The past several months have been extremely busy. I don't mean to complain about being busy. That is not my intention. I make it a point not to complain because I moved last year, in part, to have a life. Or more of a life, anyway. But it just isn't my personal life that is busy. Work has been so crazy busy for several months now that I barely have a chance to catch my breath or to look ahead at what is to come because I'm still looking back at the whirlwind of the last several months.
Everything remains overloaded. My work email has 129 unread emails, my personal email teeters on 200 unread emails and my Google Reader is lingering around 920 unread items. I try to keep up, but end up sending brief, cold responses out to co-workers and friends instead of carefully communicated or caring messages. I have missed important dates like the birthday's of my best friend's kids and baby showers. I'm tired and cranky. And I haven't had a chance to enjoy the summer at all. Although, summer is always a busy time with the overtime that I try to put in. This summer feels as though it's come and it's going fast and I haven't had time to sit outside and take in the fresh air, listen to the birds sing, marvel over the beautiful green trees and grass, or go for a boat ride on the lake. I miss my family, I miss my friends and I miss just being able to sit and enjoy the quiet.
Things with My Friend and his personal issues keep us very busy too. If it's not one thing, it's another with his situation. And you never know when it's going to strike. Just when you think things have calmed down, you realize that that was just the calm before the storm.
I'm hoping that as the overtime comes to an end, things will slow down. Then again, I've been thinking that things will slow down for months now and they just keep picking up.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Home Invasion
First thing I usually do when I get home from work every day is change into something comfortable. So Thursday evening was no different. When I got home, I headed straight for my bedroom to change my clothes. As I was taking off my necklace, I noticed that my little decorative bowl that I keep change in looked like it was missing a lot of change. Instantly, I accused My Friend because he is always teasing me for saving pennies (along with everything else) as his change jar only contains silver coins. He keeps telling me that he is going to take my nickels, dimes and quarters and leave me just the pennies. Although, I thought it was odd that, if he was going to take my silver coins, why would he leave some and only take a few. But who else was there to accuse?
For a little while, we bantered back and forth about the whole thing. I kept saying that I felt like I was imagining things because who would come in and take anything. We were pretty sure that the folks who work on the property wouldn’t risk it because they would be cutting a great tie by losing their job there and they are all good, honest people. My Friend kept asking if I wanted him to go say something to the landlord, who just happens to be his dad. I hemmed and hawed about it some because I really didn’t want someone to unnecessarily be accused of something. Ultimately, we decided to let the landlord know which turned out to be a good move.
Apparently, one of the guys who works on the property had spotted a young man earlier in the afternoon walking down the driveway at which point the young fellow was told that he was on private property and was instructed to leave immediately. The young man had indicated that he was leaving but that he had just run away from home.
At this point, it was decided that the landlord would call the police just in case the guy decides to return at some point. Meanwhile, My Friend and I are in our apartment hashing out more oddities that were previously dismissed. For instance, when My Friend got home from work, he found a cup with Kool-Aid in it and Kool-Aid splatters all over the kitchen counter and floor. He assumed that it was messy me (granted, I’m messy, but not that messy) and cleaned up the spills and went about his business.
As we stood there in the kitchen discussing this, My Friend opens the refrigerator to find an empty pitcher with just a splash of Kool-Aid in the bottom. He’s like, “I thought you did this too.” Nope. Apparently, the kid who entered our home did that too. Not only did he take half of my change from my bowl (which had coins from my trip to England), but he drank the Kool-Aid out of a cup that I had used the day before, put the empty pitcher back in the refrigerator, spilled it all over, rummaged through the freezer taking a full bag of Taquitos and placing frozen hotdogs from the freezer in the refrigerator (which we joked about saying he planned on coming back later), rummaged through our pantry cupboard and took food from there and stuck his hands in bags of things and ate from them too.
Ugh! It was so nerve wracking. Of course, there has been great discussion about locking the doors now. At first, when we moved in, I was bothered by the fact that we couldn’t lock the doors (the landlord doesn’t have a key and has never locked the doors), but I let it go. Until now. The landlord insists that we still don’t need to lock the doors as the police office indicated that the kid who invaded our home (and another single ladies' home that same day) was a foster kid from down the road who was about 18 with a 3rd grade mentality and is “harmless”. This kid is said to not be able to have sodium because too much causes him to have heart attack-like symptoms. Since he is not allowed to have certain foods, he goes into other people’s homes and eats whatever he wants.
Regardless of this kid’s harmlessness, he still invaded my home and went through my things. All of which is nerve-wracking for any person. You feel so out of control and debilitated because there is nothing you can do. What is done is done and what is gone is gone. For someone who is co-dependent and depends on controlling certain aspects of their own life (even though there has been lots of therapy to learn to let go of some things, there are still things that drive me crazy when out of my control), this has been a very traumatic event no matter how minimal the damage.
For a little while, we bantered back and forth about the whole thing. I kept saying that I felt like I was imagining things because who would come in and take anything. We were pretty sure that the folks who work on the property wouldn’t risk it because they would be cutting a great tie by losing their job there and they are all good, honest people. My Friend kept asking if I wanted him to go say something to the landlord, who just happens to be his dad. I hemmed and hawed about it some because I really didn’t want someone to unnecessarily be accused of something. Ultimately, we decided to let the landlord know which turned out to be a good move.
Apparently, one of the guys who works on the property had spotted a young man earlier in the afternoon walking down the driveway at which point the young fellow was told that he was on private property and was instructed to leave immediately. The young man had indicated that he was leaving but that he had just run away from home.
At this point, it was decided that the landlord would call the police just in case the guy decides to return at some point. Meanwhile, My Friend and I are in our apartment hashing out more oddities that were previously dismissed. For instance, when My Friend got home from work, he found a cup with Kool-Aid in it and Kool-Aid splatters all over the kitchen counter and floor. He assumed that it was messy me (granted, I’m messy, but not that messy) and cleaned up the spills and went about his business.
As we stood there in the kitchen discussing this, My Friend opens the refrigerator to find an empty pitcher with just a splash of Kool-Aid in the bottom. He’s like, “I thought you did this too.” Nope. Apparently, the kid who entered our home did that too. Not only did he take half of my change from my bowl (which had coins from my trip to England), but he drank the Kool-Aid out of a cup that I had used the day before, put the empty pitcher back in the refrigerator, spilled it all over, rummaged through the freezer taking a full bag of Taquitos and placing frozen hotdogs from the freezer in the refrigerator (which we joked about saying he planned on coming back later), rummaged through our pantry cupboard and took food from there and stuck his hands in bags of things and ate from them too.
Ugh! It was so nerve wracking. Of course, there has been great discussion about locking the doors now. At first, when we moved in, I was bothered by the fact that we couldn’t lock the doors (the landlord doesn’t have a key and has never locked the doors), but I let it go. Until now. The landlord insists that we still don’t need to lock the doors as the police office indicated that the kid who invaded our home (and another single ladies' home that same day) was a foster kid from down the road who was about 18 with a 3rd grade mentality and is “harmless”. This kid is said to not be able to have sodium because too much causes him to have heart attack-like symptoms. Since he is not allowed to have certain foods, he goes into other people’s homes and eats whatever he wants.
Regardless of this kid’s harmlessness, he still invaded my home and went through my things. All of which is nerve-wracking for any person. You feel so out of control and debilitated because there is nothing you can do. What is done is done and what is gone is gone. For someone who is co-dependent and depends on controlling certain aspects of their own life (even though there has been lots of therapy to learn to let go of some things, there are still things that drive me crazy when out of my control), this has been a very traumatic event no matter how minimal the damage.
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