more to come . . .

So I have to admit that I've been holding out on you guys a bit. I know I keep saying that there's not much exciting to write about, and that I've been unmotivated, but that's not entirely true. Actually, I've got some totally juicy things happening that I haven't wanted to share. Well, not that I haven't wanted to exactly. But really, I wasn't sure that I should, or how to even begin.

My crazy co-worker story is what comes to mind as falling under this category. Actually, when it all started unraveling initially, G told me that I shouldn't blog about it. First of all, I only knew the inside scoop cuz my co-worker found out and told me. G kept saying, "come on, its not even your secret to share." And I don't know, I think I have maybe one or two co-workers who peer in on this site sometimes. And never mind that I spend a fair amount of time complaining about work in general, but now I want to start throwing work gossip into the mix too? G's points made a lot of sense. So I held off, though it was kind of killing me.

But THEN, crazy co-worker confided in me directly, and it was on. Well, I guess maybe. I still held off, cuz honestly, I had no idea how to begin to start writing it all down. Plus, I'm worried that it's one of those things that just don't look as good on paper as they are when they happen to you. Cuz my jaw was literally dropping as this lady started telling me about her stalker who's trying to give her AIDS. Sure, you're either cracking up or deeply concerned right about now, but nowhere near to what I was feeling as it was happening.

Anyway, as entertaining (in a "whoa-awesome-blog-material kind of way) as it was, the whole thing kind of had me thinking about boundaries, what was appropriate to share and when. Finally, I've decided that you know, I'm sorry. If it makes for good reading, then it stays. And that's that. :) So over the next few posts, I'm going to try to fill in some gaps from the last couple of months. I don't promise to do it quickly. Work's been busy, and it is the holidays after all. Chances are, I won't even start til after Jan. And I swear, its not that I'm trying to keep you guessing. I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that I haven't forgotten about this blog. I know it's been slow lately, but I hope to be getting back to my regular posts here pretty soon. And I have some awesome material to start the new year off with.

calling all crazies

We have a little one bedroom cottage behind our house that we rent out. It's not like we have a use for it, so it's nice to have the extra income. It has a separate entrance, and most of the time we hardly see the person who lives there. Except for the fact that they come in through a gate at the side of the house and go through the back yard, which gets the dogs going crazy everytime they come in or out. But other than that, it's kind of cool. Mia has a tendency to love whoever lives there, especially after one lady (this kind of disgusting one) started feeding her things like ribs and chicken wings. We got to deal with the resulting dog farts, and the tenant had a nightly visitor whenever she came in that ran in as soon as she opened the door. She definitely got the better end of that deal (cuz we got the back end and it wasn't pretty). Since then, Mia is absolutely convinced that who ever is back there has got to be better than her cruel, totally neglectful (i.e. crazy people who will only feed her DOG FOOD twice a day and hardly any scrapes) owners.

Anyway, for the most part part, its a good deal. But I had no idea how having a little place to rent out would bring out SO MANY crazies. Everytime we look for some one to fill the spot, we're inundated with wackos and bums. So now that I'm married to G and part of the fun, I don't have to go into the world to meet crazies. They come right to my door. That particular lady with the ribs was my first experience with G's tenants a couple of years ago. She started chain smoking as soon as she moved in AND moved in her girlfriend with whom she would have frequent arguments. It took us several paint jobs and new carpets to even partially get out the smoke smell. And the random bits of furniture that was in the house while she was living there are STILL airing out in the garage. The best was when I got to meet the girlfriend face to face. G was out of town. Apparently the two ladies had had a fight, and she was knocking on the door asking for a ride to the airport cuz she'd been kicked out. Um, ok. And stupid me got caught off guard and said YES. Even though the airport is like an hour away. No wonder crazies are drawn to me, right? But I don't know, I don't do well under pressure. And it turned out that I was actually picking G up from the airport a couple of hours later, so somehow it seemed like a fine idea to just take her up with me. Except that I wasn't leaving for a couple of hours, and as soon as I said yes, she brought all her bags and just sort of sat on the couch and waited, until I finally decided to just drive to get it over with and figured I'd kill time near the airport until G's flight got in. And the worst part about the whole thing (well, if I had to pick just ONE) was that she cried and complained THE WHOLE RIDE UP and for the entire time, I had no idea what her name was. Seeing as how she wasn't even on the lease to begin with. Turned out that she had flown out from Texas to be with our chain-smoking, rib-loving tenant, and they'd had this on-again, off-again relationship for YEARS. Awesome. That was already way more than I needed to know, but since the ride was an hour long, I got to hear all the gritty details.

So then, when we started looking for some one to replace the tenant (whose gay AND straight sex encounters I knew WAY TOO MUCH ABOUT), our prize candidate was this lady who kept calling and pestering G until he finally agreed to show her the place. Her thing was that she needed Section 8 (low income) housing. We're not really authorized for that, but she seemed to think that we'd really love her and decide to go through all the red tape. And come on, who wouldn't be tempted after meeting her. She came around 9 o'clock at night with her belongings all loaded up in a van - she had already been kicked out of her housing and was ready to move in immediately. She sat in our living room and filled out her rental application instead of taking it with her. She listed her references but asked us not to call her last 2 landlords because they were spreading lies about her and had pretty much blackballed her in all of Santa Cruz county (hence the move to ours). She said it was fine to run her credit but fyi, she'd had some difficulties recently and her credit reflected that. She hoped we would understand. She didn't have a job. AND the best was when we asked for $20 to run her credit check along with her application. She wrote us a check but then called G the next morning asking if he wouldn't mind waiting . Needless to say, we didn't go with her. The sad part was that I think she was thinking the whole time that this place was the one. Like I got the sense (because she said as much) that she was already picturing how some of her belongings would look in certain corners of the apartment. I'm sure she would have loved to bring some stuff in from her van to test it out if we'd let her.

Most recently, we just had to find a new tenant at the beginning of Dec and she seems all right. Except that she's already been late with her first month's rent. Said that she could only withdraw so much $ from her ATM per day and didn't think ahead to get money before moving in (she waited until she was 2 days late to even start withdrawing the first increment). And couldn't pay by check cuz she lost her checkbook in the move. This was after we'd already agreed to let her pay the security deposit in 3 monthly installments. We'll see if we regret our selection. The problem is that we don't seem to get a ton of applicants each time, and we end up trying to pick the best of the lot. I guess the economy's not helping. And its sort of a unique little apartment, not really suited for families or anyone with excellent income. This girl definitely seemed better than the other call G got from some divorced lady with 3 kids who asked if "we could help her out" cuz she only made $600 a month. $600 TOTAL. For all her expenses. That's already less than what the apartment goes for, so I'm not sure how much help she was looking for. Plus she wanted to move all her kids in there too.

So clearly, we didn't have much to work with.

Last Harvest

In order to get a headstart for next year, G found this covering that's supposed to protect plants even through negative temperatures. He had everything bundled up long before this most recent cold spell and left me with strict instructions when he went out of town last week to make sure nothing got blown away. We managed to go through and get one last harvest before saying good bye to fresh veggies for the winter. I got creative with green tomatoes (and they were yummy!), and I think we're planning on opening a chile pepper store.

Pity Party

So I know I've been pretty terrible about blogging lately. And trust me, it's better that way. 'Cuz I haven't had anything funny to blog about. In fact, I have to admit that my life has been far from funny lately and actually a bit depressing. Mostly cuz my job SUCKS, and that's primarily where I do most of my blogging. It's hard to be entertaining when I come into work every morning and immediately feel my life getting sucked out of me. OK, maybe that's a tad bit melodramatic, but not by much. It's been hard. It's not that I expected this job to be the most exciting one I've ever had, but I also didn't expect it be so mind-numbingly miserable and BORING. And I'm not sure what to do about it. For one, has anyone seen the want ads lately? And two, I've only been here about 6 months. I'm not sure how to explain that during an interview. I mean, I could be wrong, but getting into the details of why this place is more terrible than jail doesn't exactly make for a great interview, am I right? A co-worker of mine (one of two who indulges my constant whining) just this morning compared this place to a concentration camp. I actually think she has it a bit worse than me even, but I couldn't have agreed more. So if anyone hears of a great job out there, please save me. I promise you, you'll immediately see an increase in my blogging output.

I do feel bad for complaining. I know I have it pretty good. For one, I have a job. That's more than I can say for about half my friends. Also, when I'm not at work, I have a great life. I love my husband and my dogs. We have a roof over our heads. I have decent friends. I mean, sure I live in the middle of nowhere, but overall, I have a pretty great life. Recently, I had some nice news that distracted me for a whole week and a half from being miserable at work. G has a job, and between us, we have everything we could want and then some. So I know I shouldn't be whining. But I'd never realized how HUGE job satisfaction is. I mean, I guess it makes sense. I spend approximately half my day each day either getting to/from or being at work. It's hard to push this part of my life into one corner and just enjoy everything else. Honestly, by the time I come home, my brain is so fried from boredom that it's hard for me to appreciate much of anything. Especially with the thought of going to bed and having to get up in the morning to do it all over again.

The to/from travel hasn't been great either. This week, G's out of town so I've been leaving the house pretty late in the morning. Too late to catch the last train at 7am (cuz um, you know, before 7 is the PERFECT time to ensure public transportion and not after - I mean, really, if you're not leaving for work by then what kind of loser are you?), but just in time for me to hit rush hour traffic. Which has been helping me feel so much better. But it just takes me so long in the morning to get the dogs walked and fed (usually G handles them in the morning), especially since I hate to walk them in the dark, and these days, it's like noon before it gets light out. I suppose I could just wait the traffic out, but the cleaning people come around work around 4 and staying much later than that is EVEN more depressing, if that's possible. So the thought of having to wait the traffic out in the evening until about 7pm gets me in the car every morning and rushing off to work. At least until I hit the first patch of traffic and decide that shooting myself might be all right too.

Last week, though, I had my first public transportation fiasco. I finally decided to try my option #4. I know, there were too many options for y'all to pay attention to. But that was the one where I would take the train in the morning, and then do a quick bus ride to catch the train in the evening (as opposed to light rail which was off schedule wise). So anyway, I tried that last week and guess what? The bus never showed. Well, when I called they said it had showed but apparently somehow I missed it. Even though I'd been standing there for like 10 minutes and buses are kind of hard to miss. I resigned myself to catching the next light rail and waiting for the next Caltrain. EXCEPT guess what?

So in the morning, the trains run every half hour or so (there are more, but just a small handful that come as far as my neck of the woods). I just assumed that'd be the case in the afternoon also. But no, actually, the 2nd train comes an HOUR AND A HALF after the first one! WTF!! Apparently, you're not only are you a loser if you go into work after 7 am, you're also a loser if you leave before 7pm. Really, is this the work-centered society that we live in???? F'in A, no wonder my whole life seems to suck if my job sucks! So anyway, I went back to work (after sitting around waiting for the bus/light rail for half hour), and then finally decided to just take the stupid express bus all the way home. You remember, the one that had me almost vomiting after? Let me tell you, it wasn't any better the 2nd time around. Well, it was less crowded and the driver seemed more motivated to get home. But that just meant he'd be tearing ass, skipping stops, until he realized that there was some one standing there in the dark and come to a screeching halt that had me almost flying out of my seat a few times.

That actually might have been the last time I took public transportion. . . Fortunately, I've had a whole week of sitting in traffic to convince me to go back.

So I guess that's my other request . . . If anyone out there is working on some sort of teleportation device, I could use one of those too. Again, I promise, you'll immediately seen an increase in my blogging output. More than that, I'm sure you'll see me returning your phone calls and emails, and actually hanging out with folks more cuz I'll just have more energy instead of feeling drained all the time.

OH, and as long as I'm getting it all out there -- Bandit's been getting up at least 2x a night to go out to pee. Damn old dogs! G usually takes care of that chore too. So if you're interested in crashing in our spare room for a couple of days and letting the dog out, that'd be nice too. :) Come on, any takers? Anyone? Anyone? :)