Stressed out, thoughts of fall
I can't believe it's almost October. Only 5 more days. It's officially fall, yet the temperature outside still lingers in the 70s and 80s. I would be concerned about global warming if I didn't once hear that the global temperature only raises 1 degree every year... or something along those lines. Possibly it was 1 degree every 3 years... but whichever the actual numbers were, the statistics were soothing and comforting, despite that would mean it was 10-20 degrees cooler this time of year when I was born. It's funny to think that one day I will tell my grandchildren stories of what a real fall felt like, when the air was chilled but still managed to feel sticky and humid. I will try to tell them it feels like damp leaves, but none of them will understand... and I'll feel sorry for them.
9 more days until it will be a full month since I've had any form of "real" employment. It's already been more than a month since (what ended up being) my last day working at Giant. I have played phone tag with Taskforce, but they have yet to call me back. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with my misfortune with my first job, or because I requested that they add "no phones" to my requirements for assignments, but I don't feel they'll be contacting me soon. They could be in a slump, with no companies really requesting the need of replacements, but it would have been appreciated if they had mentioned that to me when I had called. But either way... despite how much I love being home doing nothing, I'm starting to feel guilty about it. I would like to go into Fredericksburg tomorrow and pick up applications at schools or department stores and fill them out over the weekend. My father may need the truck, so that may be postponed till Monday.
There's so much stress going on with the aftermath of Isabel. My neighbor got their relatives to cut down the trees that landed in both of our properties, and we were recently presented with a $1500 bill. All that money to remove two trees that were already down. They even charged us $350 for removal, yet the yard is still covered in hunks of tree, and my father was the one who did most of the moving that was done. Even though my parents should have fought the price they were charging (it's obvious price gouging, trying to get money from our insurance company), my father went and got advances on the credit card so he could pay the little fucks without even waiting for the claims adjuster to come and look at the damage first. Luckily we got $1400 for the dent in the truck, but we don't plan on repairing it. We also got $7800 for the car, $6000 of which must go to finish paying off the current loan for it. If we scraped together all the money we had, we could put up to $3000 down on a new car, and in turn lower the monthly payments... but my father has decided he doesn't want to put any money down, and use that money for immediate purposes. I tried to tell him that the money he'd save over a 5-6 year time would be far greater than the immediate $3000, but he refuses to listen to anyone.
I'm beginning to have little or no sympathy for our current finical situation, since it seems my father puts great effort into making as many wrong and thoughtless decisions as he possibly can. Hell, maybe he does it so he has something to complain about. That's actually pretty probable, as many pity parties he throws for himself in honor of it.
I really had not wanted to spend this entry complaining and simply repeating what my whole family has been discussing all week. It has been stressing and effecting me... even causing my IBS to act up worse than it has in more than a year. Add in the fact that I'm on my period, and it's been causing me to blow up at even the slightest annoyance. My family has felt the backlash of that, and so has Matt. It's always the loved ones that end up being tortured.
Anyway... I cannot wait for fall. I want to go out and take pictures of the leaves... see if I can capture the crisping of the air on camera. I want to see Halloween decorations in yards, and maybe even decorate ours. I'd look forward to giving out candy to cute trick-or-treaters, but practically no one comes to my street since it's usually too busy.
Thinking of this makes me long for Christmas and snow again.
I installed Movable Type to test it and I ended up loving it. I'm tired of waiting for the next version of Greymatter, so I'll probably start the pain in the ass process of moving all (read, ALL... starting from feb 1999) entries to Movable Type. It will take forever and I may pass out from time to time, but in the end it will be much easier to update. I'm also working on a photolog using Movable Type... but it'll probably take me a month or more to get all thta done, especially if I get a job in the near future. Fun, fun stuff.