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J and I have been back together for just over a month and so far things are great. She’s only had one “bad day” and it reminded me of how things were and provided a great contrast to how things are now.
She injured her hand at work in late April and has needed my help to do things like hauling her to the surgeon/pharmacy/grocery store. We’ve been to the Braves game and the movies… eaten dinner quite a bit (which is getting kind of expensive and I’ve been using my credit card, a big no-no for me usually). The difference this time is that she actually pays for some of this stuff now. We’ve made it clear that things need to be equal between us now. There are still a few things that get on my nerves, but as long as we’re talking about them I don’t see any problems and I’m happier with her now than I ever was before.
As my last couple of entries mentioned, I have great difficulty living with my father. The responsibility of taking care of an aging parent conflicting with the life of a 26-year-old, to butting heads with his care giver… it’s just stressing me out. My brother has decided he is moving out in July. Now I’m really stuck here…. mainly because I don’t want the house/property to go to shit. Nobody else will do it, at least not well.
Money and the lack of work is really starting to eat away at my spirits. I do some contract work here and there, an event or two on the weekends. It’s usually just enough to pay my bills (the minimums at least) and comes at just the right time, but I’m sick of it. If I weren’t at home, I’d be screwed. The job search has been intimidating and frustrating. I’ve been looking for something since Feb and despite landing a few interviews, nothing has come of it. I follow all the leads my networking contacts toss my way, but there is something I’m missing… something isn’t coming together for me. I dunno if it’s a lack of solid experience (which I doubt) or if I’m chasing the wrong carrot.
I’m constantly told that “the” account is happening soon and the agency wants me to be on it, but I’ve been told that since March. That is what I’m really holding-out for, as it will provide me with the account management experience that I think I need. They throw me some bones here and there when I ask, but it’s not steady. It would be perfect as a supplement, but not as a primary source of income.
Otherwise, what is a guy with a Bachelor’s in communication supposed to do to find work? I finished college, so I believe I’m above working a retail/wage-job like Target or Best Buy (though I did it during Christmas… yep, no job search luck then either) or becoming a pharmacy tech again. I’ve been too proud to inquire about unemployment benefits, but I think it’s time to go down and find out about it. Maybe they can help out in the job search too.
Ugh. At least I’ve got a loving girlfriend and friends. And Batman is coming out in a couple of months.
For the past few months, my Dad has been exchanging communications with a really desperate widow over Yahoo messenger. She sent him a V-day card by busting-out her Sherlock Holmes skills and finding our address and landline number on the net.
He asked Corey and I how we felt about him talking to a woman. I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I think everyone deserves some companionship and a friend to talk to… even after your partner dies. However, I also don’t like the idea of my Dad seeing another woman. Mom told me in conversation long ago that if Dad were to die (and this was when there as a good chance he might) she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to meeting new people.
So they’ve spoken on the phone a lot and since April she has been over to visit him… usually for 8 or more hours at a time… just watching movies and talking is ear off about every facet of her life. I try not to have much interaction with her but I can see that she likes my Dad whereas he’s just looking for a friend and someone else/new to depend on instead of handling things himself.
Yep… I’ve got two people who are always in my house that I try to avoid like the bubonic plague.
That is how I would put it nicely. I absolutely abhor (or some other synonym which even further demonstrates my hatred) my father’s caregiver. He had both his legs amputated before I graduated college, so more than 3 years ago now. He has made no effort to rehab himself to a point where he can… I dunno… take care of himself. Mom took care of him and my brother and I helped out when we could. Then Mom died. So Corey and I had no option but to pay agencies to send caregivers each day so he can be utterly dependent upon them in lieu of us. (Okay, there is the option of sending him to an assisted-living facility… but I can’t do that to my father. He hadn’t been the greatest male figure in my formative years, but I can’t put him in a “home”)
Anyway, caregivers come through here like we’ve got a revolving front door…. either by their own crappy work ethic (no-showing) or Dad exercising his rights as a well-minded-senior-citizen and firing them because he has a bad day. After a year of this, I managed to get him on a State program with Medicaid which provides much more care in exchange for a cost share. It helps since he has no retirement pension of his own (he’s the beneficiary of Mom’s) and is drawing Social Security early as his sole source of income.
The whole point of the caregiver is to provide me and my brother some help so we can work and have a social life… ideally until he can become less dependent on others. This includes his personal needs, cooking for him and doing a little housework each day. The girl who has been coming for most of this year has progressively gotten lazier and unprofessional in my eyes.
She makes grocery lists and goes to the store whenever she feels like it even though I buy what we need once a week, that gets expensive when you’re on a budget. She doesn’t clean-up very well after cooking, I can’t find anything in my own house anymore, she has folded and stored clean-yet-still-damp towels in the bathroom a couple of times, and instead running a Swiffer over our floor occasionally she’ll watch Maury while dinner is cooking or talk to my Dad about the ghetto drama going on in her life. (I’ve always hated listening to ghetto drama and gossip in my previous jobs… now it’s in my house. Watching my TV. On the clock.)
Dad likes her, so I’ve expressed my concerns to him in hopes that he’ll pass the info along. If he did, she must not have been listening. I guess she figures that since he’s in bed all day then he doesn’t know what goes on outside of their direct interactions… so she’s can do as much (or as little) as she wants and do it in a manner that she wants. Because of this, I don’t talk to her anymore… if I did it wouldn’t be pretty.
In a nutshell, instead of helping Corey and me it’s been a big cause of stress because I’m constantly angry at her. I come home from work in the evening and she’s here doing her thing and I’m immediately struck with a wave of irritability. So I’ve been very dodgy lately and avoid being in the house at the same time. I’ll stay late at work or leave early in the morning. I’ll spend a lot of time at J’s. Tonight I came home, saw her car in the driveway and turned around and hung out at Wal-Mart for an hour.
I realize that anyone we get in here isn’t going to meet the high standards I expect in the workplace, because quite frankly, if they met those standards they might not be in this line of work. We haven’t exactly had a lot of winners here as I mentioned earlier. I just see it as disrespectful to me (and my Mom) that, in an effort to help me, I ask you to do things the way I’d do them (and the way my Mom always did them) and you almost purposefully disregard my requests…. and then wonder why I don’t like you.
