December 26, 2010

  • Merry Christmas, all. Mom and I went to Gilly and Al's house today, and I'm so glad to be out of there. I could have killed Allan! He was so rude all day, and when I finally snapped on him, Gilly told me off.

    I put up one string of lights in their front window, which is in their dining room. Gilly had liked this idea when I suggested it in advance. It's the only set of Christmas lights in the entire house. So I plugged them in for a while, and he unplugged them. When we were setting the table, I plugged them back in as it was getting dark out. A few minutes later he asked who plugged them in, and started yelling at me that he unplugged them because they cost a fortune to run. I said no, it's Christmas, and we're eating in the room, they're pretty, and they cost MAYBE a quarter to run for a whole day. Not even. Meanwhile, he refuses to use CFL light bulbs, and keeps all the lights in every room in the house on all the time, wasting loads of electricity.

    After dinner, I turned on my laptop to watch the Queen's speech on Youtube. Al got angry that I was streaming a video and stealing HIS bandwidth. Never mind that Gilly pays for half of it, and he's been coming over and eating our bandwidth for 2 1/2 years now. Eventually Gilly told me they have internet light, which has very limited bandwidth. Why couldn't they have said "Hey Ali, we only have light internet, can you please go easy on our bandwith?" No, of course not. That would have been polite. Instead, I got a yelled lecture from Gilly about how I was a guest, and I reminded her that Al had been a significant douchebag in our home for all this time and he was being *actively* obnoxious. (I can't find an old entry about it that I'm sure I wrote, but one night he followed me around my apartment as I turned off all the lights he had left on, and he flicked them all back on again. I turned around and told him where to go! He got all sucky about it and Gilly took him into the bedroom to make sucky baby feel better.)

    At some point, Al walked down the hallway and called out that Teffy had peed on the carpet. Gilly was busy, so he called it out twice. I said he should just mop it up himself. "I will not clean it up myself!" Gilly said she'd be there in a minute, and I muttered that they'd better never have children. But you know, he'll be pissed off when his carpet is ruined because he didn't mop it up while it was still pooled on the surface instead of letting it sink down to the underpad.

    I went to make tea, and I pulled out the expensive Paderno kettle Mom had bought them. I was filling it, and Al groaned and asked me to use the electric kettle. I said that since this expensive kettle was a gift from the woman I was making tea for, I was going to use it. He rolled his eyes and walked away.

     Oh, I also got a free turkey from the food bank, which I have nowhere to store for a week until I can cook it.  Last night I asked them to store it for the week, as they have their kitchen freezer, plus a chest freezer and the standup freezer, which they are working toward emptying so it can be disposed of, but it certainly won't be tossed in the next 10 days. They acted like I was asking them to let me move in. I said to Gilly that either they woud take it for me for a week, or it would go bad before anybody got to eat it. She sighed and took it, saying if I left it too long they'd eat it themselves. Fair enough, as I honestly don't plan to leave it there indefinitely. I said I'd pick it up next Sunday, and Al kept shouting "No, Friday!" I said if I take it before Sunday, I'll have to cook it when there is nobody else around to help me eat it. It's not like I went out and BOUGHT a turkey I clearly didn't have room for. I was given a turkey and had to pick it up by a set date, and am unable to cook it immediately. If I had only been asking Gilly, she would have done it for me as a favour, but because he was involved it became a Big Deal. He doesn't think of me or our mother as family, and treats any request like a huge hardship. Never mind that I was dropping off milk for them as they were almost out, and I had driven way out of my way to deliver it.

    This afternoon, they asked me to get my presents out of the living room so there would be room to move around. I took them down the stairs and placed them by the door, which was a struggle as I threw my back out a couple of days ago and it's also causing muscle spasms in my right thigh and calf. However, the living room was very congested and cleanup was necessary so I agreed it was a good idea.  After I packed up and carried the presents to the door, Al started yelling at me to take them out to the car. Well, it's down another set of stairs in the cold, and I was already having pain problems without that. Cold air and stairs are not good for muscle spasms! And why was he ordering me to do this? He wanted to move furniture! I mean, why not wait until after we were gone? Gilly and Al decided to move her wardrobe up from the basement, and it was large and heavy. They got stuck on the stairs, and I suggested that maybe Ed and Paul could help when they visit tomorrow. "No they can't help me!" He shouted. Uh, OK. Whatever. At least wait until you don't have guests sitting in your living room.

    The only nice thing Al said to me the whole day was when I asked if I should take some of the flattened boxes with me for recycling at my building. He thanked me for the offer, but said it wasn't necessary as he would bundle it for the curb.

    On the positive side, Mom was really well-behaved this year. We had a good time with presents, and she was thrilled with her new slippers and her Coronation Street 50th Anniversary book, which she hadn't heard about before. The meal was excellent, and Mom didn't choke or spit food from talking with her mouth full. We had the richest, fruitiest, booziest Christmas pudding I've ever had. We spent half an hour talking with our cousin Andrew on Skype video chat, which was a first for us. He's in England, so we normally phone and have trouble hearing him because Mom yells into the phone and won't let anyone else get a word in edgeways. We ended up having trouble with the sound, so we made faces at each other and got laughing pretty hard.

    Since my last blog entry: I went to Barbados with Bishop for a week in late August, and had a blast. Came home to face reality with my financial situation, and determined I had to move somewhere less expensive. Gilly found me a Kijiji ad that said "One of us is gay and works all the time, and the other is a nerd who studies all the time." I wrote and said all my friends are gay or nerds or both so we'd probably get along great. Well, Rob is 23 and flaming, and Cole is 27 and just last week finished nursing school, and we get along great. It's like having brothers. I moved in here over the course of September.

    Right after I announced the move, Al got a move-on with his house shopping, and a week later put a bid on a brand new house in the south of Kitchener. He was nervous about telling his parents Gilly was moving in, so he waited until a couple weeks before he got the house, then said "Gillian asked to move in with me." (I see a very big problem with this, as does everyone else I've asked, but Gilly doesn't see an issue. Doormat much?) So his parents, who liked Gilly before, were not happy. However, Al's sister-in-law Kathy laughed and said "Don't worry Gilly, Ed married a slut!" They got the house on November 22, and had a "key party" in the empty house that same night.

    The official big moving day was last weekend, and lots of people showed up to help. We filled the UHaul truck TWICE. Eep! Apartment was still not empty after that, but the big stuff was gone. Have been goin back daily to clean, toss garbage, and remove more stuff.

    Mom and I went to Florida and the Bahamas in early November. We were there 12 days total, and it was brutal. Mom had gotten conned into yet another time-share thing, and she convinced me to go. She had been planning to drive down there alone, but evetually she asked if I would go with her if she bought plane tickets. I reluctantly agreed. Well, chunks of the trip were good, like snorkelling and dolphin swimming in Bahamas. A lot of stuff was really, really bad, causing me to feel ill and anxious and angry, and at times leaving me in tears. The time share people screwed us at every turn, putting us up in the worst hotels they could find in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando. The rooms weren't disabled accessible, and when I complained about it one manager threatened to call the police. The overnight cruise ship was great on the way out to the Bahamas, and shitty on the way back, although I did meet a cute young guy from Kansas City and made out with him on the ouside deck of the ship at 4:30AM. Don't know his name, as I forgot it not long after meeting him, but it was a fun time. The Bahamas resort was great, but the service in the restaurant crappy. A 50-year-old taxi driver named Woody propositioned me on the beach, and Mom was oblivious until I told her, at which point she claimed she knew all along that he was taking her jokes about finding me a husband far too seriously.

    Teffy and Waffles now live with Gilly and Al.Waffles was terrified the first couple of days, but Teffy settled in quickly. We had been worried about her with the move, as she had lost a lot of weight and had a major kidney infection a month earlier. She's 15 years old now, and she only recently started looking her age. Twice in the last 48 hours, we thought we were going to have to put her down, but she has bounced back again so we're taking it day by day. She's not likely to last a lot longer, but if she still get some joy and is not suffering, we'll keep her with us a little longer.

    Alright, nough for now. Time for bed. Merry Christmas!