Won’t you be my neighbor
My neighbors Sue and Bob invited me over for dinner last night. I had gone out to my car, headed to Dave’s for my glorious hot shower, and they had mentioned that there would be plenty of spaghetti ready at 5. And sure enough, at quarter to five, they sent their son Eddie over here to say that I’m welcome to wander over whenever I was ready, and that if I didn’t feel like coming over, he’d be glad to bring me a plate. (Eddie’s 20 — damn, if only I were 10 years younger. …)
I did go over, and I loved the whole bunch of them — three generations’ worth. Shawn drove in from Pittsburgh, bringing my microwave oven and other assorted goodies that Mom had sent (including chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies — home-baked. Yum!), and they said to bring him on over. The food was great, and it was cool to develop some cameraderie with my neighbors across the way. In all, there were about three different apartments represented there — they have friends and family throughout the complex. They even said we should come back tonight for leftovers, as they tried to send us home with food but as the rest of us don’t have electricity in our kitchens, we had to pass. 🙂
Yeah, I just dumped out the entire contents of my fridge and freezer. Two full garbage bags and counting. Even the condiments have to go. It’s hotter than hell inside the fridge and freezer — everything’s skunked. Oh the pleasure.
I get my damn staples out today, in honor of which I will take a cold ‘ho bath. I drove by Staples (the store) yesterday, and I cringed and flipped it off. 🙂 Made my side hurt, just to see the word in 22-foot-tall letters.
Kadi (Short Bus cat) is wearing me out. In addition to jumping on my side where my staples are, she has farted on her sister, farted on my head and farted on everything in the apartment. And she keeps eating the flowers that work sent, no matter how much I try to punish her. They sent red and yellow flowers. The bouquet is … unique. 😉
I’ve got to get with it and clean the litter station. It’s stankin’ to high heaven. It just hurts to lift stuff, but if I’ve got to drag 40 pounds of rotting food down to the sub-basement today, I might as well drag 100 pounds of cat poop with it. Ah, the joy of being me.
I have NOT missed being at work. Not in the least. To not have meetings and people hovering has been sheer pleasure. I spent a lot of time thinking about how, if I only worked for myself, I would’ve been compensated for all the long hours I had already put in, and therefore I could rest and recover and not worry about all the bullshit that is associated with a leave of absence — particularly the fact that every employee feels the need to stand in your doorway and view you like a zoo exhibit, asking questions and giving you fake concern that you neither need nor want.
Shan and I were wishing that someone had kept track of all the nights and weekends we had worked, so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the semantics associated with sick leave. I mean, shit, I definitely put in more than two weeks of personal time during the course of seven months on staff by myself, but they’re gonna be calculating (I’m sure) down to the minute how much leave I needed to take. Because that’s just the way of the world.
I have a lot more to say about the work, but I’ll save it for the book I should write about it. Why give ’em even more fodder to fire me? 😉
On that note, Shawn’s former employer keeps reading my page. In fact, they are one of my most frequent readers. I just have to laugh — I never mention them, so somebody is whacking off in their IT department, probably reading me for pleasure. Maybe that person should get fired for wasting their time reading this mindless mess instead of doing his or her job? 😉 Or IS it the job of the IT people to surf the Internet and read what their employees are/were reading? Oh well. It’s driving up my number of hits quite nicely, so I really can’t complain. Come in, kick off your shoes, and won’t you be … my neighbor? 🙂