Keeper of the Keys

I really love this house, despite all its quirks. Actually the imperfections make me like it more. It's more than 100 years old, but it's been updated and expanded over the years, so there's a ton of things I haven't seen since going to my grandmother's as a kid. Some of the doors still have big keyholes, the air vents are antiquated, and half the power outlets are two-pronged.

We bought a set of four locks and four deadbolts that all use the same key, and changed all the locks in the house. The thing is, each lock and each deadbolt included three keys. So we now have 24 identical keys to this house. Seems a little excessive, but at least I can give some to close friends and family members.

We're Really, Really Here

Well... *huff huff* We're finally... *huff huff* ...completely out of Nashville. We've technically owned our new home since the beginning of the month, but we had a deal that allowed us to stay in the old house until the 18th. And boy did we need it. Between snow delays, unexpected expenses, and backbreaking work, it's been a hell of a month.

The movers came last week. They worked all day long, but had to stop when the semi was full. They managed to get all of our furniture, but only about two-thirds of our stuff. I swear we're not hoarders. We're collectors. It's not like we had stacks of old newspapers or used diapers in the corner.

For my part, I have a lot of hobbies - D&D, video games, writing, toys, and so on. I love my stuff and I'm glad I finally have a house big enough to display everything. As for my wife, she is creative and loves crafting, and she jumps from project to project such as painting, wood burning, crochet, jewelry making, and so on. She's also an avid reader and owns hundreds of books. Plus we have a large DVD collection.

These hobbies require a lot of space, and I'm surprised we fit all that stuff in our old, 1,024 square foot house. Nothing could have prepared me for how much time and space it took to move at all. There's an old saying about how the things you own end up owning you. I never believed that until now. Still, I like my stuff and want to keep as much of it as possible.

So, after spending an ungodly amount of money on the movers, we still had plenty to move. We spent several days driving up and down, almost three hours each way, loading up our Rogue with boxes. A friend in Nashville offered to let us store some stuff in his garage, so we rented a U-Haul van and put some of our things there.

But the final day was coming, and there was plenty left that had to go. We had to pick out what was important to us, and hired a junk guy to haul off the rest. That was yesterday.

We spent all day working yesterday, packing the Rogue, dropping more stuff off at my friend's garage, filling up both cars for the final load, and cleaning the house. We finished around 10 PM, and finally got home around 2 AM.

Today I'm going to take it easy. Every muscle is screaming at me, and I can't find the energy to do much. The last few weeks have been nothing but packing and moving boxes around, and now I can barely see straight. My wife, who suffers from chronic pain, will probably be in and out of consciousness all day.

The good news is, I found a few cool things I hadn't seen in years. We lived at our old house for 18 years, and some of the stuff in the attic had been there the entire time. I found an original X-Box as well as a PS1 (the cute little slim model they released later) with several games:

I haven't found a controller yet for the PS1, but it's still a nice find. I also found a ton of cool action figures I hadn't seen in a long time.

But we didn't have time to go through all the boxes, so the junk guys probably took away a few things we would have liked to have. We just ran out of time and energy. Oh well, if we didn't miss it in 18 years, it can't have been that important.

I'm going to go to sleep until Tuesday.

Dream: Space 'n' Vader

Last night I dreamed that I got a new job, working as a valet on the Death Star. I'm not exactly sure how one drives to the Death Star, but hey, I just park the cars, I don't ask questions. A couple of Autobots (specifically Springer and Kup from the 80's movie) worked in the parking garage, repairing cars. Sometimes they would convert people's ordinary cars into Transformers while they were parked.

While I was working, an ambassador came to visit. She was an evil witch queen, and she actually went by the name "Evil Witch Queen." She wore a red dress and her face was painted white, like an evil version of Queen Amidala. She floated through the halls with little crackles of electricity sparking around her, and she gave orders to the Stormtroopers like she was their boss. But the Stormtroopers just stood around looking confused, unsure if they should follow her orders.

At one point she went too far with her demands, and Darth Vader came out to see what was causing the commotion. Vader was in his normal outfit, but also wearing bunny slippers and carrying a coffee mug and a newspaper, like he'd just woken up. Barely giving the Evil Witch Queen more than a thought, he pointed at her and used the Force to slam her into the walls a few times, then turned around and left.

Looking a bit like Loki after his run-in with the Hulk, the Evil Witch Queen groaned and asked for her car keys. I handed them back, worried about what she'd do when she found out her car was now a Transformer. That's all I remember.

We’re Really Here

Things are simultaneously moving super-fast and super-slow. We haven't offically "moved" yet, but I have spent a night in my new house. I can’t believe how big it is compared to the old one. Our old house was a measly 1,024 square feet, and it was so cramped with all our hobbies. Our new house is nearly triple that size.

But even cooler, it actually feels like our own house. Our old house was a unit in a fourplex, and we shared our walls with other homeowners. One of the adjacent units was owned by a landlord who rented it out, so neighbors moved in and out a lot, and some of them were really loud.

Never buy a unit in a multi-house dwelling. Just don’t. You end up with all the disadvantages of renting, only now you’re responsible for all the maintenance. Plus you have all the questions – when the shared driveway needs repaving, who pays for it? If your neighbors play loud music, who do you complain to?

Honestly, it’s weird to me that I can “own” a piece of a building. I mean, who owns the wall between me and my neighbor’s unit? What if I decided to knock down the wall that leads to my neighbor’s bedroom? I mean, I own the wall, I paid for it. But she did too, which is the confusing part.

But now… I have a house. My own house. With a little fenced-in backyard, a garage, a basement… and I don’t have to share my walls with anyone.

Now I just have to make sure I can afford the damn thing. I have a severance package to live on, so getting a new job isn’t an emergency. But it would still be nice to make double paychecks for a few months, so I’m not going to rest on my laurels, either. My goal is to have a job by the end of January, and use the extra income to pay off some debts and furnish the new place.

With a little luck, I’ll get something I actually enjoy.

Kroger

I admit it, I don't always understand social situations. I don't always understand what's going on around me. There's a good chance I'm autistic, but I don't want to self-diagnose. My hearing could be better, too.

This morning I went to Kroger for some groceries. I don't like parking near other cars, and I don't mind doing a little extra walking. So I parked near Little Caesars, which is a few stores down but in the same parking lot.

I went in, got a cart, got my groceries, paid, and took the cart back out to my car. I was almost to my car when the wheels seized up. I thought I'd hit some gum or maybe gotten some string caught in the wheel, but I was a little confused because it seemed like more than one wheel wasn't working. I dragged the cart the rest of the way to the car and started unloading.

A Kroger employee shouted something at me, but he was too far away for me to understand what he was saying. He came running up to me as I unloaded the groceries.

The man was screaming at me. "IT LOCKED BECAUSE YOU TOOK IT OUT OF THE KROGER PARKING LOT!"

I knew that some grocery stores do that, but I didn't know this was one of them. I apologized and kept unloading my groceries. But he just kept on yelling. I don't remember the entire "conversation," but no matter what I said, he screamed back. 

I stayed polite and breezy with my answers. I said things like, "Wow, the new technology is neat." He responded with, "IT'S NOT NEW TECHNOLOGY, WE'VE HAD IT FOR YEARS, EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT!" I'd say, "Well, I didn't know," and he'd come back with, "THERE'S SIGNS EVERYWHERE!"

Note that I've never noticed these signs, and I looked around for them as I was leaving the parking lot and still didn't see any. I'm not saying they aren't there, just that I haven't seen them. My parking space was only two lanes beyond what would be considered in front of Kroger. There was a Kroger cart return less than 50 feet away.

I have no problem with their rules. I have no problem with them enforcing the rules. But this guy was just plain rude. He just wouldn't let it go. We went back and forth for several minutes, and like I said, I was polite the entire time. He wouldn't take apologies, he wouldn't allow me to deescalate the situation, he just kept yelling at me until I finished unpacking and left. I really wanted to call him an asshole as I got in my car, but I didn't.

There were multiple points in the interaction where he could have just said, "Well, now you know," and laughed it off. But no, he just kept on yelling and yelling and yelling. Maybe he'd had a bad day. Maybe he'd had to chase down carts before, from people who were actually stealing them. You know what? I DON'T FUCKING CARE. I have bad days all the time, and I promise you my customers never know the difference.

I am not a violent person, and I'm usually not vindictive, but I want bad things to happen to this man. I got home and filed a complaint online, but I don't feel like it's enough. It happened three hours ago, and I still see him yelling at me whenever I close my eyes. I'm so angry I've given myself a headache. I want this man fired. Out of a cannon. Into a wall.

I will not go back to that location. I can't stand the thought of running into that man again, and I'm worried that if I did, I would do something I'd regret later.

Time Enough At Last

My job is something else right now. And by “something else,” I mean, something besides a job. If you’re not caught up, I’m losing my job at the end of the year because they’re eliminating my position. However, I don’t think they planned it out as well as they could have, because my position technically went away as of the beginning of November. I still have a few duties, but if I took everything I currently do in a day and did it all at once, I’d be done in about an hour.

So yeah, the majority of my day right now is keeping my seat warm. It’s good work if you can get it; too bad it comes with a time limit.

I’m not being lazy – I’m perfectly happy to help out my coworkers. The problem is, almost anything they could teach me at this point would take a few months to learn, and I won’t be there that long. Plus, they just don’t have the time to cross-train me right now. It’s not a good investment of their time to train someone who’s headed out the door.

One of my current duties can’t be started until around 7 PM, but the rest of the office leaves around 4:30. So I’m alone in the building for about three hours every night.

I’m getting a lot of writing done. I have three books that are in the editing/proofreading phase, and I’m moving right along on getting them polished up. I hope I can publish at least one of them before my time runs out, because who knows how much time I’ll have once I find a new job.

Post-Election Blues

You’d think I’d post a big rant right now, but some things go without saying. I ranted plenty back in 2016, and if I were to mouth off now, I’d be covering a lot of well-worn ground. There’s just not much left to say. A while back I even wrote a short story about you-know-who getting elected the first time. It’s called “Think Tank” and you can find it in the collection “Geek Cutes.” My point is, I’m ranted out.

That said, my community is really suffering right now. The Republicans are acting like their favorite basketball team just won a game. For them it’s nice to have a win, but it was just a game - the stakes weren’t really that high. But the people I follow are worried for their lives. Some of them are contemplating suicide, while others are looking into moving to another country.

It’s seriously insane, the difference in the amount of danger involved. If the Republicans had lost, they’d have been angry, but their lives wouldn’t have been upended this way.

That’s the concept I wish people would get – sometimes the stakes are higher for one group than another.

A scenario: If your next door neighbors – people you like even if you don’t always agree with them – were about to be unfairly executed, but you could pay five dollars to set them free, would you? I know it’s not your problem, and I know you were hoping to spend that $5 on a root beer float or something, but are you really willing to let them die?

Because that’s what’s going on here. Republicans are angry that eggs cost more than they used to (something Trump isn’t likely to fix), and they don’t like that their children are learning actual history in school.

Meanwhile, Democrats are angry because women are dying from ectopic pregnancies while doctors wring their hands, worried they’ll go to jail if they help. Democrats are angry because the new anti-trans laws could force people to detransition. And of course Democrats are angry about the usual issues, such as climate change, wealth inequity, police brutality, and the cost of medicine. Very real issues, and much more important than the price of your goddamn eggs.

Yeah, maybe if Kamala had been elected, your groceries would have gone up another $20 a month. But some of your medicines might have gone down by more than $1,000, so… and I say this with a dollop of sarcasm… “it evens out.”

The point is, Republicans lack empathy. I’d say that’s the biggest difference between the two parties. One side wants to make the world a better place for everyone, and the other says “I got mine, screw everyone else.”

Republicans probably think I’m overreacting. And I hope they’re right. Nothing would please me more than to be wrong on this one. I mean that. This is one time when I’d rather say “you were right” than “I told you so.”

But I predict I will be saying “I told you so” a lot in the next four years.