urbandruid | Entries tagged with house

Oy. I should, you know, update this thing once in a while, but it's so much easier just to type out 140 characters of random bitchiness or whatever on Twitter.

But, yeah. Still alive. I'm catching up on Supernatural, and have gotten Mom hooked on it too, so I'm basically seeing everything twice, which is fun, because you catch things that way.

For example? Last night, "Crossroad Blues" rewatch with Mom. When the demon's talking to Dean, I didn't notice the first time I saw it, but she gets yanked back and leaves the vessel. First time around, I thought Dean finished the exorcism. He didn't. Hmm. Was she maybe saying some stuff she shouldn't have said? I pointed this out to Mom, but didn't want to spoil things.

Speaking of, I should probably go hit the DVDs again so I can get ahead of her. She almost caught up to me once last week, and it was this weird combo of seeing stuff out of order, needing to remember where we both are in the show so I know what I can and can't talk about- oh yeah, and nobody really wanting to see more of "Everybody Loves A Clown" (OMG Kripke, NO THEY DO NOT!!!) than was absolutely necessary.

Certain members of my flist will be amused that in the middle of "In My Time of Dying" Mom called John a 'lying sack of shit.' I bit my tongue. I really did. Because I love John, I really do, even if he has Issues. (Hell, the whole family has Issues.) And in all fairness, the first time I saw the ep, I thought he was going off to hunt the demon too- except I knew something weird was up, off Bobby's reaction to the shopping list Sam gave him. (Okay, that and I've seen it three times. Shut up.)

In other news, it turns out that our new neighbor's brother does yard work for a living, so we hired the two of them to clean up Weed Land out back. They chopped it all back, hauled it away, and are out there with a rototiller. We're gonna buy some grass seed this weekend after Mom gets paid and toss it out there. Probably going to do some black paper and stone on the sides of the house. It'll be awesome when it's done, 'cause we can actually enjoy the backyard, which we never really have been able to do. But. It's summer, it's 90-plus degrees outside, so actually getting it done is going to be fun. Probably do it in stages. Probably also gonna do it early in the mornings.

I've been hellishly busy lately with school stuff, but I'm still alive. :)

My aunt and uncle from Mass. are coming out next weekend. I'm really excited- I haven't seen them in over a year, and they haven't seen the house yet.

We ordered blinds, but they may not be here in time fo the aunt and uncle's visit. So they get to see the sheets we have taped up. :)

We've been collecting cat supplies for the past few weeks; now that we have everything we need, we're finally going to get a cat, the weekend after my relatives visit. We haven't had a kitty since we moved into the duplex up north and had to get rid of ours because our "friends" thrashed the place so badly with their 8 billion pets that we weren't allowed to have one there. (Yeah, I'm still kinda pissed about that. Sarah was the best cat ever.)

The California Feline Foundation has a shelter in town, so we're planning to go there. It's a no-kill shelter, which is great because I cannot deal with the pound. I know they have animals there that really need homes, but it's just too sad and depressing, and I always want to take them all home. Which isn't practical at all, of course.

I told Mom I'd check the CFF out online, but I didn't have time to do it, so she had to do it herself this weekend. Whoops. But she found some good stuff. The cats come with all their shots, tested for all those nasty diseases you really don't want to adopt a cat that has, and microchipped, which we'd planned to have the vet do. So that's awesome.

I'm really, really excited. Two weeks and we can pick out a cat- or let the cat pick us, more like. That's how we got Sarah, and she was the best pet I've ever had.

Well, now the fence guys seem to have left, without doing or taking anything apart. Maybe they thought they were doing this today, and got chewed out by Mr. construction forman for not calling us ahead of time like they were supposed to? Anyway, I called Mom, griped at her about this, and she pointed out that they really were supposed to call, and that the foreman will probably be keeping a very close eye on them when they do come to redo the fence, since they screwed it up once. And since they left without even an "oops, our bad, sorry to bother you, miss" (actually they all call me ma'am, it's pretty funny)... I'm going to my meeting. They can fix their screw-ups some other time.

So, I'm heading out the door around 2 to make a 3PM meeting down at City. Ah, how I love the bus.

Ah, the joys of new home ownership.

I'm still processing the fact that this place is really ours, but the problems that come with it definately seem like something that would happen to me. Which is why there's a crew in my backyard right now, tearing apart half my fence. They made the division between our place and the neighbors' just a bit too big, apparently, so they have to redo that part of the fence. They just got here, and I imagine it'll take a few hours, so I'm petty sure that about kills my plans to go and catch the bus this afternoon to make it to a meeting at school. Last week I didn't go because I had no transport. Now I can't go because I've figured out the bus routes (mostly) and there are guys I don't know in my backyard. And because I'm me, and freak out about things like this, I'm not even comfortable jumping in the shower while they're still here... So there go my plans for the afternoon. *sigh* I really wanted to go, too, even if it does involve a lot more walking and my legs are still killing me.

This is really, really annoying. I actually wanted to go out and socialize with other people and everything.

Figures.

They were supposed to call and tell us when the fence guys were dropping by, but I guess somebody missed a memo. Usually the house people have been pretty good about stuff like that, so I guess I shouldn't be too pissed that somebody dropped the ball. I sort of am, though.

And just when I thought real life was calming down for a bit so I could take a breather. Hah!

Yep, still alive.

We're all moved in, even if half our stuff is still in the garage. I'm beginning to feel like I live here, and I have at least some idea of where all the important things are, even if I haven't gotten around to unpacking them yet. I got all the nifty electronic toys set up in my room over the weekend, and Mom, who is the man, as they say, played with my phone outlet until it was wired to my line, rather than the main. So I'm coming to you from my laptop, in my room, on my very own desk (which we did NOT have to take the door off to get in my new room, though it was very close) from my very own phone line. The only problem is that my connection's at 28.8, and that's the best we've been able to get around here. It's better than Mom was doing at the old place, on the crappy old main line, but I was spoiled, and I'm really hoping that the reason for this is that the construction crews and or SBC haven't buried the main phone boxes for the neighborhood yet. Which would make sense, since they're still building down to the end of my block.

I swear, from the way those construction guys stare, you'd think they'd never seen two white chicks before. They stared at everybody on the days we were moving in, though, my grandfather and my aunt and uncle too. Maybe they're just curious about who they built the house for, but it makes me uncomfortable, to the point where I don't want to walk past more of them than I have to on my way to the mailbox or home from the bus stop. Yep, that's right- as of next week I'm taking the bus home from school, since it's either that or wait till Mom gets off work. The joys of living farther away from work and school.

But I love it here. I love it love it love it. I'll be posting pics soon, but they still need to bring by the shutters that go on the outside front of the house, and I want to wait till it looks all pretty before I take my pics.

More later, as I must now go hunt up my school crap. Uh, yay.

I hate moving.

I really, really hate moving.

We got the keys today, the place is ours, and we started moving boxes. We got a ton of stuff hauled over to the house, but we didn't get started until late afternoon, because that's when they called us to say the keys were there. So it was hot and icky, and we just did the one load of stuff in our car and Grandpa's van when we went to get the keys.

Right after they called us to say the keys were ready- and I mean like right after- the phone went dead. They weren't supposed to switch it over til Tuesday, but we have no main line in the apartment, and the house phone rings through. For some reason my line is still up at the apartment, but who knows how much longer that will last? So I thought I'd better post this now, while I can, so that everyone knows I'm still alive. I'd planned to do this today anyway, and mention that with the going back and forth between house and apartment, and the stats exam I have to study for on Monday (thanks so much, jerk!) I'm going to be very scarce. Plus the fact that the phone company wants like $100 to wire the second line for me at the house, so Mom's decided we're going to figure out how to do it ourselves... so even once we get settled in the house, I won't be around as much, obviously, because we'll have just the one phone line, and... Well, you get the idea.

I'm just starting to feel human again after last week, with the kidney stone my idiot of an ex-doctor thinks is a pulled muscle, and I'm going to kill myself moving crap. Of course, I'm fairly useless hauling stuff downstairs from the apartment, because I need one hand free for the railing, and there's not much you can carry with one hand. Basically I got my framed posters into the trunk of Mom's car, then ran around refilling water bottles and shuffling boxes for people. I know it's not my fault, but I feel crappy about it.

I'm so tired I can hardly think straight, but I'm not done yet, oh no. We have to go out and buy a fridge. And a dryer.

Then there's tomorrow, when the fun starts all over again...

...and Mom just came to tell me we've got to go back to the house tonight, because we left the box dolley in the garage, and we're sorta gonna need it here tomorrow morning.

*facepalms*

Also, happy belated birthdays to

rian219 and

irreparable. Sorry I missed 'em, guys. Hope you had good ones. :)

Even if, honestly, I'd rather not be traveling anywhere.

I have either a kidney stone or the infection from hell- jury's still out, must call doc's office later to see if they have ultrasound results yet. I'm tired, I hurt, and if I didn't have my first test in Psych today, I'd still be in bed. I may end up back there soon anyway, because I'm not sure I have the energy for two hours of Stats. I know I don't feel like I have the energy.

We tour the house Thursday, I think, sign papers on Friday, hopefully get the keys and start moving boxes Saturday. My uncle and some friends of his are going to help us move the heavy stuff on Sunday. I'm excited about the house, I really am, but I'd be a lot more excited if I wasn't in serious pain.

I just want to call time out on this one right now, you know? Like thanks for playing, but I seriously can't deal. *sigh* I'm so out of it, and I don't know how much is the fact that I'm exhausted, and how much is the drugs. Probably half and half. Yay?

Oh gods, it's gonna be a long day.

Current Mood: sore

Days till the move: 10 *Home Alone face*
Tally of moving-related injuries: Bunch of paper cuts from cleaning out papers last weekend

So I'm sitting here, wondering to myself, do I really hate the forum hall enough to justify taking my Psych class at 7:00?

Yep.

I'd still like Psych a lot better if it was, oh, say an hour or so later, though. But Psych is cool. I'm loving it, really. It hardly feels like work at all to sit there and pay attention and take notes, and I'm almost sorry when the class is over. Except by then I could usually use a drink of something- my allergies are going nuts lately.

I still hate Stats, but I think everyone who isn't the teacher or the TA is kind of loathing that class.

Did I mention I bombed the test? Actually I got 50%, and thank Gods for that vocabulary page, because that's pretty much the only thing I didn't screw up. He drops the lowest test grade, though, and I know where I screwed up- besides everywhere.

In other news, Mom got really pissed off last week and attacked my toilet with the plunger, determined to make it work. The next words I heard were, "Are you missing a toothbrush?"

I'm not, but we think she accidentally flushed the one she used for cleaning stuff down the toilet when she dumped her bucket full of soap suds... Anyway, apparently the toothbrush got stuck in the valve from the toilet to the wall, and that's why the thing backed up. It works fine now.

I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

Anyone else watching "Bones"? Because you really should. Mom's packed the books it's based on, but they're supposed to be really good, and the series premier sure was. Kind of CSI-ish, with a little bit less "ewww, bugs!" The House premier was good too, but I'm a bit odd this way, mostly I'm with the "Yay! Dead people! Murder investgations! Cool forensic science! Yay!"

...Okay, that sounded just a little bit odd, but what do you want from the girl who read Patricia Cornwall in high school? (Back in the day, before she started to suck...)

I clearly need more caffine... now where's my IV? (In a box, is probably the answer. Usually is around here lately.)

And last but not least, Penny, hon? I love you dearly, you know that, and I know I'm getting later every day with the BF quote challenge fic, but now is kind of not the time, so could you pretty please shut UP? I'll write on my break, if I manage to finish my stats homework.

*sigh* Muses. *eyeroll*

Sing it with me, you know the words. "I don't want to go to class today." I'm tired and I'd rather be sleeping. I went to bed at what for me is a pretty reasonable hour, and yet I wake up feeling like I've had almost no sleep at all.

The weather finally seems to be turning- not sure if it's going to stay like this or not. I guess we'll see. Either way, it's not helping much right now. It's so much easier to stay in bed than to get out of it when it's kind of cold in the morning...

The stats test didn't seem to go as badly as I'd been afraid it would, but I'm still pretty scared to see how I did on it. I'm afraid I'm going to get to class, and my crazy teacher is going to hand back the tests, and if I did badly, it's just going to be the final straw. I'll start bawling in the middle of Stats, and... Yeah.

I'm tired, I hurt, the only stuff I can find right now are the things I still need to pack, I feel like I'm losing my mind, and I do not want to go to school.

On the plus side, Mom and I drove out to see the house again last Saturday. They finished our sidewalk, so we were able to go up to the house and peer in the windows. We're not supposed to be on the lot at all unsupervised, but it's not like we went in the house. Anyway, it's looking good. They've painted the walls, the linolium and countertops and cabinets are in, the doors are hung... It's looking like it really will be a house in (OMG *freaks out*) 12 days.

I'm just still having a really hard time getting it to sink in that it will be my house. A really hard time.

I feel like I'm not making any progress with the packing and the cleaning out of stuff. I am, really, there's just so much stuff, it doesn't feel like it somedays. I'll tell you, though, there's nothing to make you feel better about your writing than reading through stuff you wrote almost ten years ago. I hope the paper shredder enjoyed that really bad fanfic, because reading over it to see if it was worth keeping was pretty painful for me. Agonizing, even. Although maybe I should have seen it coming. Seems like any time you say the words "Star Trek fanfic" you're pretty much in for it.

And I shouldn't say that, really. I've read some very good Trek fic. I just don't think I've ever written any. If I have, it sure as hell wasn't in that notebook.

Anyway. I'm going to go scare up some food, take some Advil for my headache, and maybe I'll feel better about this whole Monday thing. *pause* Yeah, I don't think so either, but the Advil and food at least should help with things in general.

The icon has basically nothing to do with anything I'm about to write, but it's pretty, so, there you go. :)

I spent the long weekend packing, cleaning crap out, helping Mom clean crap out, and pretty much avoiding my Stats homework a bit longer than I should've. I might or might not get it done by the start of class, and then there's the test, which I'm not sure right now I know enough to pass. I may surprise myself, but let's just say I'm worried about this test. I hate first exams anyway, because you never know how hard they'll be, or how much weight each question has, or... well, you get the idea.

We close escrow in 17 days (!!!) and I'm starting to think the apartment knows this. The microwave is showing signs of calling it quits, the water heater has issues, and my toilet has decided it'd like to back up at about every other flush. We had to go buy a plunger, and now it's parked in the corner of my bathroom. It's so lovely. At least it gives me something to vent my frustrations on when I have to unstick it, but, you know, ew, huh?

I saw this CSI rerun the other night, where somebody puts a bunch of dry ice down a toilet, and it blows up... :) Kidding, but the thought does have some appeal, you know?

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before or not, but my psych instructor mentioned once that there's a link between stress and depression. 'S true, too. Because, you know, one of these wasn't bad enough, I have to be stressed out of my mind, with the depression feeding on that and them getting into this fun feedback loop of misery and "grr, argh!" which then becomes "grr, argh... oh who gives a fuck, miserable now."

I swear, I just want to get into the house so I can start unpacking things, and have my room all set up, and my things where I can find them... We're to the point now where we've packed almost all the dishes, so we're eating dinner off of paper plates and drinking out of plastic cups. I hate this part of the move. From here on out is just six kinds of not much fun, and I can't wait until it's over.

My grand plan for today is to survive my test, hopefully not totally bomb it, come home, and fall into bed for a couple hours. I'm so tired, and of course I didn't sleep well last night. Right now I think dragging myself through school and then coming home to collapse is about all I can do, all I have the energy for. If I didn't have to do the school thing, I'd be skipping that, too, let me tell ya.

It has to get easier, right? Even if it doesn't, I'm sure I'll feel better on the other side of my stats exam, and once I've had some more sleep.

Current Mood: exhausted

*smacks spam filter* Silly thing, you're not supposed to eat things from Livejournal.

azhure bought me two months of paid LJ time! What a nice surprise to wake up to today (she did it yesterday, but my spam filter decided to be silly and snag the email from LJ). Thank you thank you thank you thank you! This is so cool, I missed my icons! :)

The garbage truck in the alley out back woke me up (7:10 on my day off, thanks SO much!) so I decided to go ahead and get up. I can take a nap later, but I will not miss that. I have an ever-growing list of things I will not miss about the apartment. Like the stairs. We've started packing, finally, and we keep having to rethink how we're packing heavy stuff, like Mom's glassware, because someone has to not only be able to carry it, but carry it downstairs without hurting themselves. That someone won't be me- I'm not going to be much good during this part of the move, unfortunatly. I haven't been able to navigate the stairs without a free hand for the railing since my eye surgery. The depth preception- or lack thereof- is just too wonky. I've always had that, or not had it, I suppose I should say, but since the surgery it's been more difficult on the stairs, somehow. Keep meaning to ask my eye doc about that, but there were always more pressing issues, or more important questions. And then it was such a relief to not have to go back to the doctor's every couple weeks, or every other month, to have them check things out again... I didn't want to think about asking any questions I didn't have to ask.

Anyway, the glassware is ending up in a couple smaller boxes, of which we have not very many right now. Mom keeps snagging them from the stockroom at work, but some of her coworkers are moving too, or have relatives who are moving, and they work closer to the stockroom than Mom does. So... she can't always get the good boxes.

I've been going through old papers and notebooks I found in my desk, and let me tell you, there is some scary stuff in there, that I was quite happy to feed to the paper shredder. I should not have been allowed to attempt poetry or fanfic in my first two years of high school, because I was just dreadful. I did find some stuff I'm keeping for amusement or sentimental value, though- I turned up some really old stuff, including the first short story I wrote that was coherent (ie didn't include illustrations; that would be first grade) which is from 6th grade. Unfortunatly they made us write in cursive in 6th grade, and mine is... not tops, let's say, so one of these years I'll have to see if I can translate it. My handwriting's gotten a lot better since then, thankfully. I'm sure it's dreadful, but that's something I just have to keep.

I also found my 9th grade English journal. My teacher must have thought I was nuts. Well, alright, maybe it's not that bad, but I did talk about writing an episode of Star Trek with one of my friends, and how we wanted to send the script in if we ever finished it. (Voyager, and they did accept submissions back then, even used them once in a while, if they didn't suck. Ours... would have sucked, I'm sure.) I believe his note on that page was something like, "Hmm. Good luck." Yeah, I think that's about all I'd be able to say to me right then, too.

*facepalms*

It just dawned on me I should have packed said English journal with my other journals, and it's sitting on my floor with the other notebooks instead. Duh... Oh well. It's not like I'll need it right away, and I'll pack it with the notebooks, which is the other logical place it'd be. I'm trying really hard not to do what we ended up doing with the last move- We ended up moving in a month with almost no notice, so a lot of our stuff ended up just tossed into whatever box was closest to hand, no matter what else was in it. I started to hate the boxes labelled "Miscellanious". At one point we had about twenty in the dining room, and they got pretty scary. "Hmm... three cookbooks, some canned goods, Tupperware... Would it have killed us to write 'Miscellanious, Kitchen'?"

I don't want to do that again. I want to be able to find stuff. And for Mom to be able to find her stuff. Instead of me finding her stuff, and her finding mine. Ah, good times... well, you know, not really.

I will be so, so glad when this is over.

I gotta get me some new icons... or be able to use the other ones I have uploaded. *sigh*

But anyway. We gave our notice on the apartment yesterday, escrow for the house closes on the 20-something of September (too unawake right now to remember exactly when)... We're in for it now, and all. And I'm still trying to settle in to school, and get through the stress of the first couple weeks.. One of these would probably drive me nuts. Both... are turning me into a stressed-out mess, with too much to do, not enough time to do it in...

You'll notice I've been quieter lately, not posting here as much, answering tags and comments as fast, or writing as many posts for my other great obsession. It's gonna get worse before it gets better. And it's not that I don't love you guys, because I really do, but- like I said, I have all this moving crap to do, and they still expect me to do the normal going to class stuff at the same time, too, which I can never figure out- don't I get a break from classes so I can move? Anyway... ugh, I'm so tired, I didn't get enough sleep last night, and my brain's still kind of fuzzy here... What was I saying? Right. It's not that I don't love you all, because I really do, but there's stuff I have to get done that can't wait, so I'm going to be a little scarce lately. And exhausted. And stressed. And probably depressed, when the stress builds up enough- My psych teacher says there is a correlation, which I didn't know, but makes absolute sense if you think about it.

So, all the stuff I should be doing, or promised anyone I would do, I will do. Just probably not as quickly as I'd be able to do it if I wasn't moving in (OMG Ahhh! *Home Alone face*) about a month, give or take a day. Plus there is the school thing, and the thing where I want to know if it'd be possible to make freshmen-hunting legal, just to thin out the population a little, and the part where I'm still expected to do school crap, and OMG what is my Stats teacher smoking, NO ONE should be that freaking perky about math at his age...

And all I really want to do is sit back, relax, write more Moody/Penny fic and more Jack/Irina fic, pass my classes, and enjoy the last two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I have on DVD and have not had time to watch. Oh yeah, and be in the new house, without the packing thing, or the cleaning up the old apartment thing, or, gods know, the unpacking thing, where the most common words in the house for ages will be "Hey, have you seen...?"/"Can you remember where we packed...?"

On the other hand, when we gave notice yesterday, the manager told us a couple cool things. Namely, they are replacing our horrible carpet after we move, which is great- this stuff is so bad, we had water leaking out of an ice chest once- just water, mind you- and it sunk into the crappy excuse for a carpet pad and stained. No shit. They're also going to repaint, and replace the craptastic linolium. Yay! This means we don't have to obsessivly clean stuff that is very hard to clean, and I have to tell you, Mom's been a lot calmer since we found out she doesn't have to try so hard to get the water stain out of the carpet from Hell in 3D.

I got a bit confused about the dates, and thought next Monday was Labor Day. Bah, I wish. I was all excited, thinking, okay, get through this week and you have all this time before you have to go back to class again. And I do. After next week.

And I really, really need more t-shirts with rude phrases on them, the ones I have are too polite. Probably time to find a pair of ear plugs and go to the mall. I need clothes in general, really, jeans are getting pretty worn out and all, but I hate clothes shopping so much I'll put it off as long as possible. I really have to be in the right mood to deal with the teenyboppers and the skater guys and all the rest of those idiots who don't seem to do anything but walk up and down the mall, giggling and staring at the blind girl, because OMG teh strangeness of it all... and hey wow, look, what's that white thing she's got, kinda looks like a cane...

They're staring, I know they see me... but do you think they can get the fuck out of the way? Hell no.

That's okay, though. I'll hit 'em if I have to. Not hard, you understand- well, okay, let me qualify that. Not hard, most of the time, unless they are really horribly obnoxious and deserve it- but just hard enough to get the point across. "Oh my God I am SO sorry, I didn't see you there!" At which point the connection is usually made- hey, how about that- cane, blind person.

Though my personal favorite is still, "Hey, watch where you're- Oh. Sorry."

Anyway, I suppose I and my cane, and my backpack carrying my own weight in textbooks, ought to finish getting ready to go now... at the speed I seem to be moving this morning, that's gonna take at least another half hour. Bah...