Work is good for your soul day five

I don't really hate either one of my jobs however my part time job insists on twenty hours of availability during the week including weekends the result is open hours on Friday so here is how this shift usually works I go to work Monday through Friday from 2:30 until 11:00 unless their is overtime then I stay later. Thursdays I work from 2:30 to 11:00 pm then work from typically 4:00AM until 1:00 PM returning to work for 2:30 until 11:00 pm resulting in me being awake for a typical 32 hours straight. The only thing I typically get for sleep is extra sleep on Thursday and then several small cat naps. I call this thirty two hours hell day and I really don't like it.
Chores take a back burner as does everything else. I did manage to join blog carnival in the wee hours of the morning and to do this entry in addition to checking bank balances. Later on during my break I will recheck the bills I am going to pay before I pay them to make sure I am not missing anything and often I cut the checks right then and there.

this is not my beatiful house this is not my beautiful wife how did i get here?

Talking heads has a connection to daily life in that one line that seems to resonate with me, and I imagine with most other people at one time or another.
This is day three almost one percent down. and the days go by
During bouts of melancholy I find the only thing that will get me out of a stupor is music.... the pick of the day is Phish Birds of a feather there is a positive resonance in the song even if the lyrics are anything but. I'm not crazy about most of the rest of the album and there are a few tracks which I positively hate but I do enjoy that track enough to make it through the whole album in one whack. Larry Carlton Sapphire blue was playing first but Ive had enough and I realay don't want to go on with the same hit after hit on the radio.
So today I am attempting to reclaim the way I once felt about music when it was my whole life and woke me up inside reminding me of good and bad times some sweet some sultry and some downright miserable but that is what makes us human what gives us depth and character.
I went through and filed about eighty documents in the last few days and eliminated a huge pile for the burn heap or shred pile depending on the paper. I try to recycle anything I can think of to get more use out of it before I send it to the great trash can in the sky IE the municipal dump.
I knocked out a strainer full of dishes and washed yet another huge section of tile floor on my hands and knees before wiping down the counter bleaching them and washing them down again.

Tomorrow is yet again payday even though I have already determined where all the dollars and cents I will be receiving will go it feels good to have another chunk of change coming in to knock out some more bills including the electric bill which will dodge the monthly fee by a day or three.

It is always harder to change your means than your spending but when your means suddenly change it is difficult to make the necessary changes to meet in the middle and even harder to save.
Since December I have been working one full time job and a nearly the same at a part time job and it is still difficult to make ends meet. It is getting easier as I am nearing the end of one large payment multiple times a month you feel very good watching the balances drop and will feel even better when you move onto the next one.

I feel like today my mentality has changed a bit it may just be the music but I have made some progress over the last few days

Not one solitary comment about the state of the House

If you are a married man in this century and have been a stay at home dad or have done or said anything recently you have likely gotten yourself into trouble.
If you on the other hand do nothing your still gonna be in trouble. what a quandary
Yesterdays efforts went completely unnoticed by anyone no pleasant comment or any comment at all for that matter.

This morning I am off to the post office to buy stamps after recovering the babies snow suit and the collection and charging of some batteries I have started another fire and am off to shut down the furnace. Then off to city hall to pay down the tax bill which is now under six hundred dollars from where it was in December my goal is to have it eliminated by the middle/end of February. Eliminating the tax bill from my dolls will allow me to free up extra money from the second job to pay down the highest credit card in my arsenal.

In the twilight hours I spent about an hour working on the federal income taxes clearing a nice big spot on my desk as I entered one random thing after another. It is amazing how many tiny pieces of paper it requires to value yourself for taxes to the federal government.

Day one clean up declutter and eliminate wasted time and frustration

In an effort to clean up and simplify my life the first and most necessary step right now seems to me to be to cut spending clean up and declutter its a warmer day so I killed the furnace and began to burn scrap wood to clean up all the while cutting the oil bill. The kitchen is a disaster as the Christmas tree had a home there the furniture we moved to make it fit is yet to return to its home today I will remedy that along with decluttering anything that needs to return to the basement.
I should say that our family is quite large compared to most. I am the only man in a household of women and girls. We have three daughters two nieces and a sister in law along with my wife all housed under the same roof. To say I am is outnumbered and out gunned is an understatement.
So as you might imagine on a nearly daily basis it looks as if a bomb has exploded in our kitchen the girls all have chores which they often execute in a less than urgent or efficient manner.
step one find the bottom of the sink -success

step two fill it back up -
step one find the bottom of the sink -success

doesn't seem like steps are going to work

so ( I wonder if anyone will notice?) I did all the dishes while boiling noodles to make lunch then cleaned the counters and moved on to the floor sweeping vigorously I usually use a shop vac it does more than a broom in most cases. then an old fashioned scrubbing on hands and knees with a stained sweatshirt and some heavy duty SOS floor cleaner. I didn't know these tiles where white hum mm....


Then I came in here carrying random dirty laundry which I threw in the washer and began blogging
In new England this winter we have had one massive pile of snow after another amounting to my fence in the front yard being below the snow line on either side of the street and either side of the driveway we have mounds roughly seven feet high. on every warm day snow is pushed out into the street to melt in small shovel fulls of packed ice breaking down like sand as it hits the warm pavement you could do this dozens of times on a warm day and still not get too far ahead. so yet again I worked at the berms of ice along the edge of the driveway trying to avoid sinking later in the season into the mounds of dense ice.


Between trips outside With Jazz playing quietly in the kitchen not the slower type but a faster beat good for keeping you motivated I vacuum between trips outside knocking out the dining room rug and the living room rug along with the hallway to the stairs cleaning up as much laundry and scraps of trash along the way that always seem to work into the corners and edges of the room.

don't cry over spilled milk

Lets see I knocked over my milk and shes cleaning it up

What should I do now?

I know I'll pick up my bowl and

And go back to eating while Monica cleans it up

Clown shoes Paint Brushes Time and Creativity with great toast

I have painted at one time or another for most of my adult and adolecent life. At times I have stoped for long periods at a time not holding a brush for months or years at a time. As the regularity of day to day life seemed to draw out all the positive and negative energy which an artist needs to have feeling in their work like anything in the world without heart it falls short.

Over the last week i have completed several paintings and have restarted a number more. Art supplies are strewn around the house already as I struggle to bring them together mixing mediums and methods all working at the same time to try to draw somthing out of myself that used to be so ingrained I thought it would never leave me.

I have one that I have been continualy repainting over and over and again I definitly understand why an artist would burn canvas but what if its the one with the hiden masterpiece burred below a quarter inch of layers painted and repainted. You can know if you dont give up trying maybee...

The most simple of meals can always make an impact deep within the soul the body or the mind the senses and sensations of a simple food like toast with a specific jam or jelly with a clasic coat of butter and honey. Why can a piece of toast wake somthing because it brings back the sensations and wake a part of a person reminding them perhaps not directly but indirectly of a passion or a thought or somthing deep and burried ideas and knowlege are awoken even if just on a sub level. Good toast has always seemed better with a paint brush. Just like a song can make you sing or dance or even just wiggle especialy if you are rythm challenged. Not that I am the proverbial man dancing on everyones feet in giant clown shoes...

When I think of all the time I have not spent working but have twiddled away doing this or that it makes me a bit angry with myself. Be that as it may it occured to me how many people there are out there playing farmivlille or some similar game on a webpage investing hours and hours of time in fictional characters all the while missing out on their own creativity and inspirations. I have not been inspired in any way by these games but have seen many myself included waist hours and hours of time in mindless abandon. ohh im ranting again... Any way the conclusion I draw from all of this is that these are often one of very few choices the working class get to make on a very real level where they can succede or feel that they acomplish somthing which they can value and win no maybee achieve somthing. My feeling is that so many of us connect to these types of things on a sub level giving our over cooked brains the feeling if only for a few hours of control and freedom from outside control.

I think that is why many react very badly when a bad thing hapens in a game or the service changes or ends. War of Warcraft alone has  a 2.2 billion dollar market share in selling an alternate reality. Second life offers a similar world where you can build and sell anything you can think up create and or add animations to. Like when aol was young and offered the opportunity to reinvent yourself on the internet. Lying was and probably still is widespread throughout the internet.

I dont know what do you think?

The world is a pickle and my University is full of dips

Sometimes I wish the world was a giant pickle so I could eat it and fill up on dilly goodness. On the other hand I do enjoy a dill pickled green bean much better and they are much more crunchy after they are canned a while.

I have not acomplished much today just payed for Global economy at University. I was not pleased with them much as I recieved an email late sunday nite notifying me that I couldnt enroll in a class because I did not meet the prerequisits. Heres the interesting part they did not tell me what class or what prerequisit i hadnt met . That seems a bit lazy to me. how hard is it to add a course and name to a notification. So I responded in kind with a response email that was heated at best. So what do they do but call me on my cell phone while of course Im on the toilet. for what else but a comfy little confrence call with both schedulers at the university. Too chicken to just call me and tell me to deal with the problem.

Mind you I have three classes left to grandify my exit with a third economics class a single elective which I NEED to be in accounting to sit for the CPA. and finaly a nice introduction to college class to finish my degree 103 YAY what a waste of opportunity it makes me cringe I always want to say fringe that I could be learning somthing I can use and actualy benefit from .....

Well so what do they tell me but that Its not Global economy but a class I was recomended to take by one of them. When you look under the surface it seems ubsurd to me that they cant even comunicate in course names but in IB232 language. Tell me the stinken class. Neither one of them bothered to read the file or farmilurize themselves with it. no instead lets just wing it. Great teaching method hmmmm grumbling

Anyway after all that I do what I always do research so I open up the worst college Catalague I have ever seen i mean this thing is infuriating .... I have seen a number of well done ones this one is the absolute worst the class descriptions are spread throught the book and not in alphabetical order I might add. I find the class which states prereq ec214 or teacher aproval....... Why couldnt they just ask her if i could take the class or sugest it even. then they tell me it will need the deans aproval. If the teacher aproves it whats the problem? why say with a teachers aproval and not the dean..... Grrr i just dont get it who exactly works for who Im a student not a puching bag and I pay them allot of money to do very little in return.

It frustrates me that they are supposed to be there to help you.... thats their job not to make money for the college although they can do that by simply helping the student who will in turn be more likely to stay and take more classes with them... Its just sad it makes me feel realy not great about it.....

So next week I will have to fix the nuty little problem by simply visiting a teacher with a form letter requesting to take the class and draft another letter to the dean which states all the wonderful changes I am looking to make in my fabulous final adventures/////