chochiyo_sama

I woke up fairly early because I had a couple of phone calls to make. I called Steve Ross, my mom's financial advisor. I wanted to get his advice about my best move to make and ask him about the situation with my house. He came here at about 5 pm. He had an appointment with my brother Jack for later. He was very nice and friendly. He believes that my best bet is to collect unemployment--and he could relate to my situation as he had worked as a teacher for many years at a vo-tech (in Waseca) when he was terminated and replaced with two new, younger, cheaper teachers. He commiserated that being dismissed with only two years to go till retirement was a slap in the face and extremely unfair, but "that's the way they do things."

He also told me that I will have to declare the money being paid by Amy and Josh on my house as income--even though I will not benefit from it in any way. His suggestion is to have them pay 15% more than they pay for the whole monthly shebang, to go towards taxes. Or, he suggests that the kids buy it now on a 30 year mortgage with their parents as co-signers because of their poor credit rating.

I feel like I am getting fucked straight up the ass without lube every time I turn around these days.

Prior to Steve's visit, right after I got up, I put all fresh bedding on my bed, including the comforter I had bought a while back but have never used. It is really pretty and has butterflies on it.

I putzed around in my room for a while, then ate the other half of my Jimmy John's sandwich. It was a combination breakfast/lunch. Mom and I split the other elephant ear while we watched some judge show on tv.

After that, I went into my room and worked on organizing my patterns. I got a lot of "Ellery" patterns put into the correct folders and filed a few Tyler, Marley, and Matt O'Neil patterns. When it got to be after 4 pm, I went upstairs to wait for Steve. I brought a cover from one of my totes with me as a measuring tool as I have a tote here which was just a little bigger than the cover I had. I also brought down another medium sized tote and a shoe-box sized one.

When Steve left, Mom and I ate a supper of corn on the cob, boiled potatoes, sliced tomatoes, and cucumbers which had been soaked in vinegar water. We each had a piece of the cheesecake that was left over for dessert.

I read a few more pages of The Swiss Family Robinson, but I am still quite a long way from the end.

Mom and I watched a couple episodes of Pawn Stars, then I put my feet up in the recliner, laid back, and fell asleep. I woke up when Mom turned the TV off just before 10 pm, so I came downstairs, took my pills, and dinked around on the computer for a litle while. I had a pretty good conversation with Shane via Facebook, and he is as loyal and devoted as a hound dog. He's willing to take on the school board for me if need be.

I forgot to mention that I also talked to Jay today. I am covered by insurance through August for sure, but he also said that the school's legal reps advised him against paying my insurance...saying it would set a bad precedence for the future. I am afraid that that promise, like many others, is just so much piss in the wind. *sadness*

But, there's nothing I can do about it. I will have to find some way to pay for my meds--some of them are cheap, but some are ridiculously expensive.

Megan Lovelace and Derrick Brucki and some other kids called me from school today. It was good to hear their voices. The little goobers. I love them so much. They told me the new teacher was "mean" and "a bitch" and that they wanted me to come back. I told them that was what I wanted too. Hopefully the kids will continue to press for my return.

And, in the most unChristian of ways, I wish my successor nothing but failure...though I tell the kids to treat her respectfully and cooperate with her because that is the right thing to do and it really isn't her fault that I don't have my job...but that does not stop me from privately hoping she goes down in flames. I am sure I will pay for this in bad karma...but I can't make myself stop hoping.

On Tuesday, I want to finish filing the patterns, do laundry, and go through the laundry basket of miscellaneous stuff that is sitting on the bar in the family room. I am also having an urge to bake cookies--but I think I will hold off on that until Wednesday when Mom is at her Bible study.

That's it for today, I guess.

Current Mood: lonely for my kids
Current Location: bedroom
Current Music: thunder...

Well, what a crazy day.

While I was getting dressed this morning, my sister Kim texted me that she had just touched her first dead body. I thought she had found a dead mouse or something, so I texted her back, asking if she had finally killed her (no good) husband Kevin.

She responded that he had not driven her to it...yet. Then went on to explain that her next door neighbor who shares a driveway with them burst into her house early this morning yelling, "Kim! Kim!"

Like me, she doesn't wear a bra unless she must, so she hollered, "Just a minute!" Got herself presentable, and went out to see what the problem was.

He said, "There's a man laying in my back yard and I think he's dead!"

Many years ago, Kim was an LPN, and she knows how to do CPR. She was steeling herself to give some random guy CPR as she walked out to the neighbor's yard with him. She put her hand on the guy's back and shook him, asking, "Sir, are you all right?" But she could tell immediately that he was gone and had been gone for some time.

Her neighbor had called the police, and they came pretty soon after that.

The man was lying face down in the back yard. He had taken his glasses off, and they were folded on the ground next to his head. He also had a ladder lying next to him.

When the police turned him over, his body was so stiff that his arm remained bent and his hand stayed up to his face. Kim said his face was swollen and purple and already covered in flies. Ewww.

The police got his wallet out of his pocket and he turned out to be a 60 year old neighborhood man who lived just a little ways from Kim's house. The police found marks on the ground near the garage that appeared that he had put the ladder up against the garage possibly to climb onto the roof.

Kevin said that this guy had been a burglar in his younger days...and the neighborhood has had a lot of issues with a peeping tom lately. As an extra icky detail, the neighbor's preteen daughter was having a slumber party last night and there were a lot of preteen girls up hooting and giggling all night....so it is possibly this was a peeking pedophile...I hope not.

The guy had to have died in the middle of the night--and there is really no good reason he would be in the neighbor's back yard with a ladder, so who knows what he was up to.

My poor sister's driveway was full of squad cars and an ambulance and all kinds of emergency vehicles.

Another icky detail is that they could not move the body until the coroner was on the scene--and he never showed up till around 1 pm. So that dead guy lay in poor Paul (the neighbor)'s backyard in the hot sun all day long.....ewwwwwwww. They did have him wrapped up in something, but still....

Now my poor sister who has problems enough has this grim evident burnt into her brain.

My day was much less eventful. I was supportive to Kim over the phone as much as I could be. Mom and I had two ears each of sweet corn for lunch and then milk and oreos for dessert. Very healthy. Ha.

Mom and I rolled up the wet carpet remnants in the furnace room and got them into a big black garbage bag. It was so heavy neither of us could carry it out to the garbage can, so after my mom and my sister-in-law and the kids left for Tammy's, I called Jack to see if he would come and take it to the garbage. He did. We chatted a little while he was here.

After mom left, I hauled my blue Walmart bag full of patterns out to the family room and started sorting them out. I made real good progress getting them separated out...also, there were a bunch of pattern pieces that I had xeroxed which had not yet been cut out, so I sat and cut out several pages of those while watching Pawn Stars and Auction Hunters. I could have watched Hoarders, but for some reason it just seemed too depressing for me today.

I did not get any laundry done as I had planned, but I will have all day tomorrow to mess with that. I want to take a bath first thing in the morning, then get dressed and buzz into Owatonna to do a little shopping. I want to get a new pillow for my cats as theirs was wrecked by the flood in the furnace room. I also want to get some hair spray to kill the damned little gnats that are every where in the bathroom. I don't know where they came from, but they are thick in the garbage can and on the mirror and even on the towels.

I like hair spray to kill them because it isn't toxic for me or the cats. It paralyzes them and kills them. The bathroom really needs a good cleaning right now, but I kinda want to wait until I get all the rest of my stuff put away, so I can thoroughly clean everything.

I also want to sort through my towels while mom is gone. I want to get rid of about half of them to free up drawer space for other things. Once I have done that, I will drop them off in the green box that is at the gas station. That is great for getting rid of stuff. For some reason Mom is uber possessive about my stupid towels. She wants me to keep them all. I don't need them all. I don't want them all, and I don't have ROOM for them all.

I also need to restock my chocolate stash. I am down to the bitter end of it. I will want to pick up a couple bags of Bliss Milk Chocolate pieces and some kitkats and possibly some red licorice or gum drops. The candy lasts me for a long long time because I only eat a couple of pieces a day--usually at this time of night while I am messing around on the internet.

I will also need to fill my pill caddies tomorrow. I should do it tonight, but I really just do not have the motivation to do anything more productive than type right now. Sigh.

Tomorrow is the first day of school at ROC. I feel really sad and a bit bitter about not being there. I feel like I got royally fucked over, and fucked over by people I thought sincerely cared for me.

Well, not one person from ROC called and checked in with me over the summer. Not even Susan. We did speak a few times this summer, but never about that. And I almost always called her, not her calling me.

Dust in the wind....out of sight out of mind, I guess.

Sad.

I thought I meant something to those people. Obviously I was foolish in my assumptions.

Current Mood: sad and betrayed
Current Location: bedroom
Current Music: my own typing.

I can't sleep

I have tossed and turned and tossed some more.

Finally I got up and worked on my pattern sorting for about two hours. It is going well and is almost done.

The worst part of it will be filng all those little odds and ends of patterns that fell out of their envelopes and have been lying loose. I have been putting them in a large ziplock bag as I run across them, and when everything else is done, I will file them appropropriately.

I did sort what is left into piles according to what kind of doll the pattern is for--so that should make getting the duplicate patterns straightened out easier. (I made copies of patterns and I keep finding more of the same one....sigh...I am so driven sometimes.)

I know I have lots more patterns in this house--mostly for bigger dolls like Cabbage Patch dolls and larger baby type dolls. I am going to have to buy at least one more file cabinet on wheels to hold them. Fortunately, I still have a little space under my desk table for file cabinets...I think I can get two more under there if I need to.

I will work on those later--perhaps this winter when the snow is piled up to the eaves...lol.

I am actually feeling a little excited about this task being accomplished. The cleaning of this room went much faster than I expected it to, and I am "into" the cleaning spirit. I don't want to go anywhere or do anything else right now--I just want to clean.

In fact, I suspect that is why I am having trouble falling asleep--I don't want to stop with my pattern organizing task undone. I want to keep going.

I want to get started on the next room--and indeed I have to as my friend Papillion-san is coming to visit me and he will be staying in that room! He has to be able to get to the bed, and I have to wash the bedding for him--I'm sure it is dusty and full of cat hair....

My plan of attack is to haul everything out of the room and pile it up in the hallway--leaving, of course, a walk way so that I can get out of my upstairs...lol

Then I can scrub the floor, take down and wash the curtains, dust down the cobwebs, and put ONLY the stuff I want to keep back in that room. AND put it back in an organized manner, so that I know what I have and can access it when I need it.

If I am stuck living in this house because no one wants to buy it, at least I am going to try to make it so I do not hate living here.

My Pappy sells on ebay frequently, and I am going to ask him to give me a tutorial on selling and so on so that I can get rid of a lot of my stuff that I do not need or want. I'm only going to keep that which I love or really will use. All else is just clutter and an unnecessary burden that I am dragging along through my life.

In other news, Brendi received her June is Dairy Month Swap--here is what I gave her:

Of course the pieces of the outfit are mix and match--so there are four possible outfit "looks." Brendi said she loved it, and that makes me happy. I have not received my swap from her yet as her husband has hurt his back and feels nothing from the waist down--she is busy tending to him now, as she should. Family is always a priority.

BTW--this is Erin who is modeling the denim dairy month outfits. I have sent her off to Kari, a doll artist friend, to have realistic freckles put on her face. Sadly, even though I wrapped Erin in Bubble wrap, she arrived at Kari's house with one of her arms broken off. (sadness)

I said to go ahead and freckle her anyhow...I'll see if I can do anything about the arm--maybe I can super glue i or something.

I don't know.

If nothing else I will write to the Tonner company and ask if they have a doll hospital to get her repaired.

Poor thing.

I haven't taken pictures of the barbie June is Dairy Month swap yet--I will try to do those tomorrow and load up the pictures.

Current Mood: obsessed
Current Location: bedroom
Current Music: sounds of silence....except for air conditioner and clicketty clack of keyboard.

You know, it is very hard for me to get started when I have an enormous task to do--but once I have started it, it is very difficult for me to stop!

It must be that law of physics that says an object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest....you think?

I worked on my patterns tonight--I have a gazillion patterns, mostly for doll stuff, because sewing for myself would be too much like sewing circus tents and hot air balloons....

I prefer to work TINY, and I do not enjoy sewing on the machine. I much prefer using a needle and thread.

Anyhow, I have struggled with finding a good way to organize my patterns since I started sewing, probably 40 years ago.

I have tried many different ways to keep the pieces from getting out of the little envelopes and getting lost, but nothing has seemed to work....

Until now.

I have begun a system which appears to be THE ANSWER.

First, I cut the pattern envelope so that the front and the back are two separate pieces. I give each pattern its own file folder--I slide these things into the folder. Then I put the directions for the pattern into a page protector. I trim off the piece with the holes punched in it to make it fit better into the folder. Then, I separate the pattern pieces out so that all the pieces used to make each "view" or "outfit" are in their own ziplock baggies. I label the ziplock baggies with my permanent marker--the type of pattern (i.e. Simplicity, Vogue, McCalls), its number, the view (usually by number or letter and name), and the type of doll it is for (baby, barbie, tonner, etc).

I write the type of pattern, number, and doll it is for on the tab. Then I place it in a stack. When I get 10 or so stacked up, I take them one at a time and use clear contact paper which I have measured and cut before hand to attach the pattern front and back to the front and back of the folder. I wrap the contact paper all the way around so that the folder is now an open ended envelope.

I have two 2-drawer file cabinets on wheels that slide right under my work table/computer desk. I will probably need to purchase at least one more by the time I am done with this project. I place 2-3 of these folder/envelopes into each hanging file folder in the file cabinet as they are pretty fat by the time they get all those ziplock bags and such in them. I put them in order according to pattern type, doll, and number.

It is so nice--whenever I want a pattern, I know exactly where to find it.

Of course, I have a big purple basket of patterns left--these are the hell patterns which are all messed up, out of their packages, god-alone-knows where they belong. I will probably start sorting on this purple basket tomorrow. Sigh. I hate the thought of the tedious job that it will be. I just keep telling myself how absolutely AWESOME it will be when the job is done.

I think what I will do is separate the stuff in the basket tomorrow into piles according to kind of doll they are for. Once that is done, I can separate them by pattern type and then begin the slow process of figuring out what belongs with what. It will definitely be a bit of an ordeal...sigh.

Before I do that, however, I am going to vacuum the area rug and scrub the floor. I have a bunch of empty plastic sorting boxes too, that I am going to stack up and clear out of there. I'm going to try to shove the crap in the hallway into the other bedroom and then drag that wooden desk out of there.

I have moved it up and downstairs myself in the past by flipping it onto its top and sliding it down the stairs while walking ahead of it slowly so it doesn't go crashing to the bottom and break into a zillion pieces. I hope it doesn't get away from me and crush me at the bottom of the stairs--it would be about my luck. LOL.

I really want to go and see a movie tomorrow--either Journey to the Center of the Earth or the new Mummy movie...but I really want to get that room completed also.

Sigh.

I guess I should go to sleep. I could not get my arse out of bed today until almost 11 am as I stayed up last night till 2:30 working on that room.

Oh, a final note on the patterns--I grabbed an old notebook left behind by one of the kids probably 4 years ago and gave a page over to each TYPE of pattern, and then I listed all of the patterns that were already dealt with on the appropriate page of the notebook. When the task is finally done, I will type the list and stick a copy in my purse so I can refer to it when looking at patterns. I have only found one duplicate so far--and it is for an American Girl doll. My friend Frank's daughter collects those dolls and has a sewing machine, so I am going to give him the pattern to give to her. Maybe she can have some fun with it.

That's all for me.

Naughty me, I could not make myself go downstairs tonight, so I didn't eat supper and I didn't take my supper meds. I did take my bedtime meds with a granola bar. I have to shape up on this....

Current Mood: weary but content
Current Location: bedroom
Current Music: cat slurping her toes. Air conditioner.

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chochiyo_sama

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