What have we learned, Charlie Brown?
Aug. 22nd, 2002 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupFinished the ceiling up this morning... it was definitely a pain in the ass and all that, but it did turn out to be doable. It only all collapsed on my head 3 or 4 times. Turned out to be much easier once I got new tiles and runners, although it took me an hour and a half of dealing with Home Despot to get what I needed. Whole thing came out to less than 65 bucks, which is a lot less than I expected to pay someone to do it. The downside included getting pieces of tile dust in my eye 4 or 5 times, stabbing myself in the wrist, and having enormous amounts of fibrous dust coat the linings of my lungs. In the end I wouldn't say that it looks great, but it does seem better than the old ceiling did. (Not that this will matter to the landlord, who I'm sure will try to rook me royally if he figures out what I did.)
I was going to follow up all this with a backbreaking afternoon of yardwork, but settled instead for hauling hundreds of cobweb-covered boxes upstairs from the basement. It is unfathomable as to how we can have so much damn stuff left.
***
Anyway, it was a year ago today that I got laid off. The other night I was talking to E., who remarked on what an amazing year I have had, and I had to think about it. I have been working far too hard to contemplate it much, but by just about any standard it is pretty remarkable how much better off I am now than I was then. I have a job I enjoy with people I don't hate; I'm in the enviable position of working from home; I spent a month in Maine this summer; there's a hell of a lot more in the bank account now; the baby is on the way; and I'm about to move to a place I've been thinking about for years. I've managed to juggle a workload that is fearful to think about. More than that, I did learn that I could find ways to reinvent myself and keep house and hearth together despite feeling well-nigh unemployable for a lot of September and October of last year.
I try not to think about it because of my superstitious feeling that when you are smug, you're vulnerable. But at the least it is worth noting that once in a while, and contrary to one's own instincts and experience, if you are really lucky, things do turn out OK. It's well to remember that sometimes.
**************
Mrs. Sanpaku left at noon to go down to the new place. Without the cell phone. Not home yet. I am worried.
I was going to follow up all this with a backbreaking afternoon of yardwork, but settled instead for hauling hundreds of cobweb-covered boxes upstairs from the basement. It is unfathomable as to how we can have so much damn stuff left.
***
Anyway, it was a year ago today that I got laid off. The other night I was talking to E., who remarked on what an amazing year I have had, and I had to think about it. I have been working far too hard to contemplate it much, but by just about any standard it is pretty remarkable how much better off I am now than I was then. I have a job I enjoy with people I don't hate; I'm in the enviable position of working from home; I spent a month in Maine this summer; there's a hell of a lot more in the bank account now; the baby is on the way; and I'm about to move to a place I've been thinking about for years. I've managed to juggle a workload that is fearful to think about. More than that, I did learn that I could find ways to reinvent myself and keep house and hearth together despite feeling well-nigh unemployable for a lot of September and October of last year.
I try not to think about it because of my superstitious feeling that when you are smug, you're vulnerable. But at the least it is worth noting that once in a while, and contrary to one's own instincts and experience, if you are really lucky, things do turn out OK. It's well to remember that sometimes.
**************
Mrs. Sanpaku left at noon to go down to the new place. Without the cell phone. Not home yet. I am worried.
