amanda_lodden

As you may have noticed, SE Michigan has been covered in snow again (is it spring yet? How 'bout now?). As it typical of our "is it spring yet?" snows, it's the wet, dense snow that just refuses to move and weighs approximately 5 tons per cubic inch.

John parked in the driveway yesterday, because we weren't expecting the snow until Tuesday. That, apparently, is the price for not checking the weather forecast every 15 minutes.

Riding in with John this morning (I'm killing time until I pick up my car from the repair shop), he stopped at a light. The snow on top of his car did not. A strip about three inches high slid down onto the front windshield. A second or so later, the snow that was being held back by that front strip also slid down the windshield, and then a second or so after that, a third layer slid down until the windshield was completely covered. The windshield wipers couldn't handle the load and refused to move. The light turned green. John rolled down his window and cleaned off the edge he could reach, which didn't do enough. The car behind us honked. The light turned yellow. John sighed, flipped on his hazard lights, and grabbed the scraper. The light turned red. John got out and "brushed" off his side (which implies that the snow moved, which it did not. It was more like shoveling the snow off with an implement not designed for such actions). John got back in and turned on the windshield wipers again. They moved about a half of an inch before groaning and going back down. I took the scraper and got out. I shoveled off my side. John turned the wipers on again. The wipers cleared the rest of the snow. I got back into the car. The snow that was left on the roof gave way, and covered the windshield again.

"Week" is stretching it a bit, since I remember very little of the early week. I remember saying "F*ck this, I'm going home" at least once and maybe twice.

Things starting getting better by mid-week. One of the days was fairly productive, and I'm going to call that "Wednesday" even though I'm not 100% sure that's correct. On Thursday, Carol (who is a real accountant, rather than someone who got handed the bookkeeping job because no one else wanted it) came over to the office to help me figure out the Quickbooks problem, which had blossomed into a situation where my gross income went DOWN by $60 but my net profit went UP by $1000 when I went through and deleted a bunch of credits that existed only to adjust the accrual balance (and, again, I can't stress enough that we're cash-basis). She agreed that it was weird and told me that it would be perfectly fine for me to go back to the system I used to use, which got rid of all these damned problems but that our paid-accountant[*] didn't like. I'll move heaven and earth when it's an issue of making something correct, but it turns out that there's nothing incorrect about the way I was doing it, it just doesn't match the accountant's preferences. So, either he'll deal with doing it my way, or I'll get a new accountant.

A sinus headache interrupted Thursday. I took a nap, which helped the headache but left me wide-awake until pretty late, which was okay with me because I got quite a bit done in the evening so at least it wasn't a completely wasted day. John had gone to bed, but a call on his cell phone woke him-- a customer calling to report that they were out of service. He started downstairs to his laptop, and fell down the stairs. Fortunately, he didn't fall head-first, and he fell on the top section before the stairs turn, so he went down four steps instead of a dozen. His back and hips are still a little sore, and he landed on the cell phone. It still worked, but it developed a pretty severe crack in the casing. After he tracked down the problem, he came upstairs to tell me that he was going back to bed. On his way out of the office, he shut the door rather suddenly and said "This night just isn't going to end, is it?" Then he steadied himself, went out into the hallway, and chased the bat in the hallway out of one of the windows while I cowered in the office. That brings the bat count up to four in the last twelve months. I'm not sure exactly what changed, but it needs to change back.

Friday I ran a bunch of errands, starting with taking my laptop to Best Buy to have it fixed. It runs fine, but the case has cracked open near the hinge and makes it difficult to open it if it's closed all the way. With a house full of cats and the electronics being exposed via the crack, I foresaw that becoming a bigger and bigger problem as time went on. I couldn't remember if the extended warranty that I sprang for was for two years or three, though, so I was a little nervous about what the cost would end up being. It turned out that the warranty was for three years, so the cost will be nil. Then I went to the office to have lunch with John, and we went over to All-Star Wireless to get his cell phone fixed. We ended up getting new phones for each of us, since his is pretty old (and would require a replacement rather than a fix anyway) and I hate mine.

Saturday I got into a mood and cleaned out some of Mom's stuff from the basement, clearing out a corner so that some of the furniture could be re-arranged into a more sensible layout that got in the way less. I also worked on sewing some of the curtains I promised to Brian & Julianna (*sigh* more than a month ago), and finished up that set on Sunday. We went over to their house for dinner and dropped off the curtains, so I've got that much less guilt over how long it's been taking now. I rounded the week out by finishing up organizing my mp3s, which will make it easier to actually make the four CDs I've promised to people.

[*] I asked Carol, but she doesn't want the job, or I'd just pay her.

Recently, I've watched two relationships implode in on themselves, over a difference in desires and long-term goals and a lot of poor communication.

It makes me even more grateful that John is who he is, because even in the midst of the worst of my meltdowns and malaise, he's understanding and tries to figure out what's wrong rather than just writing it off as a phase or something I'll get over.

Thanks for not being an ass, my love.