The Ribshack

Need a job very very very very soon. I don't have the stomach to sell but will do almost anything else - something above digging ditches and stopping short of sucking cock.
I'm sick of both my resume and my cover letter (and absolutely HATE the cover letter) and it's just a damn shame my interview skills are for shit because I have to, you know, act like I like people.
Well, not "like"...how's "not hate strangers"?
That work better for ya? Me, too.
Apparently my lot in life may be the night shift stocking shelves at the local Home Depot for $10 an hour as no winning lottery numbers have come my way. Kind of pathetic how sorry I feel for myself but I HAVE been unemployed since June. Hate.
Life gets old as you see punters sitting around and talking about how "sick" their day was while sipping their lattes and waiting for their fucking Hummers to warm up. More hate.
The move was...eventful. A little more than 3 months ago when we decided we were fer sure moving back to the PHX, we talked with a friend of ours who owns a house and would consider renting it to us. Yup, he'd be happy to, for a very reasonable rent amount. BUT, it needed work - paint, etc. No problem, we were assured, as there's plenty of time to fix everything and he has a contractor who will fix it all up.
The night before we leave SATX, our friend gives Jenn a call and tells us we cannot move in. He went through the house and ran the water in the shower in the master bath. It came out the color of oh...iced fucking tea. Rust in the pipes. Will take an estimated $10,000 to tear up the floor and replace the pipes. The house is unlivable.
Our move out date is set and so we have to leave. We pack the truck and head toward AZ, toward homelessness. This is not what I aspired to in life. Luckily, another friend of ours is a real estate agent and starts busting his ass to find us a decent place to live for reasonable rent.
We leave SATX in the early afternoon with the very make-able goal of being in El Paso by that night. Well, it would've been make-able except - remember that huge snow storm that dumped snow in California, buried Oklahoma and is still wreaking havoc in D.C.? Guess what we hit east of El Paso? Heavy rain turned into heavy snow which turned into driving on two inches of ice. White out conditions. Cars in ditches spun out or flipped over, accidents left and right. Guessing which lane I'm driving in as I cannot see out my snow-filled windshield as 18-wheelers pass by mere inches.
Thank God, Allah, Buddah, or whatever Higher Power helped the Astros in 2005 reach the Series, for the Points of Interest feature on the GPS - I saw we had a number of hotels in the next major town "only" 60 miles away. Driving 25 mph for the next two+ hours as assholes all around us are playing bumper-cars-for-real while talking to the fiance on the cell to calm her down is not an experience I plan on repeating. She was in a tear-filled panic.
What did I say before? Oh yeah, this is not what I aspired to in life.
The next day the crews have plowed & salted the roads so travel can resume. Later in the day, our friend finds us a house that sounds suitable but we won't be able to move in until the next day. Fuck, gotta crash at his house that night. The rent is more than we wanted to pay but our friend that assured us his rental house would be good to go now assures us he'll make up the difference each month between what we were going to pay him and what we are paying now. Place yer bets, place yer bets - what are the chances this will go well?
Finally in the PHX, finally have the lease signed, finally moving in. The place is an absolute mess. Dust, dirt, stains everywhere. The place sat vacant for two months so the wonderful cleaning crew the landlord employed must have just taken the money and run. Bastards.
If these are the only complaints I have then to hell with me, as it's a miracle a livable place was found in less that 24 hours.
The afternoon of the move, the fiance uses the master bathroom and tells me the toilet won't flush. Uh oh. Grab the monkey wrench and get to work. The flapper, float, etc., seem to be in working order. Better check the line to see if it's blocked. Turn the valve to shut off the water...it's still running a little bit... The line is clear...must be the valve as it's still leaking, even with the water main shut off. Call the landlord to tell him there's an issue. He doesn't call back for 45 minutes. Turn the water main back on so the other bathroom can be used and I'm reconnecting the line to the valve to put in the bowl because it's still leaking when suddenly...I'm shot back against the bathroom door as the valve has come loose from the wall.
You know what it's like to be shot by a Super Soaker? At that moment I had a very similar sensation except with the SS there's a finite amount of water, that orange water-tank runs out of water eventually. Not so with household plumbing. The water main is shut off again but by that point I'm sitting in two inches of water on the bathroom floor.
This is not one of my better moments. I have an interview in two days. The plumber shows up two hours later and fixes everything - that one toilet was only one issue with the plumbing in the house. Broken shower head, no tub stoppers, toilet intermittently runs in the other bathroom... Why didn't I have a video camera running to catch that impromptu performance art?
What else can go wrong?
It's a rental house - there's no refrigerator and no washer or dryer but our friend that was going to rent the house to us says he has a refrigerator we can use. Great, something is finally going to go right. We arrange to pick it up from that same house in a couple of days - apparently he's in no hurry. What the hell, right, he has a refrigerator in his house. He calls us an hour before we pick it up and to be sure that "we're on the same page" and tells us that it's not his refrigerator and if the rightful owner shows up, we have to give it back.
What? Same page? How about same set of encyclopedias? (Note: for those not old enough to know what an encyclopedia is, it's what we olden people used to look up information before the existence of the interwebs in the olden days. Unlike Wikipeida, encyclopedias were somewhat reliably factual.)
Since when is it okay to give away another person's stuff? Fuck it, we need a refrigerator and if the person shows up, I'm handing her my phone to call our friend and let them work it out. So we go to the house we were originally going to rent that was going to be fixed up in three months to pick it up.
The place is an absolute fucking disaster. Nothing has been done in that three months we were promised everything would be painted/fixed. Nothing.
The fiance is so upset she starts having a nervous breakdown. A real honest-to-goodness nervous breakdown. My pissed-off-ometer is in the red. It's pegged. I'm ready to kill EVERYONE and hope someone cuts me off in traffic just so I have an excuse to pull them from their car and send them to hell.
Our friend then tells us he may have a washer and dryer for us. We haven't called him back on that...don't think we will.
What else can go wrong?
Another necessity called electricity. A week later we lose power to half the house. Call the landlord. He tells me to call the electric company. Call them, they give me the runaround and tell me to call another number as it's half the house, not the whole house. Call that number, they give me the runaround as they open up the Yellow Pages and give me 800 numbers for electricians. Well, that was helpful...
Call the landlord back. His electrician shows up two hours later. The GFI (the outlet with Power/Reset buttons) burned out. How/why? Sometimes they just do. Where is the GFI located? In the garage. Huh? Why there? No one fucking knows. Aren't they usually found somewhere easily accessible like the kitchen or bathroom? Yup. Why would the wiring be done by some half-wit Einstein that I suspect smells of off-brand Twinkies and plays with his poo poo outside a gas station?
This move has tested my faith, patience, and sanity.
I'll end this Blues song here by saying despite all of the above, we're glad to be back in the PHX. Oh yeah, the interview didn't go so well as I was a little distracted. They haven't called back.