So, to get that polo shirt that is the certain color with the embroidered logo on it, you have to order it from the company for twenty-five dollars plus tax and shipping.

So, in addition to being laid off for days and weeks at a time, and when you do work you get paid less for working extra hours, now the company is trying to get some of your paycheck back by selling polo shirts.

Isn't that nice?

What do you think they should do with their twenty-five dollar embroidered shirts?

Sorry I have not posted

I have started a couple of posts, but then not finished them.

I have had the place to myself for a few days. I debated on going, but then decided that I could get a certain thing done better by myself, even if I did not get anything else accomplished.

You wouldn't think this would be something I would want to do by myself, but there just doesn't seem to be room for me and the junk and other people, so other people are out.

I told him that there would be a surprise for him when he got back. I didn't tell him I would be moving furniture, but that did kind of commit me to do something impressive while he was away.

It would have been better to clear away some space in the backroom first, and I did sort of try that for a bit, but I gave up on that about halfway through. Friday I needed to deal with the bedroom, thinking that I would get halfway and need the halfway point to be Friday night when I went to sleep. But I got to that point earlier than I thought, and managed to get the furniture moved Friday night.

Of course then most of Saturday was spent in bed watching TV. But I have moved furniture from one wall to the opposite wall, and also removed everything from another bookcase so that I could clean behind it and spray for bugs. And I threw away a lot of stuff. Now all I have to do is move three more pieces of furniture, clean under the other side of the bed, and throw away more stuff.

Okay, not even done with one room. But this is a big deal, that I was able to move the furniture by myself (should have just done the one piece and left the other, as the other piece had to be lifted instead of just dragged to the new spot, but I managed), and that half the room is the way it is supposed to be, and the other half should be easier (no furniture needs to be lifted, and most of the actual trash is gone).

I am about out of certain cleaning supplies, so I can tell myself I took a break because of that and get right back on it Monday.

So my husband came home to his surprise and said that is just how he would have moved things, if he weren't so lazy.

Anyway, after all the complaining about not having enough work, this week stuff has been added from another division so that he has six things scheduled. He is starting to whine a bit about stuff that might happen at the other division, but I am thinking that a total switch might be best. It might have most of the advantages of having a new job, without the stuff like losing our health insurance.

Today we will probably go out (though I'm not sure where), and then after lunch we will go to my brother's and watch Riverworld. While they are hoping that it is better than the last one, I had never read the book and thought the last one was okay. Anyway, it is a two-parter, which usually means that they have put more work into it than the usual SyFy movies. We will see.

Well, I did manage to do one thing yesterday. I made yogurt, which if I did it right should be ready to use just about when I finish writing this. I didn't do any special measuring or take temperature readings or anything. No fuss. I just decided to accept that everything done last time was correct and try doing it without the thermometer. If I'm going to do this on a regular basis, that is the way it will have to be. If I have to spend all day checking on it then it becomes a serious chore and I'll make excuses for not doing it. This way I'll have no excuse.

Also, after today, I plan to eat what I am supposed to for the rest of the week and compare that to the dollar a day thing. So we'll see how that goes.

Now back to the usual stuff, like whining about cleaning and such.

Does this make any sense?

It seems that I've read a number of things that didn't quite make sense the way that they were written. I can't remember most of them, but this was in the 2010 Census.

This concerns either questions 8 and 9, or questions 5 and 6. And maybe there are different Census forms, and other forms don't look like this.



--> NOTE: Please answer BOTH Question 8 about Hispanic origin an Question 9 about race. For this census, Hispanic origins are not races.

8. Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?

_ No, not of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin
_ Yes, Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano
_ Yes, Puerto Rican
_ Yes, Cuban
_ Yes, another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin--Print origin, for example, Argentinean, Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Spaniard, and so on.

________________________________

9. What is Person 1's race? Mark x one or more boxes.

_ White
_ Black, African Am., or Negro
_ American Indian or Alaska Native--Print name of enrolled or principal tribe.

________________________________

_ Asian Indian
_ Chinese
_ Filipino
_ Japanese
_ Korean
_ Vietnamese
_ Other Asian--Print race, for example, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian, and so on.

_________________________________

_Native Hawaiian
_ Guamanian or Chamorro
_ Samoan
_ Other Pacific Islander--Print race, for example, Fijian, Tongan, and so on.

_________________________________

_Some other race--Print race.

_________________________________



I don't know if your copy of the census looks like that. Mine had blue columns in English and green columns in Spanish. I don't know what race you are if you are Hispanic and Hispanic doesn't count as a race. What race would a Mexican American be if not Hispanic? He isn't White and he isn't Black, and he is not any of that other stuff listed. If White and Black are races, then maybe Brown should be race, but it isn't listed either.

I would not know how to deal with this if I had to answer that I was Hispanic. But I am not Hispanic. There are Hispanic people on my husband's side of the family, but he doesn't speak Spanish, so he doesn't even say that he's mixed, he just says that he's White.

I'm not sure why they need to know anyone's race anyway. Blacks and American Indians count as whole people now. The census is supposed to be counting to figure out how many representatives a state should get in Congress. That number isn't going to change because of a race majority or minority.

I also don't get the point of question three. Not that any of the answers were good ones for my situation, but I made a guess. Seems like there should be a few more boxes on that question, like condos or dorm rooms or even jail cells.

No, I do not live in a jail cell.

But, again, renters and homeowners and maybe even actual homeless people should count the same on a census. The state representative number won't go up or down either way. Why do they need to know if a person pays rent?

Whatever.


I heard another thing was was maybe poorly phrased.

My husband went to this meeting. This is part of a process to change the way that things are done so that my husband will start doing his job paired with one salesperson, while in the past he has usually worked with two salespeople. Most people don't like the idea. This isn't going to fix the problem. This is going to make everything better and get back those larger paychecks that a lot of them got used to getting.

And, it seems clear to me, that this means that there will not be work for half of the salespeople.

So this middle management guy (who possibly doesn't have a real job when he isn't going around giving speeches) gets my husband and other people with his same job and their two managers together, and a couple of the salespeople's managers were also at this meeting, though most of the salespeople were not there cause they'd already had one of these meetings.

So my husband is telling me about the meeting, how this middle management guy was trying to convince everyone that the new one on one system is going to be great (while most of us have figured out that it is a bunch of BS, but there's just no choice in the matter if you want to keep your job). And he starts out by saying that the new one and one system is a good thing, because right off it will get rid of half the problem. So this is a really good thing.

Sounds like he was saying that the salespeople were the problem, and that this was a good thing to get rid of half of them. And he said this not only in front of my husband and other people with his job and a couple of his managers, but also those few salespeople managers sitting in the back.

They were not amused. My husband did not laugh. Most of the other people didn't laugh either.

How about getting rid of half of the appointment setters and people who arrange for the accounts, since they bring in all the "customers" who don't buy anything. And how about getting rid of middle management, who probably don't do much when they aren't giving BS speeches.

But stand up in front of people and say that the new system will get rid of half the problem? What was he drinking?

Monday Morons-- how's that going to help anything?

Okay, I said that the problems with my husband's job deserved its own post, so here it is.

My husband got this job about three and a half years ago. It was much like other jobs he has had in the last fifteen years or so, just this was a different company. Some jobs he does his part, and then weeks later a salesperson will follow. Other jobs he has been paired with a salesperson and they work at the same place at the same time. (Once I was the salesperson, but I wasn't very good at it.) At this company he has been working with two salespeople. Most of the jobs he gets paid at least some commission. If a good salesperson is assigned to work with him, this is good. If a bad salesperson is assigned to work with him, this is bad.

At this company, when he gets to work with two good salespeople, this is really good.

So, for a time, my husband made a lot of money at this company. Okay, maybe not a lot of money, but almost twice as much as he was making before. That year, we both bought new cars.

And then this whole economy thing happened. People lost their jobs and had no money to spend. Other people who didn't lose their jobs were afraid that they might lose their jobs later, and they didn't want to spend much money either.

So, my husband still has a job, but not really steady work. And when he does work, people don't spend as much as they did, so he doesn't make as much money.

So, when he has a bad day, he makes about fifty dollars. When he has a good day, he makes about three hundred dollars. There are now a lot more bad days than good days. And then there are a lot of days that he just doesn't work at all.

The company has decided to change things around so that instead of working in groups of three, people will work in pairs. To make up for the change, my husband is supposed to get a slightly higher percentage commission. After doing some math, they have decided that the new plan will raise the current average pay of one hundred and seventy nine dollars per day to one hundred and ninety dollars per day.

This still doesn't get them anywhere near the previous three hundred dollars per day that he got used to getting paid on a regular basis.

And, everyone will usually have to work an extra hour per day and do a lot more work in general. Not really worth an extra eleven dollars a day, even if the plan works.

Okay, so they now have three people working together, and they don't have enough assignments for everyone they have already hired to work on a regular basis. Now they are going to change everything around so that people work in pairs. So either they will have to fire half of the sales staff, or they will have to hire more people who do my husband's job.

Now, if they fired half of the sales staff, and they manage to fire the half that doesn't make much money anyway, this might work out okay. If they just go out and hire more people, that will mean that my husband will only work about half the time that he has been, and he isn't working that often now anyway.

I have never heard of this company actually firing anybody. They just give people bad shifts and wait for them to quit. Some of them just don't quit, though I don't understand why.

Those are the salespeople my husband will probably get stuck with.

None of it really makes any sense. But they just refuse to deal with things the way they really are. They don't want to get rid of salespeople who aren't selling much and they don't want to cut back on the schedule so that they only work at sites where people actually want to buy stuff. They want to mostly keep doing things the way they have always been done. They want to try to bully people into buying stuff, even though the people just don't have money to spend on stuff.
Now, if they really want to improve things, they should maybe get rid of some of the people who schedule the accounts. They obviously don't care if the account makes any money or not. That isn't their problem. They don't get paid by how much money an account makes, just how many accounts they can schedule and how many customers they can lure in, even if the customers don't spend any money. So they should get rid of these people, or at least change the way that they get paid, so that they don't waste everybody's time working a site where there is no money.
So, they should get rid of some of those people, and get rid of some of the salespeople (those who aren't making much money anyway), and then see how many people are needed to work with them that do generate some business. Instead they are either going to hire or fire people based on this silly idea of having all the workers pair off.

The snow is melting.

I think the official snowfall for the area was 12.5 inches, with the previous record for the area being 12.1 inches in 1964. I don't think that there was actually that much snow in my yard, but there was a lot.

The snow in my yard is already starting to melt, while most of my neighbors still have a solid blanket of white outside. We think that is has something to do with our having green plants (weeds), while most everyone else has dormant grass. We have seen a few other places with green grass next to otherwise solid white areas. And there is a snowman at the corner, and another one on the next street over. The snowmen are a bit odd looking. Obviously none of us know how to make one.

My husband seems quite obsessed with the fallen tree branch in our front yard. Someone helped him mostly pull it out of the street when we first found it. That was not to his liking, and he has twice moved it a bit more by himself. He keeps wanting to go to the office to get someone to cut it up or haul it away. I wanted to stay in, and I think that they were busy doing other things anyway. Yesterday he wanted to go to the office again. Yesterday was Saturday, and there's no one in the office on Saturday. It can wait til Monday. In fact, now that it is out of the street, it can wait indefinitely. What is the big deal about a tree branch? Other people around here have to deal with having no power, or leaking roofs, or broken windows, or damage to their cars. Leave the branch alone. Either the maintenance people will come and deal with it next week, or it can just stay there for a while. It isn't even touching the house. It isn't a problem.

Well, he worked on Tuesday as scheduled, had Wednesday off because as usual there isn't enough work to go around, had Thursday's job cancelled because of the snow, had Friday's job cancelled because of the snow, ended up working at a different place on Friday cause someone else got stuck in the snow, got to come home early on Friday cause even though that particular job wasn't cancelled on Friday most of the customers decided to cancel anyway, and then he didn't go to work on Saturday cause even though the roads were now mostly okay to drive on the job had already been cancelled. This week should be almost back to normal, and he is scheduled to work four days.

I am still wondering if they will postpone that scheduled power outage yet again. I will do a lot of cooking on Monday, just in case it is still on. I have heard that most of the stuff in the freezer will be okay, but I'll have to throw out a lot of stuff from the fridge. Of course, it is about time to clean out the fridge anyway.

I have received a jury summons. Contrary to popular belief, I do not have the answer to getting out of jury duty. Not that I'm going to try this time, I think that it is one of those that pays forty dollars a day, and I might as well get it over with next month. I'm a little concerned with the instructions I received. It says something about no electronic devices. That doesn't mean cell phones, does it? Surely they don't expect us to find our way to the courthouse and such without our cell phones.

Saturday we went out to lunch at Cheddars. After all the giggling we did when we were on the road and heard about people waiting hours to get into the place cause it was new, we actually like the one here, though it does not take hours to get in. Having been mostly stuck in the house for days, we decided just to go where we wanted to go instead of looking for coupons and such. We will call it an early Valentine's Day dinner.

I bought some more scrap lumber. So now I have quite a stack of it, though it looks like it will be a while before I can paint it and otherwise do anything with it.

Sunday we went out again. My whole front yard is now melted except for a couple of snowballs. Other people still have a lot of snow or not. And there are a lot of places that only have snow where someone tried to make a snowman or an igloo or something. Big mounds of snow here and there on an otherwise melted yard or field.

After having the nice lunch on Saturday, Sunday evening we just went to Whataburger for some buy one buy one free deal available only to people who had nothing better to do than go to Whataburger for dinner on Valentine's Day. After that we went to the grocery store, and then mostly couldn't remember what we were going to buy since we were trying not to buy anything that needed to be put in the fridge. Then we got a couple of DVDs from Redbox and went home.

Okay, not very exciting. It was just good to get out for a bit.

It is snowing here

And it never snows here. Or at least, it rarely snows here, and most of the time when it does it isn't enough to stick. But the snow is here, several inches of it, and it will stick for a while.

Here's a tree in my neighbor's yard.

It's a good thing that they postponed that whole power outage thing, or it would have been tomorrow. It has been planned again, for the third time, for next week. I wonder if they will have to postpone it again?

My husband's work called and cancelled. This is the first time that he has worked his regular job in weeks, and so of course this happened on the second day. Tomorrow and the next day are probably cancelled too, but that won't officially happen until tomorrow and the next day are here.

We should be doing something useful, but we are mostly either on the computer or watching television in between short periods of going to look out at the snow. We're not much for actually getting out in the snow. That lost most of it's appeal after I turned twelve.

I think that the driving looks bad, but it is just mostly the way it looks. Tomorrow there will probably be more in the way of solid ice that is really bad to drive on.

A couple of weeks ago, I was all ready to get out the rakes and shovels and other garden tools and get to it. Now I can't even see where the garden beds are. There's that much snow on the ground.

Still, I expect that it will all be gone by Monday.

What smells like beer?

Before I get too much into the boring details, let me say that I mostly had a good weekend.

And if you were planning to eat your spaghetti dinner while watching the latest episode of Being Human, alter your plans a little bit.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to make some cookies. I don't think that I have made any cookies from scratch since I have lived here, but I thought that it might be a good idea after I found this recipe online, and I remembered that I would have three things coming up that would require me to bring food.

So I took the new mixer out of the box and I went and spent five bucks on a new cookie sheet (cause it had been so long since I made any cookies I couldn't find the old ones) and I got together the ingredients that I already had and went out and bought what was missing. The new cookie recipe was not that great, but now that I had this new cookie sheet and all the ingredients for making cookies, I decided to try making an old recipe except to substitute whole wheat flour. That wasn't great either, so I went and bought some regular flour and tried again.

The cookies weren't bad, just not like I remembered. They are sort of tall and fluffy. I don't know what I did wrong. Also, I don't taste the baking soda. Chocolate chip cookies have baking soda, and I am quite sure that I put in the baking soda, but I can't taste it. Does baking soda get old or go flat or something?

Again, the cookies aren't bad, and in fact I am starting to like them, though I sort of doubt that anyone else will. I just can't figure out why they are different. Anyway, I took some of the whole wheat ones to the annual meeting, cause I had to take something, and most of them did not get eaten, which is okay cause that left more for me. I took the regular flour ones to the party, and again not many were eaten, so again I have leftover cookies for me, which I am not complaining about. But I think that I will give up on making the cookies for anyone other than me, and I will figure out something else to take to the last thing, and in fact there is no reason that I have to take anything to that at all if I don't want to. But I'm thinking that I will just purchase some candy instead.

All day Friday and Saturday, I had been very careful to read any emails from the group, in case it had something to do with the party that I would need to know about. Not that there was much, just people asking other people if they were going, and what are you bringing, and once in a while what are you wearing, etc.... And there was this new guy that hasn't been to a regular meeting yet, though he's already officially a member of a club, just that most of us hadn't met him yet and didn't know who he was. And he was asking about the party, and no one else answered him, and I didn't quite know what to tell him. But I thought that somebody had to say something. It wasn't an official club function, just that someone had invited pretty much everyone in the club. If he had joined a few weeks earlier, he would have officially been invited already. I didn't think that it would be a problem if he came, but I really couldn't invite someone I didn't know, and I thought that he should talk to the couple giving the party, though by that time it was too late. He already knew where the party was, so I told him the time and a little more info, hoping that someone else would chime in and say whether he was or was not officially invited, but again no one else said anything.

So after all this wondering what I should take to the party and what I should wear to the party, I have bought a black blouse and this sort of black thing that is not really a shawl and yet another black dress, and then I decided that it was too cold to wear any of that and just gave up and decided to wear what I wore last year. Except that I couldn't find what I wore last year. So I ended up wearing some really dark blue stuff and black boots and this black thing that used to be part of a Masonic costume.

I was getting ready to leave early, cause I hate driving in the dark, when I realized that I forgot to charge my phone. So I wait a little while to put some life into the phone, and then I head out, and as I am just nearly there I realize that with moving things from one bag to another and getting my keys sorted out and everything that I have somehow not transferred my wallet and do not have my driver's license or any money or a debit card or anything. Not that I expect to need any money or anything, but it would be very upsetting if something happened and I needed to show my driver's license. I didn't expect that would happen, and I was nearly there anyway, so I kept going, and nothing bad happened. But it was still very annoying.

So I got there at about the same time as a couple of friends, and we were all about twenty minutes later than we had intended, but we were still the first there from our group, and the parking lot was mostly empty. And I have been to this place several times before, but I am always surprised by the layout when I get there. There is this sign that says something like "Lake Ahead", and literally, the lake is right there after the sign. Not that the parking lot I'm looking for is ahead, but the lake is ahead. By the time I read this sign I have already missed where I meant to go, and I have to turn around and go back a little bit.

So we go in and see all empty tables, as everyone who is already there is in the back helping our hostess. So we are relieved that we are not late.

More people come in and bring food, and I am surprised how many of them are not wearing black. A few more of my friends show up, and some of us sit down and eat. And then this guy comes in by himself, and I think that's probably our new guy, and then I restrain myself from blurting out something like "Are you the new guy?" and he looks around a bit and goes to the back of the room. So maybe he isn't our new guy. But a bit after that someone brings him over and says something like these are some of the people in your group. And then there is a discussion between the four guys about steampunk stuff, and then the new guy and the other guy wander off to meet other people.

I get up to get some more food, and I'm wondering what smells like beer?

Probably beer.

I don't drink alcohol, but I do like several things that are made with alcohol, mainly beer bread and beer chili and beer cheese soup. But there was none of that, just beer.

So there was a lot of talking to people I don't really know and whose names I can't even remember. And I talked to the new guy some more. And I talked to M.

This is not M my friend the Klingon, this is the other one, and I see him once in a while, and I have finally decided that it isn't weird and running into him a couple times a year is not a problem. So that's what I thought, so I kept talking to him. I was wrong.

I had a few items of clothing that I decided I needed to part with, though I would rather give them to someone I knew would appreciate them and make costumes from them, so I brought them to the party. I gave a t-shirt to my host, who thought it was such a cool picture that it didn't bother him that it was started to tear. And I looked around the room for women who might fit into the dresses, and I asked a few if they were interested, and they said no. And then I noticed a certain person I did not want to have any of my things, so I did not make an announcement like I had planned. But then another friend arrived, and she said that she wanted the whole bag, so that worked out. I'm glad I thought of it instead of just dumping the stuff at Goodwill with the rest of the clothes I got rid of.

I talked to the new guy some more, and it is always nice when someone attractive is paying attention to you. He made suggestions, and though he said upfront that it would not be a date, I'm afraid that he didn't really mean that so I declined. It seems like the guys that I have known for a while who suggest something that is "not a date" really mean that and totally get that it is not a date and is not going to lead to anything resembling a date, but guys that I have just met are thinking that the "not a date" will either somehow become a date or at least end with me agreeing to a date later. So no more "not a date" type things with anybody I don't already know. I will be happy enough to talk to you when we just happen to be at the same place at the same time, which is probably going to happen a couple of times later in the month anyway.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, M has reached a whole other level of stupid. And it is hard to believe that anyone is really that stupid, so he must just enjoy making other people uncomfortable. I am thinking that if I have anymore trouble from him, I will start a new blog totally devoted to answering the question, is M really that stupid?

The party ended a bit after that, and I waited for certain people to get their things together so that I could walk out with them and not be around either M or the new guy, even though the new guy was being totally nice.

I managed to drive home without anybody finding out that I didn't have my license in my purse.

Sunday we ate at Taco Bell, after my husband saw a commercial for something he wanted but they hadn't had for a while. And then there was the Superbowl, which he watched, and I watched commercials in between Googling stuff.

Yesterday we went to various thrift stores, but I didn't buy much, and it got cold and rained and we came home earlier than we might have and watched Caprica and Being Human.

And then we got some bad news about this job he was applying for. He had read somewhere what the pay was, but then he couldn't find where he had read that, so he sent another email. And we can only hope that they misunderstood the question. Surely no one gets paid that little. We were only thinking about the job because he read that it was a lot of money, and we wanted some clarification on if that was the most you could make or if that was an average or what. And on top of that you had to provide your own transportation to the interview, which was out of the state and would require either plane tickets and cab fare, or would require driving a lot and get a couple of motel rooms. And then you had to provide some of your equipment and buy somewhat of a uniform, plus nicer clothing was sometimes required.

Anyway, that is the end of that. We would have serious problems with paying to get to the interview even if we thought it would mean a good paying job. There is no reason to even waste the time if it is really such a low paying job. It was about half or less of what we have read about similar jobs, and even those do not seem to pay enough. So that was disappointing, but at least that particular discussion is over.

The job hunt

Okay, well not so much my job hunt, it is more about my husband's job hunt. In order to get unemployment, you have to be looking for a job and so forth. And you can't turn down any offer of a job, cause that would mean that you aren't seriously looking, and then you would lose your benefits.

So don't apply for a job at McDonald's if you don't actually want to work there.

Anyway, at first he was concerned about this, cause there are only so many jobs out there in his field, and most of them are about up there with working at McDonald's as far as the pay goes. So he really didn't want to apply for them, cause if they offered him a job he wouldn't take it, but then if he turned down a job he'd lose his unemployment. He has a job, just the job doesn't have enough work for him right now. If he takes another job, they won't have any work for him. If he doesn't apply for other jobs, he can't get unemployment during the weeks that they don't have work for him.

I thought the solution to this problem was pretty simple. Only apply for jobs that you know you won't get. There is nothing in the rules about it being a practical job search, or even a job search in your same field, just that you apply for several jobs each week that you get unemployment benefits.

As for jobs in his field that he might actually get, he should only apply for those that are as good or better than the job he already has. There aren't many of those out there, but there are some. He should only apply for those that he would actually want to accept if offered.

So he hasn't applied for many jobs in his field, but he has applied for some. When there's been a really slow period he'll apply for a job that looks just as good as the one he has now. But none of those have offered him a job. In fact, so far no one has even sounded interested in him at all.

So this week, he didn't quite get a job offer, but they did at least respond by email, saying that they might have an opening, and that they would be interviewing in a couple of weeks.

Still, this is not a job offer. In fact, at this point they haven't even scheduled an interview. They're just telling him when the interview would be if they did interview him, so that way he can clear some time in his schedule.

So now there is the big decision to be made, whether or not to go forward with the application process. I have mixed feelings about it. I suppose that if he applies for the job I hope that he gets it and that he actually does make a lot of money and so forth. And I hope that it isn't a terrible job and that he enjoys it. I hope that all works out.

But in addition to my thoughts about him actually taking the job and what that would mean, I am just worried about continuing with the application process. I'm a bit worried if he tries to get the job and he either doesn't get it or he gets it and it doesn't work out. I'm a bit worried what will happen at his current job when they find out he's seriously trying to get another job and not just doing the minimum job search required to get unemployment benefits. And then I'm really worried what will happen if he gets the new job and then it doesn't work out. Would he be able to get his current job back, and would they have even less work for him then?

Maybe they'll cut his hours as soon as they find out he's trying to get this other job. And of course they will have to be told, cause he won't be able to go on this interview without asking for a day off, which usually means that he won't work for the whole week.

On my end, I haven't done much to get my own job. I keep waiting for things to be normal, whatever "normal" means anymore. But I think dealing with my own situation would be easier after his job situation is settled.

A few thoughts on being an adult

I was reading another blog, and I tried to leave a comment, cause I disagreed with the author. Most of the other thought out comments also disagreed with the author, but I didn't think that they went far enough, so I proceeded to write this really long comment.

And then there were technical difficulties, and my comment was eaten.

So rather than have that happen again, I will write some things here, and then maybe later I will go back to copy some of it there.

The author of the blog sometimes gets letters from other readers, asking for advice. This week's letter was from a girl who was twenty-two years old, still living with her parents, and in her last year of college. She complained that her mother treats her like a child and wants to know where she is and what she is doing at all times.

There was no mention of the college student paying rent, just that she still lived with her parents and didn't like that they weren't treating her like an adult.

I don't think the college student is an adult. She has lived a certain number of years, and the law says that she's old enough to know better and follow the rules and such, and that she is old enough to vote and old enough to drink if she chooses. But that is about it. If she has in anyway earned adulthood, it wasn't mentioned.

Our civilization doesn't require an adulthood test, just that we reach a certain age, and if we reach that certain age, that probably isn't something we can take much credit for either. If we didn't die when we were younger, it was probably due to our parents, or some other family member, or maybe a teacher, or maybe a doctor or a cop or someone else in emergency services. But you probably didn't get to the magic age of eighteen or twenty-one because of anything brilliant you did. If left to your own devices, you would have done something really stupid before then, you would be a face on a milk carton, you would have died in a car wreck, you would have drank yourself to death or overdosed on some other drug, ended up in jail with some of your buddies, etc....

In other cultures, it is different. You don't just magically become an adult just because you have lived long enough. You have to do something to earn it. You have to get married or become a good parent. You might be expected to safely bungee jump or dive off of a cliff. You might have to prove that you can hunt for food or kill a dangerous predator. You might have to join the military. You might have to mutilate your body without anesthesia.

But we don't do any of that. We don't even have a test. You don't even have to graduate from high school. You don't even have to prove you can balance a checkbook.

So eighteen year olds and people in college complain when some of us don't treat them like adults, but what have they done to be an adult?

Are they married? Are they good parents? Do they take care of children or elderly people? Do they have jobs and pay their own bills? Or do they spend all their money on going out and having a good time? Did they pay for college or earn a scholarship, or did mommy and daddy pay for that?

The complaining college student probably isn't a bad person, or even a lazy person. She at least is going to college, which is what we want most people her age to do. Other people who think that they are adults didn't even graduate from high school. But she probably is not an adult yet. Probably if she were really even that close to being an adult, she would not be whining about all this stuff, most of which was probably done for her own safety.

At the other end of the spectrum, those of us who have actually been adults for a long time and have done something to be called an adult other than just living to be a certain age might have some life changing thing happen that takes away whatever it was that made us feel like adults. People who had bill paying jobs have lost them. People who were buying cars and houses have lost them. People who choose to cook and clean and otherwise take care of a spouse instead of pursuing a career might not have their spouses anymore. Stay at home parents might not have the child at home anymore or might have to go out and get a job. People who take care of elderly people or invalids eventually have to deal with the death of the person they cared for, and after that they aren't quite sure what to do with their time.

I don't guess that you stop being an adult after something like that happens, but losing that thing that was a major part of your life is hard, and sometimes you don't feel like an adult afterward. Even when it is something normal, like when you get old enough to retire or when your youngest child grows up and goes to college or moves away, it is still sometimes a difficult adjustment.

Adults have real problems to deal with. If you were really an adult, complaints about your mother wanting to know where you're going wouldn't even make the list.

A few things in no particular order

A friend sent me a link about a job, and I can't get it to work. I will try again later, but maybe it isn't worth the effort, as I missed four or five questions on what seemed to be an easy practice test. I'm getting old. I'm slipping.

We have finally figured out the whole unemployment thing. The thing about the unemployment is that you have to file all the time, even when you worked and don't need it, even when you didn't apply for a job and won't get it, even if you turned down work and won't get it, even when all this is going to do is waste time and make people at the unemployment office do more work that is totally unnecessary, and that way you are still in the system on the week that you don't work and need the money, and they send you your money in a reasonable amount of time and such.

So that is what we are doing. Unfortunately, now that we have figured all of that out, we are told that we only have ten thousand dollars left, and the way things are going that isn't going to last us very long.

My husband seems to be making an effort to be especially nice to me, if you can call it that after more than three years of him still not having done one thing that he was supposed to do for us to be roommates, much less actually be back together like nothing had happened. On my part I was having one of those moments when I think that I might as well try to enjoy myself with the way things are, as they will probably not change in the near future. He worked two days last week and two days the week before, and then he is not likely to work at all for the next two weeks, and then we don't know what is going to happen after that. So of course what we tend to do when he has all this time off is go to restaurants and go to movies and go shopping. Well, we are short on money, though not as short as we would be now that we have figured out the whole unemployment thing. We have not been going out to nice restaurants, just now and then going to Arby's and such, cause we have coupons. And we haven't done that much shopping, but we have bought a few things. While I feel some guilt over that, I can't really say that I feel bad about seeing a few movies, as we have a couple of inexpensive theaters. But there are still days when we stay home and do absolutely nothing, and it tends to get on my nerves spending all that time together doing nothing, sort of getting in each others way.

Not that the day I had to myself went any better. I had planned to spend it knitting, and something went wrong, and I don't know if I can fix it. And he was really trying to be nice to me after that, but there is just nothing to be done about it. I will just have to put the thing away for a while, and maybe after some time has past I will see a solution and not get so upset when I look at it. I instead spent the day watching videos, but I did not feel much better. The next day when he was trying to be nice to me, I did make an attempt to just forget about everything that is stressing me out and just enjoy the day, which I did, for a while. And then the next day I noticed something, and that made me think that something is going to go wrong, and that he knew about it and intended for something to wrong, or at least that he was okay with it. But even if nothing goes wrong, that is what I think of him now, that he is very selfish and this attempt at being nice is just to hide the fact that something else is going to go wrong and that he is responsible.

Christmas Eve dinner was finally rescheduled for yesterday. I ate a half dozen oysters and have no need to see anymore oysters for a while. They were really big oysters too. I'm not really complaining, the food was good, and it was good to see everyone and it was good for mom to have a break, as grandma did not get better like we thought from her most recent hospital stay.

Saturday was fun, though not what I had imagined. We did trivia as planned, but just regular trivia, not sci fi stuff like usual. So I did not win, even after having put together a really great team. And we were playing Family Feud, and the answers are based on what people think is the answer, even if that in fact is not the answer. So we were trying to "steal" points from the other team, and we just don't have any good ideas. The question involved things that turn from green to yellow, and all the good answers have been taken, and all I can think of is pears. My friend thinks maybe the answer is yellow squash, except that I and another friend have gardens, and we know that yellow squash starts out yellow, or maybe even white, and is never green to begin with. So we go with pear, cause no one else can think of anything, and the answer was squash. And then there was a question involving things associated with Texas, and the answers to this question obviously did not come from Texas, and no one was getting those right. And then there was a question about haunted houses, and I was thinking theatrical production, and I guess that the people taking the survey were thinking real house that no one lives in anymore. So we got all of that wrong too. But it was still fun, and I didn't need a silly plague anyway.

I have really had it with all the junk. This helps somewhat when we are shopping, as I have several times put things back, cause I'm thinking that I don't need it right away and I don't want it enough to find someplace to put it, and if something happened and I had to move away, would I want to pack this? Probably not. So I have stopped myself from buying a few things, but I still don't manage to get rid of much.

I know all the experts say that if you don't use something for a year (especially things that you have had in box that hasn't even been opened for a year), you should get rid of it. And I know that makes sense on some levels, but on other levels it just doesn't work for me. Like I have many craft things that I don't use for a year, but that doesn't mean that I should throw away tools or supplies that are still good (or even still new in the package). And seasonal things stay in boxes most of the year, should I throw them away cause I was too busy to put everything out this year? Throw out the stuff that I didn't put out cause it looks too old or I just don't like it anymore, sure, but just because I didn't use a particular decoration this year doesn't mean that I won't want them next year. And I haven't done any baking in forever, but I just have a feeling that in the future I will want to, maybe because of the financial situation, and then I either wouldn't be able to do anything or else I would have to go and buy all new stuff, which would be hard to do because of the financial situation.

And then like all people who have either been on a diet and gained it all back (or people who keep thinking that they will diet but don't), there are all these clothes to think about. And even if I haven't worn them in a year, it still doesn't seem to be a good idea to throw them out. If my weight changes by ten pounds either way, if I didn't keep the clothes, I would have to go out and buy clothes (clothes that might not even fit for very long), or else I would have to stay in the house all the time naked.

So I guess I would rather live with all the junk than live in fear that I'm going to be stuck in the house naked without bakeware and holiday decorations.

The other thing that I have a lot of that I don't really do much with anymore is books. For the last three or four years I have done little reading. My eyesight isn't what it was, and most of the time I just don't have the attention span necessary to enjoy reading a book. But reading has been such a big part of my life, and I keep thinking that someday I will feel better and want to read again. And it also seems silly to get rid of the one thing that is somewhat organized and I actually have a place for. I have many bookshelves, and the books that I've had for a long time have places on the bookshelves and I know where they are and I can find them when I want them. And then there are some additional books that I'm not quite sure where to put, cause they don't quite go with the books that are already on the shelves. And then there are really new books that I didn't put anywhere, cause I was reading them (or at least I meant to), and they are just here and there. So there is the dilemma about the books that on the one hand I shouldn't get rid of them because if I really put some effort into it that is the one thing that I could get organized and every book would have its place, and on the other hand books are the one thing that I could easily get rid of and there is a place to take them where I wouldn't feel that they had just been tossed out. I could even get some money for them, though not enough for that to be the deciding point. Still, I think today I will make another attempt to cull some of the cookbooks. There are two boxes of them that I meant to look through, and it may have even been a year since I last looked at them.

And while I am trying not to spend money and buy things that I will just have to put away somewhere, I am thinking of buying yet another black dress. I was invited to a party, and it is less than a month away, and since I just now learned of it I haven't been planning what to wear. Ideally, it would be something goth, and while I have plenty of black I don't think that just being black makes it look goth, and of course a lot of my things just don't fit at the moment. So I am looking through my things trying to find something that looks goth, or something that I can add to something to make it look goth. I don't think that my best black dress looks goth, but if I add enough stuff to it then maybe it does, except that I wore all of that to a party this time last year that was for the same people, and I'd rather not wear the same thing two years in a row. Though they do not have the same reason for the party as last year, they are thinking of just having a theme party as an annual event. So this may require a whole series of black dresses and gloves and hair ornaments and such.

I thought that there was more, but now I can't remember what.

About yesterday

Yesterday I was not happy because my husband basically got in the car and drove to an assignment in Oklahoma without enough money for a motel room and without even a full tank of gas.

The day before yesterday, I had to go and get a few things from the grocery store. While I wanted a whole lot of things, I had to restrict myself to really basic things. I bought a very few food items, some tissue paper, etc.... To get the best prices, I went to four different stores and bought two or three things on sale at each place. While all of these stores were in the same general area (two of them are at the same intersection), this still takes a bit of time, even if I didn't drive very far. I was gone more than an hour and came back with about a dozen items.

I barely had the money for what I bought. We used to have this huge jar of change. We've spent most of it now. We are overdrawn on one of our accounts, because I just can't seem to get through to my husband that except for big things like rent we should only use cash, and he needs to turn off the thing that automatically pays bills. We've been charged $140 in overdraft fees again, because we were short like fifty cents. If we were using cash we just would have bought fifty cents less gas or something one day, and none of that would have happened. But he just doesn't get it.

So, we are overdrawn in one account, have very little cash on us (most of which I spent yesterday getting really basic stuff that we needed). I really wanted to drive to Arlington to get a few things from the Asian Market, but I didn't because a.) we have so little money left and we have to do without a few things like that, and b.) driving to Arlington would have used gas and I shouldn't waste the gas if I'm not going to get that much. We have maybe ten dollars in one account, and about that much in another account, and then we have some change in jars, but we've mostly used up too. My husband has to go to Oklahoma on Friday, and the only reason he hasn't had to call and tell them he can't make it is because he gets paid on Friday.

While I am at one of the grocery stores, someone from work calls my husband and asks him to work in Oklahoma on Wednesday.

Sure.

I am really tired of this. You would think that they would know that he hasn't worked enough to have money for out of town assignments. And they don't have anything set up to advance money for motels and gas, you're just supposed to pay for that yourself and wait a week or two for reimbursement.

But even if they somehow don't know that the people they don't even have full schedules for can't possibly have the money for going out of town, the employees who don't have enough money to go out of town should certainly know that they don't have enough money. But my husband agrees to the extra day of work, even though I can't see that he has any way of getting to work.

So I come in, and he asks if I want to go to Oklahoma with him. And I'm like sure, when? And he says, tomorrow.

We don't have any money. You can't go tomorrow.

He doesn't immediately see the sense of this. I yell for a bit. I get tired of yelling. I don't want to waste anymore time on the subject. If he cannot borrow money from someone, he will just have to call and cancel.

Only, he doesn't borrow any money, and he doesn't call and cancel. He plays on the computer all day. I don't ask him if he's called to cancel. I'm tired of being his mommy.

So, he does nothing about the situation all day. I do some cooking and work on one of the videos. A bit before we go to bed I ask him if he managed to borrow some money or if he called to cancel.

Neither.

I do some more yelling.

I cannot believe that he really intends to get in the car and drive several hundred miles away when he has no money for a motel, and I doubt that he even has enough gas to get there and back. He's going to run out of gas and get stuck somewhere at one in the morning. It is really hard to believe that people are that stubborn that they would knowingly do something that risky, but he doesn't change his mind.

We go to bed.

The next morning, I convince him to wait an hour to see if he can get some money from one of those payday loan places. We go in, and we see a sign that says something about a hundred dollar fee.

I think, that's more than an overdraft fee. We're not paying a hundred dollars just to borrow a hundred dollars for three days. I was thinking the fee would be more like twenty dollars, not a hundred. We leave.

We we are halfway home, it occurs to me that we should have asked if that was the minimum fee. Maybe the hundred dollar fee was for a loan of five hundred dollars, and the fee for what we needed would be less. But he didn't want to go back and ask. He took me home.

We have have about ten dollars in one account, and about ten dollars in another account, and he tells me he has another ten dollars that I didn't know about. He thinks that he can buy enough gas for the trip with thirty dollars. I disagree, but he leaves anyway.

He finally calls seven hours later to tell me he's okay and that thirty dollars was enough to cover the gas.

He got home at about one-thirty in the morning.

I was mostly asleep, so I haven't really had a chance to talk to him. I know he said something about me probably being right and that the trip was mostly a waste of time. I'll have to get the rest of the details later.

A mostly uneventful weekend

It is raining right now. It has mostly been raining since about Thursday, with a few dry spots here and there. It is a shame to waste all of this rain, but I hadn't done any fall planting, and most of my spring plants are dead. So I had been wishing that I had planted something, except now that I've gone out and looked at it, I think that we've had so much rain that it would have just washed the seeds away. There is standing water in places, though not so much near the back of the house, so there has been no threat of water coming inside yet.

The two wildflowers that I had transplanted seem to be recovering. I am wondering if I should go and get some more of them now that the intense summer heat is passing.

I did not film anything yet for the new video. I meant to do that this weekend, but I forgot a few things. Like, I forgot and left the camera on when I wasn't using it, so it was drained of power when I went back for it. And I wanted my husband's help for some of it, and forgot he had that damned meeting to go to.

He mostly kept his mouth shut. They actually came out and said that they were required to do this that and the other, or they would be replaced. It makes no sense, as this that and the other require more work from everybody, tend to annoy everybody, and have not increased anyone's sales. It would be different if customers had asked for this that and the other, or if customers were going to buy this that or the other. So far, all this work has only resulted in one sale, and we don't even think that it was an additional sale, just that someone bought this that or the other instead of what he normally would have purchased. It almost seems like they want to make life harder on people so that a bunch of them will quit, cause they really don't like firing people do to lawsuits, but they are perfectly happy not scheduling people who don't do what they are told, and they don't seem much bothered by people leaving as long as they give notice first.

So my husband mostly kept his mouth shut, and brought home leftover pizza. He talks about asking for his old job back, which I understand why, but the old job didn't have insurance, and there's no guarantee he'd get a full schedule there anyway.

And of course there is nothing in this meeting that ever addressed what would actually make things better for everyone. Stop scheduling people who don't want to buy anything. Stop going after accounts that didn't even have money to spend when things were good and aren't planning to start spending now that there is a recession.

That is a totally different group of employees. And I doubt that they are being told anything like that at their meetings.

So that was all annoying, except for the pizza.

On the bright side, I found certain pieces of clothing that I had misplaced, and I think that I will wear some of it when I start filming that video later today.

I am thinking that I won't go to Oklahoma this weekend. As for Louisiana, I will have to give that a bit more thought, though I had more interest in going to Oklahoma that I did Louisiana. Not that there's anything I especially want to do in either one, nothing new that I would want to do (and there's no money even if I did), just that I like the motels we usually get in Oklahoma better than the one's we usually get in Louisiana. I'd probably just spend most of my time in the motel room knitting and watching cable.

There has been no swimming to speak of this summer. Not that I do much in the way of actual swimming, but I do rather like being in the pool or a hot tub talking to someone. The only time I can remember doing any of that this year was at my friend's place, and I was really not that happy with the swimsuit situation and didn't stay long.

Everyone is going back to school. I have no school this year, and no hope that things will get better so that I might take art classes again. I should go to the lab and see if I've left anything behind.

My friend from the great white north tried to do me the favor of posting my video on his blog and asking people to go to the website to vote for me and leave positive comments. I think one of his readers went to the website and voted for someone else. At least, there are no comments on my video, and only one of some other video. Anyway, I think it was a mistake, as the comment doesn't seem to go with the other video.

I misspelled something on the video, twice. My fault. I'm the one who wrote the script and did the spell check. Spell check and such won't catch that you've misspelled a word if it makes a different word. So I had typed out someone's name or something, not the word I was looking for. That sucks. I do that on the blog sometimes and can go back and fix it, no big deal. Fixing a video is more complicated, and it is really to late to try it after I've already uploaded the thing.

Defying gravity had their season finale last night. I think it has had like four episodes. Hardly time for a season finale, even if it is just a summer replacement series.

Fringe starts this week. It will be nice to have new TV shows again, even if my VCR is acting up.

I am getting confused

The days go by, and I can't keep them all straight. I forget what day of the week it is. I forget the date. I see the day and the date when I am blogging, but when I am away from the computer I can't remember what it was. I am vaguely aware of what month it is, but again it doesn't seem to mean much.

It is September. I should be in a mild panic that Halloween is less than two months away, and Christmas is less than two month after that, but most of the time I am not. Unfortunately, this is not due to me being all prepared. I am not prepared for anything, I just can't seem to focus on what I should be doing to get ready for things.

So today is Friday the 11th of September. Next Thursday will be the 17th. The 17th of September is the end of the video contest, so if I am going to do anymore videos they need to get done before then, and I haven't even started on them. And I haven't done anything about the Halloween decorations, or the Christmas presents. Well, I've maybe done one thing about one of the Christmas presents, but that is all. I have bought something that might work for a Halloween costume, but I haven't done any work on it. There's a box somewhere that has my Halloween shirts in it, and I should be wearing them by now, but I haven't gotten the box out yet.

There was something that I wanted to do on the 12th, but it has been cancelled, or maybe postponed until the 26th. There is something else I wanted to do on the 19th, but I might not go. There is a possible trip to Oklahoma that would include the 19th, and there is a possible trip to Louisiana that would include the 26th. I've had nothing to do for months, and now I can't do everything. I want to go, and I want to stay.

My husband has to go to one of those meetings on Sunday. The meetings are hard enough, with someone who doesn't do the job anymore (or someone who has never done the job at all) coming to tell you that you aren't doing what you are supposed to do, and that you need to do better, etc.... On their part, those people aren't doing anything better for anyone. The company would supposedly go out of business if they gave anyone a raise or increased the expense money, etc.... So while the employees already wish that they had somewhere else to go so that they could quit (and a few quit even when they don't have anyplace else to go), they have to go to this meeting that they will probably not get paid for to hear how the company does not really value them or the work that they do, and if they don't do better soon they will be replaced.

My husband has enough trouble keeping his mouth shut during these meetings, but yesterday he was scolded for something that happened weeks ago and he doesn't remember. He doesn't even know that they are talking about, so he can't tell his side of the story. So far as he remembers, on the days they actually had him on the schedule, he did his job. He can't address a customer's complaint if no customers complained to him and/or he doesn't remember the customer. Tell somebody that day or the day after that there's been a complaint. A week later, no one remembers anything.

So my husband and all his co-workers in the area have to go to a meeting to hear that none of their concerns are going to be addressed (other than to tell everyone that they aren't getting raises or more expense money or whatever they had asked for), but if they don't do better for the company they are going to be replaced. This so soon after my husband has been told two more strikes and you're out, is not a good plan.

Today is Friday, and that should probably mean something, only I can't remember what it is.

We have no money again, but I spent what we did have on food. So I don't have to worry on that account, but I have to worry about everything else. It rather sucks having no money.

Today is Friday the 11th of September, right?

Today is Friday, and that means that all three libraries in town are closed because of the recession, instead of just one of them being closed before the recession. So I won't be going to the library here, and I don't really have any reason to go anywhere else. And I can't go shopping, even just for food, cause I'm out of money again.

Today is Friday.

Today is Friday, and...and...and what?

It will take a while to recover from this

My next blog post will be number six hundred. I usually try to write something special on the double zero numbers, but I don't think that will happen this time. Nothing wonderful has come to mind, and I don't think I want to write about anything bad either. So I think that I will just skip this time and the next blog will just be a regular blog day like any other.

Yesterday was kind of a mess. We did make some money over the weekend, but we can't spend any of it yet. I had all these worries going into the thing. One worry was that people wouldn't buy anything. Another worry was that they would buy stuff, but not much, pay with cash, and need lots and lots of change. I had this worry that all of the costumers would end up needing four pennies, a nickel, a dime, three quarters, four ones, a five, and a ten back in change, and if they paid with hundred dollar bills they might also need back a few twenties.

Well, that didn't happen. Only two people paid with cash. And after going back to the office supply place to get the special pens that check for counterfeit money, I forgot to use them. In fact, I think that I forgot and left them in the house. So, anyway, we made some money, but we didn't have much of it in cash. Only about a hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and the rental bill was due before eleven. Most of the people paid with a credit card, which means that it will take a few days before we have any money in the account. We have only a few dollars here and there of our own money left. So we took the one check that we were paid with and went to the bank to cash it.

Only they wouldn't let us cash it. Business checks are for deposit only.

So we deposited it, only to find that we had a minus sixty on the account. If you don't use the account five times or so (which we didn't this month cause we didn't have any money) you get a fee, and since the account was mostly empty we then were overdrawn and got another fee for that. (I haven't even looked at the other account, so I don't know if there is the same situation there or if it is just empty.)

So that meant that we only got thirty dollars out of the ATM from our hundred dollar check. So we went home and got our quarters and other coin change, and then we went to return the rental equipment. The bill was just a bit under two hundred, and we had just about that in dollars, so we didn't have to break into the change.

We spent the last few dollars on a gallon of milk and a Little Caesars pizza. Anything else I want to buy for a few days will involve counting out quarters and such.

So we did not go to see District 9 yet.

The credit card people called and wanted a post dated check, but I refused, because that is what got us into trouble last time. The car people can have a post dated check, but the credit card people will have to wait till I can actually see the money in the account.

So we are just sort of waiting for the money to show up in the account. And even then we can't spend much money. We only had a "profit" of four seventy-five or so, which is now down to about four hundred because of the bank fees. The car payment will be due on Friday, as will next weekend's equipment rental, so if he doesn't get paid anything from his regular job, we will be short and have to delay some of the business stuff. I think that we should delay business stuff til Monday anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Anyway, that sucks. My husband is out of money, and his car is out of gas. He called and said that he couldn't work this week, or at least, that he couldn't work out of town. They called back and asked him to just work Thursday and Friday in Fort Worth instead of Oklahoma. If the money is in the account tomorrow, that will be fine. If it isn't, I guess we will be buying some gas with quarters.

Saturday or Sunday, assuming we make some more money, we are going to Olive Garden. We are going to have a never ending pasta bowl, and we are just going to sit there and eat for about two hours.

Friday night I wasted my time putting my hair up in curlers so that I would look nice Saturday morning. Only Saturday morning it was already so hot that my hair started going limp even before we left the house. I never bother trying to curl my hair anymore, but since I haven't even had my bangs trimmed in a while I thought that I should make the effort, or else I would just have long bangs covering my face. It didn't work out. After working a couple of hours, I gave up and put my hair in a ponytail. So as soon as we get some money, we both need haircuts. Like before Saturday, we need haircuts.

I am still a bit ill from the stress of the whole thing. But it was good to get the business stuff done for a while and do normal stuff like gardening. I picked a squash and almost got done with the wildflower bed, and I even went for a walk to collect some seeds. I tried transplanting some stuff Wednesday or Thursday, but I think that most of those plants will die of shock. It just isn't the right time to transplant stuff, but I hoped that if I gave the plants enough water that it would work out. I guess it didn't.

The above was written on Wednesday. The husband needed the computer for something, and I meant to come back later and finish what I was going to write here in this post. Only when I came back to the computer, I couldn't remember what it was that I was going to write.

It is now Thursday morning. We should have that money from the credit cards today. And we will be able to see how much he made from his "real job", though that probably won't be much, and we won't actually have it until Friday. And maybe, we won't even have it Friday, because in spite of calling the bank and turning off the overdraft protection thing and telling them to put everything on hold, another check he forgot about went through, and now there is a balance of minus a hundred and fifty. So I don't know if there will be enough to cover that and the one post-dated check that we do write, which is for the car payment. There are about four things that we just cannot do without, the first being the rent, the second being the car insurance, and the third and forth being car payments. So we sometimes write post-dated checks for those four things, because those four things are the most important, and even the smallest paycheck should cover one of those. But this will be a really small paycheck, so I'm not certain that it will cover the car payment and the hundred and fifty dollar overdraft.

This all makes me worry about the rent. Since it is the first thing that we pay, I very rarely worry about the rent. I worry about everything else, but not that. But now I am thinking that even though it is not the end of the month, since he gets paid every other week, we won't be getting another paycheck before it is the first of the month. So the car and the rent will be taken out of the money that we make on the business this weekend. Which makes me worry just a little bit, because now I don't have this cushion of not having to worry if twenty-five people don't buy anything. Next week, all of the orders will have to be processed. Will there be enough money left to do that and pay the rent and the car payments?

As for the business this weekend, the list of things we will need is now haircuts for both of us, a cable for the new printer, a card reader for the old computer, and a keyboard for the new computer. Only the lady who organized this whole thing hasn't called us back, so we aren't even sure how many customers we will have this weekend, so I'm not sure if we should buy all this stuff. Maybe a bunch of people canceled? Or maybe a bunch more people want in, and she overbooked? We don't know, cause she didn't call back. I had started to calm down about the whole thing, but now, I don't know why she didn't call back.

So while we have spent all this time just sitting around at home waiting for there to be actual money in bank, today and tomorrow should be a bit busy getting haircuts and buying this and that and picking up rental equipment.

My husband's schedule at his "real job" has changed again. They have known for two weeks that he didn't have enough money to go out of town this week. So they were going to change it so that he only worked Thursday and Friday in Fort Worth. Then they called back and said that wouldn't work out, could he go to Oklahoma for just one day? Without me standing over him reminding him of all the reasons he said that he couldn't go in the first place, my husband said something like, I guess so. I got him to call back and say that wasn't a good idea. They finally called back and said they found someone else to work Friday.

I just could not handle him going out of town Friday. We have to work early on Saturday, and we have to pick up the equipment on Friday. When was he supposed to drive back and forth from out of town? And what if something happened out of town? What if he got a flat tire or something? I just couldn't deal with it, and it was going to be a major amount of work for which they would probably end up paying him only fifty dollars or so. Not worth it.

So, as you can see, despite feeling better about the whole thing for a few days, I am now back to pulling my hair out.

I'm going to have a nervous breakdown

Sunday when we were at the movie theater, I excused myself and went to the ladies room. While I was washing my hands I looked in the mirror.

Hell, is that what I look like? My hair was completely flat, and this looks even worse as it has been a while since my last haircut, and I haven't even had the money to get my bangs trimmed. (I suppose that I could ask my mother to do it, but we really don't want to go there.)

So a few hours later, I am lying around in bed, mostly watching the X-files. And I get up to get some water from the bathroom sink, and I look at myself in the mirror.

Now I look just gorgeous. My hair looks a bit wavy or something. Why do I look so good now when I looked so awful a few hours ago? Why can't I look good when someone will see me?

But enough of looking gorgeous. It is hot, and I have work to do. Better put my hair in a ponytail. I go outside and get the area of my future wildflower bed ready to dig. I don't get started with the actual digging, just sort of mark off the area and move everything out of the way so I can get an early start on it Monday morning. Then we watch Friday's episode of Eureka with my brother.

So that was Sunday. Things are tense, but we feel a little bit better after we watch a movie and I make plans for the rest of the week to work on the wildflower bed.

Monday morning I actually get up and start digging the wildflower bed. It is hard work, and I give up on it before noon. Working after that is out of the question. It is way too hot. But I get about half of the hole dug. Major progress on the project.

The thing that sucks about doing a lot of serious physical labor in the morning (okay, one of the things) is that you just sort of wait around the whole rest of the day for it to be time to go to bed. I'm too tired to really do anything, but if I actually give in and take a long nap that means I probably won't get any sleep at night.

We watch True Blood and Hung. The opening titles of Hung have the main character doing a Reginald Perrin into a lake, which is kind of funny seeing that the new Reginald Perrin does not do a Reginald Perrin into the ocean.

And what the hell kind of name is Sookie anyway?

So after we watch that stuff, it is back to the X-Files, and waiting for the day to be over so that I can go to bed.

The guy that my husband works with who is involved with the new business thing calls. The two of them are talking a lot, cause the business thing is supposed to get started for real on Saturday. Anyway, the guy says some odd things.

Like he wants the credit card payments to be made out to the business, but he wants the checks written to him personally. He says that it is time that they started running the business like it was a real business.

So that doesn't make any sense. Why should the checks be written out to him, and how would that make things more like a real business? Writing checks to him is the exact opposite of running things like a real business. And the reason that we got the business account in the first place was so that the checks could be written to the business instead of just written to my husband, cause we thought that would look bad.

But even then, the checks could be written to my husband, since his name is on the business. The other guy's name isn't on the business or on the business account. There's no way the checks are going to be written out to him, and he's just not making any sense.

Okay, so that was Monday.

Tuesday morning I got up and dug more of the hole. I got most of that done. I had a bath.

The guy who works with my husband called again. He wants to have his name on the business and on the business account and all of that. And if my husband doesn't agree then he won't work on Saturday.

This is nuts.

These guys are always talking about going into business for themselves and how it isn't fair that when the company has sales of three thousand dollars or so, three of them get about three hundred dollars each while the company gets the rest of the money. Not that the rest of the money is pure profit, there are expenses to take out and a lot of other people at the company still need to get paid, but sometimes it just doesn't seem like a fair split. If only they could start their own companies, they could make more money.

So for three years this guy has said that if my husband ever starts his own company, he would like to work with my husband. And for the last eight months, they have seriously talked about starting a business together, only the guy usually says that he doesn't want to start a business himself, he just wants to work with my husband if my husband starts one.

So that is what was done. My husband started a business, as sole proprietor, and this other guy was going to work with him. My husband bought the computer, bought office supplies, created a website, paid for an advertisement, etc.... The business and the business account only has my husband's name on it (though I believe I have access to the account in an emergency). So all the money put into the business has been my husband's money, and most of the work done has been done by my husband.

Until recently, when we just totally ran out of money.

There were a few more things needed (or at least wanted) to get the business started. Like they needed some samples (or some more samples, I'm not sure which). And I don't know whose idea it was to buy the samples, just that we didn't have any money left, so either this guy would have to buy them himself or we would just have to do without them. So the other guy bought the samples.

And the business is going to start Saturday, and we need to do a few more things, like we need to rent some equipment. Only, we have no money, so it was either call to cancel their first account, or this guy would have to rent the equipment with his credit card. The guy agreed to use his card. He was supposed to meet us on Friday so that we could pick up the rental equipment.

Hopefully on Saturday they would make a lot of money, and then make a bit more the next Saturday. Then they would take out the money for the rental equipment and some other expenses (not even the expenses we're already out, just money we will actually spend for the two days that they work together), they would split the remaining money. The expense money would be at least six hundred dollars (more if business was good), and they were hoping to take in two or three thousand dollars Saturday, and a bit more the next Saturday.

As exciting as that sounds, that wouldn't even get us caught up on the bills, but it might at least get us caught up on the car and such.

Anyway, they were either going to lose some money if business was really bad on Saturday, or if it was good, they would split a thousand dollars or more. Since this guy usually sells something around two thousand a day (and on a regular basis he brings in three thousand or more), they were hoping for something in the four to six thousand dollar range for working the two Saturdays, taking out a thousand or so for expenses, and then splitting the remaining money. I'm not sure that they had discussed whether or not they would equally split the six hundred that they would lose if they made no money at all, or if my husband would be totally responsible for that. Maybe the guy was worried that he would get stuck with the total rental bill of four hundred dollars. I don't know.

But anyway, out of nowhere he wants to be a legal partner and he wants his name on everything, and if we don't do it he won't work on Saturday.

Well, I don't even think that anything can be done with less than a week to go anyway. And if we wanted to do that, he isn't here to sign anything. I suppose that we could make some arrangement to give him access to the business account, but I don't trust him after this stunt. So I said, don't do it. Either cancel the whole thing or maybe I'll try to do his job Saturday, but don't put his name on anything. Something is up. This just doesn't make any sense.

I asked how many customers were expected. My husband said about thirty-five. Thirty-five each Saturday? He said no. So, I thought, if not thirty-five each, thirty-five total. Which probably means twenty customers or so on Saturday. I convinced myself I could do that, even though I haven't done this in about seven years and don't really want to do it ever again. But, it would be better than putting this guy's name on the business account and making him a full partner, when he didn't want to be a full partner until two days ago.

At this point, we started to worry about him working with us at all, even if he apologized and said that he did want to work Saturday. I mean, he would be there with the customers, and he could just say, make the checks out to me, and then he could just go cash the checks and leave us to pay the bills without any money. So if he did want to work on Saturday, I would have to babysit him and deal with all the money myself, cause we just don't trust the man anymore.

Oh, and this is the guy who is out of town with our computer.

But at this point he says that he will meet with us Friday morning to give everything back.

I am wondering if there will be a fight over these samples. I will have to have some to work with, but we still don't have any money and can't pay for them Friday. If he says he's going to keep them until we pay, we can't pay now, and the samples will be of no use to us later, so we shouldn't pay for them later if we can't have them on Friday.

I'm picturing us in front of Judge Judy.

Anyway, I agreed to work Saturday, thinking that I would have twenty customers or so. But again, my husband wasn't clear about that. There are thirty-five customers on Saturday, but he doesn't know how many there will be on the next Saturday because names are still being added to the list.

Crap.

Okay, when this used to be my full-time job seven years ago, and I used to know what I was doing, I could handle about twenty to twenty-five people, and on a good day I could take in about a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars would not be so great on Saturday, cause that would only leave us about four hundred dollars profit (plus whatever we could make on the second Saturday), but compared to what we expected the other guy to bring in, that's just not very good. But I used to do that level of business, and I used to be happy with it.

On my very busiest day, when I was used to doing this, I had thirty-nine customers and brought in more than two thousand dollars. But it was very hard to do that, and I didn't have time to eat lunch or anything. That sort of thing makes a person panic, even when that just means that they'll make twice as much money.

I don't think that I can handle thirty-five people in one day, after not having done this stuff for seven years.

And I don't look good.

And what am I going to wear?

I could just be sick.

But, I agreed to do it, and my husband told the other guy that we didn't need him.

That left us short one credit card.

Well, we do have one credit card that we've kept up with, but right now it is totally maxed out, so we can't buy anything with it. So I doubt we can use it at the rental place either.

So we're back to borrowing from my mom or his brother again, after we haven't paid back either of them from last time.

So my husband goes to work, and he's like, you'll talk to your mom about the money, right?

So, I call my mom. I don't really feel up to talking to her at all, and here I am calling to ask for money.

It doesn't go well. At first she sounds pleasant enough and is interested in the whole story, even though I am up front with her that the point of it all is that we need to borrow money and if she doesn't want to we can skip the whole rest of the story. Just say no, and I can go back to gardening or something, and he can try to borrow the money from his brother.

But my mother gets on to other subjects, like why don't I like being a salesperson? Like she wants to talk me into being a salesperson. It doesn't make any sense. It just makes me feel like I'm a bad person. Just let it go. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. I don't want to go back to this full time, but I'm so desperate to not have this guy involved with us anymore that I've agree to do something I really hate for two days. That's all that she needed to know. We did not need to have an argument about it.

So, she can't decide without talking to my brother first. And then my brother can't decide without knowing just everything about the business. I can't really see how that helps. Just say yes, you're in trouble and I'll help you out, or no, I can't loan you any money cause you haven't paid me back for last time. The details of the business don't really matter that much.

My husband comes home and he talks to my brother. They seem to have a much more pleasant conversation than my mother and I did, even though my brother seems to start out saying this is a very bad idea and we should just cancel.

They finish talking, and we try to go to bed and get some sleep. Only neither one of us feels good. I keep waking up. I almost get to sleep, and then I feel sick and have to get up again.

As long as I am awake anyway, I should go outside and look for meteors.

Dallas is on one side of us, and Fort Worth is down the way on the other side. And at the time I go outside, the almost full moon is directly overhead.

No meteors for me. I go back inside and try to sleep.

So that was Tuesday.

Wednesday I don't get up early as I have been. After feeling sick and waking up several times during the night, I finally get back to sleep and don't wake up until about eight. I'm trying to drink more water, but this time I go straight for the cola. I get very little gardening done, but that is all that it takes to make me hot and tired. I have more soda and a bath and then watch an episode of the X-files.

My husband calls the place with the rental equipment and finds out that while you need a credit card number to leave with them when you take the equipment, you don't actually have to pay with the credit card. That's just supposed to insure that you bring the equipment back in good shape. (I'm not sure how that is, since even if the card had any credit on it, that wouldn't be enough to replace the equipment, but whatever.) And then you don't actually pay for the rental fees until you return the equipment, cause you might bring it back late and have to pay for an extra day or something.

So it doesn't appear that we have to borrow a credit card or money or anything, as long as we make some money we can just pay the rental fees on Monday. The long conversations with my mother and brother were unnecessary.

At about eleven I feel up to having a look at the computer program I am supposed to use on Saturday.

It has been too long. My husband tries to show me a few things, but he goes too fast for me to follow the simplest things. What have I gotten myself into?

It goes a little better once I am sitting at the computer instead of looking over his shoulder. I can work some of it. We go to lunch at Arby's, and then come home and see if I remember how to do anything.

Okay, I think that the part we practiced isn't that difficult, but I'm just going to be slow no matter what. I have to stop and think about things that I used to have memorized. It isn't fun.

And then there are parts that I just can't practice with on this computer. I need the laptop, but the other guy has it.

And I haven't had customers in seven years. I can't practice that part either. I don't know what to say to people.

I might not know what to say to these people anyway. Several of them don't speak English. There will be translators hanging around, but that will slow things down even more. But I used to have this whole speech I was supposed to say, and I thought that it was rather long, so I cut it down to what I thought was important and then slipped in this little bit about the sales making the program possible (and then I tried to just be nice about it after that and not bully people into buying stuff). I don't have a speech this time, and I don't know how to politely suggest that they need to buy something or we won't be back to do this sort of thing again. Just the most basic information that used to roll off of my tongue will now be very awkward.

My husband went to work. I have been alternating playing with the computer program in between watching X-Files and looking at other stuff on the Internet. I get the basic idea of the thing now, but there's just some stuff that I don't know how to do and I'm not going to get to be any good at by Saturday. So, I don't know what to do at the beginning of the day to get started. And then once I get started, I don't know what to say to the customers. And I don't know how to finish up with a customer, and if he's paying with a credit card I don't know how to do that, cause we have to do something with the phone cause we don't have a card swipe thing on the computer. And then when I finish with the customer, I don't know what to do to move on to the next customer. And then if I don't fall apart and run home, I don't know what to do at the end of the day to wrap everything up.

And I'm hoping that part doesn't take too long. I was supposed to see my friends Saturday afternoon, which now I'm not, but maybe some of them will wait around for me if I can meet them by six or so.

Anyway, I don't know what else to do. I try to figure out how to do something, and then I go watch some TV, and then I come back and see if I can remember what I was doing. And I know that I'm not doing much, and I should be doing more work and less watching TV, but I'm not sure what else to do without the laptop and/or a practice customer.

F^&*ing thirty-five customers in seven hours. If we get started on time and finish when we are supposed to. And no lunch break. That's like twelve minutes per customer. (Less than that if I'm ever going to go to the ladies room or get a soda or something.)

I'm not in a happy place.

Going to have another soda and watch more TV now.