September Lingers

Here it is, the end of September. I woke up on the 23rd whispering words to the wind, a happy birthday to an old friend, even though our paths will never cross again.

The painting is done. For now. I was tempted to keep on going when I painted the hall side of the door trim, which would result in painting every inch of baseboard in the entire house, all the doors, door trims, the vanity in the bathroom, and the hallway cabinet. That can wait.

First things first… I have to get that room done. It’s still a mess of bins and boxes, and other things needing to be neatly put away. I have an old closet organizational system (shelf units, drawers, and a kiddie cube bin thing) set up along the wall that is painted solid light blue. It looks dingy white, could use a nice coat of paint or something. I still need help to hang the birdie wallpaper border up next to the ceiling on the solid darker blue wall as I’m not able to climb up ladders or stand on tables or anything. Still need to do some touch ups, clean up splatters… one section at a time as bones allow. That’s life trying to do things with disabilities; everything goes in slo-mo. It takes me weeks to get done what someone else can do in a day.

Here is a peek of the cleanest corner.

Yes, I got the table in there. I had my grandson’s helping me. They got the “lefty loosey, rightie tightie” lesson with wrenches and screwdrivers as we put the doorknobs back on, too.

I have “before” photos but I can’t bring myself to post them as this room was the bedroom I shared with the vet and his shit is in the photos… piles of his clothes, his shoes lined up, stuff on stands, etc. That’s what launched this project. I couldn’t sleep in there as I’d wake up thinking he’d walk in the room any minute, as if he just went to the bathroom. The only way to stop crying was to pack up his stuff and flip rooms, make my little office the bedroom and turn this one into work space.

It’s been almost three months… might take me till Halloween or maybe Thanksgiving to get it all set up good.  Yeah, my life rolls in slow motion.

Oh, here’s my temp solution for the kitchen: two outdoor chairs and a little oak desk that I found on the curb awhile back… I snapped the photo to show my sister my 74 cent mixer.

Yes, this red Hamilton Beach stand mixer cost me a grand total of 74 cents because I cashed out $25 of my Ibotta funds as a Walmart gift card (mixer was $24 on sale online, plus 1.74 sales tax) and opted to pick it up at my local store because I was too cheap to pay for shipping.

My kid got me started using that Ibotta app… it’s kind of like using coupons to save on groceries and stuff, only instead of getting cents off, you get cents credited for buying what you were going to buy anyway. What I do is check the app when I come home from a store (long list of participating stores, even the dollar stores) and see if there are offers on anything I got… click, click, snap photos of the receipt or square thing on the receipt and UPC’s on products, IF requested (some brand names want proof you bought it to make sure you’re not trying to use receipts found in parking lots) and it all adds up. Some things are worth more than others… few cents for this, buck for that, etc. Once your total tops 20 bucks, you can cash out via various options.

My sister doesn’t trust anything that wants to “link” to a bank, not even PayPal, so to show her that it’s totally legit and you have options… if you don’t want your Ibotta funds deposited in your PayPal account, you can choose from a long list of gift cards… I choose the Walmart this time and bought the mixer online as a “Show & Tell” hoping she would sign up, too.

If you are interested in trying the app, here’s my link…

https://ibotta.com/r/wecqckn

They offer a $10 welcome bonus… and yes, if five people sign up via my link (or my referral code of WECQCKN), then I get a $25 bonus. That’s why I’m plugging it…I’m aiming higher than a mixer for my next cash out. Yeah, between the referral bonus and using the app myself, I might be able to buy myself a kitchen table, maybe a sweet little bistro set.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

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Words Again

I’m back to playing with words again, after binge watching 8 seasons of “Shameless” on Netflix.  Considering that I’m not one to lay around watching TV,  that pretty much says everything.

Yeah, I was a bit depressed, let a down day stretch into a few. I tried drawing, took watercolor pencils out to the porch. It didn’t help. Too many echos of other people’s words in my head, cutting me down, colossal waste of time. Do I hear voices? No, just audio memories.

Doc finally listened to me, changed my script to Lexapro, but I’ve been holding off on taking them. Best to let time pass, make sure that Wellbutrin is totally out of my system (has been, odds are was out before she wrote the script) but the real deal is I’m trying to ride it out. Depression is a riptide. Sometimes, you just have to float awhile.

The TV was off when the vet startled me with words at my open window. I was on this computer, revising a poem. He came to swipe the last few green tomatoes. I don’t know how long he was standing there. He could have been watching me for awhile. My writing is private. I toss words to the wind via this internet as public as can be; but, I don’t share anything that I write with him.

There’s still a hint of awkwardness between us, but not as awkward as it used to be.

Oh, he still has a burr about being “put out” even though I didn’t put him out… he left. There is a difference. Besides, one has to be IN before they can be put OUT and he was never fully committed, didn’t trust me enough to actually move in. He just stayed with me when and if he felt like it, came and went as he pleased, which dwindled from mostly here to an average of mostly gone over the last year. We broke up on 4th of July because I thought he was cheating on me. That freshly cut house key on his key chain was the last straw. He refused to tell me whose door it opened, couldn’t even tell me who cooked the chicken, so I figured he didn’t need a key to mine.

In all fairness, it’s not like I ever had a key to his place.

Was he cheating? He says no… all evidence points to the contraire. I ask myself questions: Does it really matter? What do I want out of this? He knows, just as well as I do, that most women won’t put up with his shit. Even if he finds someone else to play with, it’s only a matter of time before they say BYE and now he knows that I won’t put up with THAT shit, even if he never admits it.

I don’t know what the future holds.  I do know this awkwardness has to be completely gone BEFORE he brings his granddaughter over here to spend the night as kids pick up on everything… he doesn’t want her to visit with him at his apartment, says it is too crazy there. Well, yeah… if that’s where you party so you got crackerjacks knocking on your door at all hours, that’s no place for a child.

Bottom line, we still love each other. Maybe we will work it out, maybe we won’t… time will tell.

Sometimes I feel like his pot of soup bones, that he’s just trying to keep me on the back burner for awhile, boil me down slow, stir me with a hug and a kiss now and then while he figures out exactly what he wants.

Well, I have nothing else to do… as in, no desire to seek a new romance or anything. No desire to do much of nothing with this depression hanging over me.

To help pull myself out of this funk, I’m making PDF versions of those little chapbooks that I used to make when I lived downtown. Plan is to post them on YBWorks.com (my other WordPress blog) so anyone can print and fold their own copy. The first went up the other day, if you want to look.

I’m just going to have to make myself go places and do stuff… been floating long enough, about time to swim like hell but I don’t have the energy. Not yet… takes all I can do to hide this and pretend to be normal around other people.

I started knitting a thin scarf awhile back, something to wear with a brown sweater this winter.  It’s slow going as I’m not into it at all. What I really want is a shawl so I regret not casting on enough stitches. I had another ball of yarn so I started a shawl in Solomon’s Knot last night.  My last gift from my grandmother was in Solomon’s Knot so there is sentimentality in the pattern.

I feel like I need to finish something. I haven’t even finished the room that I started painting in July. All it needs is door and window trim, then get someone to help me hang the wallpaper border. I told the vet that I am going to move my kitchen table in there so I can use it as a work table and the man rolled his eyes.

Yes, literally. He actually rolled his eyes at me tonight. As if I’m not going to actually use that room for anything but storage. I’m supposed to be working on me, getting my “me” back… well, THAT ME makes art and all sorts of crap. All I need is a new kitchen table to replace this one and right now, I don’t care if it is a cheap folding card table, just something to put in the kitchen until I find something else as I’m going to get that room done this weekend.

Yeah, keep on rolling those eyes… I’m defiant enough to prove him wrong.

Thanks for reading!