Digital Impulses

Tuesday, October 28: Angst

I haven't the dammdest idea what the hell I am supposed to do about the general over all level of flakiness, drama and angst being displayed by my significant other these days.

At 1115 she calls me up and starts up with the "I wanna fly off to Mexico for no good reason" routine again, thereby absolutely frustrating the hell out of me. It's like some kind of weird, annoying coping mechanism that she uses to avoid dealing with the stuff around the house that is pressing.

I left Carson today at 1630 and after resting at home for about half an hour, we drove over to Versailles to have dinner.  After dinner we came back home and I watched a repeat episode of Fringe on FOX.

Actually, by the early afternoon and evening, Reyna seemed to be feeling much better. 

Whatever the fuck ever, Like Denzel sez in Training Day.

Maddening Wednesday

Holy shit.  What a fucking day.  Where to start?

Isa goes home from Mom's house
In what was an untenable situation from the very start, my sister made the retarded decision to leave my mom's house today and go home.  She left in the middle of the day and just left some crappy note saying thanks to Mom.

I guess she feels better at home even tho there's more drama there than at Mom's.  Whatever.  I need to separate myself even more from the drama in this family.

Router failed during a flash upgrade
So, I got the retarded idea today to try and be a smart-ass and upgrade the firmware on my router to some non-standard piece of crap called "Tomato".

FAIL.

Killed my router deader than a fucking doornail.  Nothing I googled helped resuscitate it.  I fried the fucking thing.  Nothing for it but to replace it with a new wireless router.  So, I drove over to Best Buy and picked up a Cisco/Linksys "N" router for $59.00 and I will be installing it later tonight.

Dinner with the kids at Olive Garden
The kids were over the house today for their customary Wednesday visit and we decided to go to dinner at the Olive Garden in Manhattan Beach.  Dinner was fine and we had a good time.  After dinner, we returned home to face more drama with the wife related to the earlier POLGVB lawyer disaster.

Project POLGVB: Initial meeting with the Fajardo's Lawyer = EPIC FAIL

What an unmitigated fucking disaster.

It all started with us getting utterly LOST in Marina Del Rey trying to find the lawyer's office inside this insanely complicated, labyrinth structure of buildings.  Eventually we found where to park and made our way to the lawyer's office.

With both the Fajardos there along with their accountant, we sat down and started the discussion.  It eventually came down to specifics, specifics that my wife was in disagreement with.  The conversation devolved quickly from that point and we ended up leaving the office in acrimony.

Much drama ensued on the way to the car and on the drive home from the lawyer's office.  It seems utterly incredible to me that this process has unraveled the way it has.

I am a little speechless right at the moment.  I am recording these events so as to have something to refer to later or in a year from now, so I can see where we were at this point in time.

Dammit, this sucks.

Not a good Tuesday

It all started with getting pulled over by the motorcycle cop that lurks in the parking lot of the 99-Cent store on the corner of 149th and Hawthorne Blvd in Lawndale.

He gave me a ticket for driving while talking on my cellphone (no bluetooth headset) and for driving without proof of insurance.  Neither one of these are moving violations, so it should be an easy enough issue to resolve.

Work-wise, I created a portal today and then I went home at lunch time and spent the rest of the afternoon with Isa and Mom at Mom's house.  The tension between Mom and Isa was just unbearable and I escaped there at 2000 and headed on home.

Ugly day.  Bleh.

Pre-42nd Birthday drama

Days like these live in your memory for years and years...

This evening we met up with my family at the Cheesecake Factory in Redondo Beach to celebrate my birthday a day early since it falls on a Sunday this year.

The dinner at TCF was OK for the most part, save for a few uncomfortable moments discussing politics with my younger brother.  He was his usual bombastic self and it was all taken for the most part in good humor.

Towards the end of the dinner, the spousal unit got a little emotional and started telling my wife that she was dealing with some unusual bouts of depression, blah, blah.

That was a harbinger of things to come that night.

After dinner, I drove home and dropped off the wife and took off in my car to go to PV to play Scrabble.  I won't go into the gritty details but suffice it to say that the Drama that ensued with multiple phone calls locating the teenager and a trip to Mexico that was on and off about 5 different times was absoultely jaw-dropping.

I didn't leave PV early, but in the end, the wife stayed put and we decided to deal with the aftermath in the morning.  The morning of my 42nd birthday, of course.  Special.  Yay Me.

Not.

STILL SICK: Reyna and & Feliz leave for Mexico

In what turned out to be an absolutely *crazy*, angst and stress-filled day, the wife and her mother have left on an ill-advised, by-the-seat-of-the-pants, hurried, ill-planned flight to Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, where they will be met by family members and driven to the city of Colima.

All of this because they finally decided to act on the notice that my mother-in-law's elderly husband is very, very ill and has been sent home to pass away by his local doctors.

I spent the entire day, hastily trying to arrange for tickets for them and finally found them a flight on Expedia that was to leave at 0030 and would arrive in Guadalajara at 0530 Monday morning.  The wife is set to return on Thursday 8/14/08 and her mom is tentatively set to stay home in Colima for at least a few months.

My son, his girlfriend and I drove them to the airport (LAX) this evening and saw them off successfully. 

What a nightmare of a day.  I *HATE* doing shit rushed and under the gun.  GOD.

Grand Drama Fizzle with Isa

Minding my own business, on my way home from work at noon, I get a phone call, telling me that my sister had gotten an urgent call from the hospital related to some test she had done earlier.

The amount of drama laid thick in the voice of the caller was unbelieveable.

I then proceeded to have an incredibly shitty afternoon, worried out of my head, until I got the 1600 phone call from my sister, telling me that there was nothing wrong with her and that they "just wanted to make sure" at the hospital.

All of that angst and teeth gnashing for NOTHING.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I am EVER SO RELIEVED that there is nothing wrong with my sister, but jeeeze... could we lay off off the unnecessary drama just a little bit?  My god!

After the call, I met up with my sister at Piggies for an early dinner and then we drove over to her house for me to take a look at her malfunctioning internet connection.  It turns out that her router was inadvertently unplugged and that was killing her connection.

I took care of that and thgen left her house to come home and relax in my office for a while before calling it a night.

Bit of a stressful Wednesday

As if the ugly phone call and news I got from Alex at WF this morning was not enough, I have to deal with a tremendous amount of FUD and angst at my workplace, as there has been quite a shakeup in staff and there is a lot of whispering and muttering amongst my colleagues reagarding what might happen next... This sucks, I tell ya.

Rescuing the Teenager
In the middle of all of this, I get a call from the teenager to tell me that he blew out a tire on the 405 san Diego freeway in Long Beach and that he needed help paying for a replacement tire.  He was lucky that the exit he took from the freeway was one that just happened to have a Good Year tire replacement store and he was able to get the car there without having to call AAA for a tow truck.

I took off immediately to where he was and by the time I got there, the repairs were almost done.  We waited in the lobby of the store for a few minutes and then eventually we went and paid for the repairs and he was on his way to his girlfriend's house in the O.C.

FICO discussions with Bert
After rescuing my son, I came home for lunch and had an interesting conversation with Bert regarding FICO scores, credit reports, how to care and maintain them and such.  It was one of those rare instances in which a conversation with Bert did not end up on a bad note or with him dumping a bucket of cold water on whatever happy news or project I am working on, as he usually does.

Teenage Drama

So there I am, minding my own business at my mom's house, watching TV, when my cell phone rings and it's my son's girlfriend and she is absolutely hysterical.  I get her to calm down enough to tell me that they had a big argument and she was very upset.

So, I go home, get in the middle of this and end up going to sleep rather late after having to go pick up the teenager in a not-so-nice part of town because after the fight with his girlfriend, he decided to jump on a bus and just get off at some random point.

We brought him back home safely and eventually they worked everything out. 

Teenagers.  Wow.

Drama with Pete

So this evening, before going up to PV to play Scrabble, my sister, mother, sister-in-law and myself met up at the El Torito Grill in Manhattan Beach near the corner of Artesia and Sepulveda to celebrate my brother's birthday.

What an unmitigated fucking disaster.

The service was abysmal, my food was spicy, the drinks took FOREVER to come to the table and the harried, scatter-brained waitress kept forgetting stuff that we ordered.  To top it all off, she brought my brother a hot fudge chocolate cake that was *cold* and then grimaced and said " Sorry.  I don't have anyone to sing you Happy Birthday" and left.

She then returned to the table moments later and stated that she "took a couple of the desserts" off of the bill to make up for the bad service.  Well, that did little to mollify my brother's incediary temper and so by the time the bill came to the table, my brother was steaming hot.

He grabbed his coat and keys, told his wife that he wanted to leave and then made perfunctory good-bye gestures to us outside the restaurant and proceeded to blow out of the parking lot at a high rate of speed, even going to the extent of ignoring a wave from me as he left.

This obviously left everyone feeling terrible and so we got into it over SMS text messages as I was driving up to Palos Verdes.  I took the time to mention to my brother how bad we all felt at his behavior and I got the token apology in response.

The dysfunction in this family seems to reach new and epic proportions with every family gathering.  I truly wonder how bad it has to get before it gets any better.  I hold little hope.

*sigh*.