Well, he's gone home by now (sigh).

The two days he was here have felt like a weekend to me. It's weird to think that the weekend officially started after he left.

Anyway, he got into town and cheered me up, as I was moping and whining that one of the rings I'm working on got mysteriously pulverized as I was trying to solder it. (I hate soldering, I hate soldering, I hate soldering.) It was the one I'm making for me, and now I won't have time to finish it before the class is up. I could just cry, you know? I'm not even sure if I'll get Dad's done.

We spent most of those two days shopping. Since I could spend days with him instead of just nights all the time, I took him around downtown to various places to look around. He wanted to go furniture shopping, as he's not too thrilled about sleeping in my tiny bed, and so we went to a couple places. He is trying to convince me to get a futon for $300 (which, oddly enough, is the same as the cost for a full size mattress here) so I could fold it out and put it back as needed. I don't know if I want to spend the money for that kind of thing or not, not to mention that I'm not sure what I'd do with the bed I have. I don't want to get rid of it, it could at least work for a guest bed at some point. But on the other hand, no place to put it.

He keeps talking a lot about future plans. Work is quite frustrating for him just now (the manager's various shenanigans astound me), and he wants to get out of there in a few months and move over here. He was talking about transferring to another location within the company in Sacramento, but now seems to be cooling off on that idea because he's not so thrilled with their company policies. Now it's more like, "I don't even care if I find a job first before I move up, I want ouuuuuut."

Only, he wants to get a house. For the dog, the space, not having to move around, etc. He so has house fever, and I just don't even care about a house at this age yet, to be honest. For one thing, he thinks we can buy a house here, which, well... isn't likely. I know he can't afford one, and I really don't think I can at this age, given how little I make for that sort of thing. There's not a lot of houses available for sale thanks to the whole no-growth attitude going on, and the ones that are are $$$$$$. If we actually went into buying one, we'd have to move away. And I'd prefer to not have to move to one of the other little towns around here that everyone moves into when they want to buy a house in the area and can't get it here. Those towns have hardly anything to do, buy, or eat. Ugh, no thanks. I've tried to get this across to him, but he's too optimistic. Then again, after working for the newspaper I am jaded as hell.

Alternately, there's renting a house. Which I've done twice before here and can't say I'm too enthused about doing again. The affordable rental units here tend to be large (six people lived in my first house, three in the second) and DIVEY, with flaky do-nothing landlords. I've done my time putting up with that stuff, and I love how in this apartment complex you can put a notice in, and they come THE NEXT DAY. None of this crap about how you called them and they never answered, so you called a repair guy and then they bitched you out for calling a repair guy. The toilets work here, the doors lock, I actually KNOW the management here (I never met one landlady, the other I met the night before I moved out. No joke.), they work hard at making sure the place looks nice... waaah! I wanna stay!

But I can't, because of the dog. Don't get me wrong, she's a sweet dog, but she's going to make it all a lot harder to deal with. And this does frustrate me a tad.

I do feel bad because I didn't exactly discourage him from spending money on the "weekend." I may have bought a whopping four books (including the LOTR books, which he pretty much made me get), but I will still have money after buying them. He loves spending money, and seems to think along the lines of "Oh, hey, I have $80 to spare. Time to start buying stuff until it's all gone." Given the car payment stuff going on, etc. this perhaps isn't the best idea. Okay, so even after our book-buying spree he does have enough to do the first car payment right now (whatsherface selling it to him didn't want to start taking payments for awhile- bad idea, methinks), but I do wonder how much of that will be left by say, the end of the weekend. It seems like EVERY single time he gets a paycheck, either he's in a shopping mood or more likely, someone's hitting him up for money and/or having some kind of disaster.

This is, well, frustrating. But what do you do about it, other than become an asshole? Especially when the one hitting you up is a parent.

I'm feeling a bit buggy right now, I guess. I'm also feeling a bit annoyed that Dave's got Wednesday through Friday off next week *gasp!*, but wants to do the DMV and doctor's appointment stuff during then. I don't have a problem with the appointment thing, but he really should like, get one SET before he says automatically that he can't come. And the DMV stuff really doesn't have to happen before he goes to the doctor- needs to be done after that, actually.

Anyway... as for the actual weekend, I've gotten a surprisingly large amount done on my bodice in class. Big pat on the back to myself there. All of my new fabric was suitable (thank GOD), and I think all I need to do now is put in the boning and grommets and laces and sew up the bottom. Then on to making other things, yay!

There's one annoying problem coming up there, though. The teacher found out that her parents are selling their house, and she has to go down to LA to get her stuff out on a weekend. So she wanted to move the last class to sometime during Labor Day weekend. Only the center we have classes in closes at 7 on Fridays (so much for a 4 hour class) and isn't open Saturdays. And I highly doubt they'll be open on Labor Day. I have no idea what she's going to do there. I'm already getting pressure to (a) see my friend Jackie around then (assuming she isn't busy), (b) visit the parents (groan), or (c) visit Dave, and/or (d) go to the Scottish Games with S&D. The latter does sound fun, especially if I can wear my new outfit ;) Though I HIGHLY doubt Dave could get that weekend off like he wants to. Especially since the new policy there is "no free weekends off- you must work two weeks straight if you want a weekend off." You can see why he wants out of there, correct?

Speaking of family, part 1: Last night I was bored off my ass (and hearing how Dave and S&D were out getting Chinese and going to see Signs was not helping), so I wandered down to the bookstore again. I'm walking over there when someone yells "Jennifer!" As usual, I ignored it, but this time it turned out to be my Aunt Susie. They'd all showed up in town after visiting Granddaddy (no comment) and were getting ice cream. So I hung out with them for awhile, which was fun. Though I could have skipped the part where Aunt Susie said that she was going to call Mom tonight to tell her she ran into me. That'll just bring up another fight during tonight's call, I'm sure...

Speaking of family, part 2: That Scottish Games bit I mentioned? Is over by my hometown. And yes, they've got the idea to just "drop by" and surprise my parents again. Like I said, I doubt Dave would get that time off, so yet again it won't work out anyway.

I think at heart I've just given the hell up on this being anywhere remotely near pleasant.

"I don't mean to put pressure on you or anything," Dave said last night, "but this is really bugging me. For one thing, I feel like we're sneaking around or that I'm hiding from your parents."

"You're not hiding from my parents. They're hiding from you."

"I know, I know, but... I don't feel like we can start planning or picking dates or stuff like that until they know, and we know if they're going to want to do anything or if your mom wants to get involved or anything like that."

*sigh* "I know..."

I knew it'd get to this someday. That it's now all my burden to tell. To tell someone who doesn't want to hear it and doesn't seem to want to make it easy on me and herself to do. How the fuck am I supposed to do that? Spit in her face, tell her she's no longer the top priority, in short make all her worst fears come true? I'm not that mean.

And yet, the longer it goes on, the worse it's gonna get.

Then again, will it ever not be awful?

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