Day Two of Unemployment - 11.06.14 in Your Face

My second day of unemployment was a bit dull.

Woke up around 7:30am, my brother asked to borrow my phone so he could call in sick to work.

Rewind: My brother has been off work for three weeks after injuring his shoulder after work. He has to have surgery on it in two weeks, and he will be in a sling for 6 weeks after that. He went back to work yesterday for the first time, on light duties, meaning he sits in the office and gets given crap filing and envelope stuffing jobs to do because he's really not very useful at office-type stuff. He came home last night really frustrated at how he'd spent the day and how he didn't see the point of it. Simple, pal: your employer doesn't want to pay you to sit on your ass at home, particularly when you've only been working there 4 weeks and have gone straight out on worker's compensation.

So, of course he calls in sick today, on what was meant to be his second day back at work. And he'll show up there tomorrow like nothing happened, even though it will be blatantly obvious that he wasn't sick at all.

So I went with him to Westfield so he could get a pair of jeans using a voucher he had. Then to K-Mart where I showed him the $5 shoes and he lost his shit. I am the absolute queen of securing the cheapest of cheap clothing and shoes at K-Mart (which is already ridiculously cheap). All it takes is a weekly browse for the items you want, and eventually they get marked down, and down, and down and even then half the time they scan at a lower price once you get to the checkout.

So then we had to call past his old job so that he could pick up some car parts and get some Armour All for me to use on my car. Then we went to get pizza for lunch (which was a silly indulgence on my part - I have so much food stockpiled at home that I need to eat).

I can't help but be envious - we drove around all day in his car and I bet no one from his job saw him. I am the sort of unlucky person who is genuinely sick, calls out from work, then gets spotted driving to a doctor's appointment and suddenly my boss thinks I was faking.

After we got home, I gave my car a wash and started working on getting it ready to photograph for sale. The little compartment where the gas cap is was absolutely black and crusted with dirt, so was the rim of the boot where it sits crooked (the car was in an accident before I got it and the boot is kind of screwed up). I spent ages carefully wiping those areas out with a wet cloth. Then I cleaned the insides of each door where they meet the body of the car, to wipe out the grime in there. Cleaned the windows, Armour All-ed everything inside and scrubbed at the smudgy makeup on the stereo buttons.

Side note: I really don't wear that much make up, so I was surprised at how grotty those buttons were, and my indicator (hey, at least it shows I use it!). I can't even imagine how gross the cars of those cake-faced girls must be.

I took the carpet out of the boot and hosed it off (it was covered in crushed leaves and little sticks that had been washed into the boot through the wonky seals). Hopefully it is dry in the next day or two and I can put it back in. I half-heartedly vacuumed part of the back, but my neighbour's vacuum is really shitty and the amount of Ernie hair in the car is just terrible. Tomorrow I will try one of those industrial vacuums at the car wash and see how it goes. There's nothing more gross than other dog hair. My own dog's hair is fine and doesn't gross me out, but that's because I know how clean I kept him! Someone else's dog's hair - ew. Keep it away from me, please.

I came home around 5pm and made spaghetti for dinner - mother had brought home the ingredients yesterday. It's now 6:30pm and I have officially retired for the night. Time to put a movie in, do some French knitting and relax. I also managed to resurrect some leather wrist bands that M left behind because they were mouldy and gross. They came up really well, although I'm not sure why I bothered. Actually, I do know. Because I love him. I just think he is being an asshole right now.