not goin' anywhere fast.

Up until about an hour ago, I thought I was moving.

I am not. 

Last week, I stumbled onto the Edison Apartment listings on their website and was shocked to discover a 2BED/2BATH unit for $2,895. For the area, that's an incredible price. I jumped at it. While I can't say I've been hardcore looking for a new place, it's on my mind a lot. I'd like to have a baby and I'm not sure how I would fit a baby into my current apartment with Harvey and me. This nags at me. Sure, I'm not pregnant yet and maybe this move would be a little premature, but I also work from home. A 2BED unit would allow me the ability to separate my work life and home life a little bit more than I currently do. So, it seemed like a win-win situation. The price hike was giving me some nerves, but I felt I could make it work. Plus, when would I find another unit of equal size for $2,895?

Well, turns out, I never will. 

In the midst of negotiating the move-in date and working through the details of the finances involved in transferring from one unit to another, I learned that $2,895 is for NEW residents only. Current Edison residents like myself are only offered the market price; which in this case is $3,605. $710 more than listed. Way, way out of my budget. I could not even consider that. 

So, I'm not moving. Despite days of thinking and planning and worrying and adding necessary things to wishlists, it's all done and over. We are staying put. And I'm sad about it. I was nervous and excited about the idea of moving and now that the possibility has been ripped from my fingers, I am feeling rather hopeless. The floor just dropped right out from under me.  

Le sigh. 

this is 40.

Every time I try to re-launch my blog, I do one, maybe two, maybe even three posts and then abandon the idea for another couple of years. However, every time I open the blog to look up something obscure from my past, I wish I was still doing it. So, with that in mind, I will attempt yet another re-launch. I say this like anyone else is reading this but me. It's not intended for mass consumption, or even for friends at this point. This is just for me. While Instagram is a pretty great way of documenting things, it does lack the long-form format of a blog. Hey, anyone else remember Livejournal? 

Speaking of Livejournal, I just turned 40 last Sunday. That's a heavy statement for me. Intellectually, age is just a number, life is what you make it, you're only as old as you feel, yadda yadda yadda. But, for women, it's an alarm bell in a way that it's not for men. Or, it can be depending on what you want in life. I'm single and childless and would definitely not like to be, so it's more like a siren. They say the biological clock ticks, but at 40 it feels more like a second-by-second gong. With that gong comes questions of personal value; why am I seemingly the last girl at the dance? Why are other people falling in love, getting married, having babies, and in some cases, getting divorced all while I am perennially alone? 

I could blame Martin, I suppose. He wasted 3 solid years of my 30's leading me nowhere. If he were reading this now, he'd say we were just friends and he wasn't leading me on. But he was never turning me away either. He was allowing me to follow. He did not attempt to deter me. He kept me wanting more and thinking so often that if I was patient more would come. That situation burned me out in a way that I have yet to recover from fully. I haven't seen or spoken to him since May of 2020 and yet here I am thinking and writing about him. Still in disbelief that he's actually married and that I could be so stupid. Still replaying everything. Still believing that what we had was special and real. I imagine that's not the case for him. However, he won't attend any work events that he knows I'm attending and he refuses to attend even the digital meetings I'm invited to. I guess it could be a coincidence, but it feels like more. But I guess I always read too much into everything Martin does and I should have learned better by now. 

Fuck, I just realized it's his birthday today. What are the odds that I would be writing this today? Universe, what the actual fuck? 

Anyway, I'm 40. I'm single. And I'm childless. This year I'm going to try to remedy at least one of those things. If this post is the only post I make in 2024, when I inevitably return and attempt yet another re-launch, I hope I'll have at least accomplished that. 

Fingers crossed. 

love thy neighbor

I've lived in my apartment for about three or four years now. Despite the neighborhood not always being the safest while also having to park my car in a garage two blocks away, I love my place. Sure, it's small, but the rent hasn't gone up since I moved in, so I'm actually now living in one of the cheaper units on the block. Sure, I have to walk up four flights of stairs multiple times a day, but I have a washer and dryer IN my unit. And no doubt there's other little issues and problems that arise all the time. But, the patio probably makes up for all of it. It's pretty decently sized and gets so much sun. My patio has been a literal source of vitamin D and an actual godsend during many months of lockdown. When I found this place, I knew it was a needle in a haystack and scooped it up quickly — despite that fact that it was out of my price range at the time. Until this year, I've never thought much of moving. 

In November, a new tenant moved into the apartment and my perfect apartment has become a lot less of a dream come true. The week he moved in was the same week I got a cold from my nephew, who had been exposed to COVID at school. So, basically, there was a chance I also had COVID. Regardless, I was feeling pretty awful. My lovely new neighbor began blasting bass heavy music. Being after property management hours, I didn't quite know what to do. I couldn't go to his door and politely ask him to turn it down when I would potentially be exposing him to COVID. So, I did what the good people of the internet said to do and I knocked on the floor with a broom handle. Without delay, he knocked on his ceiling to reply. A clear "fuck off". I knew then and there that this neighbor was going to be an issue. But I didn't really fully know just how badly. 

After complaining to the property management email a handful of times with no change, I got someone on the phone from Entourage. All in all, it was not a pleasant call. They told me I had to provide proof in the form of videos with his apt number in the frame because my complaints are empty because no one else in the building had complained. Do people make fake noise complaints a lot? Is that a thing? They also told me that due to the lockdown, everyone is home so they were taking noise complaints with a grain of salt. And lastly, they told me I could always call the cops. I thought that seemed extreme until this past weekend when I wound up calling the police twice. 

Friday, Feb 5th: He was in rare form. The music was BUMPING. I think it was possibly louder than it's ever been before. So loud that even another tenant in apt 4 pounded on his door and asked him to turn it down. He didn't answer the door for her, but he sure did for the police. They told him to turn it down and while he did turn it down, I could still hear it. That's the power of bass. It cuts through everything. It's inescapable. It was quieter, but only in comparison to the insane level it was at. 

Saturday, Feb 6th: The music started at about 9am. Bright and early. I had plans to go and see a couple apartments so I had to abandon Harvey in the prison of bass thumping. I got home around 7:30pm and I could hear some bass, but I couldn't hear a song. I figured, by his standards, he was keeping the music quiet. So, I went in my bedroom and I put on my white noise machine with my TV volume up loud and tried to block it out. But I couldn't. I just kept hearing it and it felt like I was hearing the same song over and over again. Like the exact same song. So, I went in the hallway and realized he had created a loop of bass sounds. He turned that on, cranked the sound, and he left. Well, I was pretty sure he had left since I didn't see any lights on and who could possibly stay in that apartment with that loop on? While I didn't think calling the police would do much good, I thought it best to keep a record of this stuff. And honestly, having the police come and validate my experience was a little nice. I live alone, so I have no one here to just commiserate with. Just having the policeman say that he heard it loop while he stood there knocking was very validating. 

Long story short: my downstairs neighbor is a selfish asshole and my property management company took all of my videos and my police reports and my point out the line in the lease about noise that disturbs other tenants being a breach of agreement and replied, "We do apologize for this inconvenience, we will go ahead and contact that tenant to speak to him." And that's it. The next day, said tenant came home and played his music as loud as fuck just like any other day. And continues to do so. 

And to add insult to injury, he also keeps his poor little dog shut out on his back patio and the poor thing cries and cries. Yet another breach of lease agreement, but who's counting?

So, now I'm in a rough spot. I love my apartment and I don't want to leave, but I don't know how much longer I can handle the psychological abuse I'm enduring living with a constant sound that I cannot control. Historically, I'm not great with repetitive noises. I can't block annoying sounds out and it raises my anxiety. Currently, all day long while I work and it's quiet below, I love my apartment again. I relax into it again and I start to hate all the apartment listings I loved the night before. But then the evening comes and my neighbor gets home and turns his stereo on and I'm right back to desperately scouring the internet for a new place. 

But I'm not going to settle for just any place. It has to be an upgrade. I cannot throw away an apartment I love for a place that I just like. But fuck, it's going to be hard to find a place that's better than this one. Beyond all the stuff I listed in the opening of this rambling, ranting mess, this is my first apartment in California. I busted my ass to get it. I struggled a lot when I moved back in with my parents during my internship and subsequent unemployment following college. Getting this apartment restored some of the self esteem that I had lost. And bigger than that, this apartment is full of memories with Gizmo. Just walking around the block I can have multiple flashbacks to our thousands of walks around this neighborhood. And maybe hardest of all, Gizmo took his last breaths in this apartment. I don't want to leave the last place I ever held him. If I had a therapist, they might tell me it's unhealthy to want to hold onto a place because of grief, but that's grief. Or that's my grief. My grief causes me to hold on tight to anything I have left of them. Logic and grief do not work together. My brain knows he is not here, but my grief is terrified to leave and forget things, which is just the second death of loved ones. First, they leave the earth, then they leave our memories. 

This is what one noisy neighbor has brought to my door. 

the boy is mine

Tonight on my walk home with Harvey, a stranger accosted me and accused me of stealing my dog. He said he'd seen the dog before and that his mother knew the dog. Claimed that the way Harvey was jumping and barking at him was unique to him — as if Harvey was doing it out of some sort of familiarity. As if that issue isn't one of the main reasons I put him into puppy training! He jumps and barks at everyone! He's a puppy! He's a ball of friendly energy! Alright! Stopping. Deep breaths. 

I probably shouldn't be documenting this at all because it is just total insanity. It's just one of the many forms of nonsense I face being a lone woman on the streets of downtown Long Beach. But it got me thinking how much Harvey has grown and changed in the last 5 months. I got him when he was 13 weeks old and now he's about 8 months old. A lot of change happens in those months. It kind of feels like he's been here for much longer than 5 months. The little bitty baby dog is gone, replaced with a nearly 17 pound monster.

Also — has this dude never seen dog breeds? You'll find a lot of dogs within a breed who look a lot alike...Why does this bother me so much?!

Maybe it's quarantine related. I mean, I've been with this terror almost exclusively for 5 months straight. I'm the one who feeds, protects, and cuddles him. I'm the one who's cleaned pee and poo from nearly every part of this apartment, including my mattress at 3am. I'm the one who's gone up and down four flights of stairs multiple times a day so he can have a walk. I'm the one who's been bitten and scratched and pulled muscles trying to restrain him. I'm the one who's bathed him and clipped his hair. I'm the one who's dropped the money at the vet for shots, ear infections, neutering, and most recently, a UTI. How dare someone say he isn't mine. He is entirely mine. He is my everything. Saying he is not mine may very well be the craziest shit I've ever heard. The only thing that would possibly be crazier is if they said Gizmo wasn't mine. 

In summary, the boy is mine. And I've got 5 months of daily photo documentation in my phone if you need some fucking proof. 

i fell in love with a spineless narcissist

 

Quarantine is rough. While I'm not alone in feeling that way in a global sense, I am physically alone. Surely there are plenty of struggles that come with being isolated with a significant other, roommate, or family members, but I tend to think it would be a little less mind-melting than it is to be in lockdown alone. I may also be feeling that a little harder because I'm one of those lucky people who went through a break-up in quarantine. And worse yet, I went through a secret one. 

I've been in my own kind of isolation for the last couple of years — with this secret. Very few people in my life knew anything about it and it's not easy to explain. So, I'll just blurt it out: I was involved in an emotional affair with an engaged man. That's the first time I ever wrote that out and, let me tell you, it was a kick to the gut. I am not proud of it. Nevertheless, it was so incredibly hard to break off. Yes, you read that correctly, I was the one who broke it off. Not the engaged half of this equation. Some people are of the opinion that an emotional affair is not a legitimate affair, but I think a majority of those people are of the male persuasion. 

I guess it would also be harder to face yourself if you admitted that you were doing something blatantly wrong behind your fiancées' back. I guess if you considered an emotional affair legitimate you would have to take responsibility for leading someone who loved you on and wasting her time for the last 3 or so years. It's no doubt easier to drift back and forth on the line between friends and more-than-friends than it would be to break something off with someone you do have feelings for. I mean, in the end, that's what was happening. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to continue to text and call me late into the night, to surprise me with gifts and feel like a hero when it was convenient for him to do so. He liked showing up at my apartment and getting lavished with attention on his own terms. He wanted to maintain control and to feel like the good guy even when he wasn't. He didn't want any of that to stop. But he has to sleep at night and he has to look his fiancée in the eye and tell her he loves her. So, he has to tell himself that this is normal friend behavior. 

I fell in love with a spineless narcissist and I miss him. Don't be like me. 

the new normal.

COVID-19. The novel coronavirus. A global pandemic. Safer at home. Lockdown. Work from home. Zoom. Disinfecting. Toilet paper. 6 feet apart. Masks, masks, and more masks. These words are the new normals. This is the new reality. This is 2020. 

Beginning sometime in beginning of March, my boss began experimenting with working from home. He was able to see the writing on the wall a little bit clearer then our idiot President. He wanted to be ready for the possibility of working remotely, if necessary. He's not right often, but he was right on this call for sure. So, we did WFH test runs. The first one was a real reality check for me. I lost Gizmo, the absolute love of my life and my constant companion for 15 years, in early January. While I don't quite know how I got through January and February, that day in March was crushing. Being alone all day in our empty apartment was devastating. The quiet and stillness was suffocating. Going to work was a respite for me. It was the one place Gizmo was not missing because he was never there to begin with. The anxious pessimist in me just knew deep in my bones that we'd be working from home for a long time, and I knew if I had to be alone for that long I was going to have a nervous breakdown. That very day, in between bouts of manic pacing and rivers of tears, I went looking for puppies. 

Enter Harvey G. 

I found him on Recycler, which I hadn't heard of until that day and felt like maybe it was a weird, unscrupulous place to find a puppy. But it turns out, Recycler has been a source of classifieds for Los Angeles since 1974. In fact, the Recycler helped to launch the careers of many LA bands including the Dead Kennedys, Guns N' Roses, Metallica, and Hole. So, I guess in that sense, he's in somewhat good company, depending on your opinion of these bands. Despite my apprehension, on March 14th, 2020, my mother and I drove to Simi Valley to see if the little puppy from the Recycler was real. He was. He is. And now he's mine. 

Harvey entered my life as the world entered a global pandemic and the state of California issued a state wide stay-at-home order. He's never known a life without me working from home. He's never dealt with being home all day by himself for 8+ hours a day. He's rarely had a walk without me (and a good amount of other people) in a mask. He rarely sees anyone except for me. Most seemed to think it was perfect timing, but I'm not so sure. I made a lot of mistakes when Gizmo was a puppy that I feel I may be unintentionally repeating with Harvey. Now at the time I got Gizmo, I was deeply depressed and drowning in grief. I shut myself in. I didn't socialize so I certainly didn't socialize him. And so he wasn't friendly to strangers or other dogs. He was more than a little neurotic and clingy and I blamed myself. God knows I loved Gizmo probably more than I should have, but I had planned to be so different with my next dog. So far, I don't feel like I am not doing a very good job, but for very different reasons. 

Now, Harvey and I have been in quarantine for 154 days now. 5 months. 22 weeks. 3,679 hours. However you want to dice it. Doesn't look like this is ending any time soon. So, in an effort to do better despite the challenges I cannot control, I signed Harvey up for six weeks of pet training at the local Petsmart. It's a small, socially distanced class, but it's an opportunity for him to be around other dogs and strangers and to learn some skills that will hopefully make it easier to go forward in socializing him more fully. 

That is, if we're ever allowed to socialize again. 

hello 2020

 

Wow. I haven't used this blog since 2013. Seven flippin' years. According to researchers, the body replaces itself with a largely new set of cells every 7 to 10 years. So, that means I'm a brand new person since my last blog post. Sorry, it's just science. 

It's actually kind of wild. In January of 2013, I was a 29 year old college student; I was a senior and in my last months of hell. I was living in a large, yet somewhat dumpy apartment in Lindenwold, NJ with only my little black mess, Gizmo. I was working part-time at DSW and trying to work out a way to get an internship in California. Now, I'm 36 years old and I'm living in a smaller, yet nicer apartment in Long Beach, CA with only my little blonde terror, Harvey. I'm working (from home now) full-time at Roland U.S. Corporation and working out a way to not lose my mind. A lot of things have changed and yet so much has remained the same. 

I could go on and on and pick apart the expectations I had at 29 vs. the reality of 36, but I don't know how productive that would be. I'm not sure I'm ready to throw myself off that cliff. I'm trying to keep myself on solid ground. I stopped documenting my life in order to keep my head above water. I was a journal keeper most of my life, but after a few months of living in California, writing about my days got me in a very dark place. Documenting that I did nothing and saw no one was defeating. Dictating all of my heart breaks and disappointments got to be too much. I came to California with a lot of optimism. I was looking forward to leaving a lot of ghosts in NJ, living closer to my mother again, and getting a fresh start in the sunshine. It'd be an understatement to say that things didn't turn out so sunny.

I didn't open this old blog to rehash the last seven years. Overall, what's done is done and cannot be undone. But maybe in order to regain my former self, I have to regain parts of myself I've left behind. Maybe I need to have something to read in another seven years, even if it's only me who's going to read it.   

FREE SHIPPING TIL SUNDAY THE 13TH!

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 In effect until January 13, 2013 at Midnight Pacific Time!!!

xxoo, jnell

Love my puppy dog

Some days Gizmo comes up and sits on my lap without any poking or prodding.
It has to be documented.
In other news, this quarter is going to be an odd one. But hopefully a good one!

Summer 2012: Week 1

First day of summer quarter 2012
my LAST summer quarter EVA??