Friday, April 24, 2015

Can’t believe I’m saying this…

I don’t know if I like my new job’s hours.

I work 7-3:30 and I should be LOVING it. It’s not like I never went into work at 7, and I tend to burn out by 3, so these hours should be perfect… but after three weeks, I’m struggling to get my body into the rhythm of the new hours.

I haven’t been doing anything with my Ukrainian. I’ve had to stop with the tutoring because the hours that work for me usually (due to the time difference) no longer work for me. I’ve been trying to find the motivation to go to the library between 3:30 - 5, but that’s missing, too. I’m not sure how to reboot myself, but it has to happen soon.

——

I posted this on Facebook yesterday:

For those of you who like a good ghost story—I had to find a letter referring to a benefit I received when my father passed away. It was not where it belonged. Not the safe, not the ‘active’ files in my office, and not in the ‘storage’ files upstairs. I looked EVERYWHERE. So, I pulled some file folders related to the estate that shouldn’t have had that letter in it…

It was. Tucked between a pissy letter to the Toledo Coroner’s office (long story) and the addendum to the death certificate. EXACTLY where it belonged. *grumble*

The longer version is that I needed proof that my father’s pension payments would come to me for the rest of my life. I don’t know why, but the bank was requiring it as part of our mortgage refinancing. I called to request the document (because I couldn’t find the original), but I needed it ASAP, so I went on the search. The letter I needed should have either been in my office or upstairs in storage… in a folder labelled “PENSION DOX”. It wasn’t.

As I’m going through my storage area, I find three different folders full of my father’s estate crap. I’m not sure how long I need to keep it (although we’re going on 14 years now), but I haven’t had the emotional strength to go through all of it. So… I’m going through literally hundreds of pages of legal documents, notes I’ve made, my father’s address book, his to-do lists, everything and anything that I accumulated as part of closing that chapter of my life.

I get about 3/4 of the way through, and I am DONE. I can’t look at another page of this stuff. It just hurts so much, you know? All the letters from the collection agencies (dead men don’t pay bills and their daughters can’t afford to pay them either), all the back and forth with the attorney, the absolutely TERRIBLE obituary my father’s siblings wrote…

So. Just as I decide the document is gone, and I’m going to have to wait for the company to get their shit together, I hear my dad say, “It’s the next page.” Like he was sitting right the fuck behind me. I could even smell him: shoe leather and cigarette smoke. I decide to trust him, because, when disembodied voices of long-dead people tell you to do shit, you do it.

I finish reading the letter a co-worker wrote on my behalf to the Toledo Coroner’s office about the rude asshole who gave me a hard time when I asked for a copy of some document the life insurance company needed, and there it was. In all it’s two-paged, scribbled on, glory.

Of all the places that document should have been, that was the last place it belonged. I don’t know how the fuck it wound up in there. It shouldn’t have wound up there. The last time I needed that document was when we moved to Da Brook, and I had to change the direct deposit information. All the direct deposit information was in the active folder in my office. By rights, or pure laziness, it should have been in there as well. Paper clipped to it. (And I do have a very distinct memory of actually paper clipping that shit together and putting it in the yellow file folder in my office.)

How the fuck did it end up in an orange folder, labelled “Dad’s Estate 2/3” in between the angry letter and the addendum to the death certificate? (And why wasn’t the addendum paper clipped to the original like it should have been?)

I really wish I knew… Thankfully, D.O.D. is still looking out for me.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

I miss the Rugrats

I’ve started playing around with a piece of writing software called Scrivener and it’s pretty neat. I wish there was an iOS app, because I’m having trouble with the workaround. For whatever reason, I can’t get it to sync properly. I’m digging it, though, because I don’t have to write linearly. It’s been great to start a new section of the story and be able to jump around from part to part as inspiration strikes.

I used to love Storiyst, but the major problem I had with it was when I was trying to write 30 Day OTP Challenges. I couldn’t plot with index cards and move them independently of the text. I contacted them, and there wasn’t a workaround for that that worked quite in the way I wanted it to. Maybe I never played with the software enough, but training was hard to find and while the forums are awesome, I always have a problem with the jerks. They always want to tell me to start with things I already know, or tell me to RTFM, and no one ever has constructive input.

I’m not finding that with Scriv.

It’s interesting and fun to change things up and I really love the level of personalisation that I can get with Scriv. I can change icons, fonts on those icons, and it’s just bloody brilliant. I don’t know know why it took me to long to finally play with it. I mean, I got it at a steep discount when I won NaNoWriMo a few years back, but I was so satisfied with Storyist that I never really wanted to change. It’s been sitting on the laptop taking up room I don’t have, and it wasn’t until I decided to start removing software I don’t use that I even remembered I had it.

Now - moving my projects between iPhone and laptop issues aside - I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to go back to Storyist unless it’s to pull out old projects and import them to Scriv.

——

First week at the new job in the books.

I went though a metric fuck-ton of webinar training. It was a little weird and I was starting to be concerned, but then we went a little more in detail about the actual job and now I’m exited again.

It has the opportunity to be heavy on the cost accounting side, which is awesome. I’ve always wanted to be a cost accountant and now - a gazillion years into my accounting career - I finally found an entry-level cost position.

Two steps forward, twelve steps back.

I don’t know why I can’t figure out how to continually move forward, but every step is movement to somewhere…

I think I need a fucking map.

Oh well, the journey’s part of the fun.

Thursday, April 02, 2015

UMBRIDGE

I’m in between jobs - start the new one Monday - so I’ve spent my week deep cleaning the house. I didn’t touch three rooms, but I will. (The extra bedroom is getting a window replaced, so that will need to be cleaned when they’re done. Then there’s my scrapbook room and my office. Those two I’ve been putting off for a long time. I may start my office today.)

I only clean like this when I’m upset, so that tells you how my last week at the old job went.

Yeah.

—-

The little Drarry fic that could has exceeded my expectations.

My favourite comment on the piece so far: Please for the love of Merlin, describe the sex!! Other than that, it’s awesome.

Unfortunately (Fortunately?), I suck at writing detailed sex scenes. Plus, these versions were young, confused, boys. They’re of age, and not virgins, but I think making allusions to het sex and blow jobs is enough.  It wouldn’t have enhanced the plot and it would have made me totally uncomfortable to post. (I keep thinking of my 15 year old beta… I don’t want to write something filthy that someone that young can read.) Besides, if they want to read detailed sex, all they need to do is search for “PWP” on AO3.

But, you know, it was awesome even without the sex.

*happy dance*

—-

I really wanted to take a bubble bath today, but I’m out of bubble bath.

Getting bubble bath would require taking a shower so that I’m decent enough to leave the house… That seems counter-productive to me. Ugh.

In other bathroom news, our dripping sink was finally fixed. The plumber was a young kid and totally hot. What a nice way to start my day.