Grievance

Dear Jackass Who Lives Behind Me,

I'm sorry we ruined your lives by moving five years ago. I'm sorry you feel like you can't come to us if you have a problem. I'm sorry you called the city and told them our door was out barking, "through the night" despite the fact that he is rarely ever in the year past ten p.m. In fact, I'm sorry you've made us so paranoid about the dog thing that we are afraid to allow him to spend the afternoon in our fenced back yard.

I'm sorry we aren't excellent grounds keepers. We can't afford help right now and neither of us is retired, like you, and therefore we can't dedicate five to six full days a week to yard maintenance.

I'm sorry you've never once acknowledged our presence, even when we try to say hello to you. That especially pisses me off. Because of the phone calls about the city to the dog and the never talking to us, I now feel basically threatened and intimidated by you. Congratulations, you jerk, you have made my mild-mannered husband stay awake some nights trying to think of legal ways to annoy you. Maybe the reason we aren't trimming that tree now is because it has become sport to piss you off.

Honestly, if our house were burning, and you were the only people home on the block, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't come to ask to use your phone to call the fire department.

The thing that bothers me the most is that your actions have made me feel entirely un-neighborly to you, so much so that I am shaking thinking about your latest stunt, and I am really not the type of person to get worked up about much.

Apparently you reached over the fence and trimmed some bushes off of a tree in our yard. An "improvement" that resulted in an electric or cable line which is now sagging into the yard and across the patio. From our back room I heard wife fretting to you about this action, to which you responded, "Well then they should have taken care of it themselves."

Um, seriously, if you don't let us know it's a problem for you, how can we take care of it.

Now that your children (including the youngest slutty one who threw parties and left empty beer containers and condoms in our bushes) are all "out of the house" maybe you should just move your hoity-toity asses to some kind of retirement community so we won't bother you any more.

Having you living behind us makes me wish we'd never moved here.

You suck.

Your neighbor,
Constance

And The First Love Finally Gets Married

The first boy I ever loved. The first boy who kissed me. The first boy who broke my heart and then became a really wonderful friend.

That boy is getting married next Saturday.

I could probably dedicate and entire constance blog to the story of me and that boy.

We have been through a lot and I thought we were still friends.

But he is getting married on Saturday and he didn't even tell me about it.

And that's what hurts. I can't believe he never told me he was engaged. His mom told me.

And I really want to email him and tell him how sad and hurt I am that I wasn't an important enough friend to him to be told about his engagement. BUT that doesn't seem very appropriate the week before the wedding.

AND I guess it would be weird for me to send a card or a gift, as neither member of the couple told me about the wedding, and that feels weird too.

There is no way any other person I have known for so much of my life (almost 25 years) would get married and I wouldn't acknowledge it.

So I am sad about that this week. And I'm also feeling pathetic for feeling sad about it.

Blech.

FYI

Dear Sam,

If you have already decided that you are attending the race track "work thing" on the one weeknight you were going to be home next week, then just tell me about it. When you call pretend to ask permission it only pisses me off.

Love,
Constance Number Five

Staying Put

Well it turns out that all this delay in the interview was probably (in part) because they knew the restructuring was going to affect them up north as well. Sam got the word this morning that there won't be an interview - they are no longer planning to fill the vacancy he'd applied for.

So now we wait for the "official" announcement of the restructuring, probably tomorrow, and then we see whether Sam still has a job here.

At least I know we aren't moving just yet.

Not Unfounded

Tomorrow Sam is supposed to have his phone interview for the potential new job - he is still waiting for details confirming this. I swear if I didn't know he worked for a decent company I'd be wondering about them...

Today, in a management meeting, Sam got a version of the news we'd been dreading. His administrator is not eliminating his position, but the entire local affiliate is being absorbed by the larger affiliate south of here, as a cost cutting measure. Basically they are restructuring to eliminate some administrative costs and it is now nearly certain that Sam's position will be eliminated. He is hopeful that he will be given a different job in his current company.

If not, we are totally screwed. I have a professional degree that is all but useless in our area right now. Even if I could find full-time employment in my field, I would be lucky to make half of Sam's current salary. We don't have a lot of debt beyond what I consider normal, our mortgage, one car payment, and a small amount on an equity line, so that's something. We have money in retirement funds, IRAs, and stocks, but nothing that is made to be accessed right now, or would be much help right now. We have very, very little in the way of traditional savings.

Sam says not to worry, but he isn't really the type to tell me to worry, so I don't find that very comforting. I just pray that he will, in fact, still have a job a week from now. If he isn't given a different position it looks like he'll continue to get his salary for about two months. Which is better than not at all, but sure doesn't seem like enough time to find a job in this economy.

I'm trying very hard not to be consumed by fear about this - for me it is made worse by the fact that this is not going public just yet and I cannot talk about it with ANYONE, not friends, not our parents, no one. I'm not sure I've ever been so grateful for this little pink haven, because I really need a place to let this out a bit.

Seriously?

The weather has interfered with Sam's interview again! He was supposed to head north today and they are getting slammed with more ice/snow so they have finally decided just to do this interview over the phone on Tuesday, instead of in person tomorrow.

The lack of an in person interview may put him at a disadvantage, but we're a bit of the mind that things will work out they way they should, and if he is really meant to have this job things will work out, despite not getting there this week.

So I hope, I HOPE, we will have an outcome on this particular job/moving situation in the next week. Then I can stop holding my breath.

Until the next out of town position is posted.

And Again With the Changes!

Now Sam's interview isn't January 5th - it's January 12th. Which is good, he'll be around to help unpack after we return from our holiday travels, but it means yet another week of dragging all of this along.

We've also had some random issues with winter driving - nothing bad has happened this trip, but we had a scary black ice skid on the highway coming home last winter. And that, combined with a couple of other scary but harmless incidents has made Sam really, really nervous about driving on snowy/icy roads.

Not that driving on icy roads is a picnic for anyone, but in many parts of the country it is a fact of life.

I don't mean to be a bitch, but if Sam gets this job we'll be moving significantly north of where we currently live and there will be many, many more snowy/ice roads that need driving on. I think this needs to be a serious consideration IF he is offered the job. He has had anxiety issues in the past (serious ones, before we met) and manages stress/worry very well most of the time. But I can see how this driving thing unravels him and I worry about it - not that I wouldn't support him if his struggle with anxiety resurfaced, on the contrary, I think I would help him do whatever needed doing in order to cope, but I have some concerns about totally upended our lives and how he'll really deal with that. And drive in the northern winter.