Ayn's Multiple World

Long First Day Back at the Office

Good morning. Today we posted the last post we neglected to post from January 27th and already today is February 8th. That means almost two weeks ago we wrote … yeeks things are going steadily worse in that direction. Ok, maybe it’s actually better just I suppose depends which part you are talking to. It always seems like quite a bit has happened from one writing to another. We’re just coming off from almost a week spent at home because we were not handling things well.

The last straw was that our insurance company stopped paying for the medicine we use to help us concentrate and focus. Yeah … like we can do that right? Dr. Marvin was still prescribing it, but to take it we would have to pay $505 a month for the medicine. That was like NOT going to happen. The first couple of days without it we got foggy and needed a lot of sleep. One day we slept almost 17 hours straight through. We had gone to work on Monday and then Tuesday morning, but had to go home and then we ended up taking off a day and another day and another. Thursday we saw Dr. Marvin and he gave us a new medication and we started taking that on Friday.

Now it’s Monday and we’re back. We’re still checking out through Dr. Marvin to argue our case with the insurance company. We’re hoping to hear something today, but I also don’t have a problem if this other medicine works – not paying for the more expensive. This one is costing only $10.

The medicine we’re on right now is Ritalin. It’s like the most common medicine for people with ADD. It didn’t make sense to give me medicine to help me calm down when I needed to be revved up, but Dr. Marvin explained – though I didn’t understand that the medicine is counter-intuitive in that its actually a stimulant giving the right parts of the brain a chance to work through its obstacle. He said in fact that it might make me feel a little high like being really buzzed on caffeine.

I guess it does that a bit as far as we can see, but it’s also added to coffee making it a little more difficult to stay a sleep – though we weren’t good in that area either. Last night I woke up about 2:30 am after going to bed about midnight and I couldn’t calm down my work fears. Finally, I fell asleep in the living room.

We’ll talk to Dr. Marvin about it. If the medicine is helping I don’t want to take it away that fast.

I think I’m concentrating better in that we took on a project with Rich. It of course being me turned out to be an expensive project. We had gone last into the tax place and by Thursday or so we’d gotten our money back from taxes. It only ended up being $900, but $900 is better than no-$900. We spent about $525 on the purchased Item. We’re going to send part of it - $45 worth back, so will recoup a little. It turned out that we didn’t need an extra set of cords we ordered. I think it should be relatively easy in that the box hasn’t been opened yet. But, I think we have to open the box to get the return shipping. I’m not sure … we’ll have to talk to Rich.

We just talked to him a second, but only to check on getting together for Joe’s birthday. It was last Friday. We’re thinking Wednesday after work, because he and Cari have the day off and Rich is able to schedule around his day. It might mean taking off work an hour early. It will depend on when he and Cari have to leave to get to their karate class that night. Good good I texted him. He’s usually pretty good about answering them, though he never really talks while he’s workin. Maybe he’ll respond back soon.

Ok, now as to the item we purchased … I’m not sure if it was the best decision, but still seems like the necessary decision. We know we have to get new breaks – pretty sure about it, but we had some money left over too so we thought at first at least we could get the dresser and then we thought after Apple announced the iPad that we’d get that instead, but it turned out our big purchase was

Wait wait … we’re getting Joe … plans are almost finalized. It sounds like Outback, Wednesday the 9th at 4:30 pm in Villa Park. I think that’s very doable. I’ll call Rich … ok that’s done … we’re all good. I said to Rich we’ll give him $100 but he’ll have to pay for dinner. But, Rich said we should just do dinner and give him $50 because the dinner might be too expensive. So we figured that would be a good idea. Joe is up for the meeting.

I’ve seen a few pictures of he and Cari, but haven’t heard too much about him.

Maury is also a distant thought. He’s had off about 2 weeks for an ankle injury from Volleyball so has been sleeping either at his place or over at his new girl friends. Her name might be Stephanie, but I’m not sure. She has two girls about 9 and 11 so things mix well with Maury’s two girls, but I think everything is going very fast. But that would just be a mom’s impression. Good good … Joe just said thanks a bunch and then that’s all that is on that. And, well about that on the other place.

I haven’t said too much lately on Thom either. I don’t know if we wrote about the part of getting him a shaver for Christmas but we enjoyed that – I think I wrote of shopping together online. He’s a Corporal now so we’re real pleased with him. He’s changed positions and I think he’s moved up in intelligence because he said it was a move up and he can’t say ANYthing about the job. I hope he likes it better. I think he was having trouble with a few people in command. I’m pretty sure Thom and his brothers are still riding a bit on arrogance, so I’m thinking Thom has something to do with it, but then they are our kids so nothing is wrong with them – just need more loving. Hehehe well Moms are like that.

Ok, now back to the other thing. We got Rich a sheet-fed scanner. It was pretty expensive, but as to how much they usually go it wasn’t bad. I took some ribbing from Bob because he wanted to insist that we could get one from a multi-tasker for $80 and it would be as good. Yeah … like right. I heard of this one working really well and especially with OCR. That has something to do with recognizing letters and words and such from a PDF or other file so you could manipulate the data. I heard about it when working with our Evernote. We should be able to hook it up so it goes there immediately … I didn’t get to that part over the weekend, but its on the agenda. I had forgotten whether or not we’d canceled that account, but fortunately found we hadn’t … it does a lot and is only $5 a month. Other stuff got canceled including Netflix, Apple Me and the program that read our other computers while we were away. I know of that stuff being out there and when we need it actively we’ll look into it, but for now am working with Rich to get accounts cleared up. That has to be one of the most positive things of late.

We talked also to the mortgage guy from the bank. He helped give us some ideas how to clear up our credit a bit. We’ll take that advise and hopefully work on it when Rich is gone. He’s going away this weekend for his big trip down to Alabama. He’s looking very forward. I just hope to spend the time keeping up with the house and then we’ll feel better about him being gone. This last week its been pretty much a train wreck. But, let’s get back to the scanner for now.

I spent the extra money to have it come in on Saturday the day after we had shopped for it. We were feeling better I think with the medicine. It is a pretty sleek machine and is incredibly fast. It just took about 2-3 minutes to run 45 sheets of addresses through it. There is some disappointment in that when we sent it to the spreadsheet, it only filled in one column so we weren’t able to use it as effectively as we’d hoped. You know like name in one column address in the next and so forth. I guess that was hoping for too much and our source didn’t have titles like “name” “address” and such.

It did print out nicely in an organizing space, and then from there could be sent also to Word. It maintained the format and was easily manipulated. I was really glad that it worked that far. But, then Rich came home grumpy about it and then forced the issue that his database of marketing names is about 17,000 and in one particular format. This meant I’d have to go through one label at a time and input the data. If you could quickly copy and paste, that would be possible, but I found it faster to just enter the data by hand. The nice part was that I could put the copy on the bottom of the screen and the form we were typing to on the top part of the screen and very easily switch up or down to forward the screens as we typed. It helped that the form is in Excel so we had full sorting capability and word search.

That being said we could order things by zip code or city, and then by company name. It matched very well with the sheets we were copying addresses from.

The rows across were each visible from one screen. There was a little craziness in that things scroll very fast sometimes and I haven’t figured out how to get it to stop other than maintaining a very light touch on the pad being controlled with our right thumb. The things we are adding are the business name, SIC code (job code) and then a description of the job, and then address, city, state and zip, and then the owners full name, his name with a Mr. or Ms. Salutation, and then the date the record was added and then last if the info had it – we would add the web address of the company. That’s basically our record.

I found over Saturday and Sunday night that I could do about 5 pages during a sitting – and that’s with a lot of watching TV in the middle. The first night I wasn’t so interested, but was listening to it with Rich, and then the second night the Super Bowl was on so I’d stop every commercial to watch it and I’d watch when the crowd got excited – ok, maybe not too fast at typing under the circumstances, but we added about 250 companies and Rich said that was great – he’d last put in about 50 names, but he was adding them 7-8 a session because of his time constraints.

That’s the biggest deal on all this. Well two things really. I didn’t mind doing the work and as long as I’m not sewing it’s a good way to use my TV time. I like the part that I can do it sitting under the blanket cuddled between the kitties on my lounger. YeHaH! It’s pretty easy work and monotonous, but I could imagine that I was really helping out Rich and that made all the difference in the world. I told him that I was going to take over this job from him. He seemed to like that pretty much. It’s taking a bit to settle into those thoughts though. He wanted to learn my method to see if it would save him time. I think the nicest part of having the scanned in sheets is that if it would be faster to him to copy and paste that would work, but if he’s like me and is a faster typist – it keeps the work straight in front of you without needing so much space for copy and an extra light. When you lose concentration too its much easier to find your place because basically a unit of information is up on the screen at a time – though 4 units to a visible row. The job is a lot harder when you are sitting at a desk and chair because that will never be as comfortable as a lounger.

I wish I could have done it another way, but for the present, I just don’t see it.

Some of his records have to be updated – he’s got them entered as far back as 2001.

Soooo you just gotta tackle them one at a time. These people on the list are the ones who get his advertisements for work to the workshops Rich is supplying. Most people throw those kinds of things away, but on the one occasion that they do read the add and call Rich – then its real money in the bank. Rich would like to get up to $1 million worth of sales this year. I think he’s on a far slower pace then that at the present. He really has to get out there and hustle some jobs, but that seems to be what he’s best at. So … optimistically we’ll help him make a difference.

We told him we didn’t want money for the work, but if he occasionally picked up a computer expense or such then that would be ok. We just have to have enough money to go around getting priority things on the list.

We talked about a special fund on the way home from his Mom’s on Sunday where we could be both putting money toward the purchase of a house. Rich is very defensive as to taking money away from his fishing hobby. He got down on me for complaining of all the new tackle on the table sitting in their boxes and for it costing $1000 for this next week to go fishing. He’s got a very expensive hobby. We figure if that weren’t happening we’d be in a much better condition to take care of buying a house, but we will never consciously take fishing away from Rich in whichever form it takes. That is the one thing that seems to give him a steady and constant sense of pleasure. The above cost probably doesn’t cover the cost of taking and readying his boat from winter storage. *sigh*

It seems another thing learned from going to his mother’s which is like an hour trip – that he also seems to have opened up some communications as to talking about business and in this way we seemed to help him too. Usually, if he talks too much we shut down that conversation, because usually its taking up time in our leisure areas. But, I think if he is ever going to have money from work, its going to be because I can help him with things like this and take some pressure off his mind. I told him last night that we’ll consider it my second job like his second job is the officiating. That way I won’t feel so guilty when he’s out til all hours making some bucks. And, when he does come home he won’t feel guilty for not continuing his work load. It just seemed like a natural all the way through that I take up this obligation.

I next have to worry about my steadiness in doing anything. I’m pretty good at almost all I do first off, but then I slip off the wagon and just want to play. I like the part now this part of his work seems to be like playing. There’s another benefit, because its building stronger ties between us when he can look over from his comfy chair and know that I’m doing this to help him. Hehehe ok, well there is some helping us too. It goes back to that part if we have a slush account for the house maybe periodically, he will get ahead enough to add some money to it. That be like earning my house … ok, well it’s slow, but I’d get to feeling like I were doing something toward it. And, then Rich would be thinking of a dedicated account to be feeding beside just his fishing account. It would be OUR accounts – the two of us together. And, in the far run that’s what a house effort should be like anyway.

Part of me being down over this last week was the medicine and part of it was about the money I didn’t have to buy a house and the money Rich said he didn’t have either. We mentally don’t want to believe him and we often take an attitude that he’s holding back from us. We talked to the mortgage guy – I might have mentioned that – it was an effort to get our credit up by clearing some debts, writing to some medical expenses, and in one case using our charge card a bit to show we can make payments. There are other things too we wrote down, but this was the gist of it for now. We still want Rich to talk to the mortgage guy, and we told him what the guy said that it looked as if he could buy a house on his own. He said we couldn’t average my credit score to be 620 and that we’d have to go with the 613 score which wasn’t high enough – needs to be 620 and he said that my debt-earning ratio wasn’t good enough, but that Rich’s was and he’s the one with the 738 score so that he’d qualify for FHA or conventional mortgage.

The mortgage guy said that if it shows that the wife is consistent in paying house payments for a year then that would help out, but he has to look at the divorce papers to see how they are written. Right now Rich is considering that too personal. There’s another problem in that some of Rich’s income is coming in under the table. And, we don’t know without him doing that for real if he is going to show enough income to do the house. There’s another situation that Rich is explaining to me and that of paying down his debts. It’s what gives him good credit in the first place.

He’s got too many credit cards so that’s not helping, but he says they are all zeroed out. He’s put a good part of his debt though on his second mortgage. He’s been making extra $1000 a month payments there so that’s good and he’s trying to pay off the boat. I think the first expense might be like $40,000 and the boat would be like originally $16,000. He says he’s also paid down $40,000 of lawyer fees this last year, so it’s not like all the money is going for more frivolous things. I would I think in the future like to see more of how the money works so I can feel we are working on financial things together and that we by not taking out money from him are helping him to do things he needs to do financially.

Hmm, we just called Kim from the Ryland homes that we like so much … we’re going to put another picture here just to show again how beautiful this kitchen is that is totally captivating our brain. We’ve left it to our left just to keep us in perspective.



Wow this picture dropped in is the large size that fits across my page. Man oh man what a beauty. I think this part of our life is called visualization. If we dream it hard enough we can make it turn out for real. That’s the thing about a house you shouldn’t buy until its everything you dreamed of.

For the record … not this weekend but the weekend before it … Rich and I met out in Bolingbrook – he’d been west of there visiting his mother and we’d been out with a Realtor visiting other properties. Our tasks ended at the same time and we were both not far from the location of his Big Bass store. So we met there and he went in to shop – I opted for staying out in the car and napping. I had been in and out of about 7 houses. The Realtor was doing very well with me and we’ll go into that later. But, after that we went to dinner and then after that Rich agreed to look at the Ryland model with me.

I think he was pretty much blown away by the house. He told me I had very good taste. And, he said that sure he would move in the next day if he could. That made me feel like a million dollars. Well, we don’t have a million dollars, but it did an awful lot to think that we could both be working toward the same house goal. He did think still it was more than we could afford, but that it would be a nice lifestyle to live on a golf course and not be responsible for shoveling or for lawn mowing. Another thing he said was that it was too big and that we didn’t need the rooms down in the basement that already come finished. We forgot that part until later, but when he repeated it … we said well, I would really like more space because it becomes options, but we could buy the less expensive model – on a slab and not pay for having a basement. That would take off like $40,000. Afterward, I went down the options too that had originally started at about $75,000 – the ones I’d worked out with the home builder, and when I took out the majority keeping the REALLY must haves like a fireplace – then the option list was more like $20,000 so our house had gone in one swoop from $294,000 + 75,000 = $369,000 to $254,000 + $20,000 = $274,000. See I can be reasonable too, right? AND, then we’d still have the house of our dreams.

Rich also came out very strongly while at the house as to having his mother and or Bud move in with us. I think its going to take a lot longer than that to convince me that its going to happen differently, but he says they will most likely stay out at the mobile home until they die. I don’t know what he thinks is going to happen if Bud died first, but maybe then he’d be more practical in having her move in.

But, in the meantime even without the extra room in the basement – the house has 3 bedrooms and laundry on the first floor – plus two baths. That would mean there’d be a master bedroom, one for guests and the one up front would be turned into the office or library. That would be a good deal.

Here we figured you needed to see this picture again. It is the view from the middle of the kitchen to the living room, and from the middle of the living room to the kitchen. Can’t … hold on … we’ll have to come back to this thought Rich just came in with a sub sandwich to split!!! Let’s leave these two pictures though k?





Ok, we’re back. Rich is working in the other room and we’re here back to typing. I wish the picture was lighter so you could see better the longer depth – especially with the picture being in the living room looking toward the kitchen. It’s a pretty good shot of the open hallway though. I’ll have to remember to ask Kim if she calls back about floor changes if there isn’t any stairs going down to the basement. I can’t say enough how much I love the design. I suppose it’s not everyone’s style, but it’s so much me – matter of fact the me I’ve barely met yet.

Rich and us were talking over lunch – pretty much about his business concerns. He’s having trouble with his main contract paying him fully and on time. He just says he doesn’t have the money, but I’m sure he’s taking out his full check. I have a hard time listening to this kind of stuff because often Rich will go through the same complaints without fixing them. Like this is not the first time that this guy has been shady with the money, and I don’t like this guy anyway because he’s the reason Rich is doing a cash business. That’s not going to help with the house.

Something else happened or is happening too. Something Rich is doing between his son and wife so that he is quick-dealing the house over to her. I haven’t heard of any obvious benefits to him in doing so. What is she going to do with that much more power over the house where he still has to be on the credit or not getting his portion of money from it. If she’d just get rid of the house we could get money out for a down-payment from it. Make a note to question this part more again later.

This is the kind of stuff that Rich and us just sorta knaw over. He doesn’t want to tell me everything and part of it really if not most of it isn’t really my business, but as long as she is wearing MY house around HER house, I’m going to think I should be concerned. HMPF!

We went into talking too about the computers. He’s holding back on bringing my computer in. The cords are in places and the machine too awkward for me to handle, but I will manage it somehow if he doesn’t get it in between today and tomorrow.

It’s driving me batty not having the bigger computer. And, now there is more reason than ever. I can’t load the program for his marketing on my little computer, so that means after he goes next weekend WITH his computer, I will have no computer to do the business work of his that I told him I would do. That’s getting me riled up. He complains about not having time, but he has time for the fishing radar thingy so he can do one more errand while he’s off real work doing that.

It’s a wrong thing to leave me desperate for something to be working on to while away the hours he’s not going to be sharing with me. I know that I can go to the quilting and maybe its time to do that, but I don’t know why we’ve backed off that lately. I don’t want to count on it as my only resource. He got me a little fussidy. He said too that I’d agreed to do with $100 less a month … It’s like WHAT! When did I do that – I don’t THINK so! No way in hell I’d give up money without having made something conditional out of it. If he’s short on money it’s not going to come off my allowance.

He said something like we already talked over a deal. I just happened to have that deal paper with me so I brought it out. This is the deal I waved in front of him.

There weren’t any deals – he said well yeah this is part of that deal … NO NOTHING was part of that deal … THIS IS the DEAL and if we are not doing it – we have nothing dealed between us. What exactly is the reason I’m suddenly supposed to lose $100 without getting something from it? Like is it going toward our house? Can we open an account with it? I might agree toward something like that. Hmm, I guess I’m a little more angry than I thought I was, but there was a client in the next room so we didn’t want to upset that apple cart. It’ll come back though because this is a NON-deal!

Again MY deal was that he stop giving me the $600 and I give HIM $570, but I also give him the bills for rent, electric and cable. Rent - $900, Electric - $70, and Cable - $200. That’s $1170 – ok, I give him $585 instead of $570. I can do that math. That’s so he’s paying the bill but he’s got his $585 and I got my $585 so we’re both still splitting the bill, but then he can claim off on his taxes for building expense and I don’t have to worry about the bills – Right now he’s paying me $600 cash – well $500 if you have it his way and I’m paying out the bills of $1170. Just a mathematical change. One way or another – whoever pays the basic three home bills gets the extra $600 – HOW can he think I’ll accept $500. Then he said something about the food expense … well that’s about enough to run me up the wall.

That WAS our agreement and if he wants me to cover my own food expense then I would like to order my own dinners and have choice with what’s going on for dinner and I’m going to be able to spend money at the grocery store. Yes, there is a lot of new deals going to happen if he starts changing rules without me gaining some advantage. Obviously he is. How am I supposed to be happy with his fishing costs and away time when I’m thinking he’s not paying for his half AND he’s having a whole lot of fun without me. Especially if I’ve taken on a second job working for him for nothing! Sheesh … I sure hope he doesn’t leave before I get a chance to talk to him because this is NOT going well!

*sigh* Ok, I’m going to have to think of it as just partitioned off to later,

because I’ve got to move forward in progressing our thoughts.

As to us being at his mothers yesterday … he fried me a little before we went because I had and always ask him what time do you want me to be ready. He said 10 am so I said fine. I took my shower at 5 am and hung around in pajamas until it was time to get ready – 15 minutes ahead of time. But at 9:30 am he said well get ready lets go. It was like NOOOOOO that isn’t the deal. You tell me when and I prepare myself to carefully be around at that time. I don’t like surprises or being told to get read on command. We’ve long since argued out that point and I see in general he seems to be regressing.

But, I started to move toward the end, telling him not one more word on rushing us.

We did leave 10 minutes early, but I wasn’t going to be held accountable that his schedule had changed and he was adding things to do before going to his moms. Hey that’s not my problem! Now if it was about taking the time to drop off my computer … well then there might be some advantage. But, I wasn’t seeing it. Then he said he was going to pick up some lunch for his mother, but I’d heard that conversation … He said his mother had asked for donuts. Rich said donuts aren’t good for her – and it was like WHAT! Your mother hasn’t asked for much … she asked for donuts and she probably WANTS donuts. You agreed on the phone and you can’t switch up. Then he said I will bring 6 chocolate donuts. Huh??

You are not getting me breakfast OR lunch and now we as four people need to split six donuts and none of a kind that I or maybe someone else would have chosen? It was like he wasn’t making sense. First when serving a group of people you get a variety and second you get enough so that everyone can at least have 2 donuts – IF that’s going to be the only thing served AND if its replacing breakfast and lunch!

Basically – get a dozen variety. It was like we were pulling teeth all the way.

But then, he was having such a hard time with his mom we decided to cut some slack.

I guess he’d not been in for a while and he thought she was being a little stubborn. I was going to say another word, but I thought better of it.

So as mentioned before we went in the majority of the trip listening to him talk about business.

HMPF! He just came back again … he’d been talking to Sister about computers. We had heard like Rich that she called him up over the intercom, but then he came back charged up and started asking me questions about what kind of computer and about some grant and about … well no I don’t think so. She didn’t call me up she called you up. It’s an insult because I’ve always been the one to take care of extra computer questions. And, so here was Rich getting me involved through the back door. It was like I don’t know if she’s having you do it and not giving me my due then YOU figure it out. Boy we’re in a little bit of a sucky mood. But, he can do his own homework. I’m not going to be managed. Just tell me what my job or role is … what I got to do and when you want it done … but yes there’s a cost a little bit of a give and take and I won’t just be taken from. HMPF!

Hmm, is it going to get better any time soon. Well there was one other bad part of the mother deal. We were going through the four of us Bud, Rich, Mom and me general conversations, but then we got stuck on a point. There we just resolved that! It took the majority of them to argue for at least a half hour about the costs and services of the jitterbug phone. One of their friends had gotten them one and they were interested in using it but they didn’t know the rules. Each of them took a different perspective and they argued and argued. When we came in it was like saying to them that the service is open 24 hours around the clock … why not just call them instead of continuously arguing. Rich kept pretending that I wasn’t talking or didn’t know what I was saying and he kept arguing over points that weren’t clearly spelled out in their advertisement.

I was trying not to go crazy with it. Why did they all have to know everything though they together argued about everything? Why couldn’t we call the authority?

I should now thinking about it just taken my phone and made the call. Rich at one point when forced to stop and hear our words was saying that he couldn’t get through on his phone out in the area … yeah but MY phone works and your mom’s land line works. It was like he’d rendered himself helpless. Just like the question of going over his figures with the mortgage guy. Why don’t you just check it out?

The simple answer to the above is yes 50 minutes for $14.99 a month means just that. In any one given month you can talk 50 minutes and carry them over for 30 extra days so you never get more than 100 minutes and that would be only if you didn’t make calls the first month. And, then your phone service wouldn’t get cut off, but after that you’d be paying .35 a minute. Basically then you are paying .30 for the first 50 minutes and .35 a minute after that. They have a better deal with the 19.99 in that you get .20 per first 100 minutes and after that .35 cents. Ok, that’s enough of that. Just that the point of the phone gets cut off … well that’s not true. How could they make their .35 a minute if they cut you off.

Unfortunately, the words that the salesman used with Bud shouldn’t have been taken literally as being “cut-off” he meant cut-off as to any minutes after you would be charged more cost per minute.

The whole point was that Rich and the others needed to continue arguing and it was driving me crazy. I just don’t see … there are resources can’t it be checked over or let go? After that we seemed to all get around better, but it was only when Rich stubbornly put down the pamphlet that wasn’t dripping with the answers he was looking for … his question was very specific. My point? I hate arguments. Just get it done and over with.

We talked about that on the way home. I don’t remember the words we were using just the effect of him knowing everything as absolutely true and wouldn’t budge. Every time he starts off, “No … “ it means he’s going to disagree with you … not think out
the points, and not give any ground for discussion. That battle is long from over.

It’s almost like there’s some security of only thinking the problem once and not seeing others viewpoints or angles, which is especially hard when opinions should count for something too.

I don’t know why we got carried into the negative here. Rich and I were actually getting along pretty good the majority of the day. We stayed at his mom’s house 2 hours and then stopped in for a half hour over at Bob’s. Marcia was over and we listened to her as the guys discussed fishy stuff with bowling on in the background. Toward the end Bob brought out some apple pie he’d made for Rich. I think he appreciated my honest compliment, but on the way home Rich said that from now on I could eat Bob’s apple pie only. Sheesh … It was HIS friend I was complimenting – and … it was just a couple of sentences. I told him why I liked the pie.

I did get a really nice hug from Bob. I don’t always. Sometimes he hangs back when I’m giving Marsha her hug. Then I don’t go out to get him. But, this time it was long and full to the point I thought he was teasing me and I was starting to think let me go let me go! Poor Bob he just can’t win.

After that is when Rich dropped me off. I would have just as well sat with Bob and Marsha but he was going to bring her home and I wouldn’t have been comfortable sitting around without having the new program from Rich’s computer to continue the work. Better I go home.

Our place was just such a mess it was hard to handle. Yeeks … who did that! I’m actually pretty sure that was my fault. With being at home we started sinking back to our old patterns where I was making messes all over and not doing anything but getting up for the bathroom and kitchen. Clothes and dishes were being dropped everywhere and the boxes sat around from getting the new scanner. I did manage to finally start up the dishwasher and put them away, but I never got around to getting Rich’s underwear and that fact had come up at his moms. *sigh. Ok, we can do better than that.

I’ll tell Rich when I talk to him that I know he’s having difficulty because I made such a mess of my domesticity and that I will straighten it out after I eat. Well, we wouldn’t want to push things as far as before!!! That be like way too much.

It’s enough now to take responsibility for it and just do it before he has to complain about it. Let’s think … I think we left off with what to do with the boxes … like are we keeping the machine. I’d like to think yes on that score even though it was expensive. We’ll go into that in a minute. The other thing is that we need a new place for the machine. We think it should go on top of Rich’s files with the printer, but it means coming up for a spot for those two black trays of assorted stuff. Maybe we’ll have to pile better some stuff on that cabinet next to my comfy couch and we could put the office part into the desk cabinet? I don’t know we wanted to hold space for Rich’s poker chips, but does this mean we’re going to lose a display cabinet for practical? Hmm, don’t like that idea. I don’t know where else to put it. I guess I’ll just have to stack some books differently OR, we could put it in the front hall closet. There’s a lot of stuff there – well not a way lot, but it would be a good place too. Just do a little rearranging. Hardest part there is because of Rich’s pictures of maps. We never made progress with that either.

I think one more thing that deserves to be mentioned is that we’re going to need to do something about our bedroom when Rich is gone. I have in mind doing something with his lateral files and the paperwork in our bedroom. But that’s like being a pet peeve of ours. We don’t like all his divorce stuff in our bedroom. It’s just contrary.

posted by Ann Marie @ 2/08/2010 04:07:00 PM Comments: 0