Moved

On Saturday, I think I did the equivalent of a month of Stairmaster and Joe did the equivalent of 6 months of Stairmaster.

The heat kept me from doing much stair climbing, but the 50 meter walk from the apartment to the stairway back and forth did me in more than a couple of times. My calves are so tight right now, stepping up and over the side of the tub to have a shower is a feat of pain tolerance.

I think we'll like our new apartment.The landlord is a swell guy. The neighbourhood hasn't been gentrified yet, so we've still got a lot of broke white people and a possible probable drug dealer in the basement. But other than the screaming kids in the neighbourhood, it's a lot like the old neighbourhood in that there are drunk people yelling outside for no reason on Saturday night. I just think the one's here are older than the ones at our old place.

I don't know where any of my clothes are and I have a client meeting in an hour.

I have hangers and hope.

A year ago...

... we were heading into St. Paul, MN from South Dakota.

I had some decent mole at a taco joint, then I drank some of the finest rye whisky I've ever had with one of Joe's oldest friends.

This has been a time of great reflection for me.

Leaving Vancouver was the only thing we could have done under the circumstances.
I know this but that is what makes everything so damn hard.

I couldn't find a job for over a year. Living on EI in Vancouver sucks about as much as you think it might.

Joe could not find a job, period. He decided that he wanted a useful second degree. If I had been able to find a good paying job, I would have stayed in Vancouver, but I couldn't, so I left with him.

The whole thing just sucked.

So we're still broke. We're living in the least interesting city of over 200,000 residents, ever. And one of the most interesting is 5 minutes and an international border away. I never have any money to go and enjoy anything that goes on there, but I think about it a lot.

We are moving out of this shit-hole apartment, into a slightly cheaper and slightly further away, reasonably good-sized apartment. It's in a more interesting neighbourhood. There's stuff there I can walk to. No cafe nearby, but maybe that will change.

I'm going to start plotting something tomorrow that I hope is a good choice.

I am really, really tired of making choices based on desperation, and I hope this isn't one of them.

Where have I been?

So, for the longest time I didn't want to write about anything at all.

I'm not exactly what you would call "in love with life" these days.

Finances continue to be a struggle.

Car ownership continues to vex me.

The heating situation in our apartment makes me want to stab someone.

Seriously, when it's 30 below out there, it does not need to be 40 degrees in here.*

Also, when it's hovering around zero outside, it needs to be warmer than 10 inside.*

Joe's schooling continues to be a challenge. Nothing is working out as previously planned, so now it looks like he's going part-time until Spring of 2016. Which means he's gotta find a job. Find a job with a poli-sci degree in a town where the official unemployment rate is stuck at 9.5%

I'm not sure I'm cut out for self-employment, but hopefully my two new clients work out better than my three old ones.

I'm biting my nails again for the first time in 10 years. Right now I'm just glad that I haven't started smoking again.

Things are different here.

I miss living in a city.

A lot.

There's so very little from my old life that crosses into my new one.

I did the work. There's practically nothing.

I suppose that I would hate it here less if I could get away from it more often but between the location restrictions from the funding program I'm in for my business and the lack of money we're still going through, I can't really go anywhere.

***

My MS remains a pain in my ass.

I started working out with some regularity in late October of last year. The goal is to get physically stronger and improve my balance.

I don't know if it's working.

I learned that I can't do a 45 minute work out at the gym and then come home and do three loads of laundry up and down 3 flights of stairs and have enough energy to do much of anything after 4 PM.

***

I learned that cheap Indian food and a shot of Canadian Club not long before bed causes me to have dreams where I hit people I haven't seen or heard from in over a year in the arm and yell at them to stop haunting my dreams.

Yeah.

I know.

*All temps Celsius 

Hope

My crazy idea gets closer to fruition every day. I had a quick meeting with a person "prominent in the local business community" and have another one scheduled on Thursday who can help me with the stats and number crunching... and maybe some funding.

Turns out, being chronically unemployed/under-employed for about 16 months might entitle me to some startup cash... but that's not a given at this point.

I'm... trying not to be overly hopeful.

***

I've made two trips over to Detroit in the past week. This is what I know for sure:

1. Do not abandon hope for a place that has a Whole Foods, a Starbucks, and a yoga studio on the same block as a hospital and a university campus.
2. The place that created Techno cannot be bad.
3. I'm on a first name basis with a bank employee in Detroit, and she's awesome. If we ever turn our finances around, and end up in the US, she's the woman we're talking to. If you're looking for banking services in Detroit, let me refer you.
4. There is amazing architecture in the city. Architecture so well built it's solid and sound after five to twenty years of neglect.
5. Mostly the city is just empty. And this building is for sale. Practically everything is for sale.
6. This is awesome.

http://shop.detroitvseverybody.com

I'd move there if the opportunity was there. The only people who are truly getting screwed by the bankruptcy of the City of Detroit is the retirees. Otherwise the resetting of accounts is really freeing the city to find something new. It's already well on its way, as far as I can tell.

***

I'm still cranky as hell about my life. I've got a project to throw myself into, but it's just. not. moving. fast. enough.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Have you ever had one of those lives where every choice you made is wrong, or maybe the choices you made were the least bad of all the options?

At this point, as I enter my 40th year, I am now certain that the only good and pro-active decision I have ever made was marrying my spousal unit. Every other life choice before and since has just been an exercise in failure.

***

I hate it here. I hate it more and more each and every moment that passes.

That said, I am glad I am not trying to make it in Vancouver this broke. And this broken.

Windsor seems like the kind of place where dreams come to die.

***

This whole stupid life of mine makes me want to move the hell away from here.

***

My latest obsession is moving to Detroit. It's got so much more going on than Windsor, real estate is CRAZY cheap, and there are some tech incubators, creatives, and locals who are trying to find a new place for the city in the world.

That speaks to me. For some insane reason, there seems to be more hope for Detroit being awesome than there is is any chance of Windsor being awesome.

***

I want to live in a big city again. In many ways I crave the anonymity that having half a million neighbours can bring.

***

I also hate driving, but doing it 25 days out of 40 has made it less panic inducing.

***

I just want a life worth living. One that doesn't have thrice monthly panic attacks over money and resources.

***

Too much to ask?

Rain

The weather has been a combination of the worst parts of Vancouver and Ontario weather.

We've had temperatures in the mid 30s (with the Humidex) and torrential Pineapple Express-like downpours.

Toronto got the worst of the rain today, but for about an hour the water fell out of the sky in sheets. It was like someone was pouring an endless bucket of water on your head.

Luckily for me, I finished work a few hours before. I walked to a business seminar (more on that later) about four blocks from my house. I had to call Joe to come and get me, because even in my Vancouver-issued raincoat, that downpour was too great for me. The streets were under a couple inches of water by the time he got there.

***

I turn 39 for the first time in five days.

I also turn 39 for the last time in five days.

I'm not afraid of getting older. I'm afraid that no matter what I do, life is always going to be this hard.

***

I have a family reunion of sorts a week from this Saturday. Things have kind of sorted themselves out, and it's now going to be possible for us to attend and have some time to relax.

***

So, business seminar.

I really love my job, but he's not paying me enough for the few hours he can offer me.

I applied for a job that I really want, but I didn't hear from them today. My Magic 8-Ball says they aren't going to call until Friday. If I don't hear from them by Friday, I'm going to give up on them.

And by giving up on them, I'm going to try to do something real, concrete, and serious.

I went to a seminar on how to write a business plan. I'm going to register two businesses. I'm going to network my ass off, hustle every day, and I am going to do what I need to do to survive.

I have it all sketched out; they're the beginning notes of my business plans. There's only one thing really holding me back...

***

$$$$$

***

In a nutshell, I need to raise a not huge, but significant, amount of money to get set up and float some bills while I get working on building the business. I have no idea where this money is going to come from.

***

Thinking about it makes me feel ill.

Humidex

It is 10:00 PM. It *feels* like 35C. That's 95F. It's fucking terrible.

It's been like this for two days.

I am living in my bedroom with the window unit air conditioner, except when I want to use the internet. That can only be done from the living room, because that's where the wi-fi signal works. Internet is intensely complicated here... so long story short; we only have internet in the living room.

My vision is out of whack, I'm constantly dizzy, and I'm ANGRY ALL OF THE TIME.

Joe's cooking dinner (yes, at 10 PM.) and once I eat I'm going to take the coldest shower I can stand, put on a tshirt, and lay in bed until I fall asleep.

It's cool enough in there that I will know I can sleep.

I hate this. I hate this weather with the white hot intensity of one thousand suns.

I can't function. I can only leave the house if I am going somewhere that is climate controlled. I alternate in 20 minute spells of being in the bedroom and then trying to do something in the rest of the apartment, or being online, for 20 minutes.

It's not working well, because I can rarely do 20 minutes in the heat.

It is at times like these that I question our decision to move. This weather is TERRIBLE for people with heat sensitivity.

What's worse, my cooling devices don't really work in humidity.

I had a long, detailed rant about how much I hate everything, but I've had to stop and start this so many times that I have forgotten what it is. Suffice it to say that I am really unhappy about a lot of things, and this bullshit weather is only amplifying my distaste for life.

***

I have now eaten. I'm getting in the shower. Fuck this day. Fuck this weather.

Ideas

Why do ALL of my great ideas require $1,000 to put into motion?

Had this great plan a week ago, now I find I don't qualify because I'm not a Ontario registered business with an HST number. And I have to sign a year contract.

I could be an Ontario registered business and go through with the plan if I had about $1,000.

I have this opportunity to become a sales consultant for products I really love but I need $150 for start up costs, and another $300 to get into some vendor fairs over the summer. Even if I don't sell a single one, the products I get in the starter kit are worth it to me.

I've been networking once a week at a cost of at least $20 per event, I think I've spent over $100 just trying to meet people who might hire me. I'm wondering now if it has been totally wasted, because I haven't had a second look from anyone, except for the people who want to sell me what they are selling.

***

I just want to make the rent, that's all.

***

It has been raining solid here all day, but here at 8:21 PM it appears that the sun is going to force its way through the clouds and provide us a sunset.

The sunset through the Ambassador Bridge is actually quite lovely if you think bridges are lovely.

***

I feel like my whole life is a made up story. I worked today, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around what this job entails. It's easy, and I get mega amounts of praise for it, and then it's challenging, and it's like "no big whup".

Bizarro world.

***

I think about the geese that live at Sears a lot.

***

I'm trying to make friends, and its hard.

Meltdown

This morning I just lost it.

Faced with a to-do list of "clean out the fridge", "pack files for office", "write blog post", and "clean out under the kitchen sink", I began to cry.

I didn't stop for 20 minutes. Even as I type this, tears are springing to my eyes.

There's so much... small town horror here. Everyone has kids. EVERYONE. And religious beliefs just get shared as fact, at business functions. And I'm supposed to take reiki-practicing reflexologists seriously at those meetups. Half the business community is terrified of the internet or the technology that goes with it. I've talked to FOUR people UNDER 50 who don't know how Facebook works.

What kind of fresh hell is this place?

***

I'm not allowed to buy furniture, even if I did have the money, because we're moving in less than 11 months, we live on the third floor, and Joe's not moving that shit. I'm living out of boxes and piles on the floor. Joe won't even hang up the three pictures that go on the wall because we're taking them down in 11 months.

I can't have anything today, because life is going to change in 10 months.

***

Ah well, that stinky crisper drawer ain't gonna clean itself.

Missing

I've known for quite some time that there's something missing from my life.

I think I know what I want to do, but as each day passes I'm certain that there's no one out there willing/able to pay me minimum wage to do it.

***

Speaking of minimum wage, my boss gave me business cards yesterday.

So I guess that's legit now.

***

I am constantly fighting the urge to Vaguebook. 

***

I'm not happy.

I'm tired of being told that it will be better next year. While it is better than it was five years ago, I feel like I've been circling the airport waiting for a place to land for half a decade. I'm almost out of gas, and I'm being told... just one more year.

***

A guy tried to kill himself by throwing himself into the Detroit River.

He didn't jump off anything.

He basically swam out from shore. The Coast Guard picked him because apparently the Detroit waterfront doesn't have a swim-up bar, and it's illegal to enter the US by swimming. 

Too bad that whole "Wet/Dry-Foot" rule doesn't apply to Canadians. Could save a whole bunch of future red tape for us.

***

Windsor is so close to Detroit that from one angle, as you look between the buildings downtown, that it appears the GM world headquarters is just a couple of blocks away. It's disorienting.

***

I listened to music today for the first time in... months. My ears have stopped hurting when the treble gets too high.

"Shuffle" decided that I needed to hear the music that reminds me of ex-boyfriends that lurks in the depths of my iTunes music listing.

***

Programmers at Apple are dicks.

***

***

This song doesn't remind me of any ex-boyfriends.

One Month

We've lived in our apartment for one month.

It's cleaner. We own a futon, three lawn chairs, two side tables, and three desk-height tables.

***

I got a job, but it doesn't pay the rent. So I'm going to have to find another job, maybe two.

***

I'm sad, all the fucking time.

I miss my friends, I miss the weather, but I don't miss Vancouver.

***

Joe and I had to pinky swear that we would not let boolean algebra destroy our marriage.

Who knew math could be the harsh mistress that ends people's relationships?

***

I haven't met anyone that is "of my people". I think it's because I'm hanging out at women's networking meetings and with truckers.

Not at the same places, mind you.

***

My MS symptoms have improved 100-fold. Not sure what that's about.

***

I finally got my thunderstorm. Actually two thunderstorms in two days. That was cool. I loved it a lot. I missed right and proper thunderstorms.

***

I bought a box of 154 freezie pops. That was probably the best investment I've ever made.

***

Still hate driving, but it looks like driving myself to work is going to be a thing I do. I've done it twice now, and it still sucks. Though I was shaking when I got home today, at least I didn't want to die.

baby steps, and all that.

***

I referred to a future trip to Milwaukee with Amy as "My Annual Ritual Cleansing".

Just so you know.

***

I'm bored a lot.

Field Report - Day 21

1. Still not a fan of the place.

2. Still hate driving.

3. Telling me that "It's a bigger city that still *feels* like a small town" is not a selling feature. I really hate small towns.

4. IT HAS BEEN THIRTY DEGREES (86F) (or close to it) FOR THREE FUCKING STRAIGHT FUCKING DAYS. IN MAY. CLIMATE CHANGE IS A HOAX, MY FUCKING ASS.

5. I got a job.

Not just any job. The first job I applied to that wasn't through an agency.

Not just any job. A job for which I am totally qualified, have an interest in doing, and will totally rock.

***

The barest of details: I will be working as the personal/executive assistant to a small business man who's business is in one of the few industries that thrives in this area.

The downside is, it's on call for the next three weeks, for a rate that's very low.

It will then shift to a steady 20 hours a week, for a rate that is only marginally higher.

IF I can help him find 5 new employees from *outside the Windsor area* including Europeans and North Americans if necessary, I will be full time two weeks after they start. We're aiming for September/October to have that completed. Hopefully with the increase in hours comes an increase in the hourly wage, but we'll see.

***

With only 20 hours dedicated to this employer I'm thinking about trying to pick up a couple of 10 hour a week contracts with local entrepreneurs that might need a little help with getting their administration in order.

That means networking. oh. yay.

***

I was promised a thunderstorm by 11 AM. They lifted the severe thunderstorm warning around 10 AM and cancelled the thunderstorm forecast about thirty minutes after that. It is now 12:45 pm, the sun is shining, there is some haze in the air, and it's getting STUPID hot again.

I WANT MY FUCKING THUNDERSTORM ALREADY.

***

Note: Cooling vests and neck wraps do not work in humidity over 60%. Or rather, they don't work well or for long in humidity. Why no one told me that as I was forking out $40 to purchase them, I have no idea.

***

I was going to apologize for the all the virtual yelling, but it turns out that I really am not sorry about that. No. No apologies.

Attitude Adjustment

5 hours ago I set to writing this blog post, then some stuff happened, and I just CLRL+A'd the whole thing and started over.

I was going to write that I hate it here. I was going to write that it just isn't the place I want to be. I was going to write a list of things that piss me off about the place.

But now I'm not going to because I have a job interview tomorrow afternoon for easily the most interesting job I've been offered in years.

It'll be really challenging. I'll have to drive a lot. I'll get to travel some. It doesn't pay very well at the start.

But I really want the job.

Badly.

So badly, I'm about to fork out $85 to a STRANGER (on the basis of a single online review, the fact that it's three blocks from my house, AND their name is UNRULY) to cut and colour my hair the morning before my interview.

Because this mop of mine is a HOT FUCKING MESS, yo.

He wrote in his email to me that I am the most qualified candidate he's had apply, and wanted to meet with me right away. (Friday afternoon of a long weekend, even.)

I want this job and I will not say anything mean about Windsor for a whole week if I get it.

***

Also, I have a neighbour who can't seem to get his/her shit together with the car alarm. The thing has gone off 7 times in 15 minutes.

I hate that neighbour.

***

We aren't going to be able to travel this weekend because of Joe's education getting, but I realized today the bonus of being around on a long weekend.

There are going to be a few walks of shame on MONDAY morning... and that will be awesome.

So looking forward to it.

Progress

I bought a martini glass to hold my loose change and a round short vase to hold my beach glass collection when I find it.

I used Google Maps to reason that if I could walk from my old apartment in Vancouver to the GhettoMall of East Van, then I could walk almost the equal distance from my current apartment to the Dollarama down the road.

Bonus points: No part of this current trip was up or down hill.

So I walked to the dollar store for cheap glassware, candy, and Mr. Freezes.

***

It rained again tonight, but still no storm. The temperature just made it into the teens (55F) today, and the grey, overcast skies reminded me of Vancouver. Perfect weather for a walk.

***

My friend Donna got married today. I saw photos on Twitter. It was lovely.

She had amazing shoes.

I hope marriage agrees with her as much as it does with me. Marriage is awesome.

***

Nothing went right today. I`ve been having problems with my phone and my computer and both of them *just* had their warranties lapse days ago. Apparently, the problem is mine, yet no one can tell me how much it will cost to fix the problem.

I hate these things.

***

I really hate today.

UPDATE

Nothing is exciting. Things are just different.

***

I took two buses today, just to find out where they go.

Bus routes in this city MAKE NO SENSE.

The first bus was *exactly* like Peterborough buses in the 1990s, with those hard painted seats, except this bus was in different colours, and it was super clean and graffiti had been *handled*. You could see where it had been scrubbed off or painted over.

Also, that first bus driver drove it like he *owned* it. Superfast!

***

The second bus was a hybrid. It was also very clean and graffiti-free.

Also, the whole front of the bus before the back door is courtesy seating. The seats adjacent to the back door are not.

***

I woke up this morning to the sound of automobile tires on wet pavement. IT RAINED! For the first time in over two weeks I saw the rain.

It was done raining by the time I got up. It looked like more rain all afternoon, but none came. Except for a little cloud burst that happened while we were in Target getting a more sturdy shower curtain; when we came out all the cars were covered in droplets, but the pavement and asphalt were dry.

But yeah, rain. 

I was promised a thunderstorm today and it never happened.

I haven't seen a right and proper thunderstorm in years. Now Ontario wants to keep me waiting.

Ontario is a jerk.

***

The closest independent coffee purveyor is over a kilometer (and just shy of a mile) from my house.

Hell, the closest chain coffee purveyor is over a mile from my house.

I live near nothing but the University and other people's apartment buildings.

And a convenience store, a guy who sells Chinese dumplings, and a dry cleaner/alterations shop. And a bong store.

The convenience store also sells bongs.

***

We have a great view of the GM headquarters in Detroit from one of our bedroom windows.

***

I hate the apartment less now that it's about 80% clean.

Please tell me I'm not the only person who wipes down her light switch and electrical outlet covers.

***

If wiping down light switch and electrical outlet covers is wrong, I don't want to be right.

***

Job hunting still sucks.