Review of Clubs 2024
Monday, September 16th, 2024 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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69F and clear skies out there tonight, with a waxing gibbous moon at 98%.
Today was the final day of the suit of clubs, 2024, according to the card calendar.
It began on Tuesday, June 18th, two days before the actual summer solstice.
The heat was already on!.. the high was 90F that day.
Yvette was gone, and I was a few weeks into the new position at Potawatomi, having just gotten paid the final hybrid paycheck; half janitor wage, half maintenance wage.
I had signed the lease with Allerton Tower, but hadn't yet paid the deposit & rent.
I had been packing family stuff into the storage unit, and throwing other stuff out, but had not yet begun packing my own things.
I had signed to sell the house to Mr. Taylor, and the inspectors had already given the old gal a clean bill of health, but I only expected to get 3K, and not until July 19th.
I did come up with that plan to get Prowly fixed and bring him here with me to be my cat I could walk on a leash... and that plan allowed me to feel fairly positive about the move.
But I was still too close to everything, and didn't appreciate how painful just losing the house was going to be.
And when it became clear that the plan with Prowly also wasn't going to work, that was pretty devastating.
But the torture was only amplified by the fact that the sale didn't close until August 1st... so I had to return to the house every single day of July, to leave food for Prowly, and run the hot water... facing the heartbreak again... and again... and again...
Stealing a little more for storage each time... crying nearly every day... with the idea of buying it back in October being the only thing that dulled the pain.
It was a truly horrible July!
And August wasn't much better, because that's the month where I was finally able to begin processing all the trauma, and all the loss.
I'm still processing it now, but that first month was as painful as July... but with a lot more flashbacks, and dissociation every day.
I cried just as much as in July, but both work and, "home," felt very surreal... like I'd quantum-leapt into the body of a strange human with a totally different life than the one I knew... filled with strangers.
I didn't know what to do with myself on my days off!.. I didn't feel comfortable in the flat and kept going outside to wander around... seeking some kind of purpose out there.
I kept telling myself I'd soon go back home... only a couple months, and I'd go back home, reunite with Prowly, and get Yvette back.
The passage of time, since the house sold, did not feel real... and still doesn't... because every day has been the exact same hot, sunny day!
All through July & August, every day at work was the exact same day... painting, in a huge empty building.
The start of the school year, and the theatre season here downtown did finally break the monotony, and make it feel like things were kind of changing... and time was, kind of passing.
But the goddam tyranny of 90F and sunny still persists!
I made up my mind, on September 1st, to try and get past all the tears, flashbacks, and dissociation, even if the lighting and the temperature refuse to change at all from what they were, back in June.
That's why I've been making all these small quality of life improvements like new socks, and a new watch, and experimenting with staying in the flat for an entire day, without ever opening the door.
And that's been helping!
But tonight when I came home from work and was finally able to flip that King of Clubs up, and reaveal a red diamond!... I feel like there's finally light at the end of the tunnel!
I NEED it to cool down and get cloudy!.. and to put my HOODY back on... in order to FEEL like time has actually passed, and the most horrible summer of my life is truly behind me!
The leaves have actually been turning abnormally early this year... some trees were starting in late August, and the whole canopy on the drive to work right now is yellowing!.. but it doesn't mean jack, if I'm still blasting the AC at home and in the car... being blinded by sun until forever O'clock at night... and sweating my ass off at work!
But seeing that diamond tonight does bring me hope!
As I've said before, this is the first year I've had a physical card calendar to flip through, week by week... rather than just some conceptual thing, or a loose deck that I prop a card up out of, and then forget to update for 3 weeks.
It's a much more visceral, and tangeable experience to have a bound deck hanging off a nail in the kitchen (or kitchennette), as this interactive piece of decor... and this pseudo-magical tool to track the weeks and seasons.
I've made it through three suits now!
And all three suits; Spades, Hearts, and Clubs, this year, were absolutely insane!
Spades was all about the foreclosure, and the desperate hope to resolve it, while living off credit cards, and losing Snoop to the four winds.
Hearts was all about facing the inevitable... parting ways with Yvette... emptying out the house... struggling to find a buyer... and searching for a place to go!
Clubs was, as I just reviewed, about packing, leaving, and grappling with all the heartbreak, and mental anguish.
As I have repeatedly said, the five big miracles this year were;
- The fact that Terry could take Yvette, and Yvette took to Terry.
- The promotion to Potawatomi.
- The availability of the studio at Allerton on such short notice, in such a hostile rental market.
- Mr. Taylor... who not only proved the house was sound, but got the damn sale closed in the end.
- The surprise 13K I got out of it, that nobody can explain.
So the past three seasons have not been all bad, but... avoiding foreclosure completely, would've been a lot better, and having to part ways with Prowly was, I feel like, an unnecessarily bitter pill to swallow!
Like, really? All three pets?.. had to get ripped out of my life?
But I am really really praying that Diamonds isn't gonna do me dirty this year, like the other three did!
And the lore would suggest it doesn't have to?
Because diamonds, being diamonds, represent the reward for all the hard work of the previous three suits, or seasons.
And while the past three seasons of 2024 have been a lot more, trial than work... negotiating that foreclosure disaster, safely, really was a lot of work!
Before I could even worry about my own safety, I had to get Yvette to safety... then get all the family shit I possibly could, from inside the house... to safety (in a storage unit)... and THEN... do my best to ensure the safety and longevity of the house itself!
So there was a lot of physical work involved in that, as well as emotional and financial sacrifice.
And then, of course, packing and moving myself was no easy task.
So here, on the final night of, Clubs 2024, it does look like things are stabilizing, and there's an actual future?
But it is still a highly volitile election year, and I am still the new guy at this job where it seems like both Mark, the supervisor, and Tom, my lead & shift mate, are getting a little antsy about the way things are going for Trump!
I'm praying I don't wind up the liberal scapegoat, like I did the last time Trump lost... the target of political retaliation from disgruntled MAGA coworkers with some power to weild against their underlings.
But as I wrote yesterday, I am 2 years now, with Geostaff.
And I also have been at Potawatomi, now, well over 90 days!
So, they can't just drop me like, You're not a good fit.
But they can make my life miserable there, if they want to, and try to force a resignation out of me.
Tom's been off on PTO, but in his absence, Mark's looking askance at me... and today he was really riding me, over perceived failures from Friday... which I won't get into, except to say it was baseless.
But just yesterday, there was a second attempt on Trump's life... this time by a bleeding heart liberal... and I really do think that put me in Mark's own crosshairs this afternoon.
I mean, to his credit, he never gets political at work... as is professional... being the supervisor of a large facilities staff, at a high school in a blue county, with a broad agenda of diversity and inclusion.
But it's also, only a high school, so he's free to kind of, manage from the gut.
Basically, I'm walking a tightrope right now at work... thanks to political volatilty.
And I've been down this road before.
So I'm just hoping, either I can negotiate this election season and still be working at Potawatomi next year... or maybe I can find and off-ramp within Geostaff... possibly to the elementary school maintenance crew... which is what I was originally hoping for.
The elementary crew operate largely independantly, out there all night in their own work vans, going from school to school.
So maybe I need to start looking at, and applying to, any openings in that branch of things, this month.
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