Aftermath

I managed to make it through another birthday without anyone making a fuss over me. My brother Barry came by during the day and we had lunch. I had an offer to have dinner with Carolyn but decided to eat with my sister and her family instead. Lisa called just to chat and she forgot it was my birthday. I had to remind her. Mom mailed me a card. That was pretty much it. No presents. I guess I will treat myself to something at some point. I made it through my money crisis - today I got paid. I hope I can get to the 15th a little better this time. I'm pretty sure I have no unexpected expenses coming in the next 2 weeks.
Now that the storm is over there is just the aftermath to deal with. My boat is fine and once my lights came on on Monday I was pretty well back to normal. The office closed on Monday and with no power I had the whole day open. I took my food to my sisters and got on the boat early and returned it back to it's normal state and it wasn't even lunch time. I spent a good part of the day napping and listening to the radio. Since I only had a couple of dollars and was still waiting for payday on Wednesday I figured I would just bum around all day.
The weather outside was sunny and warm so I sat outside for a while. Then at about 3 I got a call from Carolyn. She was at work and her son was home with no power. I knew there was a generator there and with nothing else to do I figured I would go over there and see if it would start. First I needed to open the garage. I managed to find the bypass to the electric door opener and get inside. Then got the generator out to the driveway with Wayne's help. I only had a vague idea how it worked but within 10 minutes it was running. Within an hour we had power to the refrigerator and freezer and had a light in the kitchen.
So I spent the rest of the afternoon with Carolyn's son Wayne playing chess ... he's good but not good enough to beat me. I was basically waiting for Carolyn to get home. Odd thing about them... they don't watch TV. Wayne likes the Internet but I haven't figured out what Carolyn does to relax. When Carolyn got home she fired up the grill and reheated some pasta. It was a nice dinner. I was there until almost 11. I was more than ready to go. To be honest I am frustrated. I was glad when I got home and found the lights were on.
Tuesday was my birthday and since no trains were running I set up to work from home. Before I'd even gotten started I got a call from Carolyn. I thought she was just calling to wish me happy birthday, but she really wanted me to come and start the generator. Apparently Wayne wouldn't do it. I got him on the phone and told him he needed to get it done. He was really getting me mad. He is a good kid but he is very hard to motivate. I thought he would just take care of it but I guess I expect too much from a 14 year-old.
Carolyn met me later so I could give her a 5 gallon gas can for the diesel. I asked her if Wayne is always like that and she says only with her. He reacts different when a man tells him something. I threw my 2 cents in if for no other reason than to get it out. I said I'm not his dad and he needs to step up more. But I dropped it from there. She is doing her best. So if you wonder why I'm not pushing to be her guy that is a big part of it. It's become apparent to me that she is a package deal and I'm not that anxious to go there.
Later I called her and she really wanted me to come by. But I wanted to go home. I just didn't want to go. She doesn't want to sleep with me and other than getting together to go out on the boat I'm becoming very uninterested. I did make a promise to take them out tonight. We will see.
With that I spent my birthday home alone. Not the first time and probably won't be the last.

Irene was a bitch

I survived Hurricane Irene intact. I am now out the other side better than I was. I walked out my front door in the morning and this is what I saw. Some branches were down and a few big trees went over but not in front of my house. You can't see it in this picture but there are some big branches and trees on the ground way down the street. The lights were out at about 2 AM and they did not come back on until late Monday night ... slightly less than 48 hours.

I moved my freezer stuff to my sister's house as she did not lose her lights at all. My house was never really a concern so I didn't spend much time worrying about it. It was the boat that was my biggest worry. I woke up early and of course there were not lights. I managed to get the radio working and learned that the hurricane was now a tropical storm and would be right over the marina right about the same time as high tide. I figured the best thing would be to park up the street and walk down the hill. It was a little scary as the wind was still howling but the rain wasn't coming down as hard. When I got to the beach there was no beach. The water was flowing right into the parking lot.

I got to the boats and I knew I needed to slack lines as the boats were being pushed up higher than the limit of the docks. I had this picture in my mind of seeing boats all half sunk and in disarray. I was relieved to see all the boats afloat. It wasn't quite high tide yet so there were still things to worry about. I had a bad feeling that I had not put out enough slack on my boat or Carolyn's boat. When I got there I could see that I was right and jumped on Carolyn's boat right away and let some line out. With that I checked my boat and that was fine. Within the hour the tide started to recede and the crisis was mostly over. I was tired and soaking wet but I felt like all my fears were unfounded.

I called Carolyn and told her all the boats were fine and she could relax. Of course her lights were out and they still are to now. I guess I can talk about that in my next post.

Waiting is the hardest part

I was having a hard time sleeping last night and overslept. I missed my train. I guess I’m a little worried about this storm coming. I have a few things to prepare that I will try to do tonight. When I get home tonight I will head down to the marina and get as much stuff down below as I can. I am planning to add some extra lines and try to get things as safe as I can.
The forecasters are driving me crazy. The NYC weather people keep saying it will go east and might cross LI in Queens. But Newsday predicts it will come ashore somewhere near Bayshore. That puts the marina right about in the middle. What ever happens will happen at about midday Sunday. High tide is at about 10:30 AM. That will be when there is the most at risk.
That will be my entire weekend. There isn't any money available until Wednesday so hopefully I don't need to do anything like gas up the car or go out for food. The plans for Saturday was to see J. Geils' Band but that's been cancelled. I'm sure come Monday I will be involved with cleaning up. There is a chance to get out for a little bit tonight. Maybe something will come of that.

Big Storm Coming

Hurricare Irene is heading this way and I expect that this weekend's activities will be impacted. My sister has tickets to a great concert on Saturday but it looks unlikely that it will happen. I recall this occurring a few years ago where we had a show get cancelled and we never had the storm but I can't remember the specifics. Maybe I can look it up in a prior entry.
I took my last $20 out of my checking account yesterday so I could buy cat litter and motor oil. I'm not sure which one I more desperately needed but I have all of $14 left until next Wednesday. Since my birthday is Tuesday that pretty much means a very subdued celebration. Maybe the storm is good since I won't feel like I'm missing much as everyone hunkers down to ride it out. I went down to the boat to check on what I need to do last night.
Just prior to midnight I got text messaged from Carolyn. She is worried about her boat but since I'd gone to check on it I told her everything was fine with her boat as well as mine. She wants to take down her canvas today. I will need to do the same but probably wait until Saturday. Storm should hit late enough that I can get it done. I am a little concerned.
Carolyn and I haven't spoken all week so I was glad to hear from her although it would have been nice to plan something. She seems to be super busy so I'll give her time and space and not worry too much about it. I think she knows how I feel and the best thing for me to do is just leave it alone.

What to do?

I don't know why I keep obsessing on things that I can't change. I knew this would happen to me even as I was experiencing it. I'm referring to Lisa. Ten days ago she came to my house and told me how she isn't getting along too well with Carmine. Even as she told me this I knew I there were bells and whistles going off in my head.

I've been thinking about this constantly ever since. I mean why would she need to come to my house to tell me about this. I'm of the opinion that Lisa is like a chess player and she always has three more moves she wants to make. Is she telling me because she needs a place to land or did she just want to unburden herself? If I had been more up front would she have slept with me?

Last Friday I saw Carolyn instead of her mostly because Carolyn called me first. I am so conflicted about that decision. Was Lisa there alone or was Carmine with her? Was she considering making a move towards me? Things I'm never going to know since I haven't spoken to Lisa since. I've also not really talked to Carolyn since that night. Maybe I've been playing one off the other and neither one is responding to that. Being as I'm on a tight budget for the next week I can't really call and see if I can make something happen. So I'm feeling very powerless and alone.

But I am following the course I set out on and need to maintain focus. If something happens I would like to be ready for it. I still have three more months of loan payments before I can again have some financial flexibility.

Nobody loves you when you are down and out

I've been taking a longer and longer time between posts. Maybe it's lack of inspiration or maybe it's just summer. It seems like all my blogger friends have been away for the month and ignored the blog. I just hope everyone is having fun and not in any serious problems preventing access to the Internet.
My life on the edge continues. My edge right now is financial in that I've pretty much spent all my walking around money with 2 weeks before my next paycheck. This because my IRS tax bill came due and since I'd given them the info needed to draw the money from my checking account they did just that. Up until then I'd paid via check and figured they were accepting that and I would be able to send the last of the money on the 1st. I consider it fortunate that I had enough to pay and still was able to pay all my bills as well. Just not I can't really do anything that requires money.
So on Friday I got a call from Carolyn to have a drink before she went into the grocery store I told her I would love to come but she would have to pay. I'd already told her about what happened to me so she was sympathetic and we enjoyed a drink. While I was there I got a text from Lisa to come to GC Downtown to hear the music. She had said she would be there with her fiance and since I never committed I didn't think she would miss me. When Lisa started texting me I showed it to Carolyn and she was telling me I should go. This made me conflicted and also bothered me for another reason I'll get to.
If Lisa had told me she would be there alone I might have been more open to it but since she has told me she how she feels that her future with Carmine seems to be almost at an end I'm not feeling like I want to hang with them together. At that moment my prospects with Carolyn seemed more realistic than whatever Lisa has up her sleeve. Especially since Carolyn called me and it would just be the two of us.
But then when Carolyn started insisting I should have gone to see the band in GC it made me start to wonder just how much she wanted me there. She suddenly seems so indifferent to things. We have spent a lot of time together in the last few months and I've really enjoyed getting to know her but clearly this is not evolving like I'd hoped. So with that I said good night before it was too late and was home by 10.
Meanwhile the weather had turned nasty, with thunder, lightning, wind and rain. So I knew the music was probably over pretty early. I returned a last text to Lisa who said she would be busy most of the weekend.
And that was pretty much that for the weekend. Since I was totally broke I couldn't do much of anything and no one even called me to see how I was. I spent most of my entire Saturday and Sunday in the house with the cat. I've been here before. I go from having multiple choices on Friday to nothing for the rest of the foreseeable future. It usually turns around at some point. My birthday is a week from tomorrow so let's hope I can find someone who at least will say hello before then.

Grounded until the end of the month.

Seems like I'm not posting as much as I was earlier this summer. Life is in a holding pattern everywhere right now. I am getting out and did take Wednesday off to take Carolyn and her kids to the beach. Well, fact is they took me as it was their plan and not mine. But I did feel very much like a part of the family.
That is right up to the point where Carolyn had a phone call from her attorney notifying her that her brother had filed papers asking that she pay him monies out of her mother's estate in the amount of $20,000 plus court costs, what ever they are. Naturally she was freaking out pretty much for the rest of the day. I pretty much had to try to settle her down between moments of crying and rage. And we aren't even a couple or even had anything that would indicate to me we will ever have that.
To top it all off I bought dinner for them at an outdoor restaurant and my debit card had insufficient funds and was denied. Lucky I had my Visa with me and had just enough to pay with that. I estimated that I had more than $300 in my account so it was a mystery to me what had happened. When I looked up my account when I arrived home the IRS had banged my account for $313. I knew I owed that and I had made payments with checks regularly since April. I did give them permission to access my account but they had waited for me to remit by check in July so I was hoping I could send the money later in the month. But it is done and now I'm left with about $20 until next paycheck which is not until last day of August. All my bills are paid and there is food in my house so I just would need money for walking around. But I won't be doing much of that unless I can float some kind of loan. I may just stay around the house the next 2 weekends and go out on the boat.
Money problems and not much else so it's easy to see why I've been not putting much here. Don't expect much the next 2 weeks.