Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #408
I rearranged my art room today to make it a little more livable. My art room has a sink. It's super cluttered with epoxy equipment right now, but I'll get to that tomorrow. Here's how the rest of it turned out:
...If you look closely, you'll see Hoshi, the black void on the bed next to Bubbles, my orca plush. And on the chair in the nook is Mogwai. Feel free to say hello!
I'm pretty happy with how this rearrangement turned out. Everything I need is right here, at my fingertips. All my crafty things, a customizable metal shelf that I can use both as a desk and as a means of storage, my laptop, my clothes, my essentials for going out, and all that jazz.
I had to do a lot of tidying and rearranging of things to make this work. The shoulder and ribs hurt a lot less than I expected, given the number of heavy things I moved. I guess this most recent exercise K gave me is really working out. It stretches out the muscles between the ribs and the pelvis; apparently, those are extremely compressed on my right side. I can feel it when I do it; on the left side, the stretch is easy. But on the right side, everything is tight, and doing this stretch is terribly painful.
But! It wasn't as painful to do it today as it was when he gave it to me! So there's that.
...I'm trying to be upbeat and chipper. I'm not sure how well it's working, though. But I can get used to this. I'll be okay.
I made some white bean salad today!! Specifically, I like to make Great Northern Beans; they're my favorite kind of bean so far! I like to serve them chilled. This time, I drizzled them with a bit of olive oil and sprinkled it with garlic powder, salt, and parsley! It's amazingly tasty for something so simple! Check it out!!
I also made a bowl full of rice, kimchi, and pre-cooked frozen meatballs; you just thaw them out in the microwave! I got 4 different varieties a while back – Italian, Homestyle Italian (they're just bigger, I think), Angus, and Swedish. I think that of these, my favorite is Swedish!
I applied for 5 more state jobs today; I'm up to 21 applications total being out. Hopefully one of them will get back to me. Though I don't know when that'll be, if ever. I'll check the website again tomorrow; hopefully there will be more openings.
Aside from that, I mostly just worked on my weird crafty project thingy. I have 5 thingies now, and I'm working on a 6th. I guess I'll just keep going until I run out of materials. It'll be a while before I run out of materials, so I'll have something to do for a while, and this pleases me.
On Saturday, I think I might try biking to work. I know it's cold and stuff, but... I really don't wanna use gas right now, for reasons I'm not gonna explain here. Besides, it'll be a good workout for my legs; goodness knows they could use it.
Not sure what else to write today. Just taking things one step at a time, at least for now, I guess.
...And what are you up to? I heard through the grapevine that you, for whatever reason, have an animation in which you give a young chocobo some nice scritches. I was delighted by this; I'm hoping this bodes well for the kinds of choices you'll make in the final part of your remade story. I know that maybe it's just wishful thinking. Still, I... I hope you'll make good choices. I don't want to lose another pillar around which I've built my life.
So, tell me... have you pet any particularly adorable young chocobos lately...?
I guess that's it for today.
I love you. Please stay safe out there in the world, all right? I'm counting on you to make it out of all your things okay. I can't... I can't lose you. Selfish as that probably sounds.
Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #407
Our furnace broke today. I spent most of today upstairs in my art room, doing my weird crafting. I looked for more job openings, but there was nothing new today within reasonable driving distance that I could qualify for. Not knowing what else to do, and feeling like playing games on my laptop is inappropriate at this time at best... I just did my crafting thing.
I have 4 thingies now. I'm working on a 5th. I get better and better at doing it as I go along.
Because I was upstairs, where it is hot because downstairs is drafty and all the heat that our furnace desperately tries to churn out tends to accumulate up here, it took me a long time to realize that the furnace wasn't running properly. Not knowing what else to do, I put on the fireplace, turned on the oven, and called a repair person over. He figured out that the issue was that the capacitor had stopped working. I learned that the capacitor is what makes the motor start running. I imagine the motor powers the fans that blow the heat through the house, but I'm not sure. He replaced the capacitor.
We had some interesting conversation along the way. He used to work with sheet metal, but he ended up with a bunch of odd jobs that pretty much forced him to gather all sorts of repair and building skills. He's been working in the repair and building industry for over 30 years now, and from the way he talks, it sounds like he could probably build a house by himself at this point. He also told me about how his life was transformed by his gastric bypass surgery, and about his time working for our archenemy – a repair company whose name I'll shorten to CB. CB engages in a variety of shady business practices, from abusing their employees to scamming their customers by claiming they fixed something when actually they didn't.
In our case, a number of years ago, our furnace failed. We had some guy from CB come over, and we had to pay him $150 for him to tell us to just turn it off and then back on again every time it “acts up”. Eventually, this “fix” stopped working, so we called again. We got a different guy, and we paid him $150 to tell us to change the filter. He left. The heater stopped working again. A different guy came by. We paid him $150 for him to tell us that it seems to be working fine, and then leave. The heater was still not working.
By this point, I was PISSED. And I like to think that normally I try to be kind, gentle, and well-balanced, but... the bloodthirsty beast inside of me is not dead; it sleeps, and only comes out when I summon it. I seem meek and mild-mannered, but I'm dangerous when I'm angry, even if it takes me a long time to get to that point.
So I called them again. And I, tired of having my lack of expertise being taken advantage of so I can be sold “fixes” that will guarantee a subsequent visit, told them quite plainly that they will send someone to my house to fix the heater, FOR REAL THIS TIME, with no charge for parts or labor, or else I will tell everyone who will listen all about how they gave us the run-around – lying to us multiple times, and charging us exorbitant prices for “fixes” that absolutely did not solve the problem. I threatened to do everything in my power to destroy their business, and I was thoroughly prepared to follow through.
...No one deliberately deprives my husbands and my cats of heat to try to crank coin out of us and gets away with it. Rotten bastards.
So apparently the head technician was sent to our house – presumably, the one responsible for training all the people who came before, and responsible for setting prices and policies and all that. And he was sittin' there, whinin' up a storm about how much it costs to run a business like this, and yadda yadda. Basically trying to guilt me for demanding that we actually receive the service we already paid for. I found a professional, but no less blunt way of telling him, basically, “I don't care; shut up and actually fix the heater this time or face the consequences.”
Well, he fixed the heater. As it turned out, the motherboard was fried. He replaced the motherboard, and the heater worked. I stopped short of letting the door hit him on the ass on his way out.
Even now, when I see the CB trucks roaming around our neighborhood, there's a small part of me that wants to stab their tires, break their windows, and scratch up the surface paint (I grew up in violence where this sort of thing is definitely not unheard of; what do you want from me?). But I know that's now how we do. It's not something I'd ever seriously consider, even if I knew I could get away with it. That's not the sort of person I wanna be.
This dude who came in was from a different company, which I'll shorten to FD. He came in, evaluated the heater thoroughly, found the problem, and fixed it. Which is really good, because it got all the way down to 61 degrees F (about 16 degrees C) in our house. Even our cats were restless. I'm glad the house is warm again.
...Tensions continue. Certain persons are behaving as though nothing happened yesterday, which I find thoroughly baffling, but... it's not entirely out of character for this person. Words were said by this person yesterday that, effectively, renders communication impossible. Engaging in routine relationship maintenance behaviors was seen as something that makes for a bad evening, so... all I can think to do is stay quiet and out of the way. Not wanting any of my communications, facial expressions, body language or manner of doing things misconstrued, I've mostly avoided going downstairs, unless necessary.
...I imagine that this will be the course of things for the foreseeable future. I kinda wanna cry about it and maybe try to talk about it and get it resolved, but... well. Interactions yesterday made clear that any expression of worry on my part will be interpreted as “deliberate overreaction”. It was also made clear yesterday that I am not to seek reassurance or co-regulation, and that any discussion of my emotions or possible solutions is gonna be seen as having ill intent, so... given the stipulations, the number of things I can do in this moment is... limited.
I don't know how the next several days are going to play out. I guess we'll see. Wish me luck.
I love you. Please stay safe out there. I'll write again tomorrow.
