Throbbing Manor – Page 2 – A Most Unreliable Narrator

Appointed guardian of the mead of poetry (and chunky jam)

Dear Internet,
TheHusband and I were pretty busy this weekend with lots of Martha Stewarting it up around Throbbing Manor, which precluded me getting any more writing done other then some tweaking of a few things. I am fairly pleased with myself having completed almost two weeks straight of writing in my private journal, something which I haven’t done this long of a stretch in ages. I’m also getting in the habit of taking a daily picture so if I can’t get write, I can at least embed an image to kind of illustrate how my day is going. Because sometimes you want to showcase just how awesome the internet really is.
The biggest relief was when my brother popped over on Friday and Sunday and fixed the electrical in our boiler and stove. Over Labor Day weekend, with a house full of guests, the neighborhood transformer blew not once, but twice in the same day. The first blowout happened in the morning and power restored within a few hours after. The second blowout happened that same evening and was a number of short burst where the entire neighborhood flickered on one minute/off one minute for about ten minutes. Once that arc finished, we discovered the stove and the boiler, which were both on the same circuit, were fried.
We could write a novel about Throbbing Manor’s electrical problems, with the first chapter on how not to use three various types of electrical (knob and tube, modern, a hybrid) running through the house. Upon my brother’s recommendation¹, this summer before my surgery, we buried the house electrical from the pole to the house so it is no longer aerial, upped our panel from 100 amps to 200amps, and repositioned the house surge protector² from the sub-panel in the basement to the main panel in the garage. Every time Jeff comes over to do work on one small project, he uncovers a plethora of other issues that are bigger then the original project.
Throbbing Manor is almost 90 years old, and we live in a historic district where we’re one of the “newer” houses built, so coupled with the houses all trying to modernize their interiors, it’s not terribly surprising to get the occasional blown transformer. Except, this happens nearly every month and so much so, we signed up for the appliance plan via our electrical company that if ANYTHING should ever happen and an appliance breaks, they will fix it for free³. Since it was Labor Day weekend, I called on Tuesday and find out that our boiler is not under the repair for the plan.

me: “But it says ‘furnace and other heating elements,’ ” I insist to the customer service rep.
Consumers: “Except for boilers.”
me: “But when I called to set up the plan, and asked about boilers, the assured me it was part of the plan.”
Consumers: “I’m sorry you were told incorrect information, but that is not true. For an additional $7/month, we can add the boiler addendum.”⁴
me: “…”
me: “Just so I’m clear: Even though our boiler and stove are fried due to transformer blowing out not once but twice on the same day, and this is Consumer’s fault, I have to pay for the repairs on my uncovered equipment.”
Consumers:”Yes.”

Consumer’s was quick to get the stove repair to us within a day but he had to “order a part,” which was nearly two weeks ago. Boilers, due to their complexity, are expensive. Since we were going to have to pay for the boiler ourselves, we waited until my brother was free to look at electrical before calling the boiler people because they would have had to call an electrician to fix the fried bits anyway since Jeff discovered the arcing over the years coupled with shoddy repair jobs on the house electrical, mixed in with sketchy installation of circuits was causing various bits to melt in the shut off switch attached to the boiler, which he also repaired.
By fixing the circuit the stove and the boiler were on, viola! The stove now works! Which means, we no longer have to use a lighter to get the range going (gas stove/electrical ignition) and we could use the oven.
Edit 1/03/2013: This has been languishing in my drafts box since September. I think I was planning on finishing this post after I made a batch of pear cherry chutney but never did the update, hence for the abrupt ending.
TTFN,
Lisa

1. My brother is a licensed electrician. Don’t try this at home.
2. Brother checked and verified the house surge protector is working so why it didn’t catch the arc the second time reamins a mystery.
3. Consumer’s offers the ASP which is insurance for your appliances. Most energy providers have this kind of service and it’s way better then the typical renter/house insurance since there is typically no deductible. ( I would still keep house/rental insurance for other things, but for appliances, this is the way to go!) You pay $X dollars a month, attached to your bill, and you call if there is an issue. They send out a repair person, and you don’t get charged for the visit or the repairs (however, the last bit can be variable but it’s typically free / low cost then if you did not have the plan).
4. I signed up for the boiler addendum. Dammit.

Thruster, Mover, Inciter

Dear Internet,
It’s a beautiful afternoon here at Throbbing Manor and I plan on taking full advantage of it before the cold eventually sets in. Since I’ve spent most of the summer, okay all of the summer, cooped up in the house, the desire to be outside sometimes borders on desperation.
TheHusband and I got into one of our many fake fights this morning because I’ve not been after the doctor’s and physical therapist’s rules to the letter. When he pointed out this was the exact same behavior as my mother¹, I decided if there was any good time to change it would be now. I’ve been monitoring my behaviors all summer to figure out routines which would not only work on my days off from the library, but also I could easily modify as I move from working part to full time.
The big time suck, of course, is social networking. You cannot just login and read Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr or whatever your vice is and get off (figuratively and literally) in a short amount of time. There is some stickiness to this wicket as many of my friends are only on X network and often, that may be the ONLY way to communicate with them. Social networking is also part of what I do for the library, so I need to be up to date with what is happening in those worlds, so it’s a lot harder to just kiss off social networks or even specific services.
Ultimately, I think the real motivation of what’s keeping me on these networks is I want people to read what I write. I want my words to connect, resonate, laugh, and perhaps give others courage (or fear depending on what it is I’m writing about) so that at the very least, we do not always feel so damned alone. I find it hugely interesting with all of these tools to connect us, so many of those that I’m acquainted with often still feel like they are all alone. This may not happen all the time, sure, but even I have found while I may have over 300 friends on Facebook, but when TheHusband had seizures in the spring of 2011 and I rushed him to the hospital, I had no one to call locally for comfort. I not only want to be big in Japan, but I want a more locally fulfilled life.
With that being said, I received a lot of outpouring of support across the networks as of late over this morning’s entry and others. While I may not have responded to all of those who have written, I did want to publicly let everyone who has reached out to me to let them know how much I appreciate and adore everything you have said and given me.
This space, here, is my safe space. While I am grateful for those who have reached out to me and tell me they are there for me, please understand if I do not immediately take you up on your offer. I use this space to work out what I’m feeling, but attempting to express those thoughts does not always work vocally or in an area I cannot control. Each piece takes me hours to write so to vomit emotionally on a person is lot more complex then it is here. Also understand that I have a difficult time discussing my feelings with TheHusband and I live with him.
With that all being said, I still encourage people to comment, whether via the comment option at the bottom of the posts, via email, or on any of the social networks I am. I want to know that you’re alive and listening.
By the by, Wedensday the Pug and I were chased out of the backyard this afternoon by an indignant squirrel who kept yelling at us, for over a half an hour, from the tree tops. At first I thought it was several squirrels fighting, only when I looked up in the trees, I saw one squirrel running up and down the branches, squawking, but no other squirrels were (that I could see) in the vicinity. The squirrel made a point to jump lower and lower, keeping its gaze on the dog which is when I figured the squirrel must of thought Wednesday was intruding and it wanted to protect its space. Fair enough. I took Wednesday in and as soon as we were in the garage, the squawking immediately stopped. My office looks out onto the back area and I have yet to hear a single peep for the rest of the afternoon.
There is a metaphor in there somewhere, I just know it.
TTFN,
Lisa

1. He was commenting on how mother has been hospitalized and then placed in a physical rehabilitation center for nearly four months each time, two years in a row. Both of these incidents stemmed from her own negligence of her body, meaning that as someone who is a brittle brittle brittle, has congestive heart failure, and severe arthritis to the point that she’s had joint replacement surgery, she takes terrible care of her health. The doctor’s have told her repeatedly that all of this could be circumvented if she stopped eating like crap, exercised, and was more proactive.

The Summer Tale

Dear Internet,
Yesterday as I was leaving work, someone started calling after me I was walking away from the entrance of the library. As I walking and digging in my bag for my phone, it took me a few seconds to realize that someone was yelling my name. When I looked behind me, I saw a woman limping towards me and who, after my confirmation that I was who she was looking for, she began telling me she had lived at Throbbing Manor for nearly 25 years and is currently battling the bank to get repossession of the house. Taken slightly back (How do you talk to a crazy person?), we had a stilted conversation about the gardens, then she had this off-centered laugh about our battle with the ivy, and that she had also met my mother-in-law last year when TheHusband and mother-in-law were working in the gardens during the MIL’s visit. When I could think no more to say, I walked away from her with a twitchy smile on my lips and a what the fuck just happened in my heart.
Today is my 40th birthday.
I’m in my home office, still in my PJs at ~~1:30~~ 3 in the afternoon. Wednesday is snoring on her pillow under the window fan. I have both windows open, the blinds are pulled down as far as they will go before they go over the lip of the opened window frame, shrouding the room in semi-darkness.
I am severely depressed.
This isn’t “JESUS FUCK, I’M 40!” depressed or even, “Christ. I’m fat” depressed or even a million things that would make us sad and blue on a daily basis. This is different. Far different. This is enveloping not only my heart, but my entire being, it’s physical as well as mental. When I walk, I feel like I’m moving in half-solidified Jello. When I am still, my skin feels like it’s being pushed on at all of its pores. I feel like I am of single mind and two bodies at once: one physical and one epheremal. I watch myself during the motions, a panel of Lisa judges on how well we passed (8.5! Work on your backflip, girl.) through the motion.
Even at my worst stages of BPD, even at the stages of when things were so bad that I felt like there was no way out, there was almost always some small thread of hope that would keep me from being incredibly stupid.
I don’t have that now. At least, not in the same form as before. I don’t have a desire to kill myself but I don’t feel like there is any hope. It seems that I’ve presented myself with a conundrum. Perhaps I am my own unreliable narrative for the second I had written the above, I knew it to be a lie: I want this to go away and I want to be happy.
On paper, everything looks great: I have a great husband, a lovely house, an awesome job. I have old and new friends who are incredible and supportive. I have a brother whose relationship I’m beginning to depend on and materialistically, I want for nothing. For the first time in over a decade, I do not need to calculate the price of an item down to a per hour working cost. But something is not right in Denmark, as all I want to do is do nothing and feel nothing. I just ate a bar of my favorite chocolate. It tasted good, because something tells me this is what I knew to be my favorite bar of chocolate, but it does not make me happy to have eaten it or treat it with joy or even acknowledge that it is good chocolate. It was a bar a chocolate, so I ate it. It’s boiled down to being that simple.
Food is not consumed because it tastes good but consumed because I know it is there for me to eat it. I drink to hydrate, not to enjoy. I watch television to block out hours, not to enrich. (Except for True Blood, because well, that’s True Blood.) I used to read 10-15 books a month, I have finished two books in the last six. When I read the news, of any kind, I have the same emotion for war pieces as I do for saving kittens from a tree. I can’t tell you the last time I felt sexy. Or when the last time I laughed because I was overjoyed. While I never particularly thought of myself as being vain, I did take care of my appearance and even that is slipping. When I do something that should fall into being beautiful, I find that I’ve placed a mask on my body instead. I’m miming what you think I should be doing because that is socially what people know Lisa to do so that is what I’ll do.
So far, over 50 people have wished me a happy birthday on my Facebook wall but I’m crying because no one has sent me a physical card, because I feel that if they really did care, they would spend the few bucks for the card and the stamp. Then I beat myself up over that bit of hypocritical wants since when is the last time I randomly bought someone a card and sent it (i.e. never). Again, a lie: Today’s post revealed a quick written post from my mother who jotted that she was far too young to have a 40 year old daughter.
I am told by people they care about me (see earlier remark about new and old friends being supportive), but I feel like they are just telling me this to soothe their own souls, even when they are being sincere and true. I have stopped engaging with most people locally because I do not know how to be a friend to them anymore as I don’t know how to react anymore to someone loving me, even platonically. When my husband says he loves me, my first reaction is that I feel like he loves me because it’s habit not because he genuinely does. Then I start to cry because I know that bit about my husband is a lie and I feel like an awful human being for even thinking this to be true. And if there is anyone in this world who loves me pure and true, it’s TheHusband.
I am an emotional mess of contradictions and fallacies, and I’m barely keeping my head above water. You were good to me years ago Internet for working things out (and cheaper then therapy). I hope you don’t mind me coming to you again.
x0x0,
Lisa

Unfucking Throbbing Manor

Recently, I saw a bit of Tumblr posts on Twitter scroll on by from Cat Valente, which the titles lead me curious and curiouser down the dark rabbit hole that is Tumblr. I was fine with this since the occasional tapping of the Tumblr vein never really hurt anyone and Cat’s posts all pointed to the nirvana – a blog called Unfuck Your Habitat.
After perusing the site for a bit, it took me a minute to figure out that Unfuck Your Habitat builds/uses the same methods as The Fly Lady, only in a more OMGBBQ and animated gifs heavy way, with a teensy dose of profanity. Which if I’m honest amongst my close friends here on the intarwebs, I’m moar likely to use something where “fuck” is sprinkled liberally about and the cherry on top are vaguely obnoxious animated gifs say over a site that seems to be geared towards, well, women I’d like to strangle on a daily basis.
The premise is simple: You find something you want to unfuck and you unfuck it. It can be as small as simply taking the steps to making your bed everyday and laying out that day’s clothes the night before or even just unfucking an area that is always in a cluster and working on keeping that unfucked on a more regular basis. In an related but not kind of way, I’ve been working on unfucking my emotional/creative life for the last month by meditating every morning for five minutes and then writing for 7 minutes before I begin my day. And by “begin my day,” I mean pour coffee down my throat in order to become human.
Continue reading “Unfucking Throbbing Manor”

So I asked the Internet to trim my tree – Day 9 (@darksatinkitten, @srj68, and @canuklibrarian)

Laura sent me a box full of ornaments, that in addition to the swan and the penguins, I used to decorate the small tree I had in my work office!

Stacey sent us this beautiful, hand blown glass ornament.

The merry bells are jingling

The pug and I have been holed up in the master bedroom all day, knitting, catching up on television (namely the Doctor Who holiday specials), and sipping non-alcoholic drinks. Pajamas have not been removed but a sports bra was added. Last night’s holiday merriment, which started with my brother and I splitting several bottles of wine and ended with me finishing the night by imbibing in one vegan White Russian¹ after the other means that my liver needs a rest. I’m indulging in one of my favorite non-alcoholic drinks, Shirley Temples, because the thought of drinking any more alcohol makes me ever so slightly woozy. My goal in becoming an alcoholic is clearly failing.
The holidays are nearly over and I am in mixed feelings of these events. The experiment, “Ornaments for Cookies” has been a resounding success as so many fabulous people from across the internets sent all the lovely things that decorate our tree. But experiments in dairy free baking have frustrated me, which meant that I chucked it up for man and made “regular” treats to send since my numerous attempts to create vegan condensed milk, which was needed for many of the treats, were illuminating failures. Illuminating in that no matter how hard vegans like to think they can replace every animal product with a vegetable one, there are just some things that do not work well. Cheese is one, condensed milk is another. Because of the dairy free baking failures, my plans to be prepared for cookie distribution was slowed since since I ended up replacing the dairy free items with their original counterparts. I thought I was going to be behind in shipping of the goods, but it seems majority of the people waited until the last minute to send me their ornament so the unnecessary pressure I put on myself was for naught. So far, I shipped/gave nearly 20 boxes of cookies over the past week with another few boxes to go.
I will tell you that If I look at another fucking cookie anytime soon, I may slit someone’s throat.
My brother and I reconciled earlier this month after months of palpable tension and yesterday’s big holiday dinner was the first time since TheHusband’s and I wedding meal in May, 2010, that my brother, mother, and ourselves had a dinner together. It was not as painful as I had suspected it might be – though we did find out that my mother is a snitch and quite judgmental of her fellow Retirement Villa peers. According to Mother, any female that had a boyfriend (granted, the average age of the residents is well into their 80s), was clearly suffering from severe Alzheimer’s, but Mother never explained the the correlation between sexual freedom and dementia. This launched into a conversation between TheHusband, my brother, and myself of our generation getting older and that the uptightness exhibited by my mother and her peers would be flip-flopped by our generation with our tattoos, piercings, and shocking blue hair trolling the hallways and byways of retirement homes.
The younger generation shuddered in horror.
Friends came later in the day, with Mother meeting most them as my brother hustled her out the door. The general consensus of our friends was that it was clear Mother preferred the company of my brother to any other, and we all drank to dysfunctional family relationships.
Shaking of fists occurred several times in the night, primarily when we all know that we should be standing on our own and rallying against the societal expectations of hanging with the blood family during the holidays instead of taking a stand and creating our urban families. One year, we all proclaimed, we will take a stand! Then we ponied up to the kitchen counter to pour ourselves another drink.
And with that, another holiday is over.
1. Instead of half-and-half, I use very vanilla Silk soy milk.