Letting the Days Go By in BookThree: Flight Log 2016

Becoming an adult may be difficult.

My body naturally woke my ass up at 6 am today. So I thought… awesome, it is getting ready to have adult responsibilities and a job! Except about an hour and a half later… I was “Go Back to Bed” tired. And I went back to bed. And slept until Noon Thirty. Bah!

Two hours of housework and then my long list of shit that needs to get done.

But first… Wife wants to talk about the decision! She is cool with renting the house. It will be awesome. I’ll post photos of the place when it is completed. It will look glorious. BUT she hates the idea of me getting my own apartment for a few months. Okay… then what in the hell am I going to do for the handful of months between starting my job and getting everything finished? Because… for the next few months, Wife stays in Omaha working and finishing our lease here… the Landlords finish the updates on the Rental House… and I have to start work on Monday. So… am I living out of my car, what the hell? Wife wants me to ask the Landlords if they would be okay letting me rent their smaller property for a few months while we wait for the better property to finish. I don’t… completely understand why that is a “better” option than me getting an apartment for a few months but… whatever, I’ll bring it up.

STEP ONE
Turn in Notice to Vacate. Done! Never happy giving these things over without a “forwarding address” but hopefully, we’ll be able to fix that soon.

STEP TWO
Creative Banking and Law School Loan Repayment. SO close to being done with all of that. Which is awesome as it has only been 2 years! We only have 10% of the original loan left to pay off… and with more money coming in soon, I am confident that loan will be gone by the end of the year!

STEP THREE
Drop suits off at Dry Cleaners. There is no dry cleaning in the entire town of Pocahontas. The next best service takes 7 days from drop off to done. So… definitely going to get my suits cleaned NOW and take them with me.

STEP FOUR
Taxes. Bugger, scat, bastard, whore. For the first time in my life… I owe the government a considerable amount of money. But explain how that works out! Both states and the Federal Government have been making program cuts across the board. My wife and I together… including the trust account… make less than $50k per year. OF THAT we’ve already had several thousand dollars taken out of our paychecks to go to the government. WE STILL OWE a thousand. WTF? Now I’m mad. I mean… before… in the abstract… the war on Mental Health, the decision for both states to make Social Security & Child Protective Services privatized while also investing in For Profit Prisons… I was upset on a moral level. Now? If they are “saving the government so much money” by making these ass hat decisions… why has my income decreased while my taxes have gone up? NOT. A HAPPY. INDEPENDENT VOTER!

STEP FIVE.01
I will admit… I was NOT looking forward to this step. This is the part where I call our lovely realtor… the super kind lady who spent 6 hours with us looking at houses and showing us properties… and then tell her “We aren’t going to buy a house, you get no commission; btw, what is the number for those rental people you introduced us to?” I mean… I know this isn’t unexpected and she never would have shown us rental properties if she wasn’t prepared for the possibility that we’d select one of them. But… she did do so much for us… and now she gets no $$ from it. Perhaps in a small town that’s cool… because you’re “helping your future neighbor” but… to me? I just see it as a lady who did her job super well and now reaps no benefits from that choice.

Uf… really hate making this call. Actively sitting at my desk holding my phone trying to convince myself to just make the damned phone call! So I’ll admit, I went full on chicken shit and hoped really hard that I got her answering machine. Because… not only would I not have to give her the news in person; but it also meant my phone call to the Rental People (AKA Step Five.02) would have to wait until she got back to me. Because.... that’s another call I’m not looking forward to. Because that call will be “We want to move in to Place 2, but until it is finished can you let me live in Place 1?” I just… I don’t like things complicated. “We want THIS. Give us THIS. We have to wait for THIS? Fine, we’ll take it when it is ready.” That kind of conversation is so much more my speed.

So… finally made the call and… got her machine. Left a message but even the office machine says “Feel free to call me on my cell.” Bah. I won’t call her on her cell for a work thing that seems rude. Oh, but I AM a super idiot. The phone machine said “Hit pound when you have left your message” and instead… I just hung up. So I had to call back like a jackass. Yay me! And… I may have found a number for the rental guy?? But I’m not certain. And I’m such a shit about things like this and I don’t know why! Put me in an office environment in the morning and give me a task list… I’d knock all of these phone calls out, no problem. Put me in my home in the evening? I just… don’t want to.

STEP SIX
Work stuff. I’ve never before worked an “Adult Job” nor a job where the expectation was not at least a week of shadowing or training. To simply show up and be expected to do the job on the first day? Totally alien. Totally terrifying. So I sent this out… we’ll see if it is appropriate or gets any kind of response:
Thanks for the cases! It is good information to have and I’m glad for it. Slowly but surely things are coming together as far as finding a place to live. I don’t have anything set up for the immediate future yet, but I have some meetings and phone calls on Thursday to help me get a place for the next few weeks at least. As previously discussed, I’ll head to the Auditor first thing to square away all of the W4 forms, the insurance and all of that. However, I’ve never had a job that didn’t require a job shadowing introduction. After I’m finished with the Auditor on Monday; should I call you to see what my next steps are or… I guess… I’m wondering how those first few days are going to look for me so I can be where I’m supposed to be. Really looking forward to working hard for Pocahontas and I’m very thankful for this opportunity.

STEP SEVEN
I already have a Job Required CLE to attend in April. They e-mailed me and my boss to say I had been selected and to confirm with them that I was still attending. I’m e-mailing back to say Yes, I Am Attending. Because… I’d rather look stupid if my boss already confirmed then expect someone to do something for me and have it not get done. And I think… I can already tell that is going to be a personality difference between my new boss and I. I’m absolutely willing to tackle anything and everything I can… but if I can’t do it, I am going to want help. My boss seems to be more.... “Do everything I give you; and I’ll handle the small stuff.” Have I mentioned I’m nervous about the job?

is it for my Wednesday. Tomorrow… may go a NUMBER of ways and the lack of concrete solid planning, I am sure, will stress my wife out. Either (1) we will go up to Storm Lake to view and lease an apartment; (2) we will reach Leo and get everything squared away for House Rentals… likely meaning we’d have to make a trip up there to sign and pay for those house rental items; OR (3) absolute worst case scenario… we discover that the Apartment in Storm Lake won’t work; we can’t rent the smaller house temporarily; and I’ll be in a tent for two months.

Oh… personal note? Last night was a nightmare. So, I spent Tuesday making phone calls, working on all the possibilities, and really putting in work to make sure I had a place to live and that my wife would be an important part of the decision making process. She came home from work AS MAD AS EVER… but it was a slow day at work. She was fuming about needing to make a decision. Simply asking her to think about what she liked more (Rental or Ownership) and let me know what she thought… “ruined her day.” This is deeply one of those things that will continue to cause issues between my wife and I. Things that matter to me: (1) Both partners are part of life decisions that affect both partners; (2) an agreement, compromise, or plan is decided by both parties; (3) working as a Unit, the plan is put into action. And… this is so alien to my wife as to cause her anger and frustration whenever it comes up. She’d much rather have: (1) I make a decision that affects both partners; (2) I do the work to make it happen; (3) if she doesn’t like the plan, she gets to be pissed off that it isn’t what she wanted. Frustrating to the point of tearing my hair out, really.

Here’s a weak article on “Body Sizes”. I’ve read dozens of these and this one is not NEARLY complete enough. My favorite “body sizes” article listed 25 different sizes… almost all of them depicted by a beautiful woman of the corresponding size. Because SIZE doesn’t mean beautiful/ugly. Size, just like hair color, is simply a matter of preference. It is horrid how we live in a world that says “A hideous size 0 is worth more than a gorgeous size 20.” First of all… your worth isn’t based on your appearance. Because that tends to get lost: YOUR WORTH IS NOT BASED ON YOUR APPEARANCE. Second of all… size shaming is stupid as hell. Bashing someone for being naturally super skinny or naturally super large is a shitty thing to do. Even if that bashing is strictly being done to make yourself feel better or “defend” your size. Third… if you don’t feel healthy, have/are developing eating disorders, or have/are being told by your doctor that there is a problem… that should NOT be considered size shaming or be ignored. Be you, be beautiful, but be healthy. Fourth… and I’m still working on an article along this line… but one of the reasons my Wife really doesn’t give a shit how beautiful I find her? I have a wide range. I’m not the kind of guy that says THIS IMAGE IS THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE ONE. Looking at the article linked above? Shit… My “size preference” according to that is anything from 3 to 9. In more nuanced scales, my “size preference” is even more strange as it isn’t a strict range.... it is more like 3 to 6, 9 to 12, 15, and 19 to 22 (as an example). And so… my Wife doesn’t care what I think about her beauty because it isn’t this specific ideal she’s looking at. Which is why making decisions about Where To Live bother her so much as well. She has an ideal in mind. ANYthing that strays from that ideal simply isn’t worth considering. This is all just a theory but…it is why she’s been so cold to me since my body shape started changing, it is why the move to Nebraska was a “life destroying” thing after two weeks, it is why trying to decide between two pre-existing situations with housing “ruined her day.” If it isn’t her ideal; it doesn’t matter. A very hard way to go through life… and a very hard way to look at oneself.