Where's TD?

TDWoj

Administrator
Staff member
Hey, BB Lady! Good to see you stopping in for a visit.

This is going to be one monstrously horrible week. I'm already feeling the strain since I was planning to work on a project today that got put on the back burner for the duration of the Big Project, but the problem is there are still stragglers from the Big Project to deal with, so every time I try to buckle down and do the delayed project, the stragglers from the Big Project come back to haunt me. Arrrggghhh! Now I've only got two days to finish the newsletter, and I usually need at least 10. This isn't good....

I've got five days to make up my mind about the bits and pieces I need to dispose of. I had hoped to sell the rocking chair at a flea market up north but the lady who was going to take it for me has so far not yet gone up - and with me going on Saturday, I won't be able to dispose of it before then.

Anyway, thanks for your good wishes (and warning! yes, you bet - I'm not leaving my address behind where just anyone can have access to it). I just hope the evil spirits living in this 'hood don't decide to come along. And I hope the poltergeist stays here, too. (Yes, folks, I really do have a poltergeist in my apartment.)

-TD, counting down and as a result increasing the level of panic which is already at fever-pitch
 

Serena

Administrator
Just remember, TD. You thrive under pressure, remember? :D

Hang in there, kiddo. Just keep this thought in mind: In no time at all, this week will be a distant memory that will quickly fade in comparison with the joy of finally being in the apartment you've dreamed of for years.
 

Jules

Potters Clay
TD,
I know how you feel about holding on to memories. My husband finally had a fit and said I couldn't keep everything I got from my mother when she died. I compromised. I got rid of some of her stuff. (not the ones that had the memories) Then I got rid of some of my things to make room. Now everytime the phone rings at lunch time I sometimes think it is my mother calling. She always called when I was trying to cook lunch. It has been five years. What I would give for one of those calls now. You can get rid of the stuff, but the memories will always be there. Julie :)
 

TDWoj

Administrator
Staff member
Thanks, Julie. My problem is how many of my memories have disappeared - not forgotten, exactly, but buried, because of the trauma of losing my mother when I was so young and the subsequent horrors I had to live through afterward.

If the dresser, for example, had gone off with the rest of the suite after my mother's death, I probably would never have missed it. And if the corner shelf had been pitched by my friend's mother (which she had every right to do, since I had pretty much abandoned my stuff in her basement), I wouldn't have shed any tears over it. (Though I was furious with my friend for throwing out the skis my father had given me, even though I'd never used them.)

But now I'm stuck with these things, and I don't know what to do.

Gosh. It's Tuesday, I've already packed four boxes of "office" stuff, and I haven't even made a dent...

-TD, in the final countdown
 

TDWoj

Administrator
Staff member
1:07 a.m.

I spent most of the day (Thursday) in the new place, and did my usual idiotic thing of thinking I could get all that painting done in a day.

Yeah, right.

I barely got the kitchen done! AND it's going to take another coat of primer (on top of the one I did today) to make that horrible pink paint a memory.

(How is it on Changing Rooms, Trading Spaces, The Decorating Challenge, House Doctor, Clean Sweep and any of those other DIY shows they make it look so easy and effortless? Gullible, me, much.)

I think the new place is going to be a "work-in-progress" for a very long time... :D For one thing, there's the furniture issue. Actually, a dearth of furniture. I've already pitched the couch, and have been using the futon (banished from my cubbyhole in favour of the new bed) as a couch instead. And that is going to be binned as well. So, no couch to sit on to watch those dreaded DIY shows! (Probably a good thing.)

One of my filing cabinets is getting the heave-ho, as well. (I figure if I don't have the extra filing cabinet, I won't come up with things to put in it. Well, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it!)

Didn't find anyone willing to help me to take my old Apple 6100 and Laserwriter down to ReBoot (a non-profit organisation that takes old computers, refurbishes them and donates them to other non-profits and charity organisations. I even get a tax receipt for the value of the computers!). So, alas, they must perforce accompany me to the new digs.

I was sensible enough to keep the plastic wrap my bed came in, so my new bed shouldn't get damaged en route.

One of my quilts has slowly been disintegrating, so I'm going to use it as a groundsheet for the bottom of the van on which to put furniture I don't want scratched, after which it will be disposed of. I can always make another.

(TD ducks as Serena throws - feebly, mind you, because of her broken ribs - the copy of War and Peace Amos so kindly gave her to pass the time).

Am I packed? No. Did I get the newsletter finished? Hell, no. I am, however, sloping off downtown Friday mid-morning to get my hair cut.

Priorities, you see. ;)

-TD (feeling parenthetical this evening. Or is it morning. Whatever.)
 

Trinity

My Hero.
Oh My!You may want to duck the "Pentagon Papers"I sent her as well!(Trinity slinking off to a shadowy corner to hide)hehe:D
 

Serena

Administrator
TDWoj said:
......One of my quilts has slowly been disintegrating, so I'm going to use it as a groundsheet for the bottom of the van on which to put furniture I don't want scratched, after which it will be disposed of. I can always make another.

(TD ducks as Serena throws - feebly, mind you, because of her broken ribs - the copy of War and Peace Amos so kindly gave her to pass the time)......

What??? :confused: You mean you didn't even start it yet?
Just what have you been doing with all your free time lately??? :eek:

(Serena's turn to duck now. :D)
 

Jules

Potters Clay
With all the work TD has to do we probably will not see her here for a few days. Do not over work yourself. The work will still be there the next day. I know that is not much encouragement. I know you will be happy when it is all done.
 

TDWoj

Administrator
Staff member
Off-line for the next five days

Thanks to a snafu at my telephone service provider, there's a good chance I won't have phone service until Wednesday, so after I post this, I'm off the air for the next five days.

This is not good, since I'm in the middle of a couple of projects that I need to deliver, and which don't pay enough to warrant sending things by courier.

Grrr.

Anyway, I finished the newsletter, and got it sent off in good time, so that, at least, is off my list of worries. I suppose if I have to I can go to an internet cafe and e-mail stuff from there. Or run the jobs up myself (except my bicycle isn't in a fit state to ride, and will be spending time in the shop to get it sorted.)

Now, I'm off to finish packing. I've secured the assistance of a neighbour who should be turning up any moment now, and hopefully, I will have the bulk of the office and bedroom packed with just a few bits and pieces to deal with tomorrow.

All things considered, I'm remarkably calm....

Had an embarrassing moment today in the office supplies store. I needed some more boxes, and it was the nearest place to where I went to get my hair cut. After yesterday's efforts with painting, I was in a lot of pain today (damn this wretched arthritis) and I wasn't able to negotiate stairs. Unfortunately, this place only had an up escalator; one had to go down the stairs to get to the check-out, and with the pain, there was just no way I could manage it.

So I asked the check-out person if she would kindly call up to the second floor where they had the boxes I was after and ask someone to bring them down.

"Customers are expected to do their own shopping," she said huffily. "I suppose I could do this, but this is terribly inconvenient," she went on, and made a big deal of how put upon she was to do this, and what a fat, lazy cow I was for asking her in the first place.

There were other customers standing about, and I could feel my face going absolutely beet-red. I don't like asking for help at the best of times, but I knew I couldn't deal with those stairs. I simply didn't have the energy to go to another store, so I went upstairs myself, and hoped some kind customer would help me down with the boxes.

The staff person up there was very understanding, and let me use the elevator in the back of the store to bring the boxes down.

Fortunately, the other check-out person looked after my purchase. By this time I was practically in tears from humiliation and couldn't look anyone in the eye, and I slunk out of the store clutching my boxes.

I hate having arthritis; I hate the fact that the slightest effort brings on excruciating pain in my joints; and I hate having to ask for help when it really does look like I'm a fat, lazy cow (constant, excruciating pain even on good days being an invisible disability).

This day, however, will soon be over, and I will be in my new place by this time tomorrow. I keep changing my mind about what one new thing I'm going to buy for it immediately (the budget being very tight at the moment) but I think I've settled on a lounger for the balcony.

And on Sunday, I'm skiving off to go see Harry Potter. Priorities!

-TD, determined to let nothing get in the way of enjoying getting to the new place
 

TDWoj

Administrator
Staff member
Oh, and thank you all for your kind thoughts and good wishes.

"Free time", sez Serena. Yes, indeed. Uh-huh.

(loud disdainful sniff)

-TD, who has some hefty tomes of her own to throw, if she could just find which box she packed them in....
 

Trinity

My Hero.
TD That was uncalled for on her part!I wish I had been there with you!!!!(Trinity suddenly thinking you may have been more red in the face when I got done telling her what for and we were asked to leave!LOL) No one should have to feel like that just for asking for help!Just file her under Misc.:D Enjoy your movie!!Hugs
 

Amos Stevens

New Member
Seems a lot of employees anymore think it's below them to dare to help an customer out of their usually job description..As long as someone has a very legiment reason for needing extra help like you did-there was no need to ask twice-let alone,no reason for you to be embarrassed for needing a little extra help.
 

Trinity

My Hero.
Amos Stevens said:
Seems a lot of employees anymore think it's below them to dare to help an customer out of their usually job description..As long as someone has a very legiment reason for needing extra help like you did-there was no need to ask twice-let alone,no reason for you to be embarrassed for needing a little extra help.
True Amos!I saw a very elderly lady at the store trying to get her groceries out of the basket,but was to short to reach it all and three people just stood there and watched her until I walked up and helped her.Then it was ahhhh isn't that nice?It's like the thought to help just wasn't there!People (In my humble opinion)need to get out of the ME thing and start looking around at others around them.eh my two cents:)
 

TDWoj

Administrator
Staff member
TD pops in briefly to let everyone know that the move was accomplished, no blood was shed (on purpose) and that most items arrived mostly intact and relatively unscathed from the rough ride (no comments about my driving, please).

Message necessarily brief as TD is in dial-up hell at the moment, and must save her minutes for things related to work, until her unlimited high-speed access is back in action (hopefully Friday, but one never knows about such things).

If there has been any news about Steven's Location or his upcoming movies, would you kindly PM me the details (or at least where to look for them) so that I can update the appropriate threads.

-TD, still in excruciating pain from the move, getting better (slowly) and anxious to return to all her friends here (instead of unpacking the stacks of boxes that look like escapees from a badly designed game of Tetris)
 

Serena

Administrator
Congratulations, TD!!!! Glad to hear you've finally made it! :)
It's been a long time coming, but well worth waiting for.

But sorry--You can't come back to play until you've finishished all your unpacking. :D

I'm really happy for you, TD.
You deserve this and have worked hard for it.
Enjoy your new home! :)


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TDWoj

Administrator
Staff member
I'm BA-A-A-A-A-CK!

High-speed, functioning computers, and all.

Well, here I am in my new place. Not unpacked yet (oi!). Woke up this morning to the awful realisation that I'd actually thrown out something really precious to me (not the dresser, by the way) and I'm mourning its loss.

I do need to throw out stuff; but it has to be the right stuff.

Anyway, I'm still surrounded by boxes, I'm still living with the horrible paint job on the walls, and despite the fact that I've been here a week, I still don't feel like I live here... just visiting, don't you know.

I'm in such a turmoil. I'm happy to be in this area - the people here are really friendly and kind, and there's a lot of positive energy here. I'm also still really exhausted, and still in the most excruciating pain. And now there's that stupid toy I threw out and now I'm wishing I hadn't.

(Okay, I'll spit it out and get it over with. It was a model of the bridge of the Enterprise that I and a friend had painstakingly put together and painted. I'd lost the decals, so we went through a bunch of magazines and cut out pictures and the results were quite astonishingly good and true to the series. It had been damaged in a previous move, and suffered more damage coming from my apartment to the truck. My helpers were bitching at me that I had too much stuff and I was getting frustrated with their bitching, so I was making wholesale decisions about what to get rid of. I saw the broken pieces of the model and said, "throw it out", completely forgetting about the work my friend and I put into it. I woke up this morning and realised I'd made a terrible mistake, and there's no going back to fix it. I feel terrible, now, because it was something that I really enjoyed creating with my friend, and I just so casually threw it out in a moment of pique, in other words, for the wrong reasons.)

Don't get me wrong - I love this place, I love the neighbourhood, I love my little balcony where I'm going to create my own little garden. I just did something really stupid, and now I have to work through the loss, and accept the consequences.

Anyway, my computer equipment is all set up, and I've got the television connected. Hooray for my visual memory - I hadn't labelled the complicated cord connection for the tv/vcr/dvd player before the move, but thanks to my visual memory, I got them all connected properly (with one small oops) within about 10 minutes, instead of the several hours it took when I first got the dvd player.

I do not, however, have a couch upon which to sit to enjoy watching television, and it will be a long time coming, since I want to pay off a few bills before I buy any new furniture. (I ditched my actual couch about a month ago, and the futon which had been banished from the bedroom when I got my new bed and was being used as a couch was given to one of my helpers who had expressed a desire to acquire it).

I'm working my way out from the kitchen, and I hope by the end of today I'll have my dining room table reconstructed and in place, so I have someplace to sit to eat my dinner instead of on the footstool with a small folding table.

(Calamity Jane - my father's nickname for me - did have her moment when I spilled a can of paint all over my newly finished floor. And it wasn't the cheap stuff, either, that I could have just waited until it dried and peeled off. Oh, no. It was the expensive, "will bond to any surface" paint, which I had to attend to with water and detergent before I ended up with a big white splotch on the floor, forever.)

One thing I've noticed about this place is the good karma. I was getting frustrated with not being able to find all of my computer equipment and lost my temper; but it didn't stay lost for long. In fact, I'm finding it very difficult to stay angry or frustrated here, despite things like the loss of my toy and the bad paint job on the walls. I am a bit impatient to get things sorted, though; I hate living in a jumble, where nothing is in its place, but I'm in too much pain right now to get much done, though I do try to get at least one box unpacked a day.

Oh, and I hadn't moved a moment too soon, either - the day after I moved out of my old place, police were called and the area around my old building was cordoned off for three hours after a shooting that took place (no one was hurt). They were hunting three men with a shotgun. I wonder if they'll remember I'd been calling for several weeks prior to that about gun fire which they'd dismissed as "someone shooting a flare gun to scare the geese." Yeah. As if.

But all that's behind me now. I feel loads lighter, as if some kind of dark cloud had been hanging over me for a very long time. As I get settled into my new place, it'll start feeling more like "home" and I'll be able to relax, and forgive myself for tossing my toy out (when my friend comes over, I'll tell him the truth. We have another project we can work on together, anyhow.)

I'm here!

-TD, mostly unscathed
 
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