Don't Read This
OK kids, I'm back and determined to get my head out of my ass and reestablish contact with the rest of the human race. So, yeah.
Here's what happened, some of it anyway.
Seriously, don't read this. It's long and whiny and ranty and unedited. For your own sake, just move along. Really.
It all started with the road crew. They're widening our street you see, which means among other things that we had to sell a thin slice of roadfront whether we wanted to or not. Oh yeah, you can fight it, sure, but you'll eventually lose. So we negotiated the best deal we possibly could and relaxed to the inevitable.
The inevitable unfortunately included the removal of the strip of 50-year-old white pines that screened us from the road, which were actually one of the reasons we chose the particular bit of property. I've mentioned this before. Bothersome, yes, but old news.
The first problem came about a week after they actually brought in the tree-munchers. It seems that some superfluous county bureaucrat checking out the road work happened to spot what he, in his intense boredom with his job and ennui at his general uselessness as a human being, spotted what he was convinced were a shitload of zoning violations previously hidden from view. We got a registered letter from this human remora, who I still think must work on commission, with an extremely vague list of shit that had to be brought up to code within 30 days or else. OK yes, we had our old VW camper parked out back with no tags on it, because we were planning to fix it up "someday" and OK, technically we knew you're not allowed to have cars visible with no tags (hence no insurance) on them, which is intensely stupid, but OK, Kojak, you got us fair and square on that one. We put it in the barn. Go to hell.
(Keep in mind this is a rural area, the rules he was citing are less than five years old and we've lived here for thirteen years.)
Some of the other complaints though...here's an example. We have this storage building which predates by about a decade the zoning "violation" he was spouting. This asshat was apparently convinced that someone lived in it, and it's clearly not safe for that. So in the original letter we were given 30 days to basically empty it, find somewhere else to put the stuff, and demolish the thing, for no good reason.
(Best part? According to the letter, we couldn't demolish it without getting a permit, for which we'd have to pay the people who were trying to order us to demolish it. True. And you people thought Douglas Adams wrote fiction.)
See, there was paperwork involved when we got it, and when we called and told them to go look it up in their files we were told they couldn't be bothered. One clerk actually told me that the only way they could get the paperwork on their end was for me to find my copy and give her the reference number.
Let me repeat that for emphasis. We had filed the proper permit when we got it, but the county we filed it with refused. To look. For the file. For the permit. Which would prove. Whether or not. They could fine us. For having the building. Which they were saying. Was illegal. In spite. Of the fact. That they. Had the permit. Which we paid for. In their posession. All along. Got it?
So at this point I'm spending most of my spare time yelling at people on the phone and frantically searching for my copy of a piece of paper I'd forgotten existed ten years ago, in order to prove to some cracked-out functionary who refuses to answer my increasingly strident voicemails that no one lives in my storage shed.
The county letter also contained some incredibly vague and nonspecific complaints which seemed possibly but not certainly to be referring to some of R.'s ADD Museum Of Unfinished Yard Projects, Ltd., but when I finally managed to get through to Captain Asswipe of the Yard Mounties, he was incredibly condescending when asked to be more specific, and declared that it "wasn't his job" to "hold our hands and point to things."
Apparently though, it is his job to collect the cash when we fail to correct problems that no one has the decency to tell us what the hell they are. *pant, pant, pant*
Actual quote: "Just fix it and you'll be fine."
Um, fix what? The letter is practically nounless, dude.
So while this is going on we start busting our balls trying to repair, finish or get rid of every single unfinished project and solid object in the yard, trying to second- and third- guess what the hell this chimp is going on about, because while we're pretty sure we're morally in the right, and I'm spending time every single day yelling at people, the 30 days are ticking away and we don't dare take the chance, because we can't easily afford either some outrageous zoning fines or a lawyer to explain to them the error of their ways.
So. At this point our every waking hour not spent in basic life maintenance and child care is spent engaging in heavy manual labor and/or screaming at people over the phone, or both simultaneously. And keep in mind that I am an obsessive-compulsive bitch. Type-A's on their third heart attack look at me and go "damn, chill out!" Which means that every minute that I'm doing something I'm obsessing and feeling guilty about several other things I ought to be doing as well. I'm worried about the money, I'm furious - constantly, murderously furious - at the bureaucrats who can so casually fuck up my life, I'm totin' that barge and liftin' that bale and waiting on hold and bitching myself hoarse. I'm exhausted. I'm getting nowhere.
I'm getting chest pains and shortness of breath and constant headaches. I keep having to sit down suddenly. I keep thinking I'll go to the doctor after we finish up with the current situation. I keep on thinking this until I nearly pass out on the picnic table.
OK, fine. I hike off to the clinic the next day, expecting bronchitis (which I constantly have) or at worst a mild case of walking pneumonia, which I've had before, which sucks but can be dealt with. When I get there they x-ray my chest and run a bunch of blood tests and talk about how shitty I look when they think I can't hear them and then the doctor comes back in and asks if I came alone. Um, yeah. Why?
"Can someone come drive you to the hospital, or would you like me to call an ambulance?"
So I wind up in the hospital with anemia so severe they're threatening me with transfusions, coupled with a scary-high platelet count they can't really explain, being tested for everything from blood clots to ass cancer.
Then I'm home, but I'm depressed, brain-fried and weak as a kitten. I'm on medication which makes me constantly nauseous and/or sleepy. And we still have to move every tree in the forest six inches to the left.
During this period of time, we let Kelly out to use the bathroom while we were out working in the yard. She'd been extremely sick, and we almost lost her over the winter to canine pancreatitis, but we'd nursed her through it and she seemed to be getting some of her energy back.
We took our eyes off her for about five seconds, and she'd vanished.
I still don't want to talk about this. We were together for 14 years, and it still feels like someone cut part of my heart out.
We spent days driving all over the neighborhood in the rain, calling and tramping through the woods and putting up carefully plastic-covered signs so that no one could get within miles of our house without seeing them and bugging the piss out of every vet and shelter in three counties. We got one call from a lady two streets over who had seen her the first day, and after that, nothing.
When they feel their time approaching, sometimes dogs have an instinct to go hide away from the pack and find a quiet place to die. I'm pretty sure this is what happened. But it hurts. I knew she was 16 years old and I knew we wouldn't have much more time together, but this is not how I ever pictured it happening.
Sam and Fiona kept looking for her, and Teh Kiddo kept insisting he saw her everywhere. He wanted me to chase down every car that had a dog in it just in case, until I was ready to burst into tears every time he said her name. Sam, also 16, seemed to be very depressed, understandably so, but we showered her with affection and hoped it would pass. Two weeks later I was mowing grass and found her behind the barn. It looked like she'd gone to sleep and never woke up.
(During this same period of time, D. found his beloved hamster Bear dead in his sleep, probably from happy old age, and went into near-hysterics. I was almost as upset as he was.)
Did I forget to mention my father taking one of those old-man falls and shattering his shoulder? That was close to the beginning of this hellride. Of course he required major surgery with pins and plates and physical therapy, and mom can't handle much so I wound up carrying some of that as well.
In my copious free time. With my boundless reserves of emotional energy.
So we moved every tree in the forest six inches to the left, got pop back on his feet and buried the casualties. We found the zoning permit (in a locked filing cabinet in an unused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard") and waved it in their faces. We physically, literally moved am entire garden shed out of the Naughty Zone and repaired the drainage under the deck and finished the patio and dismantled a couple of R.'s abandoned building experiments and the 30 days elapsed and we heard nothing and no one returned out phone calls and we thought we were done with them.
Then we got another registered letter claiming they'd given us extra time (which they hadn't bothered to tell us about) and it was up in a week and we still had zoning violations and had to show up at a hearing if we didn't fix them. In a week. And no one would answer the phone and tell us what they were.
Someone had to physically go stake out the guy's office and corner him when he came in and refuse to leave until he muttered something about the tool shed and the deck and some other random shit no one had bothered to mention.
I leave my reaction to the imagination of those who know me. It's better that way.
Dude seemed to think we ought to thank him. After all, he'd given us extra time. Which he'd neglected to tell us.
Dude saw no problem or contradiction with that and implied we were being rather rude and ungrateful.
Dude, incidentally, is cordially invited to spend eternity blowing syphilitic goats in hell.
So with six days warning we crawled into the last lap and fixed the things he'd bothered to mention and cursed and sweated and wished bloody painful death on all things bureaucratic, and on the seventh day, instead of resting, we showed up at the hearing anyway just in case - because dude wouldn't answer his phone to tell us whether we had corrected the violations or not - only to have this excrement that walks like a man look at us all surprised and ask us why we were there, since we'd corrected everything.
Thanks for telling us, fucktard. I guess it's not your job to answer your goddam phone either.
Why are we there, you government whore? We're there because I believe to the bottom of my exhausted heart that you work on commission, harassing people at buckshot random, making it impossible for them to comply and then hoping some of them don't show up so you can collect when they default the hearing. That's why, you sorry sack of pus.
(And if you think I'm being paranoid, then ya'all ain't from 'round hyeah.)
I really hope you didn't read all that whiny bullshit.
There's more, but it's comparatively minor, and things are better. I'm somewhat improved, although they're still trying to figure out what's causing the problem in the first place.
If I've been uncommunicative lately please forgive me, my dears. I've been insanely exhausted, brainfried, ill, scatterbrained and in mourning, and dumping on people doesn't come easily to me, even in a strictly voluntary format such as LJ, especially when I know so many of you have problems of your own to deal with. So typically I hide under the sofa and then report in the past tense. Yes, I know, I suck.
You have thirty days to sue me. :P
Here's what happened, some of it anyway.
Seriously, don't read this. It's long and whiny and ranty and unedited. For your own sake, just move along. Really.
It all started with the road crew. They're widening our street you see, which means among other things that we had to sell a thin slice of roadfront whether we wanted to or not. Oh yeah, you can fight it, sure, but you'll eventually lose. So we negotiated the best deal we possibly could and relaxed to the inevitable.
The inevitable unfortunately included the removal of the strip of 50-year-old white pines that screened us from the road, which were actually one of the reasons we chose the particular bit of property. I've mentioned this before. Bothersome, yes, but old news.
The first problem came about a week after they actually brought in the tree-munchers. It seems that some superfluous county bureaucrat checking out the road work happened to spot what he, in his intense boredom with his job and ennui at his general uselessness as a human being, spotted what he was convinced were a shitload of zoning violations previously hidden from view. We got a registered letter from this human remora, who I still think must work on commission, with an extremely vague list of shit that had to be brought up to code within 30 days or else. OK yes, we had our old VW camper parked out back with no tags on it, because we were planning to fix it up "someday" and OK, technically we knew you're not allowed to have cars visible with no tags (hence no insurance) on them, which is intensely stupid, but OK, Kojak, you got us fair and square on that one. We put it in the barn. Go to hell.
(Keep in mind this is a rural area, the rules he was citing are less than five years old and we've lived here for thirteen years.)
Some of the other complaints though...here's an example. We have this storage building which predates by about a decade the zoning "violation" he was spouting. This asshat was apparently convinced that someone lived in it, and it's clearly not safe for that. So in the original letter we were given 30 days to basically empty it, find somewhere else to put the stuff, and demolish the thing, for no good reason.
(Best part? According to the letter, we couldn't demolish it without getting a permit, for which we'd have to pay the people who were trying to order us to demolish it. True. And you people thought Douglas Adams wrote fiction.)
See, there was paperwork involved when we got it, and when we called and told them to go look it up in their files we were told they couldn't be bothered. One clerk actually told me that the only way they could get the paperwork on their end was for me to find my copy and give her the reference number.
Let me repeat that for emphasis. We had filed the proper permit when we got it, but the county we filed it with refused. To look. For the file. For the permit. Which would prove. Whether or not. They could fine us. For having the building. Which they were saying. Was illegal. In spite. Of the fact. That they. Had the permit. Which we paid for. In their posession. All along. Got it?
So at this point I'm spending most of my spare time yelling at people on the phone and frantically searching for my copy of a piece of paper I'd forgotten existed ten years ago, in order to prove to some cracked-out functionary who refuses to answer my increasingly strident voicemails that no one lives in my storage shed.
The county letter also contained some incredibly vague and nonspecific complaints which seemed possibly but not certainly to be referring to some of R.'s ADD Museum Of Unfinished Yard Projects, Ltd., but when I finally managed to get through to Captain Asswipe of the Yard Mounties, he was incredibly condescending when asked to be more specific, and declared that it "wasn't his job" to "hold our hands and point to things."
Apparently though, it is his job to collect the cash when we fail to correct problems that no one has the decency to tell us what the hell they are. *pant, pant, pant*
Actual quote: "Just fix it and you'll be fine."
Um, fix what? The letter is practically nounless, dude.
So while this is going on we start busting our balls trying to repair, finish or get rid of every single unfinished project and solid object in the yard, trying to second- and third- guess what the hell this chimp is going on about, because while we're pretty sure we're morally in the right, and I'm spending time every single day yelling at people, the 30 days are ticking away and we don't dare take the chance, because we can't easily afford either some outrageous zoning fines or a lawyer to explain to them the error of their ways.
So. At this point our every waking hour not spent in basic life maintenance and child care is spent engaging in heavy manual labor and/or screaming at people over the phone, or both simultaneously. And keep in mind that I am an obsessive-compulsive bitch. Type-A's on their third heart attack look at me and go "damn, chill out!" Which means that every minute that I'm doing something I'm obsessing and feeling guilty about several other things I ought to be doing as well. I'm worried about the money, I'm furious - constantly, murderously furious - at the bureaucrats who can so casually fuck up my life, I'm totin' that barge and liftin' that bale and waiting on hold and bitching myself hoarse. I'm exhausted. I'm getting nowhere.
I'm getting chest pains and shortness of breath and constant headaches. I keep having to sit down suddenly. I keep thinking I'll go to the doctor after we finish up with the current situation. I keep on thinking this until I nearly pass out on the picnic table.
OK, fine. I hike off to the clinic the next day, expecting bronchitis (which I constantly have) or at worst a mild case of walking pneumonia, which I've had before, which sucks but can be dealt with. When I get there they x-ray my chest and run a bunch of blood tests and talk about how shitty I look when they think I can't hear them and then the doctor comes back in and asks if I came alone. Um, yeah. Why?
"Can someone come drive you to the hospital, or would you like me to call an ambulance?"
So I wind up in the hospital with anemia so severe they're threatening me with transfusions, coupled with a scary-high platelet count they can't really explain, being tested for everything from blood clots to ass cancer.
Then I'm home, but I'm depressed, brain-fried and weak as a kitten. I'm on medication which makes me constantly nauseous and/or sleepy. And we still have to move every tree in the forest six inches to the left.
During this period of time, we let Kelly out to use the bathroom while we were out working in the yard. She'd been extremely sick, and we almost lost her over the winter to canine pancreatitis, but we'd nursed her through it and she seemed to be getting some of her energy back.
We took our eyes off her for about five seconds, and she'd vanished.
I still don't want to talk about this. We were together for 14 years, and it still feels like someone cut part of my heart out.
We spent days driving all over the neighborhood in the rain, calling and tramping through the woods and putting up carefully plastic-covered signs so that no one could get within miles of our house without seeing them and bugging the piss out of every vet and shelter in three counties. We got one call from a lady two streets over who had seen her the first day, and after that, nothing.
When they feel their time approaching, sometimes dogs have an instinct to go hide away from the pack and find a quiet place to die. I'm pretty sure this is what happened. But it hurts. I knew she was 16 years old and I knew we wouldn't have much more time together, but this is not how I ever pictured it happening.
Sam and Fiona kept looking for her, and Teh Kiddo kept insisting he saw her everywhere. He wanted me to chase down every car that had a dog in it just in case, until I was ready to burst into tears every time he said her name. Sam, also 16, seemed to be very depressed, understandably so, but we showered her with affection and hoped it would pass. Two weeks later I was mowing grass and found her behind the barn. It looked like she'd gone to sleep and never woke up.
(During this same period of time, D. found his beloved hamster Bear dead in his sleep, probably from happy old age, and went into near-hysterics. I was almost as upset as he was.)
Did I forget to mention my father taking one of those old-man falls and shattering his shoulder? That was close to the beginning of this hellride. Of course he required major surgery with pins and plates and physical therapy, and mom can't handle much so I wound up carrying some of that as well.
In my copious free time. With my boundless reserves of emotional energy.
So we moved every tree in the forest six inches to the left, got pop back on his feet and buried the casualties. We found the zoning permit (in a locked filing cabinet in an unused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard") and waved it in their faces. We physically, literally moved am entire garden shed out of the Naughty Zone and repaired the drainage under the deck and finished the patio and dismantled a couple of R.'s abandoned building experiments and the 30 days elapsed and we heard nothing and no one returned out phone calls and we thought we were done with them.
Then we got another registered letter claiming they'd given us extra time (which they hadn't bothered to tell us about) and it was up in a week and we still had zoning violations and had to show up at a hearing if we didn't fix them. In a week. And no one would answer the phone and tell us what they were.
Someone had to physically go stake out the guy's office and corner him when he came in and refuse to leave until he muttered something about the tool shed and the deck and some other random shit no one had bothered to mention.
I leave my reaction to the imagination of those who know me. It's better that way.
Dude seemed to think we ought to thank him. After all, he'd given us extra time. Which he'd neglected to tell us.
Dude saw no problem or contradiction with that and implied we were being rather rude and ungrateful.
Dude, incidentally, is cordially invited to spend eternity blowing syphilitic goats in hell.
So with six days warning we crawled into the last lap and fixed the things he'd bothered to mention and cursed and sweated and wished bloody painful death on all things bureaucratic, and on the seventh day, instead of resting, we showed up at the hearing anyway just in case - because dude wouldn't answer his phone to tell us whether we had corrected the violations or not - only to have this excrement that walks like a man look at us all surprised and ask us why we were there, since we'd corrected everything.
Thanks for telling us, fucktard. I guess it's not your job to answer your goddam phone either.
Why are we there, you government whore? We're there because I believe to the bottom of my exhausted heart that you work on commission, harassing people at buckshot random, making it impossible for them to comply and then hoping some of them don't show up so you can collect when they default the hearing. That's why, you sorry sack of pus.
(And if you think I'm being paranoid, then ya'all ain't from 'round hyeah.)
I really hope you didn't read all that whiny bullshit.
There's more, but it's comparatively minor, and things are better. I'm somewhat improved, although they're still trying to figure out what's causing the problem in the first place.
If I've been uncommunicative lately please forgive me, my dears. I've been insanely exhausted, brainfried, ill, scatterbrained and in mourning, and dumping on people doesn't come easily to me, even in a strictly voluntary format such as LJ, especially when I know so many of you have problems of your own to deal with. So typically I hide under the sofa and then report in the past tense. Yes, I know, I suck.
You have thirty days to sue me. :P