Behind the Scenes: A look into the offline life of Xial. (Area 1-1)

Well, some of you may know, others may not.

Offline, I’m just a Customer Service Center clerk at my local Albertson’s.
Those of you who actually know me on a deeper level than I let on in my blog are already in the know about how much I used to loathe my job — or, rather, my boss, who made my job a living hell.

When my boss quit last week, I could honestly say that I felt a huge burden being lifted off my shoulders.
Her very presence inspired new lows in how apathetic I could be about everything. I started smoking much more than usual, drinking lots of soda, coming in late because I didn’t care…

But when she left, all that was scrubbed. I actually enjoy working again, even if it *is* just me and one other person officially in the department.
I’m not sure how we’re going to get this thing running properly, and how I’m gonna pull off my vacation this year, but it’ll happen, somehow.

Beyond that, I’m waiting on moving soon here. Paperwork drama is in the way, but that’s okay.
Hopefully, the price of housing starts to level off, and come back down to Earth in this city, for the following reasons:

If the cost of housing keeps going up, the working class on the low end of the scale aren’t going to be able to afford a place to stay. Apartments keep selling out to turn into condos; Houses keep going up in their prices, making it hard for the single to afford a place to stay; The few apartments who won’t sell out realize their space is at a premium, and can simply charge more and more for rent per month, knowing the threshold and adjusting prices to milk the most out of people.
Hell, it’s part of the reason I’m helping my grandmother with her new house bills - it cuts what I have to spend, out of pocket for a place to stay, since rent would cost me the same per month, or even more.

The other part of my reason:
For the record, and something I’ve not even completely told people I’ve been close to, or even intimate with: I love my grandmother dearly. She’s the woman who adopted me when I was a baby, and my biological mother didn’t give enough of a damn about me to take care of me. I regard this woman as my mother, for all intents and purposes. When I was eighteen, I helped her take care of her terminally ill husband — my grandfather, my father, if you will — and gave up college. Something he had me promise was that I make sure she’s taken care of and treated well until she, too, passes away. Apparently, he charged her with similar conditions before his mind faded too far to remember her. I remember a couple of weeks before he passed, she was trying to give him his medecine, and he refused to let her. She called me, and I spoke to him. “Dad, Mom’s just trying to give you some medecine, trying to ease the pain…” And he called me by name. He asked me, “Who is she?”

She is the woman I would die for, if it means helping her.
I owe her my life.

Inter-net-esting things to see:
Full Metal Photographer, Honky Tonk Badonkadonk (blog entry coming soon-ish), anisaerah