Sonicrusk Blog

Here it is Christmas Eve, and I’m jazzed up.

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve had a Christmas that wasn’t surrounded in some type of monotonous dreaded activity. Last year, I was moving into my current home. On this very day, boxes, clutter, and a strange guy installing fans on my ceilings with his large wife in tow surrounded me. Nothing can beat the three consecutive Christmases I spent on Oahu, including one seven days before I left the service.

“Wow, Hawaii,” you say, “must be nice!” No, not really.

I did get my shopping finished with two small trips. The gifts are not sexy, but functional, efficient, and hopefully will lead to fun.

For festive family outings, I have been assigned as The Beverage Keeper. I buy the soda and water for the parties. I don’t remember how I received this perpetual assignment, probably bought drinks sometime back when a bind popped up. It does fit me and I fulfill the task well. It sure the hell beats making a food dish for the outing.

I went out this morning to buy the drinks at a local supermarket and found it bitterly cold. I mean, I had a skullcap and sweater on, and still found it painful. I scooted into and out of the store nearly shivering. My steering wheel was cold for a while even after the heater had cranked up. I used a feature on my cell phone that gives out the current temperature. At 0800, it was 30 degrees. It’s barely raised since then, and now with fog. Damn cold in Bakersfield lately.

Merry Christmas folks.

EDIT: The photo and post title are from a fancy holiday gift bag.

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In the past, I’ve mentioned the fact that there have been voluminous home improvement projects executed on the property I live on. I live in one duplex, with my landlady on another.

For a while, the home improvement projects took place inside of my house. I would have to wake up to let the contractors in, and then sit around supervising their work. It grew to be a pain in the ass because they would spend whole workdays inside my house. I couldn’t go anywhere. I would have to have my landlady come in and sit around while they worked during those times when I absolutely had to leave the house for a pressing event. She was trusting of these contractors, and suggested that I just leave them in my place alone to work. I insisted that that was foolish, and that she remain there while I was away. She would get annoyed at that, annoyed that she had to sit around uselessly. One time right before I went to a Korn concert, the plumber arrived a few minutes before I was to leave to work. My landlady again suggested I let the plumber in and leave and I again suggested that wasn’t going to happen. She told me she was still at work and would be home in a few minutes. I said, “That’s fine,” but he was going to have to wait outside or come back later because I had to leave this very moment. It was the truth. My landlady got pissed off and stormed off the phone if there is any such thing. I stood outside with the plumber and when I saw her car pull up, I waited for her to come to my door. She was indeed pissed off. The truth is, the plumber is a nice guy and I’m sure that he wouldn’t have ransacked my house, but I don’t let strangers frolic in my house without someone I truly trust there. Would you? Would my landlady?

All of this home improvement subsided and I was able to relax. Outside work around the property continued but I was oblivious to it until I started working nights.

My landlady had talked about building this grand doghouse right by my room so the dogs could keep warm during the winter months. It sounded fine to me during initial notification. The slack ass contractor employed to work on the thing dragged his ass until the very same week I started working nights. Over the next six weeks, he somehow got most of it built right outside my window. I don’t know how I slept. It must not have been very well but well enough to not drive me crazy. He usually wouldn’t start work until around 1-2 PM, so I had slept enough to not complain too much. His work eventually stopped and some roofers came to put a roof on this dog house. My landlady called me to say that they would eventually have to come into my bedroom and living room to finish the back part of the roof from the inside. Damn.

I was losing patience. Then, this guy started sawing something intermittently for several days in the back of the property while I was trying to sleep. What the hell was that? White noise I can handle. Dead silence and then power tools cutting through concrete I cannot. I called my landlady. She called the concrete sawer and was informed that he would only have a few more slices to do that day. The ensuing work was far enough away that it could be ignored with some fortitude.

A few days ago, I was in bed asleep one morning when I heard the same sawing right outside my bedroom. Added to it were massive knocks of a hammer. I tried to sleep through it but could not. I had only been asleep for one hour, with a Tylenol PM in me to boot, when I went outside and asked him and his small crew of toothless workers what the hell was going on. He said my landlady wanted to build a “veranda” in a clearing on the side of the house that is a short distance from my room. He said that my landlady had told him that I was supposed to be off of work that day. Well, I was off the night before, but I had to work that night.

I went and called my landlady. She told me that it would only take a couple of months to build. I told her that was ridiculous. She said that I knew the property was going to have ongoing projects and that I was the one who chose to work night shift. “No one else works them, only you.” How thoughtful. I might as well be hustling on Union Avenue.

Well, nursing is not a 9-5 job. I like working nights right now. I certainly do not hanker to work the day shift at my current job with all of the bustle, commotion, and bullshit. I told my landlady that maybe it is better I move since all of this had been going on for a year. At first, she denied that duration, but eventually she said, “You do what you gotta do.”

I got back to sleep that day but a couple of hours later the saw and hammer awoke me again. I tried to get back to sleep but to no avail. I jumped up, went to the supermarket, bought some duct tape and aluminum foil, and plastered it all over the windows in the upstairs bedroom. The next day after work, I slept on a cot upstairs in peace. My queen-sized bed sat dormant.

I’ve done that for two days. My plan had been to eventually just transfer my computer room/office downstairs and bring my bed upstairs. A trade in room purpose. Would be fine as this room is now darker, quieter, and more favorable to sleep. I haven’t had the time nor additional manpower to do it yet, but it was the plan just the same.

I didn’t work last night so I slept in until 10 o’clock at night. I needed to vacuum the house, but thought I’d wait until 0700. I didn’t want to wake anyone. At seven, I started vacuuming. The phone rang.

“Sonicrusk, what is that noise?” It was my landlady.

“I’m vacuuming. Don’t tell me you can hear that?”

“Are you trying to get back at me?”

“No, I thought it was late enough.”

“At 7 in the morning on a Saturday?!”

Blah blah. She accused me of being passive aggressive. I told her if that were the case, I would’ve vacuumed at 4 AM. I tried to tell her that my 7AM is the same as other’s 7 PM. She got pissed off and hurriedly got off the phone. I hurriedly went to the convenience store to buy the newspaper for the classified section.

A lot of places forbade pets. I have a dog that I am very reluctant to part with, although I don’t see her so much working the night shift in cold weather. My landlady keeps my dog in the house with her at night. If it wasn’t for my dog, I could move into some cheap one-bedroom apartment for much less than I am paying now. So I looked for houses with some type of yard that allowed pets and also under a certain dollar amount in monthly rent. Still, here my dog has other dogs to play with as well as my landlady. If I move to a place that has a yard, I still have to leave her alone all night. I could get another dog but that would be dependent on some other landlord/lady’s permission. They would still be stuck outside or cooped inside all night alone. Then I come home and go to sleep.

I guess I could pawn her off on some family member like some jerk, or finagle work on the dreaded day shift like every other whiny asshole at work. All I want is to get regular sound sleep and be left alone.

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Yesterday morning, probably around this same time that passes for morning to me but is in reality the middle of the night, I went searching for a link. Al Swearengen made a short post on his favorite show The Wire and I wanted to direct him to a link from an interview with the show’s creator that I heard on NPRs Fresh Air.

As often happens with the web, I stumbled onto a story about Iraq vets that had returned to their home base at Fort Carson. The vets had various degrees of PTSD, depression, and emotional problems stemming from their service in the war. Listening to the NPR news story on my Windows Media Player for its twenty-minute duration, I almost got PTSD myself. I’ve never been to war, but the attitudes portrayed by the army management interviewees sounded familiar.

The reporter talked with a half-dozen or so military vets, some still active duty and others “chaptered” (kicked) out.  All the soldiers had a wavering, vulnerable voice with a veneer of toughness as they talked about some of the atrocious things they saw. Upon returning home, they had emotional problems. The bad thing about PTSD is that it often appears like general fuckedupedness. You get severely depressed, your appearance becomes shabby, and you drink too much, miss work, maybe dabble in drugs and act surly. To the army, this is just bad soldiering.

No commissioned army officer agreed to be interviewed. They had a short blip with an assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs where he used power verbs to describe goals (IDENTIFY, PROVIDE, RESTORE), showing the suspicious disingenuousness of the DOD’s plan. A couple of Non-Commissioned Officers were interviewed. They served with these soldiers, but blamed their disturbances on malingering and mental weakness. Serious. These NCOs had issues with anger and potential violence themselves but were loath to seek mental treatment from a professional.

I’ve never met an army shrink. I’ve never met an army therapist or social worker. I’m not even sure the people who treated me in the army were MDs. The army’s version of mental health treatment, as far as I remember, is seeing the chaplain who toes the party line. To say that the army is on the cutting edge of mental health is laughable.

After hearing this story, I felt bad for these guys. They are getting kicked out of the army, not for mental health ailments, but because of “patterns of misconduct.” Chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out.

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A couple of months ago, the time had come for me to get an oil change for my vehicle.  There are two places that I usually go. One is Wal Mart. Not only do they change your oil, but they fill up the other essential automotive fluids, air up your tires, and vacuum the inside, all for a low price. It takes a crapload of time, but I would wander around the store or surrounding stores, eat a meal, or take the transit bus to the mall.

Eventually, it seemed like it was going to take 2-4 hours just to get my oil changed at Wal Mart, so I went to a place called Big O Tires that is right across the street from the mall. They are reasonably priced, appear to be honest, and give you a free tire rotation. You can also kill time at the mall across the street. You can see that opportunities to kill time are very important to me in certain circumstances.

Two months ago, I drove by Big O Tires and found that the place was cleaned out and closed down. What now? I ended up at a car wash on Brundage Avenue where they changed the oil and cleaned the inside of my car in ten minutes, making me wonder if the oil was even changed. How can you ask for proof?

I know somebody out there is asking, “Why don’t you just change the oil yourself?” Well, because it’s a pain in the ass, that’s why. I’d rather just spend the $20-30 every 3-5 months. Rest assured, I do know how to change a vehicle’s motor oil, and also know to change it every 3,000 miles. That’s why I still drive my old yet still running truck; I have changed the oil on schedule the entire duration of ownership.

Next time, I’ll find one of those Texaco places that change oil.

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