Gimme Some Duct Tape

So's I can start mending that broken heart referred to in the last post.

We're not going anywhere after all.

We got ourselves in the mindset that we're moving, checked into my transferring (only part-time was available right now), had a quick analysis done on the house for resale value, called the mortgage company for payoff info...

and with all that's involved with our move, the costs involved and the time we needed to be able to do so, it's not cost-effective for them to transfer Ed after all.

I'm not too pleased with his employer right now. Upheave my whole life, give us a few days to mull it over and look into how quickly we can be there, and then yank the whole thing.

Ooog!

Well, it did make me think about how much this home means to me, and to us.

Aaaaand I decided it was high time to really clean out the accumulated crap and either donate or have one helluva garage sale (anybody wanna buy an old Compaq laptop? Works great, but has no USB ports...) And I found that most of the repainting I thought I'd have to do can be avoided by using Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. But now I've got superclean spots on the walls, so I've gotta get more Mr. Clean Magic Erasers and do the walls completely. Still beats painting, though.

Aaahhh... home to stay after all. I think I'll go make a mess and not clean it up.

- posted by Stephanie @ 7:48 PM

 
Here I Sit, Brokenhearted...

Nah, it's not potty-time humor. I'm not gonna finish that...

I'd planned to finally catch up here with something about our new car (an '02 Impala), extolling its many luxuries (standard features, it turns out, on the car) and saying how wonderful it is(not really) to be putting three hundred dollars a month into a car payment instead of into a gas-hogging Suburban's gas tank; To say something about how it turns out that the guy who hit my car at Discount Tire had let his insurance lapse and now Discount Tire has to pay to fix my car, once I have the time to get an estimate so they can cut me a check for that amount; to just catch up on things in general and maybe wish our veterans (of which my husband is one) a happy Veteran's Day (but never did get to that post, and the reason why is coming up next)...

Ed's been offered a promotion, a substantial raise and a transfer.

To Las Cruces, New Mexico. Home of the New Mexico State Aggies and a a bunch of people who don't mind living in a small college town about a half-hour from El Paso.

I don't wanna fucking move.

New places are all well and good, I like checking out new areas and really, trading one small city for another really isn't all that bad an idea. Especially a small area where it doesn't snow (there's palm trees in Las Cruces).

I don't know if I can transfer. There's three Walgreens in Las Cruces, but until tomorrow, I won't know if there's any space for me in any one of them. So I may lose 8 years of seniority, 8 years of hard-earned (and still too little) wage increases, 8 years of vesting in my retirement fund, 8 years of earning stock options... shit.

Plus, I have a house to sell. To clean up and out first, to repaint the baseboards in, to clean the carpet in, to pack and... to say goodbye to.

The little stick we planted seven years ago is now a majestically large pear tree that produced more fruit than we could eat and could give away. The tiny shrubs that we picked out with such care at Home Depot nearly nine years ago, in their little three-for-ten-dollar pots, are now taller than the six-foot fence. Every bit of concrete that we've laid down has Mason's signature and his age at the time scratched into it. I have a feeling the new owners, whoever they may be, will want the concrete left whole and would object to us taking all those corners with us.

The strawberry garden is finally producing grocery-store sized berries. The wisteria bushes love us so much that they flower twice (and if you know wisteria, you'd know this is unusual).

And, of all the stupid things, I'll miss the smooth-top range and matching built-in microwave we put in six years ago.

The room I'm typing in used to be a patio. Seven years ago, we enclosed it with screen, then decided walls were nicer, and so were windows. So we did that, too. All by ourselves, with scrap from the homes being built around us, we made this room. I remember painting it, Ed and I, listening to the old CD player that was beginning to skip (Billy Joel's 'River of Dreams' and Def Leppard's 'Hysteria') and thinking that it was time to replace the CD unit of the stereo because the thump of the errantly-tracking laserhead was beginning to really annoy.

I remember painting the house before we moved in (the builder's paint was watered down and yucky), sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags with candles burning (the utilities weren't on yet, and wouldn't be for two more days) and living on fast food and soda from a cooler in the echoey kitchen...

It's tearing out my heart to say goodbye to this house. I'll have the memories, but damn...

Home is where my family is, and this place can't be home for us any more.

- posted by Stephanie @ 7:42 PM

 
On George Bush

I’m more than disappointed with the results of the recent presidential election. I was really hoping to get the current leadership out of the White House.

It’s not that I think George Bush is a bad man (with a capital B)... I don’t. I just don’t think he’s a particularly bright man. Intelligent enough, I suppose, but not of the caliper needed to run our nation. Nor is he evil, he’s not the antichrist... matter of fact, he’s not overtly anything. Left to his own devices, I think he’d come off only marginally better than, well, bland.

I think he realized his limitations as well. So, after becoming president after the election of 2000 (read into that phrasing what you will), he surrounded himself with a Cabinet and advisors whom he perceived as being smarter than himself. And they seemed to be... in a cunning, razor-sharp teeth sort of way.

What we’ve got is an average Joe with snake-whisperers in his ear.

It’s no wonder he doesn’t admit when he’s made a mistake... when one’s not sure what’s going on, when one’s not privy to all the details of a situation (or can’t grasp them all, or see the full picture of what all those details mean or can become if not handled properly), it’s difficult to admit to what part one actually played in a bad call of judgement.

Sure, you or I could easily use the excuse of not being fully informed, of being ill-informed, or just not being able to assimilate all the data and nuances and therefore did something we shouldn’t have, said something that would have been better left unspoken, or didn’t do what was really the best thing to be done. We can all cry, "But I didn’t know! I didn’t understand it all!" and get away with it. Our shortcomings would eventually be forgiven, the mistake would be corrected, fixed, or worked around, and we’d just get on with gettin’ on.

It’s not so easy when you’re the leader of America. Bad decisions wreak havoc on our lives and budgets. Weaknesses in comprehension will be pounced upon and completely exploited by the same sneaky bastards who thought to declare a war sideways against the United States by blowing up innocent civilians who were simply trying to earn a living.

It would appear that President Bush is rethinking his key staff and there’s talk of making changes. I desperately hope the people he chooses this time will be more of a mind of what’s best for all of America’s citizens.

December-born optimism is ingrained into every cell of my being, but I’m having a hard time convincing myself to hold on to that particular hope.

- posted by Stephanie @ 8:03 PM

 
People Who Can't Bother to Vote...

Have no right to complain about their government.

So go out and give yourselves the right to bitch!

See ya tomorrow, when (hopefully) we'll know who our next president is.

- posted by Stephanie @ 5:50 AM