Am recovering from breakdown
Jul. 14th, 2009 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feng_shui_houseMinor hysteria/depression fit, actually.
Last night I was feeling quite betrayed by all the times pool guy didn't show up (he was always very good at returning my calls, so I'd managed to keep pushing that feeling aside for months) compounded by all the times his men didn't show up, added to all the times that I was told something that later was contradicted/promised something that *evaporated*. The last straw was after I finally got him to admit that the men weren't coming (this was after 7pm) and so I tried to nap & succeeded only in having a solitaire pity party (if I concentrate REALLY hard on feeling sorry for myself & imagine REALLY extreme and depressing stuff I can sometimes cry, which makes me feel better). The pity party was pretty much a waste of time, thinking about having to kill my favorite cat (the more I think about it, the more it looks like FIP to me, lethal, untreatable & contagious) & me being unsuited for any job (have sent away for an Asperger's career book, but don't have high hopes) & not having a single friend I can actually touch (you guys are lovely, but if I fall down and break a leg, no one here WILL KNOW & I will wind up dead and eaten by my own cats) & thinking about the slow erosion of the money in the bank (I'm far from broke, very far- if I was able to hold down ANY sort of job with even minimum health benefits I wouldn't worry- but I do know enough math to extend a line & when you're spending more than twice each month what your sole source of income is (which has gone down since I had to renew a bank Cert.of Deposit for half the interest it had got last year), then somewhere down the line comes a day when I won't be able to meet my bills and Ehouse will be taken for taxes and..)
Well, anyway, I dwelled on totally extreme stuff- I think I wound up with me wandering the streets until I collapsed from exhaustion & the police picked me up and dumped me in a holding tank with derelicts who abused me so I went completely insane and wound up in a local nuthouse, which, considering how bad the local *hospitals* are, must be fairly 18th century dungeons. Anyway, all that still only amounted to maybe 3 tears. I finally gave up and went to put out the trash, and found a pile of broken glass on the verge- the pool folk had left most of the smashed up remains of the old pool light. So there I was at 9:30pm bending over by streetlamp light picking broken glass out of the gravel by my bare hands to put it in the trash. After 20 minutes, I had most of it & came in & left a rather hysterical and depressed message on pool guy's phone about how I didn't believe they were EVER going to pick up the rubbish even, let alone fix the minor things I'd begged them to do.
Woke up again way too early, and took a quick shower and... heard a knock on the door. At 7:30am two of the pool guys actually WERE HERE. I bitched and pointed out stuff that I had been willing to ignore up until now, and KEPT TALKING at the lead guy (the most intelligent one of the crew) until he started telling me information out of self-defense (if he was talking, I wasn't). He put the bumpers on the pool ladder (which should have been put on FIRST- this means there's water in the ladder & I bet it'll rust out- please God, let me get the F*** outta Dodge first) and noticed a missing plastic jet over a hole (there were only 3 holes, and the guys missed 1, not a good score) and scraped away the excess cement rough edging near the steps (anywhere else I would have ignored it, but that's the one place you're likely to touch with your hands or feet) and grouted all 8 of the places I'd put blue masking tape on to point out, and told me that the chlorinator wasn't supposed to work for 2 weeks in order to give the diamondbrite time to cure, BUT the pool was supposed to be kept chlorinated-- I asked him HOW when I have no way of getting chlorine- I'd told pool boss I bought the chlorine generator because I have no car & no friends willing to take me to get pool chemicals (I really don't think taxi driver would be willing to have corrosive chemicals in his trunk) and made him promise to ask pool boss about this, and also ask pool boss if he knows any reputable company which can retrofit my gates to be within code (I had paid a fence company 2 years ago to put in gates & specified they needed to be up to code for gates near a swimming pool, but they DIDN'T so I have to get someone to fix them with self-closing hinges & self-closing latches. I also got pool guy to tell me where I could hook up to do manual vaccing (will have to buy hose & vacc stuff- just a pole & head to fit on it. Might have a pole) BUT I'm not supposed to vacc it for 2 weeks either. In fact the guy said 'in 2 weeks you can swim in it'. EH? Pool guy told me I could swim in it as soon as it had water!
*pantpantpant*
Ok, I'm calming down now. Ow. Was typing so furiously my fingers hurt.
Anyway, pool guy's flunky took away some of the debris, and I had to say for about the 10TH time, TAKE away the plywood top you ripped off the old pumphouse. YES. That WAS part of the agreement.
*flumph* So, the rubbish is finally gone. Shall now do my chores & try to do some of the stuff on yesterday's todo list.
EDIT: Called the vet & left a message to try to get info.
Called the taxi-driver & found that he's at the zoo for his kid's birthday (apparently they talked her down from the trips she proposed- either Washington, DC or Orlando.) Maybe I can wait a day & go tomorrow. Not sure how much cat food I have. Eh, worst come to worst, they can eat spam.
EDIT2: Heard knock at door- wondered if it could be pool boss unexpectedly appearing, or possibly mailman with parcel. Looked out window & saw gate open with 2 teenage boys & middleaged man, all incredibly clean-cut & wearing ties. The only people who wear ties in Hellholeah at this time of year are Jehovah's Witnesses. They're harmless but will KEEP KNOCKING until they get a reply. (They've pamphleted my gate 4 times in the last month.) So I opened the door & told the nice, elderly cuban gentleman, 'no thanks, I'm not interested' in his stack of 'Does God Love You?' pamphlets, which he took in good part with a 'gracias' and a smile as he left.
I then went to find out the answer to the question. Anise Almond ice cream tastes so good it proves that God loves me. There. Experimental data is always better than hearsay.
Last night I was feeling quite betrayed by all the times pool guy didn't show up (he was always very good at returning my calls, so I'd managed to keep pushing that feeling aside for months) compounded by all the times his men didn't show up, added to all the times that I was told something that later was contradicted/promised something that *evaporated*. The last straw was after I finally got him to admit that the men weren't coming (this was after 7pm) and so I tried to nap & succeeded only in having a solitaire pity party (if I concentrate REALLY hard on feeling sorry for myself & imagine REALLY extreme and depressing stuff I can sometimes cry, which makes me feel better). The pity party was pretty much a waste of time, thinking about having to kill my favorite cat (the more I think about it, the more it looks like FIP to me, lethal, untreatable & contagious) & me being unsuited for any job (have sent away for an Asperger's career book, but don't have high hopes) & not having a single friend I can actually touch (you guys are lovely, but if I fall down and break a leg, no one here WILL KNOW & I will wind up dead and eaten by my own cats) & thinking about the slow erosion of the money in the bank (I'm far from broke, very far- if I was able to hold down ANY sort of job with even minimum health benefits I wouldn't worry- but I do know enough math to extend a line & when you're spending more than twice each month what your sole source of income is (which has gone down since I had to renew a bank Cert.of Deposit for half the interest it had got last year), then somewhere down the line comes a day when I won't be able to meet my bills and Ehouse will be taken for taxes and..)
Well, anyway, I dwelled on totally extreme stuff- I think I wound up with me wandering the streets until I collapsed from exhaustion & the police picked me up and dumped me in a holding tank with derelicts who abused me so I went completely insane and wound up in a local nuthouse, which, considering how bad the local *hospitals* are, must be fairly 18th century dungeons. Anyway, all that still only amounted to maybe 3 tears. I finally gave up and went to put out the trash, and found a pile of broken glass on the verge- the pool folk had left most of the smashed up remains of the old pool light. So there I was at 9:30pm bending over by streetlamp light picking broken glass out of the gravel by my bare hands to put it in the trash. After 20 minutes, I had most of it & came in & left a rather hysterical and depressed message on pool guy's phone about how I didn't believe they were EVER going to pick up the rubbish even, let alone fix the minor things I'd begged them to do.
Woke up again way too early, and took a quick shower and... heard a knock on the door. At 7:30am two of the pool guys actually WERE HERE. I bitched and pointed out stuff that I had been willing to ignore up until now, and KEPT TALKING at the lead guy (the most intelligent one of the crew) until he started telling me information out of self-defense (if he was talking, I wasn't). He put the bumpers on the pool ladder (which should have been put on FIRST- this means there's water in the ladder & I bet it'll rust out- please God, let me get the F*** outta Dodge first) and noticed a missing plastic jet over a hole (there were only 3 holes, and the guys missed 1, not a good score) and scraped away the excess cement rough edging near the steps (anywhere else I would have ignored it, but that's the one place you're likely to touch with your hands or feet) and grouted all 8 of the places I'd put blue masking tape on to point out, and told me that the chlorinator wasn't supposed to work for 2 weeks in order to give the diamondbrite time to cure, BUT the pool was supposed to be kept chlorinated-- I asked him HOW when I have no way of getting chlorine- I'd told pool boss I bought the chlorine generator because I have no car & no friends willing to take me to get pool chemicals (I really don't think taxi driver would be willing to have corrosive chemicals in his trunk) and made him promise to ask pool boss about this, and also ask pool boss if he knows any reputable company which can retrofit my gates to be within code (I had paid a fence company 2 years ago to put in gates & specified they needed to be up to code for gates near a swimming pool, but they DIDN'T so I have to get someone to fix them with self-closing hinges & self-closing latches. I also got pool guy to tell me where I could hook up to do manual vaccing (will have to buy hose & vacc stuff- just a pole & head to fit on it. Might have a pole) BUT I'm not supposed to vacc it for 2 weeks either. In fact the guy said 'in 2 weeks you can swim in it'. EH? Pool guy told me I could swim in it as soon as it had water!
*pantpantpant*
Ok, I'm calming down now. Ow. Was typing so furiously my fingers hurt.
Anyway, pool guy's flunky took away some of the debris, and I had to say for about the 10TH time, TAKE away the plywood top you ripped off the old pumphouse. YES. That WAS part of the agreement.
*flumph* So, the rubbish is finally gone. Shall now do my chores & try to do some of the stuff on yesterday's todo list.
EDIT: Called the vet & left a message to try to get info.
Called the taxi-driver & found that he's at the zoo for his kid's birthday (apparently they talked her down from the trips she proposed- either Washington, DC or Orlando.) Maybe I can wait a day & go tomorrow. Not sure how much cat food I have. Eh, worst come to worst, they can eat spam.
EDIT2: Heard knock at door- wondered if it could be pool boss unexpectedly appearing, or possibly mailman with parcel. Looked out window & saw gate open with 2 teenage boys & middleaged man, all incredibly clean-cut & wearing ties. The only people who wear ties in Hellholeah at this time of year are Jehovah's Witnesses. They're harmless but will KEEP KNOCKING until they get a reply. (They've pamphleted my gate 4 times in the last month.) So I opened the door & told the nice, elderly cuban gentleman, 'no thanks, I'm not interested' in his stack of 'Does God Love You?' pamphlets, which he took in good part with a 'gracias' and a smile as he left.
I then went to find out the answer to the question. Anise Almond ice cream tastes so good it proves that God loves me. There. Experimental data is always better than hearsay.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 01:09 pm (UTC)Anyway, pool boss called a few minutes ago & says he'll send a flunky by to add chemicals in the next few days, so even if he doesn't he's not going to say 'oh, look at the contract chemicals are the owner's responsibility' when he shows up in 2 weeks (maybe).
no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 01:09 pm (UTC)You have so many skills you must be employable, and I hope someone will recognise that. Maybe as well as a book someone should set up an employment agency for Asperger's job-seekers?
no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 01:20 pm (UTC)Maybe when the book comes it'll show me something I've overlooked. The problem with most of my skills is that they're usually only half the needed equation & the other half involves dealing with people, which is not only stressful for me, but at my best, I'm terrible at live interaction.
At the moment, my ideas all lean towards me doing something & selling it over the internet, via something like CafePress, or the Stock photo sites, or Etsy, or eBay. I do hope to start at least eBaying some of my old collectibles this year.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 02:18 pm (UTC)I give people leeway on one broken promise because these things happen, and one broken promise because I'm a nice person, and then I start using the Very Firm Teacher Voice I inherited from my mother. If people who are supposed to be providing a service for money can't act like responsible adults, then they get to be treated like unreliable children.
At the moment, my ideas all lean towards me doing something & selling it over the internet, via something like CafePress, or the Stock photo sites, or Etsy, or eBay.
Dude, custom bears. I'd be very surprised if you couldn't make a pretty reasonable amount from your bears, if you charged a proper rate for the time involved. They're so gorgeous, and streets better than a lot of collectable bears I've seen in shops for an awful lot of money. Plus, bears are already a collectable item that people expect to pay a bit extra for.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-15 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-15 12:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 01:18 pm (UTC)But yay, in spite of all that incompetence, there is progress! *Hugs*
No more nightmares! um... sometimes one feels like punching someone...NOT YOU!!!! :-)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 01:24 pm (UTC)I'm hoping to relax today. I don't really think pool boss is coming by. I will compromise by trying to nap later while fully clothed, so if he comes by I'll not be too flustered.
Pobrecita!
Date: 2009-07-14 01:58 pm (UTC)Should we set up a "Society for the Prevention of Marian Being Eaten by Cats" (SPoMBEC) & threaten to call you @ home if you don't post for 48 hours?
I'm only half joking you know.
Re: Pobrecita!
Date: 2009-07-14 02:04 pm (UTC)I actually do have a friendslocked post with emergency contact info linked on my profile page. :^) But prob. the reason I might not post for a couple days would be grumpiness and sulking.
in that case...
Date: 2009-07-14 02:08 pm (UTC)Re: in that case...
Date: 2009-07-14 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 02:46 pm (UTC)Also, if you do, can I have the rights to your story? I'll get Angelina Jolie to play you in the movie. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 03:06 pm (UTC)Yes, you can have the story rights. Angelina Jolie is ok for playing me, but what's more important, is who will play the cats? I hate when they use an obviously male red cat to play female roles. :^)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 08:40 pm (UTC)Soon you'll have your lovely pool and all this stress will be a bad memory...
no subject
Date: 2009-07-15 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 11:40 pm (UTC)I always tell the Jehovah's that I'm Buddhist. The only time it backfired was the once when they turned out to be interested in an exchange of ideas.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 11:49 pm (UTC)My Jehovahs take *ANY* response other than 'No, thanks, I'm not interested' as encouragement. It's not as annoying as it used to be- I recall a couple of years in which they came by EVERY weekend- in FLOCKS. I'd see a van drop off at least a dozen, men, women and boys (don't recall any girls). That got irksome.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-15 11:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-15 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-15 12:16 am (UTC)Wouldn't be the first tiem an internet friend had saved a life!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-15 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-15 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-15 02:16 am (UTC)I spoke to the vet on the phone today, and she's once again changed what she said previously. Now she says the biopsy test won't diagnose disease but only tells what the white blood cells are doing.
Vet won't even schedule the biopsy without me bringing the cat in first to see if she's strong enough for the operation. Great. Another round trip taxi ride and 3 hours spent sitting around just to find out if I can schedule the biopsy. And they're shut tomorrow. I may think about this. The cat's been sick for a long time (prob started last November) so a few days more won't make much difference.