Well, all went as planned at Christmas. Then we suddenly had a very large New Year's Eve party (Sarah and Vicky's idea, of course) which went until New Year's Day. I was a very good girl...I had about four drinks and went to bed around 1:30 or so. My God, there must have been 80 people in and out of the house.
Now it's back to real life. My unemployment ran out, so I reapplied. You know, I have to wonder how the government thinks - if, that is, it does, which I'm finding less and less easy to believe. Now that my jobs have dwindled to almost nothing, unemployment has cut my weekly rate. I had a net of about $260 a week - now, because I have so few jobs, they've reduced it to a gross of $103 a week. This is just enough to buy my weekly prescriptions. I do know that the rate is tied to what your employers contribute based on your service to them...but it does make things a bit difficult.
However, I got a lovely call from one of my temp agencies today - the one with the nice transcription work. They've got at least four more interviews for me to transcribe, possibly starting this week, so that will keep me going until I get my Social Security and can rejigger my budget (my what?) a bit to compensate for the almost total lack of unemployment money. It'll all work out. (Anyway, if I get depressed this early on, it's gonna be a looonnng year.)
But that means that I've moved into high gear about getting the house together for sale...and lo and behold, housing prices are going up again! Yay!
And for the last two days I have managed to do exactly (with one exception) the tasks I've set myself. Yesterday was the library, the grocery store, the cash machine and the drugstore. Today was clean the cat litter and start work on my bedroom, which is the worst room in the house. I also planned to get to that damned script for my show, but that will have to be done tomorrow, when perhaps there will be a little less wind. I suppose I should explain that, because it sounds loopy. The big sliding glass doors in my bedroom which lead to my little balcony are old and leaky, and my desk is right there next to them. The result is that if there's a stiff wind outside, it blows right in on one. Since I have found over the years that the easiest way for me to learn long speeches is to type them over and over again, this causes rather a problem, as you can see. However, tomorrow I shall wrap my legs in a blanket and pound away. Promise!
The reason for all this planning of each day's goals is that I am a natural winter hibernator. If I don't force myself to achieve something or other, it's back to bed with a book for a nice nap, and that doesn't get much of anything done - although frankly, it's a lot more fun than scrubbing my bedroom floor.
I got lovely books and a gorgeous sweater and neat new spatulas and wooden spoons and stuff (to replace what Joshua ruined, of course) and - the best news of all - I have mostly solved the ongoing cat shit problem!
It turns out (and an old cat owner like me should have thought of this ages ago) that the cat simply wanted his box back in the downstairs bathroom where it always lived. Joshua (who else?) insisted it be moved upstairs, and that's when the problem started. Oh, we've had a couple of little mistakes, but nothing like the unending daily slog of chasing the cat around with a roll of paper towels and the Lysol. So now the cat food and box are downstairs and everyone is thrilled to the very cores of their beings.
By the way...it just made my year so far when I saw the headline on the NY Post regarding the underwear bomber: 'GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!"
Love, Wendy
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