[Imported] We’ll be hobos for Halloween, but I don’t know what our costums will be

A month or so ago, the people I was babysitting for asked if I could also babysit during the hours that I was currently working at the YMCA. And since these people paid me twice as much as the Y, I said sure (my exact words may have been "hell yes," but I could be wrong) and put in my two week notice. But - huh, crazy thing - after those two weeks were up, I wasn't called to babysit. I didn't think much of it, because that had happened before, like when the kids were sick, or when the family was out of town. But when I didn't hear from them the following week, I decided to call them and see what was going on. Turns out that they decided to cut back on non-necessities due to the economy, and that meant giving me the axe. They must have tried telling me this via ESP or something, since they never otherwise let me know this VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION, and only inconsiderate dopes would "forget" to inform a person of her de-employment. Now that I think about it, I never DID tell them that I wasn't a psychic, and since that must be the method in which they attempted to contact me, it's probably my fault that I didn't get their telepathic messages. That must be it. No big deal, though, it's not like I had JUST QUIT MY OTHER JOB FOR THEM OR ANYTHING.

I couldn't really get to upset, though, because I was babysitting for the daughter of my mom's boss. So. Suck it up, Nat. Suck it up.

But - heavy sigh - two days ago my mom was told that Friday would be her last day of work. She works at a family-owned commercial construction/development company, so really, how much of a surprise is that given the current real estate and new construction market? The company has been letting a few people go here and there over the past month (they also let my mom's ex-boyfriend go the same day as her, so I was sure to bring up the bright side by saying, "Good thing you didn't marry him."), and from what I gather, I don't think they're quite done cutting back. Still, my mom was understandably upset when she got the news.

And she was even more upset when she got home later that evening.

I was at school, so I didn't get to see the lurking horrors firsthand, but apparently when my mom walked in the door, she was greeted by a flooded kitchen. A flooded wood-floor kitchen. A flooded, wood-floor kitchen that only we have used since we're the first owners of this townhouse. And not only was the kitchen flooded - the flood was caused by the refrigerator which had suddenly stopped running at some point in the previous 24 hours (we noticed that the ice tray was empty the night before, so perhaps it was on its way out then). Thus - it peed all over.

(Also, I say "flooded," but it was probably more like a puddle of water with a radius of about 8 feet. Not that our kitchen is much bigger than that, and not that the water didn't do any damage; I just don't want to give the impression that we were wading chest-deep in melted freezer burn.)

She called a repairman who was able to come and look at it yesterday while I was home; and when he arrived, he said nothing other than 'hello,' and then he just yanked the refrigerator out from against the wall, and poked around the thing. Now, I don't know if this guy is new to the business, if he deals with only ceramic-tiled kitchens and perhaps he was doing a favor for the wood-floored kitchen guy, or if he just didn't like our McCain/Palin sign in our front yard and didn't care what the hell he did; because once he put the refrigerator back in its spot, we had two fresh 3-foot long wheel indentions in our floors (granted the floors were rippled a bit in spots from the water, but that you can only see in certain lights). That's precisely the reason my mom left it up to a "professional," rather than pulling the fridge out herself to see if she could figure out the problem - SHE DIDN'T WANT TO IGNORANTLY MOVE IT LEST IT SCRATCH THE FLOOR. So how in the world would this not cross the mind of a man WHO DOES THIS FOR A LIVING? I sincerely doubt that we are the first house of which he has permanently scratched the floor.

Long story short, he had to order a part, which meant I had to empty the recycling bin, fill it up with all our nearly-thawed frozen foods (except the ice cream, which tragically melted the night before, and oh, how my heart broke to dump it), and drive it over to a friend's house with a spare freezer. He then lent us a cooler and some ice, in which I packed all our refrigerated foods. Well, some of them anyway. Not everything fit, so I had to throw away some stuff. Luckily, there was a good portion of food that expired sometime in 2006, so that made the picking and choosing a bit easier.

ANYWAY. Back to today. The part came in, my mom is going to talk to the head of the head of the fridge-repair company about compensating us for our carelessly treated floor, and the fridge is currently up and running again (knock on wood). My mom has been an emotional wreck these last two days, which means that she's been crying pretty much as often as her body will allow her to, and - as terrible as this is going to make me sound - I find incredibly awkward to listen to it. Not that I don't get why she's upset - I do. I'm just not good at dealing with "people" and their "emotions," the cold-hearted witch that I am. I mean, she can collect unemployment to tide us over until another job comes up, and we still have a roof over our heads, and (as of today) food in our fridge (praise sweet baby Jesus, because I've just been eating dry cereal and chocolate for the last two days since those were basically the only non-perishable foodstuffs we have). Yeah, the situation still sucks right now, and I know she's tired of having to start over, time after time. But this losing her job stuff? This is nothing compared to some of the things we've been through. We've both lived through some very Bad Things - Things that make other capitalized words lowercase in fear, and this is a scraped knee compared to those events. Just gotta get her to see that now.

Of course, when we're on the streets begging for money in a few months, maybe I'll feel a bit more antsy about our situation.