I am depressed tonight. There are lots of reasons for it, but I think the main on is having my sleep schedule screwed with. There are many others too, but that one is always the one that lets the others break out to the surface.
My grandfather is the new nightmare in my life. He's bored all day and he has taken my living here to mean that I do nothing and have nothing to do and want to spend every free moment with him. He's great to have lunch with and talk to for a bit. I don't even mind doing favors for the guy. I was going to say that I ask of people about what I'm willing to give to them, and that's true when I don't like you, but I have a really hard time asking anything of anyone at all ever. So the amount I ask of someone is really no indicator of how much I'm willing to do for them. For this grandfather, it was a little bit. He used up all of that today.
Yesterday, he asked if I'd go to the auction with him in Las Cruces. He offered to buy me something if I found something I liked, because I didn't want to go and have no money at the moment. Today he called at 7:45 and said he'd be right over, so I got ready. He showed up at 9. Now I'm not the king of being right on time, but there's a bit of a difference if I make someone get up and get ready and also waste the productive part of their day. He has some habits. Apparently they involve asking for EVERYTHING in my mom's house. He has no use for any of it, but he just wants to grab what he can. I need to have a garage sale and ditch a lot of this stuff...and make money and pay the mortgage for a month with that.
When it comes to things I need to be doing while I'm here, they are: I need to write, I need to work on a game, I MUST write my dissertation and a talk on what I did in Germany, I need to repair this house to get it ready to sell, and I have got to organize the things in it to go too. Well I can't use those last two as an excuse to get away from him, because he wants to help with the house, and wants to hoard everything in it. I've seen his handiwork too, everything he touches looks gnawed-upon. He fixed my mom's bathroom sink. The metal is all chewed-up, the pipe has a very slow leak, and the original problem wasn't really solved. I should post some pictures of that, and of how he fixed the door.
He means well in a suffocating and overbearing way, though. He also has no respect for privacy. I should arrange it to look like I'm having a satanic orgy some morning. He started just coming through the side door without giving any notice until I started locking it. I then also locked the gates to the yard, only to discover that one of the last things my mother did was give him a key to those. He gives the impression that he thinks this place and everything associated with it or with me is his to do with as he pleases. He has a way of asking that is just pushy and quickly evolves in his head as some kind of agreement in which I get totally screwed. He wants to tell someone that they can just take over the payments of this house, for example.
So, I rode with him to the auction today. For my time, I got the following: A lecture about how Obama is fucking up the country with no specifics. A lecture about how Bush was great for chucking the UN out of this area. Some crazy nutball shit about end times and "one world government". And then a whole bunch of lectures about Jesus. If I have to ride with him again, maybe I'll just stop keeping to myself what I really think about these issues. I try now to tell myself that when someone likes me, they think I believe like they do, so this really is flattery, so I try to not be high school Jeremy, who slapped people in the face with their own belief systems when it even seemed like they were thinking about encroaching on mine. That was a fun ride.
Then we got there, and they're auctioning farm equipment. Nothing he wants is even going to be on the auction block until Sunday. He also knew this in advance, because he went the other day. Let me tell you, the farm equipment is probably good, but most of the rest of the shit is SHIT. This kind of thing is definitely for people who are not savvy enough to use a computer to check out ebay and craigslist...which is why it is all farmers there. They are really old farmers, mexican farmers, and Mennonites. Those seem to be the last three groups in the area who haven't heard of the internet.
My grandfather kept saying, "Well, if you see anything you want, let me know." So I would say, "Well, I don't have any money," which is short for, "Yeah, I kind of stopped my life to come here and take care of my mom, so I have no income and the insurance company is dragging its feet on paying out on her policy, but that doesn't mean that I want you to assist me in any way." But then he made a kind offer: "You can pick out anything you want for not more than 100 or 150 dollars...and then you can just pay me back by digging ditches or something for me for $8/hr." That is, apparently the rate "his Mexican" charges. You know when you have something hit you so profoundly out of left field that you can't even fathom how to respond until the moment has passed? That was one of those times for me. It's mostly that I just didn't want to hurt the old guy's feelings, though, at this rate, that's not going to save him for long. I should've told him that I'd work it off at my physics tutoring rate: $50/hr, and that he already owed me about $200 for the time I had spent there up to that point.
So we spent the ENTIRE day there looking at nothing. He got bored with me at one point because I, myself, was so bored that when we got over to the vehicles, I inspected a few really quirky ones thoroughly. They were: two ancient ambulances, one short bus (that I kind of really really wanted), and a van with a hydraulic arm with a bucket on the end.
I was wiped out, so I was looking forward to sleeping on the 45 minute drive back to Deming, but that's when the final bombshell was dropped. It was really a minor one, but considering it was one more straw, I wasn't happy. I got to drive home, because he wanted to sleep. Having to stay awake when I'm sleepy is the single worst feeling to me that there is. My body just goes dead when I'm sleepy; it doesn't really even consult me. So it's a Herculean feat for me to try to make it stay up, especially when I'm driving.
He didn't even sleep on the ride home.
And then I got home finally and took a million hour nap. Now I'm up at 1, alone, and am trying to think of a way to not go to an auction ever again. He thinks we're going again tomorrow and the next day.
My grandfather is the new nightmare in my life. He's bored all day and he has taken my living here to mean that I do nothing and have nothing to do and want to spend every free moment with him. He's great to have lunch with and talk to for a bit. I don't even mind doing favors for the guy. I was going to say that I ask of people about what I'm willing to give to them, and that's true when I don't like you, but I have a really hard time asking anything of anyone at all ever. So the amount I ask of someone is really no indicator of how much I'm willing to do for them. For this grandfather, it was a little bit. He used up all of that today.
Yesterday, he asked if I'd go to the auction with him in Las Cruces. He offered to buy me something if I found something I liked, because I didn't want to go and have no money at the moment. Today he called at 7:45 and said he'd be right over, so I got ready. He showed up at 9. Now I'm not the king of being right on time, but there's a bit of a difference if I make someone get up and get ready and also waste the productive part of their day. He has some habits. Apparently they involve asking for EVERYTHING in my mom's house. He has no use for any of it, but he just wants to grab what he can. I need to have a garage sale and ditch a lot of this stuff...and make money and pay the mortgage for a month with that.
When it comes to things I need to be doing while I'm here, they are: I need to write, I need to work on a game, I MUST write my dissertation and a talk on what I did in Germany, I need to repair this house to get it ready to sell, and I have got to organize the things in it to go too. Well I can't use those last two as an excuse to get away from him, because he wants to help with the house, and wants to hoard everything in it. I've seen his handiwork too, everything he touches looks gnawed-upon. He fixed my mom's bathroom sink. The metal is all chewed-up, the pipe has a very slow leak, and the original problem wasn't really solved. I should post some pictures of that, and of how he fixed the door.
He means well in a suffocating and overbearing way, though. He also has no respect for privacy. I should arrange it to look like I'm having a satanic orgy some morning. He started just coming through the side door without giving any notice until I started locking it. I then also locked the gates to the yard, only to discover that one of the last things my mother did was give him a key to those. He gives the impression that he thinks this place and everything associated with it or with me is his to do with as he pleases. He has a way of asking that is just pushy and quickly evolves in his head as some kind of agreement in which I get totally screwed. He wants to tell someone that they can just take over the payments of this house, for example.
So, I rode with him to the auction today. For my time, I got the following: A lecture about how Obama is fucking up the country with no specifics. A lecture about how Bush was great for chucking the UN out of this area. Some crazy nutball shit about end times and "one world government". And then a whole bunch of lectures about Jesus. If I have to ride with him again, maybe I'll just stop keeping to myself what I really think about these issues. I try now to tell myself that when someone likes me, they think I believe like they do, so this really is flattery, so I try to not be high school Jeremy, who slapped people in the face with their own belief systems when it even seemed like they were thinking about encroaching on mine. That was a fun ride.
Then we got there, and they're auctioning farm equipment. Nothing he wants is even going to be on the auction block until Sunday. He also knew this in advance, because he went the other day. Let me tell you, the farm equipment is probably good, but most of the rest of the shit is SHIT. This kind of thing is definitely for people who are not savvy enough to use a computer to check out ebay and craigslist...which is why it is all farmers there. They are really old farmers, mexican farmers, and Mennonites. Those seem to be the last three groups in the area who haven't heard of the internet.
My grandfather kept saying, "Well, if you see anything you want, let me know." So I would say, "Well, I don't have any money," which is short for, "Yeah, I kind of stopped my life to come here and take care of my mom, so I have no income and the insurance company is dragging its feet on paying out on her policy, but that doesn't mean that I want you to assist me in any way." But then he made a kind offer: "You can pick out anything you want for not more than 100 or 150 dollars...and then you can just pay me back by digging ditches or something for me for $8/hr." That is, apparently the rate "his Mexican" charges. You know when you have something hit you so profoundly out of left field that you can't even fathom how to respond until the moment has passed? That was one of those times for me. It's mostly that I just didn't want to hurt the old guy's feelings, though, at this rate, that's not going to save him for long. I should've told him that I'd work it off at my physics tutoring rate: $50/hr, and that he already owed me about $200 for the time I had spent there up to that point.
So we spent the ENTIRE day there looking at nothing. He got bored with me at one point because I, myself, was so bored that when we got over to the vehicles, I inspected a few really quirky ones thoroughly. They were: two ancient ambulances, one short bus (that I kind of really really wanted), and a van with a hydraulic arm with a bucket on the end.
I was wiped out, so I was looking forward to sleeping on the 45 minute drive back to Deming, but that's when the final bombshell was dropped. It was really a minor one, but considering it was one more straw, I wasn't happy. I got to drive home, because he wanted to sleep. Having to stay awake when I'm sleepy is the single worst feeling to me that there is. My body just goes dead when I'm sleepy; it doesn't really even consult me. So it's a Herculean feat for me to try to make it stay up, especially when I'm driving.
He didn't even sleep on the ride home.
And then I got home finally and took a million hour nap. Now I'm up at 1, alone, and am trying to think of a way to not go to an auction ever again. He thinks we're going again tomorrow and the next day.
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