We contracted a guy to plow the driveway for the season, the same guy as last year. We left the stakes from last year in a cluster in the front corner of the house, next to the driveway, but he never came and staked them along the driveway.
Then it snowed. A lot. I noticed that the next door neighbor’s driveway was staked and plowed, in spite of the fact that the neighbor has a snow blower. Yup, it turns out that my snow plow guy plowed the wrong driveway. Didn’t he notice that the driveway went back to the wrong house’s back yard, and the wrong house’s garage? Didn’t he notice the huge hedge separating our properties?
I called him and asked why my driveway wasn’t plowed. He replied that he had just done it. Nu-uh, I said, and he came back. So he plowed my driveway without staking it, and damaged the other neighbor’s lawn.
I can actually start the chainsaw in two pulls now. One with choke setting on, the next with choke setting off, and I’m off to the races! Some new annoyances have emerged to personally torment me, however.
I don’t know what’s causing this, but screws and bolts will vibrate out of the housing and the chain comes loose and the blade almost falls off. The first time it happened, I thought it was the hardware store’s fault because they sharpened the chain. I screwed the replacements in as tight as they could go and they still find their way out. I don’t think they’re stripped. Otherwise, I’d be screwing air, which sounds much more perverse than it actually is.
In addition, oak is stubborn. I’m rarely able to make a straight cut, even by letting gravity be my guide. The oak keeps directing my blade through the middle of the limb, not the other side. Maybe I should wait a year so the oak can have more time to die, but my yard already looks like redneck central, and I want to get it all done before the style police come tittering.
Just found out that a coworker put in his 2-week notice. He’s been here the longest of anyone and he’s been a great help to me as I’ve tried to learn how things are done here. (That’s the problem with having held several temp positions - unlearning the way other companies do things.) He’s about the best of the 3 most senior folks in this group, and he’s starting a new job in the New Year. Dammit.
When he’s gone, that’ll make me the 3rd most senior in our group, and I’ve been her less than a year. The boss hasn’t even been here 2 weeks. My office mate has been here 2 months. I foresee interesting days ahead…
Last night I went to my one and only holiday party this season. Today I saw some photos of the party on Facebook, and while all my friends and acquaintances look great in the photos, I look fucking awful. My face is all puffy from crying for the last two weeks since my father passed away, I’ve gained so much weight I don’t even recognize myself, the top I was wearing was super-unflattering, and in each and every one of the photos I’m holding my head at a weird angle that makes me look like I’m either about to pitch a softball or go all vampire on someone’s ass. It doesn’t help that my father’s birthday is 12/25, and while I’m glad I went to the party, the rest of this holiday season can die in a fire, with a sprig of holly though its heart.
TLDR: Fuck death, fuck Christmas, fuck parties, fuck cameras. Did I forget anything?
I feel your pain. Being referred to in the third person, when you are an only child, causes that vein to throb. Having to do 60 mile round trips to unscrew up the TV, even more so.
I won’t bore you with the details, but until about 6 months ago I had the best gf ever. Then circumstances intervened, and it went kaput.
Lately I have finally starting thinking I might like to try dating again. But that brings me to my latest self-discovery: I have become a women-who-don’t-like-me-osexual.
Damn. I didn’t choose this orientation. Is there some kind of conversion therapy for that?
My midwife, at my local surgery, has an iPad. She logs her findings and my survey answers. Which gives me the ability to check her notes online, anywhere. However, this doesn’t update my electronic records at the surgery itself. Not does it connect to the hospital, where I have all my scans and blood work. They can’t access it at all. So I spend two hours booking in with the midwife. Then I talk to the hospital midwife team for an hour, doing forms. Then I spend four hours at the hospital, filling in the same forms. Then I go back to the midwife for…?
I have green notes. 20-ish pages of paper. This is what I have to take to all my visits, so they have an ipad why?
Bonus- when I was back in the US, I was ordered by my absentee uncle, who is the main reason I wanted to kill myself as a pre-teen all the way through college and the reason I was bulimic, to 'get my shit out of the house by throwing it out. So I threw out the worthless stuff and saved the few bits of family ‘treasure’ I have. Not good enough for him, he doesn’t keep books so no one else should. This is my mother’s house, that my grandparents (their parents) live in. My mother says my things can stay. What she wants to get rid of are all the used sandwich bags with meat juice and empty pudding cups that my grandparents save. No dice, uncle says those are fine, my family heirlooms are the crap that needs burned. For grandparents, who are slowly going senile, uncle on the other side of the country is God and my mother, who has saved their lives repeatedly, needs to die in a fire.
This is upsetting enough, but to get rid of my shit, I had to work it out from where my grandad had shoved it all to make more room for newspapers, empty bottle and pudding cups. Which is in the basement, behind a 60 year old gas heater and boiler system. I did this for a month.
My carbon monoxide test for my pregnancy came back showing I was a heavy smoker.
I’m so very sorry about your mother. I can’t imagine.
I did want to say thank you for my new epithet, however. I’m really pissed off at a relative of mine right now and I found myself thinking, “Fuck them with a cactus. No, fuck them with Knowed Out’s chainsaw!” I thought it in traffic this morning, too.
Let’s fuck Yahoo! with Knowed Out’s chainsaw. :mad:
I’m trying to help my mother delete her Yahoo account in light of the latest hacking revelation. The account itself appears to be inactive; however, attempting to login at Yahoo prompts a notice about ‘unusual sign-in activity’, and provides a list of her alternate contact options – a mobile phone, a non-Yahoo email, and so on. I’ve tried every single one of these…Yahoo’s system is able to send a validation code to each one, indicating that they still have Mom’s information, but they won’t allow me to access the account. They even sent an “unusual sign-in attempt” notice to her alternate email. :mad: And of course there’s no way to contact these bastards directly for some resolution.
Technically this isn’t a December rant, but I haven’t mentioned it before so I might as well now:
My wife died November 18.
I don’t really know why I didn’t mention it before. My “what’s important and what isn’t” meter has been screwed to Hell for the past four weeks. Long story short, she was bedridden and in bad health, and just didn’t wake up that morning. First week was very bad, since then I’ve been coping and keeping busy.
