Oh, these past – what, two weeks? Two and a half weeks? Have been killer. And it’s not entirely over yet, but I do get a reprieve tomorrow. Monday night, however, we have to do some more cleaning (soooooo close to being done – and I busted SO. MUCH. ASS! cleaning today) and drag some bulky shit out to the curb for pickup Tuesday. And there was a minor misunderstanding with the landscaper – we thought we had confirmed for Friday, he didn’t think so. But he’s promised to have it done by Wednesday, and that’s good enough. It’ll do.
I was going to blog about how weird it is in the apartment, cat-wise. Skeeter has been an absolute angel, and Chalupa has turned into the hellion dominant cat of the household. I don’t even know. Anyway, Chalupa’s still being bad to the bone, but Skeeter got up to some crazy mischief today, so I guess he’s starting to feel at home. I haven’t processed those (shitty ass cellphone) pictures yet, so that’s a post for tomorrow. What I *do* have to share with you, is a picture of that first Roma tomato (which is still green and oh my god when is it going to turn red already!):
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Romas are one of Greg’s favorites. I don’t really even like tomatoes, and I am so fucking excited about eating these bitches, I can’t even tell you. I am like, “Get RIPE already!….Or at least produce a couple more green tomatoes so we can have fried green tomatoes. Jeez.” Although, last time I checked, there were two baby, baby romas, each about the size of one section of my pinky finger. So I think this shit is working. YEAH! Once we’re in our next house, I am breaking this gardening project wide open – fruit trees, and veggies of all sorts, and even peppers. Hells yeah. (I mean, in the proper season, duh, but you know.) Okay, I am exhausted, and I’ll post more later. Shit’s been crazy crazy CRAZY, but we have some AWESOME kickass friends, we’ve busted ass and gotten shit done, and it looks like our luck is turning around. Now let me go find some wood to knock on, and then it’s bedtime for Kathys.
I got some shit to say, but not yet. Just keep sitting tight, and keep your fingers crossed for us that that house sells sooner rather than later. Love ya!
No time for a real post yet – look for that next week maybe? Or the week after? Still moving, still cleaning, and (ugh) painting.
Thank fucking god for awesome, kickass friends, thank god for nice, helpful strangers (Home Depot and Habitat Hand-Me-Ups store, I’m looking at you), and thank all kinds of fucking gods for clonazepam. Seriously. I am almost like a normal human being again.
Who’s “gifted” enough to break not one, but TWO titanium drill bits? This bitch. That’s right. But I got those blinds up. Only…11 more sets of blinds to go. Oy. Also, I’m a little worried about how much the cats will be able to fuck those blinds up before Wednesday (when we should be moving the cats over to the new apartment), but we can’t just leave all the blinds up all the time. Like, “Hellooooo, Mr. Thief, here’s all the shit we have that you want.” Nice.
Also? Jesse Helms died today. Of course he did. Of course he died on the Fourth of July. Can’t really say I’m terribly sad to see one more hateful bigot gone, although I’m sure there are hundreds just waiting to fill his shoes.
Back to window treatments for me.
Well, there are some good things to report. We found an apartment yesterday and signed a lease for it. And Tiffianna graciously came over last night and helped us pack up two rooms pretty much completely (except for furniture), and most of my craft room. She fucking rules. And everyone else who’s promised to help us rules. It looks like we’ve got a U-Haul reserved for Wednesday (assuming they don’t need a week’s advance notice, which, hopefully not, since the site *let* us pick Wednesday instead of Friday).
There are bad things, too. I’m still randomly weepy. And I can’t eat, I’m so stressed out and nauseous and upset. I’m pretty fucked up, actually. As of this morning, swallowing water has started making me gag, and that’s so beyond not good. Sipping smaller amounts seems to work better, though, so don’t worry too much – I know the last thing I need is to get dehydrated. I cancelled my doctor’s appointment yesterday, since it was in Durham in the middle of the afternoon and we needed to hunt apartments in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area before shit closed, and I didn’t know how long it would take. So my rescheduled appointment is for next Thursday, but I’m thinking I’m so bad right now that maybe I should call in Monday morning and see if they can squeeze me in with anyone, since my normal doctor isn’t in on Monday. I didn’t think about that yesterday when I rescheduled, that maybe waiting til Thursday wasn’t the best idea, but I can’t eat, drinking water is making me nauseous and gaggy, and I’ve lost about six and a half pounds since Tuesday night (and my weight only ever fluctuates by a pound or two). I can’t keep this up, because 1-it’s fucking ridiculous and 2-we’re packing shit up and moving and cleaning, so I need my strength up. I say this is ridiculous because I know it’s a stress/fear response to an attempted break-in, and let’s be real – if dude was going to come back for a second try and actually get in, and get to me before the cops showed up, the last thing I need is to be weak and exhausted from not being able to eat or sleep. Fucking ridiculous.
On a lighter note, I forget to tell you about my calling the cops Wednesday night. It was not one of my more shining moments – although it was the right thing to do. I had been upset and crying, and Greg was rubbing my back in the bedroom, and calming me down. And I finally got calmed down, and realized I needed to go to the bathroom. So I go out into the hallway – and hear the alarm on the sliding door in the studio going off (the alarm we had just installed earlier that day). So I get right back in the bedroom, lock the door, and call 911. Then Greg goes out to investigate, so I’m yelling at him, “What the fuck are you doing! Get back in here right now!” etc, etc, while the poor dispatcher is trying to get me to confirm my address. (PS and by the way, they can automatically get your address from a landline, so we will be getting a landline. Even if you just call and it rings and you hang up, they will send cops out to check on you – Tiffianna knows from accidental experience, and told me.) Greg finally gets back in the bedroom, and I give the dispatcher what she needs, and she stays on the line while we hide out in the bedroom with our mace pointed at the locked door and shit. Right before the cops show up, Greg’s like, “I bet it’s just one of the alarm contacts fell off.” And I’m all, “I will be soooooo embarrassed.” But the dispatcher was awesome (as they’ve been – the dispatchers and Durham PD are the shit, y’all, they’ve been nice and professional and quick), and said I was right to call, because if it *wasn’t* just a contact falling off, then we wouldn’t want to investigate ourselves, and that’s what the cops are there for, etc. Anyway, the cops show up, tell the dispatcher it’s safe for us to leave the bedroom and meet them at the front door. So I go to the front door, and they say, “You’ve only got the two doors back there, right? The sliding door and the other one? They both seem to be secure.” It was totally the contact falling off. I was so embarrassed. However, one of the responding cops was a woman who’d been out the night before, so I think she knew how fucking scared and on high-alert I was, and they were extremely nice about it. Probably had a good laugh in their cars afterward, though, not that I blame them. But still, I was like, “I’m sorry y’all got called out for a false alarm, but I’m happy you responded so fast, and I’d rather it be a false alarm, honestly.”
I need to go take a bath and pack shit up and get some stuff moved today (boxes and whatnot). And drink some water. And try to find some shit to eat that I can actually get down. So, that’s it for now.
Our realtor is coming this morning (ten minutes, actually) to tell us what we need to do to get the house ready to sell. I’m expecting to hear something along the lines of, “Clean, clean, clean.” My craft room, even though I’d started cleaning it, is still a fucking mess, since I wasn’t expecting to have to move, oh, ever, so I wasn’t in a huge rush to get it done.
I’ve also got an appointment this afternoon with my doctor to talk about maybe getting something to help me calm down and/or help me sleep (although I’m afraid either of those might make it harder for me to wake up if someone did break in, and I’m the lighter sleeper of the two of us by far), and also get some recommendations for therapists, since I’m going to have to start that up. Fun stuff.
I also ought to swing by work and pick up some boxes if I can, so I can start packing.
Last night, around 11, while Greg was in Raleigh helping someone move (and thank god he didn’t come home earlier than he did), someone tried to break into the house. I was in bed, trying to get to sleep, and I heard something and told myself it was probably Chalupa jumping down from a bookcase. But actually it sounded like she was jumping down again and again, faster than she can get back up, and I knew I’d have to check the house anyway to be able to sleep. So I put some pants on, grabbed some dinky-ass scissors, and checked the kitchen door and the studio – fine. When I opened the front door, I saw that someone had cut through the screen on the screen door, realized someone had tried to get in, shut the fucking door and called 911. When I got off the phone with 911, I called Greg to see where he was – still in Raleigh, luckily. I guess what I heard was the person trying to force the front door open.
So, we’re cancelling our trip to New York next week, taking today and tomorrow off (and Friday’s a holiday), to install some alarms, cut down all the plants that block us from the road (and there are quite a few, so that’ll be a bitch to do), and other stuff to make the house safer. And also swinging by the bank and calling our buyer’s agent from when we bought the house, because we’re selling it and moving as soon as we can. This is the second robbery/attempted robbery in a month, basically, and whereas the first one was opportunistic because we accidentally left the front door open, last night someone actually tried to break in. That’s so not fucking cool, I can’t even tell you. I’m scared shitless, and really upset. I love this house, but we both just want to get the fuck out. We’re even seriously considering getting a gun. In fact, I’m pretty much decided that we need to get a gun, because mace doesn’t always stop someone. It fucking breaks my heart that I’m going to get a gun, because I am so anti-gun, but last night when it was just me and the cats and waiting for the cops, I was so terrified.
So, anyway, they didn’t get in, and Greg and the cats and I are fine. Hopefully the guy was gone before I opened the door (it took me a couple minutes to screw up the courage to get out of bed and check), because I didn’t see anyone, but if he saw me, he might think I saw him, and that could be bad. I might be calling the cops the next couple nights and asking them to come do a property check. And I’ll be locking Greg and the cats in the bedroom with me at night, with the cat carrier, and our phones and shit, in case we need to lock ourselves in and call the cops, or try to climb out the window (although I think that would probably be a very last ditch effort).
If you feel so inclined, I sure could use some warm fuzzies and some crossed fingers that 1-this doesn’t happen again, and 2-that the house sells and we find a new, safer place fast. I’m a fucking mess, but Greg is taking awful good care of me, and I hope I’m helping him, too. The cats were a little freaked last night, but of course today they’re back to their usual oblivious, obnoxious selves.
