Got up earlier than usual and especially earlier than after a meat-sorting night because something tickled the inside of my right nostril and it didn’t feel like a fuzz, it felt alive. Cast about and looked here and there, a neat trick without my glasses, but the baby spider scuttling away from me across the mattress was just big enough not to miss. I pinged it the rest of the way in the direction it had been going and tried to go back to sleep but kept thinking something was crawling on me again. I’m not half as scared of spiders as I used to be, but I still don’t want to be crawled all over when I’m sleeping. And then a larger one decided nothing would do but that she should come down the wall from the ceiling and say hello, so I got my spider-catching tub and put her out the window. And then nature called and then I gave up on sleep.
Went over later to start in on the week’s scutwork and knew there were at least eight items, wasn’t 100% sure. On the way in I saw Neighbor walking Hercules back up his long driveway, and I was going at a faster clip than he was (if you walk a dog properly, that’s a given) and so caught up with him. He greeted me and then informed me that his doctor wants him to get more exercise, so he thought he’d get some of the scutwork done too.
This on the heels of L saying she wants money out of me.
I’m not gonna argue with his needing exercise (no, he’s not fat, though I suppose he qualifies as overweight possibly, but I know he sits a lot) but I’m confused why this necessitates taking income out of my hands; simply going for a walk daily would suffice. I’ve heard no complaints about how I do what I do. All I know is one of these two fine people wants my money and the other wants to give me less of his. No reason given. Just this nonsense. I did what I usually do faced with this sort of bullshit and mentally shut down and did not argue because I don’t know where the fault lines are and I could end up losing everything.
I will tell you what, I never expected for people of this particular background, philosophy, and caliber to put me into a situation like this. They even cost me my job when I finally got one because they knew fucking well I had it and she dumped on me anyway (don’t even fucking tell me she didn’t know about that trip at least a month out, and she didn’t tell me until a week prior) and then he didn’t help. What on fucking earth. And I still feel like she wants to kick me out but is just afraid I’ll raise a huge stink. Well, she should be fucking afraid. You know what? I’ve learned my lesson from what I went through with Matt, though. It won’t be raising a stink the way we normally understand raising a stink. It’ll just be… a review of my experience, with everyone’s names on it and right out where she can see it. If I leave out the loaded language and just describe what happened, how bad is that really? And if she’s still offended or anyone else gets upset… what? I’m just reporting. Don’t shoot the messenger, man.
But yes. If she boots me, I will say something. I don’t know what it is with assholes just thinking I’m gonna keep my mouth shut when they mistreat me. So she would be best served to continue the status quo until either I actually do something wrong or I decide to leave.
Things look better on a couple other fronts:
Doug called last night and it sounds like he’s got EmmaLeah the first weekend of November, and weekends are my least busy time for once, so as long as no one pulls any funny shit with this like they did with my JOB, I should be free too, so he wants to pick me up and go down to see the redwoods at the same place we saw them in 1989. I think I have passed what he’s talking about on 101 and it’s got Paul Bunyan out in front of the gift shop. So that’ll be a gas. I’m curious to see if he’ll be amenable to talks about future arrangements or might even bring up the subject himself. He’s spoken before of trying to get custody of EmmaLeah and if he did, he’d need help probably. I don’t want to live with him, but if he’s changed as much as he seems to think he has, maybe it’ll be all right. But at minimum I’m going to sound him out about options if L kicks me out. I have no assurance that won’t happen, the way she’s moved goalposts on several other things.
C emailed me this morning with pay offers on two specific jobs he wants me to do. IF he gets the windfall he is expecting and that he needs to make that happen, I’ll end up earning a good chunk of what I would have gotten had I been able to keep the Walmart job for that whole month. My only complaint so far is that I know me and I will get my fucking hopes up and then something will happen and then the money won’t. But if that’s not how it turns out, well, it’ll be nice to have that cushion.
Okay. I need to go cook some food. I’ve had several pieces of bacon and some coffee so far today and me being hungry isn’t going to help anything. Maybe add more later, I dunno.
[edit]
I forgot to mention I had nine pieces of scutwork this week — for the new, that’s $10 a piece. I’ve gotten three done. I do not know how many he will do. If he does more than four, I am fucked. I need to make up the $10 from my first weekly payment to L, and then have more money than that: the thirty for week two and then some more.
If I have at least three to do tomorrow I will be okay. If there are four or five I may just do two trips and finish the whole thing, because fuck him. Normally I space it out because one, that’s easier on me physically and two, he said he prefers the work spread out over two or three days. Well quit moving the fucking goalposts and then I might care what you prefer, boyo. Jesus.
What confuses me about this whole situation is I feel like I’m being frozen out BUT, we just got done a few weeks ago discussing some kind of game night thing that apparently we’re going to do… or they’re going to do… whenever the hell that will be. I’ve heard no more about it since but it was pretty obvious I was welcome to play. How did we get from that to this? I don’t understand. Much less him and me having our conversation Tuesday night which was not the sort of conversation you have with someone you are about to tell to fuck off. It was totally platonic — that’s not what I mean — but again, what the fuck?
So I may just be panicking over nothing. But I can’t trust, because people don’t talk to me. And when I try to talk to them I get ignored.
I need to not be here as soon as humanly possible. Clearly this is not the place for me.
When will I ever find the place that is for me?
[edit edit]
I went ahead and messaged him and asked him since he seems to be online. He’s done three fucking boxes. A third of what I was going to get.
I didn’t tell him about L wanting money from me and I wonder if it will make any difference. But I did ask him if I could do the final three tomorrow. And what’s he doing? Sitting there “being online” and not even looking.
He does this when I try to remind him that I’m done and need paid — something he asked me to do almost from day one.
This cannot all be down to absent-mindedness. If it is all down to absent-mindedness it’s a fucking miracle he gets books finished.
[edit edit edit]
Told him about the L utilities situation. “I am also hemorrhaging money. But also my doctor really did tell me to get more exercise.” Okay, so am I too much of an expense right now? Because I need to know that. “You are not too much of an expense. We’ll split the work for now.”
Well then.
Remember (I did say this, right?), he originally offered me a hundred a week. Now we’re at this.
I’m trying at this point not to give in to despair, because I am dangerously close to that.
No, but here’s a funny thing, and I was about to put this in my Substack the other day when I realized that was probably too much of a bore for people to bother with. But there are many reasons I have issues with creativity, or many kinds of issues I have with creativity. Whichever. One of those issues with drawing specifically is that I seem to mainly want to put a lot of work into it when I am extremely stressed out. Which maps: I was there in high school, I was there during the divorce process, I was there as things began to finally deteriorate with Matt, and I dipped my toe back into there when we had that crazy woman with the little girl at the homeless shelter. When you see me crank out awesome portraits it is because my life is ABSOLUTE SHIT.
I need to figure out how to stop being like that because it gets in the way of succeeding as an artist WHILE being healthy and happy.
But for now, this probably qualifies. Oh god.
Sooooo… Working on the art site again. Don’t really have a choice, do I. At least this week I’ll have an extra day off. I would have worked three.
Come on, C’s lawyer. Get that fucking money out of escrow. I’m drowning here.
Yes I could get another job. And then L would go out of town again. Why does the universe hate me?