Up til now with Uber Eats, I’ve tried doing their CVS shops a time or three but was never very happy with them because at that point the shop and pay functionality in stores was not that great: if I needed to substitute an item, it was worth my life to get hold of the customer and ask them what they wanted. It already took me longer than a restaurant delivery did, so this was very annoying.
So for a long time I would get these offers for shop-and-pays, and other than a couple restaurants where it was order and pay, I’d turn them all down.
Well, this week so far it’s been shit. Today I was feeling kind of desperate so when I got a decent-looking Target call, I thought, eh, fuck it. I’ll go see how this goes and if I like it, I guess I can do more of these.
SEVEN HOURS LATER
Okay… what was it. Two Target runs, two Meijer runs? Yeah. That was it. Four different locations, mind you. Three of them I’d been to before. The fourth was in the Westerville-Polaris area and holy shit, that’s the nicest Meijer I’ve ever been to. Out of all four runs, I only had to sub one item. The Graceland Target was absolutely-no-shit out of fresh raspberries of any type or category. I got the customer strawberries instead because she listed that as an acceptable substitution — hallelujah.
It was kind of difficult being in that area of town, but not as difficult as it used to be. But I can’t go to the Graceland Target without seeing those stupid giant red balls out front and thinking, Thea used to yell “Ball!” from her stroller when we’d go there and roll past them.
And then she grew up.
I can’t believe that was from the same year I left. Four months before. So much changed in so little time.
Today I also went past the hospital where she was born and the church where she used to have her belt tests for her martial arts school. Not on purpose. That was just where the app sent me.
Memories everywhere. I told myself, these are all mine now. If everyone else wants to throw them away in the name of pretending to be someone or something they’re not, I guess that is their problem, but this was my life. It still is. I am the memory-keeper when everyone else walks away.
Not the first time I’ve found myself in that position, either.
Probably won’t be the last.
I’ve also been thinking over the whole situation with Dad. I’ve felt guilty about it — shouldn’t I be looking after him? Not that guilty though. Who the fuck was looking after me when my brother was beating the shit out of me and my stepmom was fucking nuts? No one. I was on my own and if I wasn’t perfect I got my ass beat by people who could not be fucking bothered any of the rest of the time. I will admit, Dad’s been a great rescuer when I really, really needed him. The thing is, I’ve tried to make that happen as little as humanly possible, and sooner or later I always left because it’s fucking impossible to make a go of things down there unless you’re oil industry or you got a man. I couldn’t make a go of it with the oil industry, don’t want to anyway, and… well… we know me and men. That’s a dead end. And what’s Dad do when I’m down there? Bitches about everything I do. I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m fucking not: If you cannot have enough respect for me to trust me to figure my own life out at the age of almost half a century, you don’t get my help. Fuck off. I did not tell my father to quit his fucking drinking and neglecting his blood sugar when he was half a century old. I like to think I’ve got more class than that.
I’m probably wrong, but I like to think so, anyway.
Besides, the car wouldn’t make it down there. I suppose I could try, and then I could find myself fucking stranded because it is just not going to fucking happen. Even if it did, it’d die once I was down there. What would I do? Not be able to so much as grocery-shop. Right now, right this minute, if my car were to die I could still go get food until my money runs out, because it’s a bit of a walk but there are two grocery stores about equal distance from this apartment in opposite directions. I’d manage. If it happened at Dad’s, I’d half kill myself getting into Iota — shit you not, there’s a dead man’s curve between the trailer park and the town and no fucking sidewalk and no one knows what the fuck a speed limit is — and we will not even discuss Crowley or Jennings. If I were twenty years younger and an athlete. And had a bicycle. No. It’s not fucking happening.
“Dad could buy you another car” Dad ain’t buying me shit. Dad could have bought me a goddamn car when I was down there with Thea 18 years ago needing to get places with her. Mom almost gave me a van, and then changed her mind without telling me and simply came over to Dad’s and took it back. That’s my parents for you. Wrap themselves up in their own fucking egos, never mind what I need.
When I think how so many of my problems started with my parents not teaching me to fucking drive because I didn’t say the magic words first… It still enrages me.
The extended fam will talk shit about me for not fucking bothering. What the fuck ever. They’ve been talking shit about me my entire life, and before they talked shit about me they talked shit about my mom, and all that ruined my life. All well and good to get me away from Mom if even half of what I’ve heard is true, but they also got me away from my entire extended family, both sides, and I was stuck out there in strange lands with no one I knew. And I never got to know my family. And I’ve never belonged anywhere. It’s as if I died. I have been this little lost ghost all my life. Keep talking. I stopped caring a long damn time ago. God… I sent out holiday cards in the 1994 season? I think I heard back from one person. Aunt Diane. My aunt by marriage. And then she DIED. “Why don’t you write? Is your hand broken?” my actual blood relatives say, but when I did write, they couldn’t be arsed. Message fucking received.
Well, Mom bothers, but I can’t even read her writing anymore, and when I could, half the time I couldn’t make sense of it.
…
Getting back to the delivery thing. Had a good run today. Have grave doubts I’ll have the full $1000 by the end of the month. There are three things I can sell with a pretty good shot at the sales happening quickly. That’ll help. Other than that? If I keep having dead days like I’ve been doing, I really don’t know.
Either I’ll have enough for the last month’s rent or I’ll have enough for a storage locker and a room. (The storage locker is to hopefully keep bed bugs out of my stuff should I encounter that little problem again.) One way or the other I’ll have a roof over me. We’ll see.
P.S. That temp place I mentioned earlier this week, I never heard back about the background check. I have apparently been added to their “talent community,” which I am pretty sure means “you ain’t shit, but we’ll keep you dangling in case we get desperate.” I have a few other tires to kick. Gotta do that quickly so I’m getting paid by the time I’m in a room, if that’s the direction we’re headed. I’m so tired.