October 22 looked like this…
7:45am – i was dreaming. something about people falling.
I wake up, trying to remember how much time I have to myself to lay here waking up before I have to be at work, then I remember that I am off today! This is my weekend to work, so today, Friday, is all mine! AND, it’s payday! I then remember that I have to be vertical very soon. We have been going back and forth with our landlord for months about a huge crack in our bathtub. They have not taken any steps to fix it, and their last comment to us was that they will do nothing about it until our unit is vacated. (I assume they are just trying to save money, and it makes me wonder exactly how many residents in this complex have not been paying rent this last year or so due to the pandemic.) Finally, after looking up the apartment’s chain of ownership, we threatened to go to the head guy (located in New Jersey) about it. They then promised to send someone over right away. Maintenance, along with a plumber, is supposed to be here this morning between 8 and 10. I stay in bed until around 8:40 anyway. The cat is hungry and is walking on my head.
8:45am – My hubby has to work today, so he gets up and gets ready to go. He is exhausted, something about how starting out on the keto diet wipes you out initially. He says he plans on sleeping a lot this weekend. I feel bad for him. He’s trying to do the right thing. I get up and get dressed. I really hope maintenance is sooner than later. Hubs is over their BS, but thinks in the back of his head they are playing around with us: “watch them not show up until 2!”.
9am – Hubs leaves out, and I start gathering trash, and making coffee. Right around the top of the hour I get the heavy knock on the door. They showed up WAY before 2! I show them into the bathroom, and I return to the kitchen. I overheard them saying something like the plumber would charge them about $3000 to get things sorted out in our bathroom. I feed the cat, put some things away, and clean the counters, waiting for them to leave. They only took about 10 minutes.
9:15am – I pour coffee, sit down to begin this log, and put on spotify…an album by Broadcast. All the lights are out but for my laptop screen. The dogs upstairs must be restless in their crates this morning. Then I realize no, that’s the roofers. Our building is getting new shingles this week. I type and wonder if I am going to spend yet another day off filled with household chores.
9:45am – I do “the 31 Days of Horror” every October…31 new-to-me horror movies in a month. I browse around and settle on The Black Cat, the Lugosi/Karloff one from 1934. How have I not seen this already? The scraping on the roof is still going.
11am – WIth the movie done, I decide to fill out more of my Letterboxd profile. Letterboxd is a social media for movies, much like Goodreads is for books. I log several of the movie watching challenges I have completed over the years. It is so satisfying to get things organized, and recorded. I have the back patio door open for this, and I can still hear the roofers. It’s kind of comforting knowing the place here is being watched over, kept up with. It is very cool outside, and it finally feels like October. Hubs messages me to ask about what happened with the plumber.
12pm – I write November’s rent check, get properly dressed for being seen out-of-doors, and set off to drop the check at the main office, and to find lunch. Getting in my car, I am reminded of how dirty the mechanics left it when it was in their shop over the last three months. Being payday, I threw a car wash into my agenda. Driving down Tillotson, I saw an Eaton EMT driver parked at a gas station, smoking. It never made sense to me how unhealthy people can have jobs that are all about people’s health. I took that one step further into feeling happy that so many anti-vax people are being removed from their healthcare jobs. We need people that will help the problem, not make it worse. Going through the car wash, I see a friend post a bath of images of abandoned Muncie buildings and homes. His caption was “Someone should make a horror film here”. I consider posting the same batch of images to the horror book club Facebook group I am in, and solicit others to contribute their images of “spooky run-down” locales here in the area, for that same horror film purpose. Ultimately, I decide not to do that, because I don’t want my employer to accuse me of sewing negativity in the public sphere. The car wash was quick, so I went to Wendy’s nearby for lunch. In their drive-thru, I get a message from a good friend, who is also off work for the day. She is curious if I could come pick her up and swing her by a couple of businesses so she can run errands. They have recently found themselves without a vehicle, and functioning in Muncie without a car is proving to be a struggle. I think I have had sufficient “me-time” this morning, so I say sure, and we plan to meet up around 3:30. We have plans later tonight for her and her husband to join us on a double date to go see the new Dune movie.
1pm – Back at home eating lunch, and plugging away again on the Letterboxd stuff I was doing earlier. Spotify is on an “ambient post-rock” playlist. I am having a lot of fun today hanging out by myself, laying low from a lot of work or personal drama. Life has been pretty good these last few months, but it’s still sometimes good to be able to run a day exactly as you want, with no interruption.
3:15pm – I arrive at my friend’s place, and we drive around town a little bit going about her business. After we get done we go back and hang out at her apartment a little until I message Hubs to see if I should round up dinner for when he gets home. He says “yes!”. We will have about an hour between him getting home and us having to leave for the theater. I let my friend go for now; they will meet us at about 8:30 at the AMC.
6pm – I get home, and order Greek’s pizza. Hubs is back on his keto diet, so it’s tough to get food that he can eat. I got him 2 Greek’s salads. I hope that’ll work for him! White I wait for pizza and Hubs, I do a load of laundry, and type this while poking around on YouTube. Hubs arrives home right around 7:30.
7:30pm – Still no Greek’s delivery. I am not so sure we will get it in time to leave by 8:30 to make the movie. At 8:00 I call them to check up on the order, and it was only then coming out of the oven, after an hour and a half. Well, if almost 2 hours isn’t enough time for them to fulfill a food order, then I cancel it, and we leave, drive through a fast-food window, sit in its parking lot and scarf that down in about 6 minutes, and make our way to the theater.
8:45pm – Our friends are already in the theater when we arrive. The line was non-existent when we got there. Last week the line was out the door, with 1 person working the front desk. I assumed a 30-minute queue was the way of things, but tonight I was wrong. The 4 of us get settled in, catching up with each other. We talk about their nomination for an arts award, and how this is their first time in a movie theater in almost 2 years. By the time midnight rolls around, and it is no longer Friday, Dune is winding down its 3rd act.