Well. While the monkeys at Bell Canada were good enough to cut off my old phone line, they were not, surprisingly, good enough to install a new line like the promised to do on Friday. I don't know what happened... all I know is that I'm irked and I can't log on except through a brief stint courtesy of Pixiegirl's graciousness. Grr. I'll see what I can do for a more detailed update of my... busy... weekend later.

I'm not even sure if you'll be able to read this or not, unless you're still looking for yesterday's Snivel and not, in fact, today's. But in any case, let me assure you that it isn't that I don't want to write a rant today, it's just that I can't.

You know what I really hate? I'll tell you what I really hate. I hate -- no, I despise people who "think" they know what they're doing when they undertake something that they think can be done cheaper if they simply do it themselves, because they never, ever do. Our landlord hired the village idiot to paint the house and generally be the new fixit guy. He thinks he's the new property manager, of course. Yesterday Theresa, our newest great leader and perhaps the most res ponsible person ever to collect rent at H'Tog screamed at our moronic, Nazi landlord (and not just in the anemic, wishy-washy overdone way that people apply the word "nazi" to anyone they think is an objectionable authority figure. He's actually an honest-to-goodness nazi. Mentioned twelve times by name in Web of Hate.) for over two hours because he showed up looking for said idiot and said idiot had never produced any I.D. or lease or any sort of qualitative evidence to support anything he said. .. such as, "I'm in charge now." Next time he shows up, she's calling the police. And I wish her all the best, because she's reasonable and responsible, and probably the best thing that happened to H'Tog. It's a shame she wasn't there from the start.
I'm still glad I'm moving.

Anyway, the story: Said idiot decided to tinker with the phone connections downstairs, because in his megalomaniacal domain as "handy guy" that's just the sort of thing he assumes he should be able to do. So, in the process of reconnecting one of the upstairs phone lines for someone moving upstairs he, like an idiot, disconnected mine. So it was at eight-thirty last night that I discovered my phone was dead, dead, dead, and by that point Gilligan had left the Island anyway so there was nothing I could do.
This all just means that until he shows up again, assuming he does, my phone li ne won't be reconnected, assuming he can. After all -- he's an idiot. It's not even worth my while to call Bell to send a service chap out, because a) I'd pay for it, and b) I'm moving it on Friday anyway. Although Bell isn't in my "Rob likes these people" book either, because after insisting repeatedly that, no, I didn't want them to connect the main line at the new house with my phone line, I wanted a private line installed separately in my room, they finally managed to get it exactly right, but even then, when Pixiegirl called them to get her phone transferred to the main line at the new house, they'd told her that I'd already placed the order for my line to be transferred there, so they had to cancel my request and now I've got to call them again and make sure they get it right, because I'm apparently not likely to have my phone back this week [if you call, it rings...leave a message] and after a week with no contact with the out side world I'm going to be really, really cranky.

The world is run by idiots.

But not if I can help it.

snap.

One of my best friends in the world is getting married. And aside from all the usual shock, confusion, dismay and worrying that you've come to expect from me, there is also this: she's getting married this Saturday. Which isn't itself the bad part. What the bad part is, well, what it is, you see, is this: I thought she was getting married on Sunday. See, the movers were all set to come and move us on (ack) Saturday, so that we could freely go to the wedding on (sigh) Sun day. Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. ...[contemplative silence]... OK, so, it's not the end of the world. Movers aren't monkeys, and neither are my roommates. Just because I wanted to be there in order to tyrannically assert myself and bark out orders like any good phoney, well hey, this doesn't truly mean that the move won't happen smooth as silk without me. It's just that I'm terrified it won't. Whew. Breathe, boy, breathe. In with the good air, out with the bad air. That's the stuff.
Mercy me, but it's a good thing I brought candy to work.
I seem to tend to have this most amazing problem with things like irony. It just has this way of pitter-pattering upon my poor head, and never exactly ruins anything for me, but instead delights in the complications it brings. I think I'm such a good survivor simply because when irony strikes, I have a reasonable natural resistance to it, built up over time like small doses of arsenic, and I'm simply learning to recover from its sticky, sickening embrace quickly enough to leap to my ubiquitous Plan B. And in this case, all I can really do is turn everything I have over to my friends and the movers, and hope it all makes the journey to the new house safely and sucessfully -- uneventful like. And hey... everything's packed, short of a couple of personal trifles like my (fragile) model of Darth Vader's TIE Fighter, and Mr. Machine, and of course my blankets and my phones and my electronics.

I'm stressing out, bit by bit, but as we come closer to our moving day I am, for however much as is humanly possible given that I'll be in a different city, increasingly prepared. We spent almost all of yesterday at the new place, all of us, cleaning it up for our imminent occupancy. The property company sends cleaning staff to the houses after previous tenants vacate, but it's been sitting unattended for weeks and, anyway, those buggers never truly do a satisfactory job of tidying up. It's a rite of passage, too, when you descend upon your new apartment and get down to the massive task of cleaning it from floor to ceiling. As you mop the floors, wash the windows, scrub the refrigerator inside and out, and methodically remove every last sign that another person has ever lived in your space, you come to actually bond with your new surroundings. Much like a long, difficult, but intimate relationship, as you invest time and care, you get in return a sense of familiarity and trust. You start to love your new home intensely, and even if it has quirks (in our case, the doorways to the hallway and the living room are a little narrow and my room, the largest one -- and blimey but it's huge! -- has a distinct slant to it; which won't in any way involve me rolling out of bed each night, but certainly prompt me to keep my bookcases on the opposite side, lest they fall over and crush me while I'm happily sleeping away in my level bed) you'll defend it against any criticism. Like if your husband chewed with his mouth open all the time. Compared with the abusive relationship I went through with H'Tog, you can bet I feel lucky this time. I'm painting my room a shade known, significantly (but randomly) enough, as delirium which is kind of a warm, light purple which should be quite tasteful and relaxing, and yet very, very macho. And of course, I'm spending lots, and lots of money. So far, which means: "just this weekend," I've spent a grand total of 160 smackarooneys on essentials for the new place, which doesn't even touch some of the bigger expenses which still wait. For instance, rent. Factoring in first and last month's rent as well, May is a month where I've spent over a thousand dollars just on moving in. Which doesn't even count the movers. Also, I've arranged to have my

telephone line moved and re-installed into my new room, which should happen Friday. Bell charges the monetary equivalent of a first-born child for the opportunity of installing a secondary phone line, which makes me (uncharacteristically selfishly) sort of wish that I could blow up the old one instead of leaving it for the next tentant. Unfortunately a new address also means, in this case, getting a new telephone number, but they'll be forwarding my calls for the next three months, so if for some reason I'm an idiot and forget to inform yo u (at least, those of you in the know, and you know who you are... wink, wink) of the new digits, I won't be, at least, off the map.

I'm also terribly unhappy due to the fact that this weekend also brings, in its massively transitional way, the departure of my dear old friend and ex-person Lucretia. She's heading west, and all she really knows is that she'll have a new address sometime in July (she plans to make her voyage across our huge country leisurely, car, tent and all), and then again in August or September when she finally moves to B.C. I wrote her a terribly sentimental letter expounding on the way I'm left feeling. Although I didn't actually see all that much of her during this last year or so of our storm-wracked friendship, her departure is going to be a great loss to my life. She called me this afternoon to talk, and explain her future, and left with a promise to call me again before she left. She really wanted the chance to see me again, but (and this I truly regret) she didn't think she would have any time in Ottawa before leaving. She was due to be in Winchester tomorrow to spend her remaining Ontario-lubbing days with her family, and that was that. I told her about the greatness of the Hayden concert she missed on Saturday, to which she simply cautioned me to keep my tongue quiet lest her jealousy consume her, and well, promised to check the mail as soon as she got off the phone. I hope her letter did arrive already. She won't leave before she's sure it has come (at least, in the sense that if it doesn't come, she'll leave anyway, but not without knowing that there was a delay of some kind and that it was, at least, there), and simply told me to send any future letters to her parents such that they might certainly find her someday, when her whereabouts were better known. I've spent all this time since she initially told me that she was leaving just remembering the friendship Lucretia and I have shared. Remembering what it felt like to hold her, and be held. Remembering the way her hair smelled, or the way her skin tasted. Remembering the first time we held hands, shyly, in the dark, of the bed we lay in side by side, unsure of what to really be doing next. And then I get that extremely achy feeling somewhere deep within my internal organs and I have to do something entirely different, but it doesn't matter because I can't get her out of my thoughts. And it's funny -- if ever I had a nemesis, it was her. I might obsess over the smoldering wreck that was once my relationship with Phil, but she and I didn't fight the way Lucretia and I did. Phil and I just broke up. Horribly, the way a paper cut becomes a life threatening injury if you don't stop the bleeding. Our friendship just couldn't stand the guilt and resentment we respectively felt after we stopped dating.

Lucretia and I never stopped trying. We were always friends, always holding on, always giving each other more chances even though saner people would probably have blown out the metaphorical door and never come back. She hurt my feelings because it wa s in my nature to deal with conflict that way, and I made her angry because that was how she reacted to conflict. But we both wanted the same thing, in the end. We each wanted the other to be there with us. And now she's leaving. After our last, terrible fight, we didn't see too much of one another, but it was as much our busy lives that kept us apart as the explosion, and certainly over time we forgave one another, but kept quiet anyway. I understand now how desperately much I should have tried harder to keep her close. Not even in a relationship way, but simply (if I can even use the word "simply" anywhere near such a complicated person as Lucretia) as my trusted, cherished, dear old friend.

I have no idea when I might see her again, and I suppose that's why I'm so unhappy now, when a month ago I was still putting off my next phone call. I always thought there was more time, which is something I guess we all do, until the "tomorrows" are strung along like paper dolls, and someone you once loved more than your own life slips away into a life all of her own, and a faraway place to hold it in.

Oh.. excuse the disjointed style of my ramblings. I wrote it over the course of my day, with many different thoughts on my mind.

Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.

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