The Rabbit Hole

Part of the continuing problem I have with our apartment's anything is that the super, the manager, and anyone they hire to work on the building never believes a word I say. It's worked out to a point where I, returning the favor, no longer believe anything they say.

( Case in point: today )

F'list, I ask you: do I have a lying face or something? I know I say a lot of stupid shit, but I don't lie very often. I'm actually not very good at it. So why doesn't anyone believe me when I tell them shit? Is it just because that's not what they want to hear?

Awesome.



Kitty fountain is in and working. So far. Kitties are having too much fun playing with it to drink much from it. But Wally's gotten a hang on this eating food thing! I think! Maybe!

I won't apologize for it: I thought The Incredible Hulk was a lot of fun. ( Worth your time at a matinee if you can make it! (No spoilers, promise.) )

In other news, I hired cleaners for today who ended up being an hour late. So I can't stay the whole time they are here and I'm running back to work and then back home again to pay them and let them out. I'm not happy about it, but I'm more sanguine than I was this morning. They seem nice and didn't mind taking some direction from me. (I asked them to do the kitty room first so I could pen the cats up when I went to work.)

Being home meant I could let in the inspector, the manager, and the super. They looked at things. Asked me a couple of questions. Nothing serious. At one point, shortly after the inspector asked me about mice, I thought I caught the manager saying that "you should clean," re: our messy place, but I think what he said was that "we keep it clean" because the next thing he said was "there are no mice." I suppose he was talking about the building. I let it go only because I knew myself to be in a bad mood and didn't need to push it.

When the inspector asked if there were any problems, I mentioned the window in the living room that didn't open. (Sorry, feiran, but I wasn't sure if yours was okay or not.) The Super gave me some kind of look over his shoulder and the manager threw him at the problem. Clearly, they didn't want a bad review to go down or anything. I didn't intend to get anyone in trouble, but if he was trying to give me a panicked, kill-it-with-the-problems-why-don't-you? gesture, I didn't give it any attention. The window didn't open, and for the first time ever that he's been around, I was at leisure to insist he fix it. He did and dragged both the others back to look at it. I'm sorry if that makes him look poorly, but honestly, I don't think it was so bad a thing that it should have done. So there :P

And now the cleaning ladies are here, and I'm about to head out to work. Tra-la!

So I decided to clean up a bit last night. Actually, a lot. Having cagexxx over for the past few days, we've accumulated a bunch of OJ boxes--not to say these are the worst, not when we've got just as many 2L of Diet Pepsi in the recycling, just that it's the straw that breaks me into finally taking out garbage and recycling (you know, after the tower on the can looks perilously close to toppling).

While I was at it, I figured I'd scoop the kitty litters, since no one had in a while. I started to sift clumps when I noticed that the clump of litter-caked poo was still moving even after all the dry litter had run through the scoop.

Long story short: THERE WERE MAGGOTS IN THE LITTER

So gross. I immediately dumped all the litter in both boxes because if the one was a crawling nightmare of HORROR, the other probably couldn't be too far behind. cagexxx and David K (whom I've not seen in soooo long) were kind enough to actually take the shit down to the basement. I dunno that I could have even risked dragging that heavy-ass bag of litter and having it spill open. I would have just screamed and screamed and screamed.

Trinity? SHE DOES NOT LIKE MAGGOTS. She does not, precious. She does not like creepy, crawly, squishy, slimy bugs. Never have. Give me a fly, and I'll sooner kiss it than hold a jar that has its little worm babies in it. Seriously. This is all to do, methinks, with the time that my friend got a turtle, and her aunt (who has a farm), scooped her out a bunch of mealworms into a jar from a container (filled with kitty litter, funnily enough) she kept in her fridge in order to feed the new pet. This "friend" being who she was at the time, gave me the open jar (no lid! NO LID!!!) to hold on the car ride back while she cooed over her turtle and otherwise generally ignored me. I was fine until the little stiff bugs started to wriggle around. Only the fact that I froze before I freaked out kept me from throwing the jar out of my lap. NO ONE TOLD ME THEY WERE STILL ALIVE!!! WHY DIDN'T ANYONE SAY THEY WERE ALIVE AND JUST FROZEN!?!?!

And, of course, there was the time I got back from a tennis lesson and felt something scratchy on my neck and I reached to itch it and came back with something squishy WHICH WAS ONLY HALF OF AN ENORMOUS GREEN CREEPY CRAWLY OF SOME KIND THAT WAS STILL MOVING OMG WHY THE FUCK DO THESE THINGS FIND ME!?!?!

::pant pant wheeze wheeze::

I guess I can just count myself "lucky" that I found the bugs before they hatched into flies. Because I'm not happy about the four-five-twenty buzzing around our apartment now (nor do I care for their ability to avoid the fly paper I've strung up EVERYWHERE). If one third of those maggots had turned into flies, we'd have had an infestation that would be incompatible with sanity.

I AM ALIVE!

After celebrating a birthday and a baptism last weekend, I went to my parents' upstate house with two of my sisters, my brother-in-law, my niece/goddaughter, my mother, and my grandmother. My god, did I need that decompression. I'm still like more tired than I was prior to leaving, but this is a different kind of tired. This is staying-up-all-night-having-fun tired and playing-with-an-adorable-baby tired and shopping-and-watching-movies-until-the-wee-hours-of-the-morning tired. These are acceptable forms of tired. When I wake up in six hours to let the electrician work on my room (::crossing fingers now::), I will be the unpleasant, less-good tired-because-I'm-up-early-for-maintenance-and-work tired. Then comes Harry Potter until midnight. Oh the craziness.

I want to post some more about the baby and family and friends and the wonderful weekend I had with kidnappings and kidlets, but it's two in the morning, I'm a tad congested, and I'm super-tired already. I've managed to tab-open a thousand posts in LJ about now (I think I got as far back as 100-120 posts when I was only away from a computer for about five days), and that's as far as I'm getting without sleep. Never fear! I shall be checking in with them and hopefully addressing them, one and all, in the next, say, week??

Scooter's not getting any jail time. Paris Hilton did more time than he for her first trip to the pokey. She probably paid more in fines, too. Please, someone grow a pair and impeach Bush already?

*

I feel defeated by my apartment. Being the only one here for any significant time last week (one roommate never being around, the other being elsewhere occupied and lodged), I figured I should just take out the garbages and such. I was in such a weary mood, I was perfectly resigned to a bunch of chores, so I did that and the dishes and scooping litters, and what not. I also changed the two lightbulbs that had been burnt out for a while in the hall and living room. I was a bit worried about putting in a 75 Watt bulb in the hallway, since the electrician who came a dog's age ago said I ought to use only 60W, but I figure we so rarely use that light, it'll be okay. I put the sole remaining 60W bulb in the living room fixture, then I settled in with a) painkillers for the headache, and b) soda (for much the same reason; caffeine withdrawal = not my friend) and treated myself to an episode of Doctor Who.

The episode ended. The light bulb popped. The new one. I just...I just wanted to cry. The wiring in this place defeats me. When the electrician came, he indicated that what he thought was the root problem of us burning through light bulbs so quickly was that there was some heat-absorbing/resistant/insulating material missing from the fixture in the living room. He also said that because we were using 75W bulbs, they were getting hotter and thus popping faster. I switched to 60W bulbs and hoped that would be the end of it. Then this bulb popped no more than two months after the electrician came and I wondered. Then its replacement popped, and I knew this wasn't fixed.

I called the building manager immediately instead of doing a run-around through the management company or the perfectly useless (for this purpose) super. He was very nice about it, but he wouldn't sit and take the call at 8 pm. So I have to call back tomorrow during business hours. I hung up, agreed to do so, and just collapsed, ready to bawl my eyes out for no reason other than I thought I'd made a bunch of progress on stuff tonight and one fucking light bulb utterly vanquished me. Again.

*

Doctor Who, by the by, was dreadful. New York accents are bad enough where you find them. Doing bad New York accents should be a crime punishable by death. Plus "Daleks in Manhattan" really takes all the mystery out of the episode, thanks. I'm usually jovially blind enough to the obvious that I never know what's going to happen in an episode of this show, but I spent the entire time wanting to smack the Doctor, Martha, and anyone else who spoke--mostly for their accents, but also because they were all so stupid. Episode is called "Daleks in Manhattan," and I'm supposed to have any suspense as to what creature the Doctor will--eventually, with much time lapsing--discover to be behind the recent shenanigans? Please. Concepts other than the not-surprise villain were okay, but the dialogue could cause a statue to roll its pupil-less eyes.

I made a plan, now that the third new season is over in the UK, to stretch out the season that I'm backlogged on so I don't spend all summer and fall waiting for Christmas like I did last year. I heard this season got really good towards the end, too, which is why I'm picking it up again and trying to slog through the crap to get there. But the crap is so bad--"Love & Monsters" bad; "Fear Her" bad--that I don't think I'm going to have any difficulty taking my time with this. Which is amazing considering that I got through all of the second season in one and a half days. And the show is suffering for the utter lack of chemistry between the Doctor and Martha. Out of nowhere, random side heroine decides that she sees Martha making googly eyes at the Doctor. I think Mickey made for more convincing googly eyeing, 'cause I sure ain't seen any of the like from Martha. Certainly nothing like ANY OTHER SINGLE COMPANION I'VE EVER SEEN (including those from Classic Who). She doesn't have visible emotions that I've seen. She smiles and goes, "ooh this is keen!" Or she doesn't. It shouldn't be that a pop-star-turned-actress can show this girl up, but she is no Billie Piper.

There was one thing to be salvaged from the travesty of that "I know you loooooooove him!" conversation though. Martha denies that the Doctor would ever be hers, and the random side heroine goes, "I shoulda realized: he's into musical theater, huh? What a waste."

Never let it be said those Brits can't be clever with a euphemism :)

Happy Birthday to the lovely ivy03! I am daily glad you are my good friend what makes with the co-squeeing and wonder over stuffs. I predict the future will only see further enmeshing of our shared interests, which should be alternately pretty awesome and very terrifying. Anyway, happy happy birthday! I look forward to toasting your good health in person at a later date.

*

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: WE HAVE US A RORSCHACH!

Well, his IMDB profile is hardly hopeful (he seems to have stopped working for some thirteen years after a none-too-productive career with such high points as Profit of Evil: The Ervil LeBaron Story before his hiatus). However, he is not Keanu Reeves; he is not a thirty-year-old who'll be aged up for the role; and, honestly, he's pretty funny looking, which is perfect. He was also nominated for an Oscar last year. I have now bumped Little Children up the queue at Netflix. When I know more, so shall the rest of y'all.

*

Tried to watch Ran, failed. It's like three hours long, and I just got back from Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer (more on that at a later point), so I'm tired of movies (!). Too tired to watch a three-hour adaptation of King Lear anyway. I hate Lear. I really do. The fact that the stupid youngest daughter doesn't just suck up to her dad bugs the shit out of me. In Ran, at least, the youngest son who loses favor with his war-lord father has a good point about his reasons for not sucking up: basically, daddy raised himself three little war-lord juniors and he should know better than to expect loyalty and filial piety from them as a result. There, at least, I can agree. Still, not interested, not for all that it had swords standing in for phalli all over the place. Oh well. I might do better with Rashomon or Seven Samurai if I want to expose myself to more Kurosawa.

*

Toilet may be fixed...by me! I gave on trying to get the super in to look at the damned thing. We called him all weekend, and I harassed his daughter in the basement and she could only, helpfully, tell me that she had no idea when he'd be around. I took a screwdriver to the bolt that seems to have the leak and I think it's fixed (or, at least, leaking less). I'm still going to want him to look at it, but at least the thing won't flood the place while I wait three years for this guy. Now all I need to do is buy a new bathmat.

I'll give him a chance to look at the toilet, see if he can fix it for good. If not, I call the management company and complain. I need to call them anyway about what the electrician told me about the light fixtures. Sigh.

You know what my priorities for season premieres are when I tell you I had the most stupid/strange dream about Battlestar Galactica that nonetheless managed to work me up something fierce. ( No spoilers, just stupidity on TV's part. )

*****

feiran and I watched the first two episodes of Carnivale last night, and man, is that show fucked up. I like that you can't quite figure the polarity of good and evil in the two guys with strange powers (they've both done something good and fucked something up royal). Not all that much has even happened; there's a lot of setup that's fairly standard (the blind guy, who I keep calling Sydney because that was his character on The Pretender, is the "wooooo eeeeevil" warn-y guy and bugs me a bit because everyone else is less melodramatic). You know the show is effective when it makes me afraid to ask: "Who is Management?"

Don't understand a single thing going on with this show, though. It's hard to recognize anyone for me because many of the carnies look fairly similar--the ladies especially, as there's about three or four of them with the same hairdo and similar enough body type running around and they get more play than the two or three guys who look somewhat alike. Nick Stahl is pretty good at playing dumbass yet proud, which is important, as his character has been brow-beaten into thinking he's not special but he knows himself for what he is and won't tolerate being messed with. Likewise the Clancy Motherfucking Brown, who has his convictions--terrifying as they are--and doesn't like to have them pissed on just because they transcend from the normal hippie/happy-go-lucky love of God to the Almighty Divinely Inspired Word of God.

Yeah, I'll be sticking with this one for a bit, see if it delivers. I mean, it's got Clancy Motherfucking Brown in it, so it can't be all that bad, right? ::whistles and ignores Earth 2::

*****

Looks like the building management heard my suggestion about our front hallway to our apartment building. They recently replaced the doorframe downstairs from a metal bottomed, glass-topped door with just metal on the sides of it to being a brushed metal door with windows throughout and windows lining the door all around on the wall. It looks great, but a tad out of place next to the plaster walls and metal borders in front of plexiglass sheets that make up the rest of the wall.

Come eight this morning, shortly after I got woken up by the cats pulling down the living room curtain again, there was this pounding noise, and when I came down to leave for work, a guy was knocking out the plaster below the windows and the plexiglass had been removed. I look foward to seeing what goes up there instead. They've had surprisingly good taste with renovations so far.

Stupid apartment. Just when you think you're getting the upper hand, it bitch slaps you with a surprise left.

My new plan for graduated settling in has been to start doing dishes and then putting them away. I usually try to do some in the morning, put those away at lunchtime when I come home, and then do more that I put away when I get off work. This has had obvious results, as we now have all plates, bowls, and utensils in cabinets and drawers. I have to find all the pieces that belong in the kitchen, then give them a rinse and that's it. I even started to cart down the recycling (a lot of Diet Pepsi bottles, mostly) and the boxes that were emptied as a result. And I grabbed the garbage while I was at it.

Then I noticed that water was leaked out in a pool behind the garbage can and fridge. When feiran and I called the super, I heard her telling him on the phone that, no, it wasn't because of the freak rainstorm. Freak showers do not create puddles six feet from a window. Pipes with leaks might though. If the leak is behind the cabinets, that would undo most of my dish-settling work.

Plus, I got up super early to cover the first two hours of waiting for the cable guy, and the super was supposed to come between 9 and 10 as well. Surprise surprise, I left for work, no super. This is after yesterday when I was on my way home for lunch and I called to see if he could come up to see the shower and toilet, and had to repeatedly state that I would be there in minutes. I called three times in the space of an hour, until finally I got the super himself (I was calling his house, but his daughter-in-law handles calls, apparently) telling me that, no, contrary to what she'd been telling me, he wasn't imminently on his way, he'd be there tomorrow morning--this morning. You know, the one where he wasn't there.

All I need is for the cable guy to flake, too, and this will be a perfect start to my weekend. Just perfect.

Do you ever feel like just opening up and screaming in a public place?

I need to vent somehow, but I'm so exhausted that I'm just pocketing frustration.

I do like our new apartment. It's large, convenient from my work, and I can spread out my stuff and house it properly at the same time. We're going to have a nice TV, a real couch, counter space in the kitchen, an office (and, when all is arranged, a housewarming).

But the "going to have" part might kill me before I get to the "have" part. ( It sucks to be me. )

The exhaustion is just the steady wearing down of my soul from dealing with all these issues. I keep having to call, I have zero patience and I think the management is catching on and becoming as tired of our calls as we are of making them. But I'm not doing it to be annoying. If they'd had the place inhabitable by the time we arrived, this would never have been so involved.

On top of that, I'm filling out the empty spaces with furniture from home and other sources, depleting my already diminished funds because neither roommate has the cash to spare (I have something more than nothing, so it's all out of my pocket at this point, and even though I trust they will pay me back their even shares, it's making me very grouchy to be constantly paying out--which is made worse by the fact that not having the kitchen set up means we have to spend money on food all the fucking time).

Worse still, I have yet to fully adjust to sleeping with windows facing the street and the level of noise in our neighborhood. I wish I worked nights or something because every time I go home for lunch (usually bringing some with for feiran because she either can't leave because she's waiting for someone or another to show up and fix something or else because she's been sick recently), the street is empty and quiet. Middle of the day, nothing going on. Late at night: firecrackers, cars with stereos blasting. Earlier than I need to be awake in the morning: car horns, people shouting at windows instead of, you know, fucking buzzing the goddamned apartment where whoever the fuck they're looking for lives instead of waking up the goddamned fucking neighborhood.

I don't fall back asleep easy, so I'm sort of a stumbling mess first thing because I've been woken up at 7 am and then again at 8 am by such noises and I don't need to be up until 9 am to make it the third or a mile or so that I walk to work. I could try adjusting my sleep schedule and just starting my day earlier (which is a huge concession as I am the world's worst night owl) and going to bed earlier, too, but I don't know if I can arrange my tiredness schedule so perfectly. I get tired in the evening about 10 pm, which is too soon for even a 7 am wake up, and really, I do not want to be awake for three hours before I get to work--that would just make workdays seem even longer, and I've got looooong days as it is. By the time I've gotten a second wind, I'm up until 1:30-2 am.

Fucking hell, I'm tired.