Read from the Beginning

Reversal of Fortune: When the Tenant Haunts the Ghost

Carolyn, Free

I was so sad to see Erica go. Of course, I cannot blame her. The space was getting too small and, I too, remember the frustrations of not having my own thermostat. She does think of me often, as do Ella and Jane, and I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside that I wish could cancel out the grating annoyances of the new tenant.

I want to preface this by saying nothing the new tenant does is wrong. We are just wrong for each other. The best thing to do in this kind of situation would be to simply admit the wrongness, and part ways before for any resentment or animosity grows. Unfortunately, we do not have that option. And two years is a long time to be stuck with the wrong person.

So with that mutual understanding between us, please allow me to vent just for a moment, about Bridget.

She is the most oblivious person I can imagine. I could write my name every day in the dusting of makeup on the sink and she would never even look. Of course, that would be too frightening for a first introduction, but she would never notice anything more subtle.

She is very loud. She is either play music, watching television, or on the phone entire time but she is home. Were we able to establish communication, I doubt I would be able to get a word in edgewise.

She likes the exact kind of books that I hate.

And so I spend hours and hours and hours watching her scroll through her phone and it is slowly but surely driving me insane. The worst part is, she cannot even delight in the misery she causes me. She has no idea.

-Carolyn

Your First Stalker: The Unexpected costs of a single incident

Erica, Free

One of the incidents that took me away from this blog last year was my very first stalker. While the incident in question was brief and quickly resolved, the stress and trauma lingered. Before I begin, I would like to clarify that this is for illustrative purposes only and is based solely on one young woman’s experience with a creepy neighbor leaving a weird note on her car. This is absolutely not meant to judge anyone else’s reaction to a similar situation. We all do what we must do you feel safe. This is also not meant as an invitation for advice or consolation. I have already received plenty. Anymore, especially from strangers on the Internet, would be unwelcome and extremely overwhelming.

The cost in time:

  • One hour spent frantically calling your parents asking what they would do. A note on your car is just over the line enough that you are spiraling into terrifying and dangerous possibilities. You can hear the fear in their voices too. They are 1200 miles away and cannot protect you as they feel compelled to do.
  • One night spent quietly alone in your apartment not lost but exchanged for a night of getting drunk with the friends who were kind enough to let you stay over on such short notice.
  • One morning lost to the hangover.
  • One hour of working on your ongoing issues in therapy lost to this new and terrifying situation. And asking a mental health professional how to deal with a crazy person (crazy person is not the word you use. In therapy you say “potentially dangerous” and “unstable”)
  • One hour of your afternoon of your Saturday afternoon lost to filing the police report. Crying in the police station because you did not expect the officer to be so understanding.
  • Two hours on a weekday evening pricing out doorbell cameras home alarm systems and privacy film for the windows.
  • Half an hour installing doorbell cam
  • Two hours installing alarm system
  • Four hours installing window films on all windows

Monetary cost

  • $200 doorbell cameras for front and back doors
  • $250 (on a 30% off promotion) for home security system
  • $30 a month optional monitoring for security system. Who knows how many months you will feel this is necessary?
  • $150 for privacy window film. Most important for windows the directly face your neighbor’s apartment. You want nice ones that you will enjoy looking at. You don’t want your house to feel like a prison. You’ve done nothing wrong, after all.

So there you have it. Six hundred dollars up-front and an ongoing cost of $30 a month and over 24 hours of my precious time lost to some piece of shit who at best thinks he is entitled to my attention and at worst has taken the first step down a path to putting me in physical danger.

I have not had any issues with my neighbor since the incident, but I think it is important to talk about these kinds of things so that people know they are not alone and should never be made to feel unsafe.

-Erica

Oat Milk is Surprisingly Simple and Cheap

Ella, Free

It took some time for me to jump on this bandwagon. For most of my life, there wasn’t an efficient way to make milk from grains or nuts. It took Erica’s consistent use of small amounts of dairy and the current insane prices for me to try it out. 

I must say, making oat milk is surprisingly easy and extremely cheap. I highly recommend it for those who like just a little milk in their coffee, tea, or hot cocoa, but don’t consume much milk otherwise. Erica would always buy the smallest amount of milk she could, and even that might go bad before she used it all. 

Now that milk is so much more expensive, I looked into making oat milk. It worked out perfectly since she had an old drum of oatmeal in her kitchen. 

I used this recipe from Love and Lemons. It was quick, cheap, and did the trick.

The reviews are in and Erica says there is a little bit of an oat aftertaste in her tea, but she likes it. And better yet she likes that it’s so cheap! One note she had was that, when making hot cocoa, it tends to thicken up like pudding if you leave it on the heat too long. Other than that, I consider us both converts!

-Ella

Beat toxic productivity with a knitting swatchbook

Erica, Free

I don’t do well in between projects. So much of my self-worth is rooted in my creativity and when I don’t have a project to focus on, all I have left to focus on is work. Which no one should have to go through. 

So what can I do when I don’t have the energy, or honestly the skills, to complete some of the more ambitious projects in my queue? I turn learning the skills into my new project. A few years ago, I made a crochet swatchbook as a way to get back into that craft. Now, I’m going to do the same with knitting. 

I purchased three skeins of cotton yarn (it’s going to be the worst to work with, I know) and a “learn to knit” kit with all the necessary tools. I have a bunch of tutorials bookmarked in my computer and my phone and I’m ready to go!

My hope is that this project will be challenging enough to be creatively fulfilling, but simple enough that it won’t add any extra stress to my life. My boss is already up my butt about all the problems at work even though he is the one who took on a contract we could not fulfill and honestly I’m just exhausted. Then, once I learn how to knit different stitches, the sweaters I want to make won’t seem so daunting. Here’s hoping!

-Erica

Starting Simple with the Garter Stitch

Erica, Free

Sometimes it’s good to start out with something familiar. I began this project to learn new stitches, but I also haven’t knitted for a long time. Beginning with a stitch I already know, the most basic knitting stitch, helped me regain the feeling of the needles in my hands, the yarn tension, and the feeling of relaxation knitting brings me. 

I originally assumed I could make one swatch per night, but it ended up taking me a couple days to finish this one and that’s okay. I remind myself that I’m also trying to take better care of myself too. Sometimes it’s all I can do when I get home from work to eat dinner and go to bed. 

Things have been especially crazy lately. We took on a contract for a large company and we are not able to fulfill the orders as they come in. My boss has put it on me to assuage all the customer complaints even though I don’t have the power to move their orders through faster or give them a discount or anything. And my boss has instituted an inbox zero policy for customer service complaints, which means I have to answer every single complaint email and voicemail by the end of the day. 

All I want to do at the end of the day is sit catatonically on the couch with tv playing in the background, but then work wins, right? So instead, I’m sitting catatonically on the couch knitting like a zombie while the tv plays in the background. Progress. 

-Erica

This isn't a picture of the garden, it's just a picture that I have.

Hindsight is 20/20: Gardening Tips that aren’t useful anymore

Ella, Free

Last year, Erica started a garden by the driveway at her apartment. It was small and she didn’t end up getting a ton of food from it. Her most plentiful harvested were cherry tomatoes and herbs. Her potatoes and garlic turned out small. Her raspberry bush, blueberry bush, and strawberry plants didn’t provide any fruit at all. Still, she seemed to enjoy the experience. 

This year, I wanted to help her make her garden more prosperous. I had her institute a few simple changes to help offset the costs and hopefully lead to a more prosperous garden. 

  1. Planning ahead: at the end of last year, Erica took all her strawberries out of their containers, planted them in the ground, and covered them with leaf litter. They survived the winter along with some garlic bulbs from last year!
  2. Lessons learned: last year, Erica planted root vegetables in the ground and everything else in containers. Harvesting her root veggies from the clay soil was extremely taxing. This year she will do the opposite 
  3. Starting with seeds: this takes the most work, but hopefully will pay off. By starting with seeds, Erica can grow a wider variety of veggies, especially greens. 
  4. Choosing new plants: Erica thought a lot about what kinds of vegetables and herbs she actually wants to eat/use. New additions are coneflower and chamomile for homemade herbal tea.

Hopefully these changes will help Erica’s garden thrive this year. As always, I will be here to help her out whenever it gets to be too much for her.

-Ella

dead plants :(

In Memoriam: The Plants We Lost Along the Way

Ella, Free

It is that time of year to remember those that were lost in the creation of the garden. Starting from seeds always carries the risk of great losses, many through no fault of the seeds themselves. 

After her middling success at gardening last year, Erica decided to expand her garden this year. She wanted to start plants from seeds to help defer the cost of expansion. This was a great idea. Seeds are cheap and starting them early helped her through the home stretch of late-winter depression. 

The problem with using the tiny sprouts to help with her depression was twofold. Sprouts need consistent attention and when she was too depressed, she tended to forget them and when she started to emerge from her depression and be more active, she also tended to forget. The hardiest of plants survived this and made it out into the garden. For now, we must take a moment to remember those that did not. 

Rainbow Carrots: She was so excited to have rainbow carrots this year. Erica is always looking to add variety to her diet, but rainbow carrots aren’t always available at her grocery store. These plucky seeds were some of the first to sprout, but unfortunately after thinning they were moved to the birdcage in the living room where they were forgotten 

Swiss Chard: they were the very first seeds to sprout, and she was so looking forward to adding these to her greens rotation. Sadly, they also ended up in the birdcage, etiolated, then forgotten. The ones that did make it outside weren’t able to withstand the shock and the early spring rain.

Chamomile: these tiny seeds were planted last and sprouted almost immediately. So many sprouted. but almost none made it to thinning. Erica was just too busy with the plants that had already made it outside that they dried out in their little egg carton.

Luckily, Erica is not deterred. It’s still early in the season and she has started new chamomile and rainbow carrot seeds outside. Hopefully since they are in the same location as the rest of the plants, they stand a better chance of survival. Here’s hoping those early losses were not in vain.

-Ella

Stockinette stitch

Stockinette Stitch: I can’t job search right now

Erica, Free

My last post made it abundantly clear that I’m unhappy. In a big way. And my job is driving me crazy. Which begs the question, why am I making time to practice knitting stitches I already know instead of job searching? 

The short answer is because I don’t feel like myself right now and I don’t want to job search when I don’t feel like myself. The long answer is I’m afraid that if I job search when I can’t get excited about anything, much less feign excitement about a job I don’t want and my embellished accomplishments will just land me at another shitty job where I’m underpaid, overworked, and stuck doing emotional labor for an incompetent man child running an inherited business. That was a mouthful. 

Normally, I get back to feeling like myself by doing a big creative project. But because of the vicious cycle of my job sucking all my energy, which keeps me from anything creative that might give me more energy, that’s just not going to happen. That’s why I’m spending a week knitting a tiny swatch of a stitch I learned 15 years ago. I’m not doing a lot, but at least I’m doing something. 

And on the actual crafting front, I am relearning to manage my tension, keep my stitches even, and count rows. All useful skills for when I eventually work on a larger project. 

-Erica

Cats Read Your Tarot Cards: The Year Ahead

Free, Harry and Dash, Uncategorized

Welcome to a new segment of the blog where we, your cats, will read your tarot cards. You have the tarot deck that you never use. We have a lot of time on our hands. We will take your questions and interpret them to the best of our abilities.

Without further ado, here is Erica’s latest question: What will the year ahead look like for me?

Dash’s Answer: It is already halfway through the year. But whether you mean the rest of this year or the next year starting now, the outlook is not good. The work stress will continue. There will be speculation about a brighter future, but that will ultimately amount to nothing. You will be disappointed, but ultimately this is for the best. Be wary of job postings that seem too good to be true. If you do decide to job search, be glad when your applications are met with silence and listen to any doubt you have in an interview. Gig work is like pyrite. Do not be tempted.

Instead of new job or monetary opportunities, find community with your friends and your cats. Use your current stability to sort out any health issues before jumping into a new opportunity.

-Dash

*This is just for entertainment purposes and should not be taken as a real tarot reading.