Word of the Day: quisling July has been the worst month of the year so far. Nearly every aspect of this month has stabbed my spirit. Let me explain: First off, it's rained nearly every single day this month. I don't mind the rain, I know it's good, though unnatrual, for us, but I hate driving into town and feeling like I'm driving through a lake because I see water everywhere. I think JD said we've gotten nineteen inches of rain so far in July; the record was fourteen inches. It's just been miserable seeing so little sunshine. The first week of July was tolerably well. We live out in the country, so the fourth was loud with fireworks and drunks and Patrick didn't get to sleep until much past his bedtime. It was the second week where it all started to go downhill. Our air conditioner had been leaking into the pantry and in front of the washer and dryer [so, in the kitchen]. We'd been putting towels in front of the pantry door and the washer and dryer, but it kept leaking out more and more. We told the supervisor when we went to pay our rent at the beginning of the month that the air conditioner was leaking, but nothing had been done. I finally got pissed off enough from having to stand on a wet towel while cooking on the stove and having to dry four or five bath towels every day, that I started getting on JD. He figured it was a blockage issue in the drainage pipe, so he found something to push down and try to clear it up. So we sat down to dinner, and about five minutes later, water's gushing out from the pantry and starts flooding the kitchen. We evacuate to the living room, turn off the air conditioner, and I go and tell the supervisor that my kitchen is literally under two or three inches of water. She calls the landlord, who said he couldn't be here until sometime the next day after lunch. Exasperated, I go back to my house and discover standing water in the kitchen and a godawful smell. After much hard labor, we get most of the standing water out of the kitchen via the back door. I mop with about half a bottle of Pine-Sol so that at least the place would smell lemony-dank. Laura brought over fans and some bad news. Kevin, her husband, landed a job in Houston, and so they had to move. Seeing as we don't have money for daycare and I don't know anyone else in Victoria who is available to take care of Patrick while I'm working, I've had to tell Theresa that I can't work unless JD's not working--in the evenings after six. I'll be getting less hours, and therefore less money, and I'll hardly ever see my husband. I really do hate that. So, anyway, the next day I was off, so Patrick and I waited for lunchtime with all the fans in the living room and none of the lights on. It really wasn't that hot because it was raining and cloudy, but Patrick's little cheeks were getting redder and redder. JD came home at noon, and so Patrick and I went to Laura's while JD waited here for the landlord. We were gone a couple of hours, but no one ever showed up. It was after five o'clock before someone came. I was getting increasingly incensed because I had dinner to cook and a huuuuuge pile of clothes to wash, and I was waiting for the air conditioner to be fixed before I did anything. They came and snaked out the drain and left, and things were fine. Even the smell went away after a few days. Still, it was an awful experience, and I will never recommend this place to anyone because of it. So I had told Theresa as soon as I found out about the need to change my schedule, and she didn't mention it for two weeks. I asked about it last Thursday, and she said we'd talk to Tracey [the 'front desk supervisor', pft] and iron things out. Well, nothing happened, and I went on vacation this past week. No one called me to ask me about things, I heard nothing from Theresa, so I called and asked what the heck. I never had time to tell Theresa that this would be the perfect time to switch me to accounting all the way, that that's what I really want, that I know Tracey can make the desk work without me. She said she was working on it and that someone would call me later. Of course, I never believe a word Theresa says, so I called Thursday evening to get my schedule. It's royally stupid, but I'll clear it up in a trice when I see Tracey. If she would have called me when she was making it to ask me exactly what was going on, she could have gotten it right. However, she didn't, and she'll be sorry. So now I want to talk about...ahem...Harry Potter. I went to see OotP, which I enjoyed. All through the film, however, I felt highly uncomfortable and hot, and when we got out and were walking to the car, I felt like I was alternately going to throw up and faint, and I had a horrendous headache. We got to Laura's to pick up Patrick, and I went to the bathroom, threw up, and laid on the cool floor for five minutes. I got out of the bathroom and asked for some water, and Kevin told me that I looked whiter than normal. I told him how I felt, and they were both quite sympathetic. We went home and I slept for numerous hours, feeling better when I woke. From what I remember of the movie, I thought that it drug on in places, but it also left out a lot of information. I don't know for sure if I was so dissatisfied becuase of how I felt or if my feelings were correct, but I won't have a chance to see it again until it's on our Netflix queue. No matter, because the next week I got my brand spankin new copy of Deathly Hallows. I stayed up till four-thirty in the morning, but I got the whole thing read in about fourteen hours. I started getting a little delierous at the end and didn't really understand the whole final showdown, actually the last quarter of the book, but I knew how it all ended, and I definitely cried when...um...a lot of people died. I started a list in the beginning which got to be pretty long [and I forgot people and intentionally skipped minor folks as well]. I'm reading it again, of course, and much slower as well, trying to soak in details. I haven't even been a fan for a long time, just two years, but it was exceptionally emotional and beautiful. My vacation started last Saturday, the day I got the book, and I go back to work tomorrow. I thought a nice break from that horrible place would calm me down and refreshen me, but now I realize how much I truly hate that place. The closer and closer Sunday's gotten, the more and more resentment I feel. If I knew I were going back to be only in accounting, it would be better, because I don't mind helping. I don't want to be scheduled at the desk, I just don't. It's miserable and I hate it. Even with the schedule change and me being there less and less, I still feel awful about it. To top off my mostly miserable July, JD's car is making a terrible noise and smokes from the engine. He doesn't know what's wrong with it, but he doesn't think it's safe to drive. That's all fine when I'm on vacation and I can drop him off and pick him up from work, that's fine, but when I have to work it's going to be bad. I have to make dinner before I leave, get him at five, go to work, and then he's got to come and get me at eleven. I'm worried for Patrick, who'll have to be disturbed in his sleep. He's going to try today to poke at the stupid thing and see about it, but we definitely don't have the money to take it somewhere. Money sucks. Both lack of and oodles of. There have been good things, too, other than Harry Potter. It's just the bad things always seems larger. Patrick is doing well with his potty training. He's just plain inventing and imaginative, but he also doesn't listen to what I say. I chalk that up to being two and a half, but I really hope that passes. JD and I are doing well. He got the word that he'll be moving to the office to do drafting and computer work, but that's an eventually. It's on the horizon, though. It's going to be hard adjusting for me, I know, but we'll get through whatever life throws at us. I've been knitting more. I stopped everything to read Harry Potter, but now that that's mostly done, I've started knitting. I'm working on these right now, and I have all the yarn for this next. The sweater should take me forever because it's done on tiny needles. The yarn cost about thirty five dollars, so I'd better be entertained for a good while with the thing. And that, I believe, is the shortest telling of my month I can do. I've been meaning to write an entry for a long time, but every time I actually sit down to write, sitD's on the fritz. Hopefully it won't take another month for us to get together, sitD.