1994-1997 Archive
1994-1997 Archives – 5,409 words. More to be added as soon as I transcribe the hand-written notes.
1994
June 1994
I remember my husband, WS, leaving me a note the first day I stayed home after quitting my job to become a housewife. I had always dreamed of being able to stay home on a full-time basis but leaving any job permanently had always left me frightened, for both financial and guilt reasons. I was especially concerned about leaving this particular job. A job with good salary potential, great benefits, paid vacation and college tuition, excellent hours plus overtime, and within ten minutes of home. It could have been the ideal job and one I would have planned on remaining with until retirement age, had it not been for the company’s history of bad management practices and ever-decreasing employee morale.
I had been miserable in my typing position for over a year and had lost several chances to transfer to other departments because I refused to participate in the office politics game: Late nights spent working and drinking followed by excessive absences the next day. Double lunch hours taken on a daily basis by more than just a few important and essential coworkers. Special treatment given to non-productive team members who were best friends with a supervisor’s family. Highly productive employees were constantly told they were too valuable in their current jobs to be “allowed” to promote to any higher paying positions. All this occurring with top management aware of the problems and still they looked the other way.
My husband was pleading with me to just give my two week required notice and “quit this nonsense,” as he called it, but I was balking. At the time, he was only holding a temporary job at a large computer printer manufacturing firm. He loved the position, and knew the job was to be his on a permanent basis if he would simply waiting out the current hiring freeze. Although I knew his job was an excellent one with a promising future, high salary, benefits, and travel, I was the one currently carrying our medical benefits. We needed these even more than the extra income I was bringing in since being diagnosed with asthma a few months earlier. I was also having guilt twinges over staying home, and becoming unemployed for the first time since my initial jump into the job market at age fifteen. What would I do at home? How could we afford our bills and expenses? Visions of realizing a mistaken made too late haunted my dreams as did my imagined horrors of endless days of TV game shows, telephone gossip, and chocolate bonbons!
We were working on being able to manage our bills on one paycheck, and I was somewhat considering making the jump into housewife mode, when the final straws at work fell. A known trouble-maker in the office was suddenly promoted to a supervisor position without the college degree required. Memos followed to the effect that her plan of attack would make our work considerably more difficult. Management also released a memo announcing a change in manager-trainee age limitations, the college tuition and degree program, and very probable department cutbacks. Suddenly, I was working at a dead-end job in a dead-end position. All the career areas I had been working on for several years were being yanked out from under me. I called WS in tears and we spent my ten minute afternoon break rehashing all the pros and cons. The advantages of me leaving won out.
Two weeks later I finally gave my official notice and immediately felt better than I had in quite a long time. Not one office game bothered me those final two weeks. On my very last day, I was a different person completely. Smiling, laughing, joking; nothing could touch me. My husband was overjoyed and had several bouquets of flowers delivered to my desk. A few coworkers approached me with words of enthusiasm, some bordering on both admiration and jealousy. A couple joked that I would be back with six months and one even proclaimed that the move was the most stupid idea he ever heard of.
At last, my final workday was over. After an evening of celebration with WS, I dropped into bed, happily dreaming of my new life, beginning with sleeping late the very next morning. Of course, morning came and I was wide awake at 6:00 A.M., the usual time the alarm clock went off, but this time my day began with a loving note my husband had left for me to find. ‘Congratulations on your first day free. Have fun today. You did the right thing and I want you to know that I love you immensely for it. Call me if you need anything or if you just want to talk. I’m very proud of you. Your husband, WS.’
July 18, 1994 10:20 p.m.
According to all the writing “how-to” books I’ve read in the past couple of months, I am supposed to write everyday. Write something down. Write anything down. Just write. I know that! But I have this other side that fights against anything I want to accomplish. That side says, “I’m too tired. I’d rather do this or that. I don’t have anything to say.” Okay, maybe that last excuse isn’t exactly true. Many a “loved” one has told me that I talk too much. So that doesn’t mean I have anything to write.
Writing takes too long. By the time you have gotten half of a thought down, your mind is eighteen thought processes ahead and here your fingers and hands will struggle with the spelling of a some simple word.
I guess that is where the discipline comes in. Like studying Zen. One sits facing a wall and watches your breath, for hours on end, no matter how you feel. You could be seething with hatred for someone or something that happened and you sit, still and quiet, facing a wall watching your breath. And I’m sure is needs to be a controlled breath.
I think I want to become a vegetarian. I’m sure my body would love me for it. My vivid imagination shows me the way animals are killed for human consumption. But every time I think about starting, its usually right after I’ve porked out on cheeseburgers or tacos. I need discipline. I need it badly. I just look like I have a handle on things. What a joke! I have them all fooled! Just like some famous people are. They are well-known, big names, and a lot of them believe that someday, the world will discovered what they really are. They can’t possibly believe that what they have done with or in their lives are good accomplishments that some many others couldn’t do.
I will be published. There is a market for it. Someone will buy it and someone will read it. And I will get some discipline in my life.
July 21, 1994
Third day in a row that the temperature here in Vancouver, Washington is expected to reach over 100 degrees F. Humidity is at 20% or lower but one can’t help but picture this lush green pine-tree laden place as cool and inviting. It is anything but inviting. Most homes here do not have air conditioning or refrigeration. So the mad dash is on at the local shops to find and purchase fans for every room of the house. The theory here is to just keep the air moving whether the air temperature inside is 75 degrees F. or 100 degrees F. Just keep a breeze going. We have three fans now. One escalating in the living room, one box size to move wherever one feels it may do some good, and one small one pointed at the ten-gallon aquarium.
Last night before I added ice water to the tank, the temperature reached 84 degrees F. or higher. The temp gauge only reads to 84 degrees and that temp was highlighted. Fish begin to boil at 92 degrees F. Learned this from long past experience with an apartment air conditioning unit malfunctioning three summers in a row. Not a good year for neons.
All the pets hate this heat. We wet them down a couple times a day and change their water bowls a few times too. All in all, I am just so glad we aren’t in Phoenix. Those people (idiots!) have been baking since April on and off. Phoenix has hit 122 degrees F. a couple of times this year already. Madness. Hope to never go there again in the summer. But don’t know which is worse. Asthma here or heat stroke there. Bad news both of them.
Got a permanent yesterday. Looks okay. Not wild about it. Not like the one I got three years ago. But I can live with it, (like I have any choice). WS, and a gay couple living next door and I are going up to Seattle this weekend. Can’t wait really. Should be cooler and the company is great! See some sights and eat great food at the Seattle Bite food festival. Worried about the pets here though I’m going to ask our other neighbors to check in on them Sunday morning.
(Disaster struck later as our gay couple friends refused to eat anything or let us eat anything at the food festival AND we forgot to give our other neighbors a key to the house to check on our pets).
July 30, 1994
Writings from a woman abandoning the human race. Nice title for an anthology. Should write a series of poems and essays on how badly humans suck. Include bad relationships and things they have said or done to me to drive me closer to living as a hermit. Maybe just “Wanting to abandon the human race” or “Abandoning the human race”. Sounds good. Nice project to begin.
More writing ideas:
- Do Pickles Feel?
- My six pets who live indoors
- Things to make or get our gay friends for their birthdays (since they hate homemade things this will need to include large basket of Oregon/Washington stuff like smoked salmon, dinner at Newport Bay restaurant on the marina downtown. Upcoming Christmas stuff could be a homemade afghan (they hated it) cookies & breads (hated it) and pet toys.
August 28, 1994
Last night our gay friends took WS and I out to Jake’s Famous Crawfish restaurant, (but unbelievably, they were out of crawfish) for WS’s twenty-eighth birthday. It was almost a week later because WS had to work overtime all last week to pay bills this week.
The dinner came to one hundred twenty-four dollars and some change. It is the second time this summer they have spent a healthy amount of money on us. The first was a disastrous trip to Seattle supposedly for my birthday. Anyway, their birthdays are in October and November. We will need to plan ahead for them so as to get them appropriate gifts.
I hate getting gifts for others as much as I used to love it. No one ever likes anything anymore and people usually go home with their feelings hurt. Lots of smoked salmon, chocolate, a night at a bed & breakfast (local), and dinner out should cover both of them. Then, unfortunately, there is Christmas and the whole thing starts all over again. Wonderful. We drop another needy couple, M and C, as friends because they want people like us to spend money on them and in their place, we pick up our gay neighbors. In the process, we have to play a version of “Keep up with the Jones” so no one feels slighted. Maybe WS is right. Maybe at times I’m right. We don’t need people or friends. They are all too much trouble and never worth it. At least I have yet to meet anyone who is.
1996
December 31, 1996 about 1:00 a.m.
Well, last day of the year. I have three more things to accomplish before the 1st. Give one of our pets a haircut, sort through thirty-five mail-order catalogs, and clean out a coat closet.
WS and I have a hockey game to go to tonight at 7:00 p.m. Afterward, they are having indoor fireworks and live bands playing throughout the arena. We did this same thing last year and it wasn’t too bad of any event. I still wish New Year’s Eves went better for me though. I haven’t had a good one for as long as I can remember.
I can’t help but to mentally run an ideal New Year’s Eve picture through my head. It is held in a huge ballroom with fancy, ornate decorations and crystal chandeliers. I am wearing a sequined evening gown and look stunningly beautiful. WS is handsome in a comfortable dinner jacket, his long hair shining. We, along with dozens of other couples without children present, dine quietly on lobster, shrimp, and caviar, and at midnight, toast each other with glass goblets of champagne while glitter and shiny particles gently shower down upon us all where we sit or stand.
It is during dreams (visions?) like this that I wonder if perhaps we all aren’t just someone else reborn, and my New Year’s Eve vision isn’t something I have already lived. Or maybe I read it somewhere or during an impressionable stage of my life, viewed this dream in a movie or on television. I think maybe it is a combination of all the above. I’m comfortable with thinking so.
A pet is snoring in his sleep on the left of me and another pet is purring on the right. I have a long day ahead of me so its time to get some sleep.
1997
March 6, 1997
Writing for twenty minutes a day, everyday. Yeah, like I’ll stick to it this time. Oops, that wasn’t positive. I assumed I wouldn’t stick to a daily regime (choice-torture penned out) habit of writing for twenty minutes or thirty minutes a day, thereby assuring I wouldn’t do it for certain. Oh well, I am lost, pathetic minded. I’ll never finish anything now except bad poetry. That I can always finish, not to my liking but just enough o turn it in somewhere, where they willingly accept twenty lines or less, and then months later, also willingly accept your $49.95 to have them print it in a book. Extra deneros if you want some blurb written about you in the back. Written by you of course, so technically, you could write just about anything.
“Blogeois, a housewife currently living in Vancouver, Washington. She writes only as a stress-reliever from her high pressure life as a purple-haired baker of small, mostly unclaimed children. The local newspaper heralded her recently when she confessed, ‘Yes, well the screaming really gets to you, but it usually ends after a while. That is the best time to add the carrots.’”
Something tells me the poetry people wouldn’t really go ape over this authors description. Maybe just for chuckles I ought to enter a poetry contest as someone (or something) else. Of course if it won or became famous, like it would (Oops, more negative thinking and re-enforcement!) I could never claim my rightful fame. I’m sure this has been done before. I could simply donate any prize money to some recently well-known and publized charity, claiming that I couldn’t be photographed or congratulated in person due to a severe skin condition and perhaps even the bearer of an unfortunate face.
I could have fun for months or at least until it all got boring and dull and illegal. Then if I truly did it as someone else, I would just become myself again and hardly anyone would know the difference. I’m sure some famous people have done this all before. It was probably all the rage to do back in the early part of this century.
Well, five more minutes to go with this writing. I almost called it a rant, because that is what I call these kinds of mindless, mostly purposeless writings. I’m supposed to begin everyday with this exercise. Okay, I could see where it could get the ball rolling. Clears your mind of stupid stuff and gets words flowing, not that I didn’t already know this. I did. Its just so hard to take the time for this and harder to stick to it. Like working out. Exercising. Hard to continue day after day. Perhaps if I looked at it as learning a job skill, not consider it an actual job. That would only dredge up thoughts of work, a negative term in this country, perhaps the world, and certainly, in this house. Actually, I have been writing nearly everyday in the day planner for ten minutes a day, all my thoughts and the events of the day.
Times up! How’s that for negativity?
March 7, 1997
We are going to Seattle tomorrow afternoon for a hockey game tomorrow night. Naturally, I’m worried about leaving the pets here alone. WS is not. I don’t think he has ever thought twice about it. Maybe it has something to do with him being out of the house nearly every day and I rarely em. Maybe it has something do to with vivid nightmares I have of animals dying horribly. Whatever it is, it is not, as WS believes, that this is the most stable place we have ever lived and I am just waiting for something to end it all. I don’t think any place is or has been a stable place. I believe every place I live will disappear sooner or later.
It’s times like this that I don’t like having animals here. It is a big risk either way, WS says. I worry about the house burning down due to something weird like wiring. We have lots of weird things happen to us on a regular basis that would normally never happen to the average person. WS says it wouldn’t be likely to happen, the odds are bad. Then he brought up someone could break in, releasing all the pets to the outside world where they would be instantly lost and probably squished by cars. How pleasant! He says I should have voiced these concerns earlier. That is a stupid statement. Oh, like only now, just before the Seattle trip, I’m worried. I can’t believe his insensitivity. Something tells me that if he was here all the time with the pets, he would feel a bit more worried then what sounds like a passing thought or two.
He is right though about asking a neighbor to keep an eye on the place. Personally, I don’t trust any one of them as far as I could physically throw them. And to really feel better, I would want this fictional neighbor to know the pets as they will feel comfortable with each other. Then there would have to be mandatory house key exchange and then I get to clean out underwear drawers, lock up any unmentionables, any alcohol, the handgun, any loose money, put a lock on the refrigerator and freezer and kitchen cabinets, disconnect the washer/dryer, hide the toothbrushes, personal hygiene products, all perfumes and lotions. Also lock up any and all prescription and non-prescription drugs, all sharp instruments and utensils, box up the VCR, tapes, and CDs, as well as the stereo system and computer. The file cabinets would have to be locked and when we got home, I’d have to change the sheets, wash all the towels and most of our clothes, scrub every touchable surface and do an entire house check of all items.
Sound paranoid? Well, that’s how much stuff past neighbors, friends, and family have gotten into during a pet sitting session. I’ve even had them totally ignore the animals and go straight for whatever goods they thought they could steal without me noticing immediately. WS says we’ll never have anyone like a friend who won’t eventually screw up over and we won’t screw back. He says it is just the nature of people to do that and that we are just intolerable of other people. SO its between worrying about the pets and going to Seattle or up to the store or out for a drive, or never going anywhere and staying home where one of us can keep an eye on things. Great choice.
(We ended up choosing to never go anywhere else after that Seattle trip as crime rose dramatically in our rental house neighborhood.)
March 10, 1997
The Seattle trip on Saturday was very exhausting, mostly due to stress brought on by worrying about the pets left here at home, worrying about the home team people at the hockey game giving us a hard time if they found out we were from another town, worrying about traffic, the weather, spending too much, getting back home, you name it.
Sunday, we woke late and functioned much like zombies until the game that evening. Today, the full force of my period hit and that combined with my recovery from the stressful weekend has wiped me out. Talking and thinking is tiring. Luckily, I felt the strong need to get some stuff done between the couple of hours of waking up and WS getting home from work to have the house looking clean when he walked in. I haven’t done any intentional exercise since Friday afternoon, using my period as the excuse. I was talking myself into doing some this afternoon but WS came home and I caved in to continuing to lie around on the couch watching TV.
It was another wet, gray day outside today. I hate the transition between winter and spring and fall and winter. Still too cold and muddy to go out and poke around in the garden, too cold for flowers to open, too cold to go outside at all. I brought in a few unopened daffodils Friday afternoon and they have all opened in the kitchen. A mixture of creams, yellows, and oranges. I want to cut more but there aren’t enough. Maybe someday, I’ll live somewhere where I could cut enough daffodils and tulips to literally fill my arms and have huge vases full of them in every room where I live. And the pets won’t nibble on them. Now there would be a dream come true. Bowls of flowers and all the plants in our plant room (a spare bedroom cheaply converted to an indoor greenhouse)out in the other rooms for us to enjoy without as much as a single claw or tooth mark on them. Pets snubbing their noses at the greenery. Ha!
March 11, 1997
I really don’t have anything much to write about today. A pet is lying on me. WS is reading. That is it. Okay, I have gas, bad gas. Today while I was doing step aerobics, I noticed that I smelled bad. Id didn’t think I should smell that bad so soon but I did. I sniffed my skin on my upper arm. Strange. I sniffed the other side. Weird. A definite chemical smell, a metallic smell. I sniffed an underarm. WHOA! Bad mistake, but no chemical odor.
I started wondering if I had gotten into anything unusual this morning. Hardly. I had just gotten out of bed shortly before. I wondered if the new sheets rubbed something into my skin, then I remembered the new sheets were not on the bed last night. I started running through the list of food I had eaten over the last couple of days. Jack-In-The-Box, coffee, sixlets chocolate candy, a vitamin C tablet, some homemade chili, and a big meal at TGIFridays restaurant, which consisted of salad, fries, a hamburger, potato skins, and a couple of spoonfuls of whipped cream. I took a day’s worth of Midol for my cramps and followed it up shortly after with a Sudafed because I just HAD to have that whipped cream and blue cheese dressing and now my nose was running.
I have to chalk it up to that Mydol and Sudafed. I showered very shortly thereafter and used both Freesia-scented soap and Ivory. I conditioned my hair for half an hour and I let the shower run out of hot water. It was all wonderful and so far, I don’t have any more chemical smell coming from my skin.
But I have gas. The chili obviously was deadly. Maybe I’m getting too old for beans. Last week’s refried beans mixed with ground meat for burritos nearly killed me with gas. There are two cans of refried beans left in the cupboard. I wonder how WS would feel about banning the beans in our house? Too bad, I sort of liked beans, but not this much.
Okay, I’m in the bathroom writing now. It’s the gas thing again. I think home builders should purposely build better sound reverberating qualities into bathrooms so that when a person has gas, not only will the next room get an ear full, entire households and perhaps whole city blocks will be able to enjoy it too. Our bathroom echoes everything, except when I’m in it and asking WS a question. He can never hear me in here when I’m talking. I’m sure he’s well aware of the gas issue now. Maybe I should have been talking at the same time.
March 13, 1997
For some reason, I keep thinking about cream pie or ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream, and peanuts. I got a bad craving for it last night during the hockey game, My body keeps fighting me I think. My mind says no to dairy and fats, but my will power says isn’t that what you are working out for?
The question is at this point: Who is going to go out and get it? WS is reading, trying to finish book three in the Clan of the Cave Bear series. I’m doing nothing. I don’t really want to go but I would if WS went with me. I don’t want to beg him to go, Maybe saying, “Ice cream with hot fudge and whipped cream and peanuts”, it will work on his mind and he’ll have to go without any further prodding from me. I could get Rice Dreams, the truly non-dairy ice cream, and use the other bad stuff, or just go for the whole cream pic enchilada which would be cheaper in the long run.
Either way, it will be fat I’ll have to work off my body but if I’ve already given into the fact that I’ll be working out for the rest of my life, then what’s the difference whether I eat bad stuff or not? I’ll just work it and everything else theoretically “off.” As long as I remember that four times a week at a 30-minute workout only maintains what you have on your body, and five to six times a week burns fat and reduces size. I’ve got three times so far this week. I see nothing stopping me tomorrow from working out again. It’s the weekends I’ll like to get into a schedule of taking off from exercising but because I didn’t do anything last Monday, it looks like Saturday I’ll be step exercising away for half an hour. I ought to do Sunday too and I will probably have to guilt myself into it if someone goes out and buys a cream pie or ice cream tonight.
We are both pretty tired and have already had dinner, done dishes, cleaned the house, and gotten ready for bed. WS is smiling at me. It is not because he’s going to get ice cream. He asks if I’m tired of him reading. I say no, because I’m not. What I’d really like to hear him say is that he’ll go out and make sopapillas or something sweet and yummy, thus saving our money yet making us something dessert-like to eat and satisfy my craving.
He came home with a craving of his own today: Burgers. I don’t know if it was truly a craving though, or simply something to pick up conveniently on the way home so we wouldn’t have to make anything here. His suggestions of Burger King, a cheaper alternative to Carl’s Jr. burgers did nothing for me. I’d like to have any one of those episodes that so rarely happen like last weekend when we both were craving cherry chocolate ice cream. We each bought a Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia Peace pop. Very good. It was out first one of these. Our only complaint was that there wasn’t more. I think we both could have eaten six or more of them. I know I could. I can’t give in to my craving if I couldn’t give in to WS’s craving. That wouldn’t be fair…unless I have better cravings than his. I asked him and he said yes, I do have better cravings than him, that my cravings are better for a person because they taste good and are better in unsaturated fat content. So a cream pie is lower in unsaturated fat than a burger. Okay, I can see that. So actually, I look at cream pie as bad because of the dairy content that which affects my sinuses and asthma. Hmm, I’ll have to think about this some more.
March 17 1997
Lying here in bed, we just heard a motorcycle racing around the neighborhood, running from multiple police cars in pursuit. Didn’t sound as though they caught the driver though. The police sirens stopped but we could hear the motorcycle still racing around the streets from several minutes afterward. That was about ten minutes ago. We just heard two more motorcycles driving normally driving in this area. Neither one sounded like the racing one.
It is times like this that a police scanner would be fun to listen to. I have no doubt that if we owned one, it would be during all our waking hours, perhaps more so than the television. We looked into buying one once, a couple of years ago and a good one cost over two hundred and fifty dollars. It was ridiculous and a real eye opener. Who would have thought something like that would cost so much. They had cheaper ones and they appeared very cheaply made as well, but who really knows except the people who are really into this sort of thing. We don’t know anyone who is so we really don’t have anyone to ask what a good model would be. I’m certainly not willing to shell out that kind of money for something I know nothing about and take the Radio Shack salesman’s word about it.
Obviously, this is a job for the Internet. A person could probably find more than their fair share of information on scanners there including using them illegally. I just want to know what kinds of criminal activity is going on around my place of residence. It could be a good thing to know about. Of course, it could be a bad thing as well. Do I really want to be outside working in the yard while rapists are running around loose mere blocks away? HA! It has already happened. People have been murdered less than mile from here. Scary thought. Like the night of the ghost howling outside and the next day, they found the young Russian girl drowned in Burnt Bridge Creek just up the road. They found who did it, a young Russian boy who said she consented to having sex before he drowned her. He figured since he was not a U.S. citizen, he would get away with it. This was all last fall/summer. He probably did get away with it because last thing I heard on it was that he was going to be sent back to Russia. Big deal. No more Levis, Burger Kings, and american rock-n-roll for him. No mention was ever made of the ghost howling thing though, that scared us to death lying here in our bed, caused neither of us to sleep and WS to go into work early but only after driving through the neighborhood first. The weirdest thing perhaps was that the howling, which drifted near and far and varied in pitch, didn’t cause our neighborhood dogs to bark, and those dogs barked at everything. Weird and scary.
