I look away for five minutes, and suddenly it’s been almost a month since I posted anything in my blog. Well, hi guys. I’m still alive. To be honest, I can’t say I’m having that much fun with it, though.
Basically, I’m deep in the pit of home renovation hell. Every time I walk into my house, I swear to god that more things are wrong with it. I spent three hours today sanding shitty paint off a windowsill. Why? Because I’ve lost my goddamn mind. At least that’s my assumption. My house is a disaster area that has exactly 33% of a floor, and the rest is composed of broken 1970s tile, tack strips, killz sealer, and chthonic evil.
I’m also, since we’re being honest here (just between you and me, right?) a giant ball of stress because my inbox is full of emails letting me now that my qualifications as a geologist are great and I should feel totally proud of myself, but I’m not in the top pool of candidates, so fuck off. This is what happens when the industry a lot of geologists depend on is in a bust cycle. It sucks. I’m on my last three weeks of unemployment, so if you hear a high-pitched noise emanating from the vicinity of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, it’s just the sound of my skyrocketing blood pressure.
That said, I’ve still got my health. I’ll be in Dallas this coming weekend for FenCon, and on the way back I’ll be picking up my cats and bringing them back to Denver, finally. I have great, amazing, supportive friends. Friends who still love me even after helping me install ceiling fans or moving closet door tracks. Friends who buy me stress tacos when I tell them that I’m really thinking about just setting my house on fire and riding my bike to Mexico, because that sounds like an excellent alternative to having to spackle another fucking wall.
I love you guys. Really and truly. I don’t know why the hell any of you are friends with me any more, but I appreciate it.
I’m going to try to have some things to say in the new future (about certain problems I’ve noticed while scrounging for freelance work, about the joys of double-paned windows), but it kind of depends on how much more of my soul my house eats as to when that’ll be. Normal service should resume around the beginning of October, since that’s when there will be floor in my house again and I can get my furniture out of hock.
In the meantime, if you see a wild-eyed, spackle-covered ginger wandering the roads near you, don’t be afraid. Just give me a beer and point me back towards home. It’ll be okay.
3 replies on “Has it really been almost a month?”
I feel you on both counts. The constant barrage of “thanks but no thanks” is annoying, frustrating, and enervating. And, as the old quote goes, “I don’t mind the pain. It’s the hope that kills me.”
And renovating a house is at best a Sisyphean task. Even if you don’t discover that the floor under the tacky carpet has wood-rot, you find that the stain needed to refinish it is found only in one store on the other side of town that closes in five minutes.
But stay strong! There is light at the end of the tunnel. I know, because I sent a train in to find you…
Thanks, John. I’ll see you this weekend, right?
You won’t be able to help it. I think we are on three panels together. So which of us is stalking the other?