LIFE SUCKS

Each day gets better than the last...

After getting laid off, from my job of three years, at the suggestion of my father-in-law (I don’t know what I was thinking) my wife, kids and I relocated to Los Angeles (from Atlanta, GA) to work at the family business. The plan was my wife and I would co-manage the warehouse, which I was okay with me because we work well together.

It didn’t quite play out like that. I was a warehouse employee and my wife was the warehouse manager. Whatever, it’s not the first time my father-in-law hasn’t kept a commitment to me. So this time I guess it was “shame on me”, right? But to make matters worse, the shop foreman was a complete prick. Yeah I ended up pretty far down in the pecking order. I think I was a half step up from the cleaning service personnel. My job changed weekly based on whatever whim my father-in-law had, and he has quite a few.

Around the same time my dog, of ten years, died likely from heart failure. When I adopted him he had heartworms really bad. So I guess it weakened his heart. And a week before we moved he was hit by a car (omen maybe?) and dislocated his back leg. He was stoic and so tough he never whined. I didn’t know the severity of his injury till a month later and then it was too late for the vet to fix the damage. I think maybe hobbling along, mostly on his three good legs, may have increased the strain on his heart.

Shortly after that I was diagnosed with Mycosis Fungoides a Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The kind of cancer that I have is rarely lethal but it can be and in it’s most severe form it’s not pretty. Still it can kill you so that kind of shook me to the core.

Then came some good news, my father-in-law bought me a car. No, wait; actually he bought himself another car that he had no real use for so he decided to foist it on me. He knew I needed a car and though I was poised to get the car I have wanted for the past 27 years (a jeep) he decided benevolently to give me a 12 year old used car that I absolutely hate. Still there is the upside this car seats 8, of course at the expense of gas efficiency. It costs approximately $150 a week to fill the tank. The value of this behemoth was less than what he paid for it (5K) and we’ve had to pump around 10K more to keep it on the road.
I really shouldn’t complain, just because a man that has a brand new Dodge crew cab diesel truck, a Lexus convertible, a Cadillac, two Harleys (he recently sold one to buy a Banshee quad), a Saturn SUV, three boats, and a motor home larger than many people’s houses, and a vacation home valued at over one million dumped a piece of shit car on me that I have hated since the moment I laid eyes on it.
Other monumentally horrible advice I followed from my father-in-law was to let my house go into foreclosure because he would definitely help us get into a house in L.A. So anyway we’ve been living with my in-laws for a little over a year now.

Which is okay I guess since I have no friends or family in the area to invite over to my house anyway. Don’t get me wrong I have friendly acquaintances, but no really deep friendships. I’m sort of glad though because at age 43 it would be humiliating to have to admit I live in my in-laws guest room.
Of course being “family” does have its perks, at work, I have recently been promoted to Assistant Rental Office Manager. There are only two of us in the rental department so that promotion isn’t worth the paper it was printed on. But my wife is now the CEO, so things are moving exactly as planned.
Every single day of my life I hate my living arrangement and the area that I live in, as well as, the job that work at, my wife has assured me she is never leaving here again. So my choices are stay in misery or lose my family.

So it’s just another day in paradise for me. Thank God for all these cliches to cheer me up.