Category: uncategorized

So, yesterday I was out doing deliveries and Uber does this thing where depending on where you start and which first few jobs you accept, they seem to want to keep sending you out to the same general area — and so I wound up going to Plain City like three times. Twice to the actual town itself. It was so weird.

Well, the second time I went out there I saw this thing in the road on 161 and it looked like a little pile of fabric. Just the same, I couldn’t tell what it was and I couldn’t swerve it so I centered the car over it and cringed. I was right to cringe. THUNKTHUNKTHUNK. And then it was in the other lane and I was past it. I spent the rest of the day terrified that I had broken something important on my car. I’m still not sure I didn’t.

Then today I had to have my headlights on because it was raining and noticed that I had one of the mains out AGAIN as I sat at a red light behind another vehicle. Thank fuck I had another good bulb in the glove compartment. Replaced it. I don’t think it’s at the proper angle because driving in the dark was a little weird, but the main reason I replaced it even knowing I wouldn’t be able to adjust the angle was because I wanted other drivers to see me properly. Now I know they can do that. It is what it is. I’ll cope.

I am so torn about which way I want to take things in the next few months.

I would stay here in Dublin if I could. It isn’t a status thing, even though I’m gonna get mileage out of “I once lived on [rich people road] for six months” for fucking years, especially if I ever speak again to anyone I used to know from this area before my life here went to shit. It’s just that I got my second Ohio job in Dublin (I can’t remember where the first one was, but it looks like it was in Westerville), I used to catch the bus to and from work in the same area of the Meijer parking lot that I now sit waiting for Uber calls (that bus stop is long gone now — the city killed the line not long after I quit), I used to visit here all the time to go to my favorite stores, I used to bring Thea here for bookstores and the cat shelter, we used to go to the Carriage Place movie theater just down at Sawmill and Bethel for most of our movies… So much of my life has been here. It feels like “me.” Even with all the crazy changes over twenty years (Bridge Park! North Market Dublin! All the everfucking cheaply-built “luxury” apartment communities everywhere!). It’s just… too fucking pricey. There are a few places I could maybe get in, but then most of the jobs here that I would even qualify for don’t pay enough, and I’m fucking fed up with call centers, which are the one well-paying option I had a prayer of getting — and did, before I walked out.

Delaware is another option. There are a few Job Possibles up there — most notably, Major Grocery Store Chain’s got a distribution center and I’ve been their employee before and left on sort of good terms. (That was when I got Mike arrested for B&E and grand larceny of U.S. Army property and then never went back to the house, and they wouldn’t lock him up or confine him to barracks so… it was no longer safe for me to go to work. I did advise my supervisor of the situation. I did that much. And that was in 1999, so.) If I got that one I know for a fact there are apartments up there I could afford on that pay. We’ll see. I still need to inquire into that.

Then there’s New Albany. There’s a Job Possible there I want to also inquire into and if I were to get it, even though it’s through an agency, there’s a fair chance they’d be looking to hire from temp. If I did get that, there’s at least one place in the general area with apartments under $700 a month. It’d be a studio but I’d have more space than I had at InTown Suites, it’d be just a little over half what I spent per month at InTown Suites, I’d be on a lease, and I don’t have much personal stuff anyway so who the fuck cares. It is so fucking far from Dublin — but Delaware is like two minutes farther away than New Albany is, just north instead of east. Whatever. I could hang out in Dublin on my days off. If I ever left the fucking apartment on my days off. I don’t have a great track record for that.

I’ll come right out with it: I don’t want a job at all, and as it is I’ll have to wait until Shark Week comes and goes (and if that doesn’t start happening soon I’m gonna be real fucking irritated — I need to get on with things) so that I can make sure there won’t be any issues. It’s not the work I fear, though I am not fond of coming off my work shift feeling like I went ten rounds with Mike Tyson and that without him dropping trou and coming after me that way. It’s the feeling like I have no freedom. It’s the having to do things I do not give one single tin shit in a gold mine about. (Why do they keep calling shitty jobs “careers”? Buddy, you tell me with a straight face that you always wanted to be a gas-station night manager ever since you were little and I will call you out for the fucking liar you are. Not that that’s any of my Job Possibles. I am just illustrating the issue.) It’s the having to deal with irrational people and stupid rules. I have absolutely no power or authority, I don’t want authority anyway, everyone probably picks all that up from me like it’s a fucking pheromone, and the end result is I’m miserable. If I didn’t NEED the money I would not fucking bother. And I have ways to earn money at home but shifting gears is really hard for me, I’ve got next to no furniture much less to do work at, and it would take time to get my income up anyway. And when you get right down to it I just want to make sure a prospective landlord would say yes. Whatever comes after that is whatever comes after that.

I spend so much time being fretful and indecisive and then wind up in trouble because I never made up my mind. Over and over. It gets old.

Oh, speaking of Uber sending me wherever, I wound up in Delaware today. Right schmackity in the middle of the town itself. Right around the corner from the homeless shelter. So I thought, fuck it, passing the shelter’s the quickest way back to William so I can turn down Liberty. Okay, so guess who was out there on the porch? Enrique. I almost stopped to say hi. I almost did, but I needed to keep picking up jobs. I cannot believe that man is still there. And Lumpy, the other guy who actually was at the InTown Suites in Dublin for five years and then wound up homeless, he was there for a long time after I left too. He didn’t get housed til August. I am so pissed. No one told me there was any chance I could stick around for longer. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to, but basically I got admitted to the shelter, given the bare outline sketch of a plan to deal with my situation, and then got zero guidance from my case worker other than a couple of minor time extensions because first she was “sick” and then I don’t know what the fuck was up and then I find out she’s being given the directorship of another of their locations just opening, at that time, in Marysville. I got neglected for someone’s fucking career advancement. I cannot fucking even. I wanted to like her, too. I don’t really know how to feel about her at this point. I could have spared myself living in the fucking car again and also at the motel in Marysville and also the Dublin InTown Suites had I had that information. Whatever. I may drop by there soon and say hi if Enrique’s around. I know he works, or anyway he was employed when I was there, and I don’t know his hours but what the hell, we’ll see. He might like seeing a familiar face.

I could stand that myself, but most of mine hate me now. And for the dumbest reason possible. I still can’t believe it.

Oh, don’t roll your fucking eyes at me. Look at the thumbnail. GO LISTEN.

Oh, and here are the lyrics. I did not expect… that.

Rent paid.

I have one more rent payment to go here and then I’m done. There was brief word of possibly renewing but after that, I was informed that she’d like to move a relative in here. She did not give me a timeframe — she could mean in December, she could mean in the spring; she never specified — but I’m not going to force her to give me one. Along with earning for the November rent I’ll be spending the next couple of months getting this place nicer as sort of a thank-you. Things weren’t exactly clean when I moved in. I’ll be able to get them clean. CleanER, anyway.

But that’s all I’m doing. And I have a feeling I will not be getting the deposit back because all this time she’s been talking about getting the electric bill to me but has not done so. I will be telling her when I move out that if she wants to pay my part off with the deposit she is perfectly within her rights to do so but that if the amount is more than $1000 for the six months, I will need documentation before she gets any more out of me. That’ll be in writing, too. Might as well cover my tracks.

(From what I understand, electric utility rates have really skyrocketed since 2009, the last time I had an electric bill to pay. If that’s true, surely I ran up more than $1000 in those six months. She will have had literally six months to get that information to me and I’m literally across the driveway from her. It is not at all difficult to reach me and she can tell when I’m home. I have no sympathy whatsoever. If people want medals for helping me, they need to actually help, not add drama where previously there wasn’t any. I’m done with that bullshit.)

I’ve been reading the Baggage Reclaim blog a little bit again. Have loved that blog for years and at some point would like to buy at least some of her books to thank her for putting all that out here where I could find it. Today it was an article about stonewalling. Now, the thing with Matt two years ago was not a breakup. I do understand that, but aside from that he pretty much fit the pattern of letting me think things were one way and then suddenly yanking the rug out from under me, then refusing to discuss it. Something was going on there and the only question is which possibility it was:

– He knew suddenly changing the situation would piss me off, and if I got pissed off I would rant, and he would automatically become the Good Guy as a result

– We already had a rapidly destabilizing situation thanks to what was going on with Thea and he didn’t want things to go to complete shambles before he had time to move Crys here

It was one or the other. It’s easy to beat myself up because if it’s the first option then I played right into his hands, but at this point all I can do is look back at the situation and all the people who went silent and think, Wow, are you ever fucking gullible. Why do I care about the opinions of stupid, mean people? Because they are stupid, mean people, or else they would have asked me for my side of the story and not been so quick to turn their backs. It seems facile looking at it that way, it seems childish, and I suppose it’s possible I’m just making excuses but given the facts of the case, what the fuck else would you call it. All along I was willing to explain my side to anyone who would listen. I have never said otherwise. If someone offers you something and you turn away, that’s on you. They tried to meet in the middle. You would not even budge.

So… No great loss, I guess.

And actually it could have been both options, come to think of it. I’m never going to know, of course. He once mentioned he wanted to write me something about the whole situation and his perspective but I told him I knew he wouldn’t do it; he is very fond of promising me reasonable things and then not fucking bothering since he’s “busy.” Over-promise, under-deliver. I do not know why he still has any friends.

And that made me think of something else. “People care more about how you make them feel” probably applies to this too. As in, “People care more about how you make them feel than about how many promises you keep.” If you can make them feel good about you lying to them, they’ll forgive anything, I guess.

But again… No great loss. I don’t even want to be friends with people like that. They prove unreliable and untrustworthy. It’s not because I think friends are a Resource To Get Things Out Of, either. It’s because no one can go it 100% alone in life and we’re supposed to help one another. “Help,” of course, NOT meaning turning people who are supposed to be your friends and support circle into your own personal servant class who does nothing but worship you. Because apparently that needs pointed out. For some reason.

Ugh. Anyway. Getting laundry done. Need to do sheets too — that’s laundry but when I say “laundry” I usually mean “clothes and towels.” I don’t like my chances of finding another apartment with an in-unit washer and dryer, damn it. I don’t mind laundromats, but these days with bed bugs becoming such a problem I do worry somewhat. I wish renting houses weren’t so fucking prohibitive. It is just an apartment not stuck to another apartment. What the hell? But here we are. I will just have to adjust.

It’s all academic if I don’t find a job and therefore I wind up at Weekly-Rate Suites again, which is highly likely. Or if I do find a job and it doesn’t pay enough and I end up there anyway. I suppose the good news is I won’t owe utilities on top of that, and this time I’ll be somewhere walkable. I did a little research into Chain Discount Store where I worked more than 20 years ago and it turns out their rehire policy will work very much in my favor. And there’s one right there across the road. So in a pinch, especially with the holidays coming on, there’s that. I’ll hate it, but I won’t hate having money. And the stakes are not as high as they were at Quantum.

It’s October and I’m going to miss Inktober again. I hate those challenges anyway because I run out of things to draw. But it’s no fun drawing half the time because it feels like standing alone in the middle of an empty room with no windows or doors, babbling at myself. I don’t need validation — I know who I am and I know what I can do — but for me to get along in humanity, somebody’s got to actually notice I’m here. And they usually don’t, and didn’t even before the current mess started. You lose heart after a while. It’s been a long process for me. I need to turn it around and reclaim, and I don’t even know where to begin.

Elizabeth wants to talk again. Am pretending I did not see it. I will give her thirty days’ notice at the end of the month and that’s the best she’s going to get. If she happens to catch me out between now and then, great. If not, oh fucking well. “I’ve got connections”… “I can help you find something”… “I’ll get you the electric bill”… “You can renew the lease.” Pull the other one. It’s got bells on. One more disappointment in a long line of them. This one doesn’t sting as much, or really at all, at least.

Have not paid the rent yet — will get a postal money order tomorrow; I’m not late til the third anyway — but did get a little driving in, so have food for a bit. Will not be doing jack squat tomorrow other than housework because I am just about out of t-shirts and my trousers could use some washing.

(I am not being pretentious. I don’t know how else to put this so I’ll just say it outright: I never know who’s reading this thing. I prefer to write for clarity where I can, and people in one country know what I mean when I say trousers and people in another country will be brought up short if I say pants when I mean trousers. So I went with Trouser Nation on this one.)

And because I need a fucking break, so there’s that. I was only close to six hundred yesterday. I crossed over today. Six hundred in a week! Jesus.

I did work out I can do this with more breathing room if I do a similar amount daily but for five days a week. I just wound up crammed at the last minute because I was stupid and rested on the $500 laurel in my savings account most of the month. Big mistake. Will I make that big mistake again? Probably. I am not my own best friend.

I am going to keep it up like this until I’m on the other side of the heaviest days in my Shark Week, and then probably look at that flex gig app again — the only one I currently have active with work somewhat near me where I can still request shifts, now that I’ve screwed that up too — and see if “we have worked out the bugs” means it has stopped asking me to resubmit my I-9 and identity documents. If so, I have additional options to what I’m doing now. I dread the changeover to night shift, but I would be able to point to that as proof of a job, especially if I grabbed a longer-term block of shifts instead of doing it piecemeal one day at a time. Fudge things, you know? If I go with something with low enough rent it won’t matter anyway.

I also still — STILL, since I left Matt’s house two years ago — have some things I’ve been meaning to sell, so I really should start taking a hard look at that. I am still not selling my Big Man collection. Not yet. But other things are viable candidates and have been. I’ve just been putting it off.

I think I want to get a post office box before trying that, because I need a consistent address for when I get out of here. I very much doubt I will still be here come December first. Lease ends 30 November. I’d rather go with a UPS box because they’ll accept more types of shipments, like FedEx if need be, but the post office is cheaper. The only question is where to rent a box. I am inclined to just stay in Dublin as my home base. I miss Clintonville, but I feel so unwelcome there now. Although if I can get that apartment I had looked at there (or an apartment in the same community — I would imagine the specific one I saw has been leased by now), I’ll go ahead and get a box there too. Big “if,” but we’ll see. I have the entire month of November to work that out.

This month I absolutely must check my account status with AEP and Columbia Gas. It’s been so long I’ll be surprised if they even still have any records of me, but I have to know. Can’t play around with this. I will not be allowed onto a lease if I can’t turn the utilities on.

This month also has a Friday the 13th. October is my favorite month for this. All I need is to meet a black cat, and month fucking made.

Other plotting and scheming going on. No energy to talk about any of it. The last two years have absolutely done my head in, and I’m nowhere near out of the woods yet.

Got the rent in just under the wire — well, not in yet, but it isn’t due until tomorrow anyway. But I got the whole amount. It may be I’ll fudge the cost of the money order, but I have that $35 wiggle room on my Chime checking and it’ll be fine. I don’t want to drive around tomorrow as well but… well… I need money! I’ve been scrounging. So I will probably at least go out long enough to pick up $20 or $30 again. I’m fine on gas for a little bit, at least. The trick is to have enough to put $20 in the tank and have leftover on any given day.

Am bemused at how much I’ve pulled in this week…

…oh, no big deal. Five-eighty-something? Close to $600. In one week.

God. If I’d earned like that every week when I had the room I might have been sort of okay. Until they found the bed bugs, anyhow.

Still, the reason I got left with hardly any of it is I left the rent almost too late and then my car eats a decent chunk of my earnings in gas costs and then, well, I have to eat. It’s so fucking lame. You can say “welcome to real life,” sure, but (1) I’ve always lived in real life even if I hated it and (2) I have had jobs and I have done this and trust me, the same $600 in a week feels very fucking different getting it every two weeks in a paycheck than it does having to get it piece by piece every single fucking day — $80 here. $100 over there. $95 yonder. It’s unreal. If you haven’t been through that, you can shut the fuck up. Thanks.

Moving on now. Was watching this reaction video for Queen playing “Somebody To Love” in a live show and it struck me. When I was growing up we were regaled with stories of famous musicians from our parents’ generation who died young and how those people were so amazing. Those people were all dead before I came along. Now there are people I can literally remember being alive, can remember their work being new on the fucking radio and I have to see these adults who are young enough to be my children oohing and aahing about these people I can remember. Must feel a lot like what it was like for our parents’ generation hearing us go on about Janis or Jimi or Ritchie.

Well. Maybe not both my parents. Dad is an asshole when these sorts of conversations get going. Like as not he’d go “so?” and then lecture me about how none of them lived responsible lives and so of course they’re gone. And Dad likes that music. One more thing about Dad that stresses me the fuck out. And it’s not like he’s the very fucking picture of sensible life choices. The two women he married, alone. (Sorry, Mom. But you know it’s true.)

Anyway. Bird sightings.

1. Herons in the Scioto! It’s low enough at Bridge Street that I can glance over the side of said bridge as I’m driving over and see them wading. White ones mainly.

2. Canada geese congregating. Haven’t seen them like that since baby season; I guess they’re migrating. I wonder how far south they go. ANYWAY, one day recently I saw a group of them on some open expanse of grass and there was a white goose with them. Okay, cool, they get along with mallard ducks all right so maybe it could have been one of a different species. But what if it was a white Canada goose? And now I’ll never know! WAH!

3. Black vultures??? I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ve been seeing. Apparently, they really like the O’Shaughnessy Dam, or they like Shawnee Hills (where that’s located) and the area where reservoir meets river particularly, or something. But today, or maybe it was yesterday, I saw a bunch of them on someone’s ROOF. Like, someone’s house, not the usual public buildings or, weirdly, those big cell phone towers in that spot. I don’t think they’re even normal here. I have no idea why they’ve taken a shine to the place.

I feel like I want to say a whole lot of other stuff but I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Well, maybe later.

Critter sighting: Groundhog. Sitting up neat as you please, chewing on something. Oddly, in that little office park at Sawmill and Billingsley on the west side of Sawmill. Local people may be familiar.

It’s not unusual to see them grazing by the highways, especially near the on-/off-ramps, all summer long, though I hadn’t noticed them much this year. They’ll be hibernating soon, I’m sure.

Much better day income-wise though it dragged on and on. I had forgotten how much work this is when I’m not half-assing it because I know I have other money.

I do not know yet if I’ll make the deadline on rent. I guess we’ll see, but so far I haven’t paid it exactly on the first. Usually it’s on the second. Might have been the third one time, not sure, but I have that grace period of about three days (it’s in my lease). If I have to go with Meijer money orders again, so be it. Elizabeth isn’t terribly fond of me using money orders but I’m not fond of her not having a PayPal account, so I guess we’re even. One more reason to want a different place: Likely it’ll have an online payment portal. Debit or credit card. Bam. Done.

Back still being a so-and-so. General pattern seems to be hurts more in the morning, feels almost normal by the end of the day. I dunno. I’m just along for the ride.

Okay. Bed.

Over the past several days I’ve had some critter encounters. First up, I had had the thought of, “wow, I haven’t seen any deer in a long time. Wonder if I’ll see any,” and THE VERY NEXT DAY one crossed the road in front of me. So far with these appearances, I’ve been extremely lucky (THANK YOU, WHOEVER) in that I had space and time to slow down and let them cross, and it was the same this time. One of these days I’m gonna go around with black crown stickers and decorate all these fucking deer-crossing signs to look like the Baratheon sigil. It’ll be a laugh. But anyway, so there was that, and then not long after (same day? next day?) I saw two squirrels cross the road and the one behind was much smaller than the one in front. Baby squirrel panicked a bit when it got almost all the way across, paused, had me going “OH, SQUIRRELIE! BE CAREFUL!” for a sec, then turned around and booked it back across the road in the direction it had come from. Fortunately, the traffic coming in the other direction also saw it and so there was no carnage. And let’s see… a couple times, it’s been rabbits. Thanks to Shel Silverstein, I tend to go nutty and screech “RUNNY BABBIT!” but one of the sightings was in a customer’s front yard and I’d have looked like an asshole. And there was a puppy once, speaking of customers; I asked this one if I could say hi to her and he was fine with it, so I got to pet a puppy. (I also got extra in my tip afterwards. Going by puppy’s opinion of me?) And then yesterday on one of my last runs, someone had what looked suspiciously like a pit bull or something in that category but I’m pretty sure doggo wasn’t even a year old yet — young, anyway, and still impulsive. It was okay. Tried to pet him anyhow.

I am down to crunch time with the rent and had a bad day today. I must pay my phone bill; that’s not optional. No phone, no Uber Eats, no work, no more money coming in. So that’s going to hit tomorrow. I’m going to need to have long days for the rest of the week and I’m still not sure how that’s going to go because I have to get gas too. Also food, but I’ve done the get really cheap food thing before and it turned out okay. I may feel like shit by Sunday, but I’ll feel like shit with a roof over my head. Beats the alternative.

(Honestly, no one’s notified me that I’m kicked out of the Salvation Army program yet, so I have a feeling that if I needed to ask for help, I could. But we’ll see.)

Weird one-sided back discomfort is still going on. And here’s an extra wrinkle: it may not be my back. I will not get into the gory details but I suspect internal-organ involvement. Best case scenario is it really is kidney stones and the pain just moves weirdly. Or that my fibroids are getting creative. Anything else really doesn’t bear thinking about. Although I am not panicking. If I get cancer, I’ve fucking got cancer; even with health insurance my options would be extremely limited, and I don’t even have that right now. I screwed myself good and proper quitting Quantum. It is what it is. I don’t know why I prioritize mental/emotional peace over, say, being able to put money into savings and not having to take it right back out again, but here we are. Anyway, I could literally have all the money in the world and I still might not give a shit. At this point the question becomes what the fuck am I living for, exactly. I haven’t acted on that solely out of fear that I’d somehow fuck it up or somehow miraculously (or not so miraculously ’cause I fucked it up) survive. If I go through that door I want it to be one-way and immediately shut, the end. That might not happen, so here I be. But if I got cancer then that’s gonna get me eventually. I might not like it, but on the bright side I’ll have a right to the good drugs and I might be able to make something definitive and final happen then.

Or, I’m entertaining worst-case scenarios because I’m an asshole, this won’t be anything, I’ll end up fine, and life will get better eventually.

Either way. I don’t really fucking care.

Meanwhile, because I’m seeing signs I need it, I finally got some magnesium again. Best part? It was part of a buy-one-get-one-free sale.

I have been having problems with a certain gig temp app for over a year now. Final straw, I thought, was the app asking for my I-9 and other documentation again. Assholes, my citizenship status has not changed in a year and a half. Jesus Christ. I wouldn’t be so annoyed but they want someone to witness the documents. I suppose I could ask my landlady, but I would rather not bother her overmuch and anyway, it’s the principle of the thing. But! I got an email from them in the past day or two about how they’ve updated the app a lot and it should be working properly now. I dunno, but at some point very soon I’ll reinstall it. If it’s working, I am not going to grab shifts right away. I want to go through Shark Week again first, then we’ll see. If I can start doing things regularly there, I’ll be able to make plans to move out of here. I might have to move out of here anyway, but I’ll have more choices at that point, potentially. I do worry that I will not measure up to what they want done at a fast enough speed, but I figure I can just ride the situation til I get thrown off. I’ve already fucked up everything I possibly could in my life. I might as well go for broke. Wait, I am broke. Past broke. There.

(Odd to label myself “broke” when I’ve got $725 in the savings account, but I need another $275 and somehow to score that whilst paying for gas and food. Fuck? So, yeah. Broke.)

I have things I can make and do to earn extra but then I get home and don’t want to do anything. I suspect most of the problem is a complete lack of confidence that any of it would even sell. I suspect that lack of confidence is not misplaced. No one cares what I do unless I piss them off. (And then they wonder why I appear to be negative in order to seek attention. Well maybe fucking notice I’m alive when I’m NOT being an asshole and we might fucking get somewhere. I’d prefer that. How about it?) And everyone’s become even bigger assholes since the pandemic began. But I guess I will see how things go. I need to pare down some more in any case and I’ve got a bunch of shit that might sell well now with the holidays coming on. We’ll see.

You can’t have my Rory stuff yet, though don’t think I’m not tempted. I do have an extra copy of Hot Fuzz to unload, but aside from that.

Okay. I need to sleep. Gotta be up earlyish again.

P.S. Never heard back from the hospital. Probably never will. I suppose it was worth a shot.

Had the phone call with Hospital today. I half suspected it was just going to be some kind of screening preliminary thing. I was right. HR lady and I vibed, though, which is what happened with the Quantum interview so maybe this might go somewhere. I guess we will just have to see. I will say this: I’m not optimistic. How many times have I thought an interview went well or at least not badly only to be ghosted or told no? This will just be the next time. I can see it coming all too clearly.

I am not bothering being angry at myself for quitting Quantum because that place was not good for me. It should have been, and certainly the money and benefits were decent, but I cannot be in a situation where three months in I still feel like I don’t know my own ass from a hole in the ground. Some people like that. I’m not some people. I’m just me people. I don’t have to like it. I just have to accept it.

Was going to go out delivering, but felt crappy for a while. I am not sure what’s going on there. I could list off this whole litany of possible candidate-conditions, but there’s no point, is there. Even if I had health insurance I’d make myself broke; that urgent-care visit for my nose cost me $125 when I was covered on the co-pay plan. Ouch. I will say I suspect possibly some residual shit from having COVID a year ago and also possibly some kind of gallbladder problem. (I fit the demographic pretty much to a T.) But it could also be simple nerves, or it could be that tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of me basically abandoning my daughter, and I haven’t heard from her in probably most of one. I normally deal fine with being by myself but the past two years I’ve felt alone to a level I’ve never felt it before. I honestly do not know why I am still here.

But, no point whinging about it. I have to drive tomorrow and I have to push myself to get the rent money ASAP, just so it’s not held off til the last minute. I also need to get ahead so I can figure out my final month here. In this apartment, I mean. Though hell, for all I know it could be my final month entirely. Life’s a crap shoot. Emphasis on “crap.”

I may go to the movies soon. I rolled my eyes at the thought of seeing Barbie, but enough women with generally feminist inclinations have come back praising it that I’m somewhat willing to give it a shot. I’m not a lemming and I don’t need people to tell me what to watch but I am not going to pay movie-theater prices for something that’s just going to piss me off. As it is, I’ll likely hit the 1pm show because that’s matinee prices at the theater I mean to visit. Thirty percent off. Fine by me. I’m aware of the choo-choo pretending to be Dr. Barbie in the film, but I also know his back story and that he was only pity casting and it’s a very short appearance. Egotistical fuckface. Easily overlooked. I just want a diversion. I’ve been watching Red Dwarf on Tubi and laughing at it — Matt had the entire series not including the new episodes and I had only ever half paid attention but now I actually want to see it — but actually Going Somewhere would be nice. I’ve done it before. I wouldn’t have been able to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace on opening day in 1999 if I hadn’t gone alone because my fucking “friends” didn’t bother trying to include me. And that’s when things were still good. This is how much I’m worth. But I don’t mind taking me to movies. I’m good company. That’s fine.

A note in case this comes back up later: My back’s weird today for some reason. It’s weird anyway first thing in the morning because I’m pretty sure memory-foam mattresses are terrible for it, but this is just one-sided and well after I’ve been up and about, because usually it’s both sides and it works its way out as I go through my morning stuff and move around some. I sometimes wonder about my kidneys just because of what Dad’s been through. So, one more concern. My consolation in that case is that end-stage renal disease is a trigger condition for Medicare coverage no matter how old you are, so at least that won’t send me to the poorhouse any worse than I already am. But I’d like to not have to do that, if the universe doesn’t mind. Kidney disease sucks. Period.

Okay. Bedtime. I need to get my ass up to have time to make a good lunch run with delivery. Just do. If I can clear $75 I’ll be pretty happy. About that, anyway.