  What a busy day yesterday was. I'm just going to ramble a bit. The order of events is in no order what-so-ever. First off, I survived my first experience of opening day of permit season. I was on the news twice much to my dismay. I didn't even get a chance to let my hair dry and then my choice of clothes made me look like a giant tomato! And forget about having time to put on any make-up. I hadn't realized just how gray my skin looks in fluorescent lighting.
I'm glad I at least had a chance to shower. I don't ever want to start work at 5am again... at least until next year. I only had two crabby people to deal with so that was nice, but man are my legs and hips sore from standing up and sitting back down again about 100 times. It didn't occur to me until around 2pm when it was getting harder and harder to do it, that it was really taking a toll on me physically. By 3:30 my brain was such mush that I couldn't even calculate the fees without using my fingers (nice representation of government employee there). When I finally got home I was so tired I went right to sleep and didn't wake up again until around 8:30... just long enough to eat something, brush my teeth and go back to bed at 9:30. We were supposed to go to a party, but Brian said I just sort of moaned at him so he went ahead without me. I'm glad because it was Bryant's first party here in Minnesota and if I couldn't be there, then at least Brian was. I'm really sad that I missed it though.. it sounded like an absolutely wonderful time! I did wake up when he got home and made him tell me all about it!
(**EVIL GRIN**) During work I got a surprise.. the roses that I was sneaking sniffs of in Pat Voyda's office turned out to be MY birthday roses and Karen found a carrot cake for me at Byerly's, and then we had pizza for lunch. It was such a nice surprise. I had suggested that we have the birthday observance on Wednesday because I figured it would be too nuts on Friday, but I was so busy with invoices and cleaning that I totally spaced it off.
Kathryn thought it was funny that I would have thought they forgot about it, but it was even funnier that I forgot about it too! Linda made me a BEAUTIFUL card that says "Play in the warmth of the Sun, Dance in the light of the Moon" and it's embossed with pastel rainbow moons and stars. Too fun! Rita had an incredibly sucky day. To start with, she had been upset because the toilet had been leaking around the base (the wax seal obviously) and she just can't afford a plumber (but she is on a first name basis with the sales people at Marshall Fields).
Around 10:30 Scott came and told me that they were towing a silver Saturn because it was parked in front of a driveway, so I made two announcements that whom ever owned a silver Saturn that had been parked on Winnee, they had better get out there immediately. About 15 minutes later Rita comes charging in and changes into her sneakers so she can run out and save her car but was too late... so she vented at me a bit because she hadn't heard the first two announcements (I kept my mouth shut about the fact that if she'd been up in the office helping with permits like she was supposed to, she wouldn't have even needed the first announcment). She tried to call home to get one of her children to deal with it since she's at work, and it turns out that her phone had been disconnected. Well, that was the final straw and she had a little mini break down with an office full of customers. Karen tried to get Rita to go into her office, but rather than taking it as a suggestion to get out of the public eye and deal with it privatly she decided that she was being reprimanded and became quite indignant. Thankfully we were all pretty understanding even though it did leave us in a bit of a tight spot when she left to go get her car out of the impound lot. She was even more upset when she got back though because on top of the impound fee, she has a ticket now.
The really sad thing about it is that it could have been avoided. She could have parked at my house and had Brian drop us off, or she could have parked in the area where the contruction workers have been parking since they didn't work due to the long holiday, but I wasn't about to point that out to her...
I'll just take it as a lesson on my part to look at all the options so I don't end up in the same fix. Hopefully she will have had a good weekend when Monday come's around... Just before Brian had to pick me up he found Amanda walking around the house in her robe and slippers crying. It turns out that the shelves and clothes rod at the foot of my bed finally gave way and made such a horrible noise that she thought Brian fell off the roof!
Once he got her calmed down he came in to survey the damage. I'd had some glass jars with bath salts in them... and one empty one... of course the empty one shattered all over the blanket we had on top of the bedspread. Thankfully it was all contained so it was a simple matter of rolling it up carefully. Now we just have to figure out what to do with it so that there aren't any glass shards anywhere. I'm thinking that we should just toss the blanket because all we need is to miss one little peice of glass and and someone is going to be miserable.
I'm somewhat pissed because I'd mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I thought one of the screws had pulled away from the wall. I made the mistake of trusting him to repair it on his own (15 minutes? ) so didn't feel that I needed to check on it, but I'm kicking myself because I KNOW that I need to. Right now, he's trying to put the shelf back up, but there is lots of swearing going on because the screws are slotted instead of phillips so he's completely stripped the screw head, so Gingersnap is hiding under the table with her nose peaking out between my feet.
I've asked if he wants help, but he just snarls at me and says "No, I can do it myself. " I can hear him crying he's so frustrated. still 1/3/04 He just asked me what I wanted for my birthday. How do I say that I want to have place I enjoy coming home to?
Instead, this house is so cluttered that I feel claustrophobic most of the time, which isn't doing a thing for my bood pressure OR my depression... sometimes I even have trouble breathing because there is so little room. And this was before my clothes all ended piled up on the couch. I've pretty much resigned myself to living in a place where there are just pathways. Every now and then I'll come home and the living room with be cleared and vacuumed... of course it's all been piled on the bed in our bedroom. I've stopped asking if he had company because he gets insulted by the implication... despite the fact that the answer is always "yes". It's quite bittersweet... I just enjoy it for the few hours that I get it but it makes me feel so worthless that he won't clean for me. I've learned not to open the bedroom door because that's usually just too much of a shock. Instead I announce that I'm going to go brush my teeth and he brings the mess back out into the living room so I can sleep. He gets angry that I don't show more appreciation, but it's hard to do when I'm waiting for the other show to drop... and it always does. He has a serious pack-rat problem and it's becoming apparent that there soon won't be room for me here anymore. His stuff has taken over the basement, the living room, the attic and most of the bedroom we share. I'm slowly going insane not having even a little closet under the stairs to be alone if I want to. Amanda has her room, Brian has the entire basement, the attic and his workshop/shed, plus he has the entire house to himself when I'm at work and Amanda is at school.
I don't know what to do because even though I've told him how difficult it is, how it doesn't feel like a home, how it is causing damage to my health, he doesn't do anything about it. His usual response is "I know I need to get organized, which turns out to be another excuse to buy some bins or shelves that he won't use. Oh, man I could go on and on about the empty boxes and pet food bags folded and set on top of shelving units still in boxes. He just gets caught in the trap of believing he can't organize his tools, until he puts the shelves together, but can't put the shelves together until he buys this neat new tool, but realizing that he needs room to assemble the shelves but there are too many tools in the way. I've tried to do it for him, but it's just wasted effort. He fills up the space faster than I can clear it. I still don't know how Rae and Kelli could have had a living room, bedroom, fridge and microwave down in the basement... I can't even get to the washing machine any more (last time I tried, I got hurt stepping on a saw). What do I want for my birthday? I want something that he'll never be able to give me... a comfortable home in which to live.
I started out very happy when I started writing, but in the past hour I've become very down. I would like to just go to sleep but I can't because he's got tools and plaster dust all over the bed, and my clothes are all over the couch. If it wasn't so cold, I'd just go sit in my car and listen to the radio... it's about the only place in the world I have that is neat and clean.. a reflection of how I'd like my life to be, instead of how it actually is.
I really can only see one possible way to make it a reality, and I'm just not desperate enough for that yet. I keep hoping that he'll grow up, that I'll be able to make the right suggestion as a starting point, that he won't find some excuse for not finishing.. A fools hope I'm sure, but still a hope that I'm just not ready to give up on. 
