my boring life story

I found out I have until the 21st to pay my late auto insurance payment or my policy gets canceled. It’s good news and it’s not good news. My brain is going “ah ha, I have more time!” but it’s now the tenth of the month so I only have eleven more days. Put another way, it’s a week and a half. That will go by in a blink no matter how slow my life seems.

Dad had some more bruising become visible from his Wednesday fall. Up the arm on the same side as the injured hand. His landlady noticed because he went over there to ask her to mow his lawn this summer, which will save him having to buy a mower (and he’ll pay her). He thinks no one else knows, thus far. He didn’t ask me not to tell anyone until later in the day of his fall after I’d already told Carrie and Doug. I am never NOT going to tell anyone when he has accidents. I need someone to bounce it off of in case I’m too close to see how serious it is so I have someone to go TAKE HIM TO THE DOCTOR, STUPID, and if I don’t mention it then it also looks like I’m hiding something. Dad is asking too much of me to expect me to say nothing. I don’t deserve to get into trouble for things he does. But if Dad were big on the foresight he wouldn’t have started drinking again after I moved back in here. I could probably cite dozens of examples, actually, not just that one. Which is funny, considering he used to scold me when I was a kid, “THINK before you do something!” You first, daddy-o. Please. Finally.

Carrie wants to put me on his checking account and take herself off. She’s afraid of my aunt Matilda, when you get right down to it, because when Dad had his first fall (that we know of), Matilda was nasty to her and made noises about just taking the cash he had at that time in his home safe. The cash has been moved to Carrie’s savings account (and Carrie wants to move it on to Dad’s checking as well, once my name’s on it) and the safe’s lock was malfunctioning so Dad had me throw it away and it’s no longer an issue. But I am not sure what Dad will say to Carrie’s current suggestion and I sure as hell do not need other people giving me grief. I’m going to stall on that one for as long as I can. Carrie really should be the one to ask him, anyway, because if it’s her idea then I don’t look like a Scammer of The Elderly. I think it is a shit idea and is bound to lead to trouble but Carrie is too nice for me to say things like that to her. That’s the problem, in this case: she’s literally a nice person (I’d rather say a good person — seems that way, anyhow) and so she never assumes someone else won’t be nice ahead of time without prior experience. There are worse personal flaws to have, I just don’t want to be broadsided by this one.

(If Matilda’s reading this, I will say what I often say to people who object to me talking publicly about their poor behavior: Quit handing me material. I mean fuck, I bet EVERYONE talks about ME and do you see any signs of that slowing down? No. And how much of it is actually true. You don’t know. I rest my fucking case. At least I am not literally talking about people behind their backs. You know what I’m saying because it’s right there visible. You’re welcome.)

(I’d be less cavalier about this, but people have been fussing at and criticizing and yelling at and judging me ALL. MY. LIFE. Doesn’t matter what it is. I’ve been mocked for wearing a denim jacket with butterfly patches on it. I’ve been derided for using the word “cool” in my speech more often than someone was accustomed to hearing. No one was ever interested in me as a person. They were always looking for points to score. It began with my so-called family and has never. fucking. ended. FUCK YOU. You ran out of chances. I’ll fucking say what I fucking like.)

Speaking of Carrie, either Thursday or Friday she went to her son’s house to watch the kidlets because at least one of them was throwing up. Well, today she told me she was back home (Corey lives a bit out of town) and that I was welcome to come by but just keep in mind she’s now thrown up too. I thought, WOW that was fast, and asked her if she also had the runs. Affirmative. I remarked that I didn’t believe I would be going over just then. Reason being it’s probably norovirus.

Now, the thing with viral diseases is that you have two factors to think about: how contagious the virus is, and how infectious the virus is. Contagiousness has to do with how easily a virus passes from one person’s body to another person’s body. Infectiousness has to do with how many virus particles it takes to actually start the disease process.

If I remember correctly, it takes more than 10,000 virus particles to start a case of the flu.

Norovirus? Fewer than 100.

If you ever hear tales of “food poisoning” in restaurants where someone puked at the restaurant and then all of a sudden everyone who was there is sick with the same thing in the next twenty-four hours, that’s usually noro. That’s how fucking awful the shit is. And the shit’s awful too.

And speaking of which, the last thing Dad needs is an illness that makes him need to run to the toilet. He already finds walking to be moderately difficult. He’s got a stash of Depends (for some reason, the brand has taken the final -s off its name, but old habits die hard), but he won’t want to sit in that, and the disease makes you feel pretty trashed so it’s anyone’s guess whether he could even stand up until it blows over.

So, yeah. Stayed home. Seemed prudent.

(I am not completely altruistic. I don’t fancy cleaning up after all that either, and it would just add to the humiliation factor for Dad anyway. No thank you.)

We’re getting more rain and the humidity’s just been killing me. In a house with a small water heater (I mean ridiculously small, like less than half the height of a normal one I think?) and I have a big body so I have to be slapdash about bathing, and I don’t shower daily so as to not run up the water bill unreasonably high, and no central A/C and I couldn’t run it anyway because it’d make Dad too cold, and there’s no good way to set up a dehumidifier in my room either, which would be the other sensible option when one does not have air conditioning. I’m thinking more the drainage than the space. I can live without the space. What I have is still bigger than my car.

Somebody posted something the other day about how when you no longer know which way to turn or what to do with yourself, that’s when your real life’s work begins. That’s funny. I have never had a real life so how am I supposed to have real life’s work? But that’s where I am now. Screaming into the void, “WHAT FUCKING NOW?”

I mean I know things I want to do but everything has been screwed up and it requires about five times more steps to get anything done that I want to get done. And I was already overwhelmed by all the shit I have to fix. It’s like my life is Matt’s messy house: had I done regular maintenance it wouldn’t be so bad now, but I didn’t, and the bullshit has just piled up and piled up. And I can’t ask my fucking girlfriendnew wife to fix it all for me and then sell the house and move. This is it. This is all I have.

And speaking of work. Pro tip to anyone knowing me from meatspace and reading this who has ever asked or will ever ask me if I have a job yet. Would you like to share around the work I am actually fucking doing so that maybe I can find buyers? Because that would actually be useful. I’ve got a whole-ass pencil portrait on my Etsy that would get me out of this insurance hole RIGHT FUCKING NOW and no one’s even sharing it. Thanks a lot. Don’t ever accuse me of doing nothing when you won’t even notice the somethings I do. Holy fucking shit, I have NO FUCKING IDEA how I EVER lived to adulthood. I’m not sure how I’m alive now! It’s a goddamn mystery!

“You’re quite resourceful,” said my homeless-shelter social worker, who proceeded to ignore me when I really needed her.

Pretty much sums it all up.

I haven’t gotten shit done this week.

Monday I went to Carrie’s to work on various things and she wasn’t home. I have a neighbor here in the trailer park, Brenda, who visits there daily and her vehicle was there but the front door was closed. Carrie has told me in the past that I’m welcome there anytime if I need an internet connection, but I felt weird visiting with her gone and I wasn’t sure why Brenda would have the door closed so I noped out of there and went home. Then I found out later that Brenda hadn’t been there to start with. She had driven over to Carrie’s and Carrie took her to a doctor’s appointment. So it’s just as well.

I suppose I should mention Carrie is a retired teacher. So I’m guessing she likes to have stuff to do during the day. She’s also very kind, but even a kind person is capable of feeling ill-used, so I can’t imagine she’d be this helpful to random people not even closely related to her unless she wanted to be.

(I mention “not closely related” because unless someone somewhere got their entries wrong on Ancestry, Carrie’s maiden name turns up in my family tree. I’m pretty sure we’re cousins. Not that that is very much of a stretch around here. There’s a reason we’re the second largest reservoir of Tay-Sachs disease after the Ashkenazi Jewish community.)

Anyway. So. Carrie not home on Monday. Well then, thinks I, how about Tuesday. Well, Dad wanted to go run errands. So that right there was a couple hours shot and I already got up a bit later than I’ve been getting up because I’d gone to bed Monday night a bit later than I’d been going to bed. So by the time I might have gone anywhere, it was after 2pm. I don’t like going over there only to be there, like, two or three hours because her husband gets home around 5 or so and I don’t like to overstay my welcome. So I put it off again.

The other thing that’s happened this week, yesterday, is Dad fell.

And please don’t feel like I’m being careless in only remembering just now. I actually did remember when I sat down to write this but a whole bunch of other stuff came up in my mind and it got pushed aside. Sorry.

As falls go it wasn’t terrible by young-person standards, but I’m waiting to see what the effects on him are after a few days into it because 70somethings are more fragile. He didn’t hit his head, but he did hit his hand. It’s along that same bone line as the pinky finger on his right hand. So… distal metacarpal? I think? Don’t ask me. I hear this shit in passing and sometimes it sticks and sometimes not. But one of those bones. I saw the bruise right after it happened and it looked a little nasty but wasn’t dark, and it had flattened out a lot by a few hours into the injury. I have consulted with Doug and we think that if he did break it then it could just be a hairline fracture, and Doug says men often break that bone anyway from hitting incorrectly when they punch things. It’s also possible, as Dad thinks, that it is just a deep bruise. I already offered to take him to the doctor and he wouldn’t hear of it.

He also seems to have hit himself somewhere else, I want to say hip maybe, but he walks just fine and that one would have been a lot more noticeable if something had broken. I haven’t seen it. He told me about that one.

He ALSO didn’t want me telling anyone about it, but he didn’t say this to me until I had already reported his accident to Doug and Carrie and as far as I’m concerned, he can kiss my ass because if I don’t tell someone when this shit happens, next thing you know someone will think I’m beating him or something. I want someone outside this situation to know what is happening as much as humanly possible. I don’t broadcast every detail all over social media anymore, and it’s reasonable for him to expect me not to if he even thinks about it (he only has a vague notion of what social media is in the first place), but 99.9% of the people there couldn’t do a damned thing for me or him anyway. I’m certainly going to fucking take notes here.

He at least asked me, when he fell and once I got him upright, to dump out his latest drink and also what was left in the whiskey bottle. I guess it finally sank in that when he drinks he’s less good at walking safely. I had already noticed that his tread is heavier and more shuffly when he is not sober, and shuffling = stumbling. But you can’t tell him anything. He has to figure it out for himself. I suppose we are all like that to some extent. He’s worse than average and it is not a safe trait in the elderly. I don’t believe for a minute that was his last drink, either. If he has to attend a social event again, he’ll go back to the bottle. I think it is his answer to anxiety meds. I will be very surprised if no one else in his life has noticed that. Xanax wouldn’t have been an improvement, though. None of those meds really are.

Honestly, he could come up with any excuse to go back to it. That get-together at Aunt Emily’s just seemed to be his trigger when he started again after allegedly being off it for a month and a half. And he could have lied about that too. Everyone said they could tell he had quit drinking because he looked so much better, but face it. As bad off as he had been in the hospital, that could simply have been him healing up. We will never know for sure. Most people who would have taken him shopping before I got here were likely cautious about what he got, but his cousin Kathy isn’t. Saw that for myself.

I wish I knew why men are ever so eager to lie to me. Doesn’t seem to matter who the man is.

(And while we’re at it? Every single one of those muhfuggers in his family knows he has a drinking problem. Several of my relatives had alcohol at the get-together, and they drank it right in front of him. What the fuck were they thinking? Look. Shit or get off the pot. If a known alcoholic is welcome at your gathering, have the decency to not drink in front of him. If you want to drink, don’t invite him. Simple human decency. I could regale you with tales of why Southern courtesy is a bullshit concept. That was one right there.)

(If anyone from that camp is reading this: No, that’s not why we didn’t show up for Emily’s and Bill’s 40th anniversary party. We did not show up for that because Dad plotted to play a prank on Emily that I privately thought would have been cruel to do. He wanted to send me to Walmart with cash to buy the prank item beforehand. I didn’t think I’d find it there anyway but also, I didn’t want to be party to a mean trick. I am hoping it was just something that sounded funnier in his head and that he didn’t actually mean to be an asshole, but nevertheless. Happily, if I stall long enough he’ll often forget something, and in this case he seemed to lose track of his plans and stopped bringing it up. But NOW I THINK ABOUT IT, we dodged a bullet twice over. If people were drinking for Christmas, I hate to think what they were doing at that party.)

Then there was today. He slowed down a whole lot after the fall. He still gets around okay in the house, but we went to Walmart yesterday and he’s regressed. He had to use one of their disabled carts again. He hasn’t needed one the whole time I’ve been back and I’ve been here since December. He’s also been napping more. There was some of that before the fall but it’s as bad or worse now. Some of it’s been the drinking. I wonder if some of it is now his drying out. No idea. I didn’t really want to go anywhere with him like this though. Also we were expecting Deborah to come by and clean (she and her husband are kind of on hard times and Dad hires her to help her out) and there was a chance she’d come by while he was sleeping, and one of the things she does is wash his sheets so I wanted to be here to make sure he was awake. She didn’t come by, though. Turns out she came down with something and stayed home.

Or maybe I am getting confused myself and Deborah’s non-visit was yesterday. I dunno. I feel like I’m in a perpetual summer vacation and I don’t even get to have any real fun.

Well, we’ll see how things go. I don’t know anything anymore.

This is going to be an interesting week.

I forgot that I got my insurance a few days before I got my license renewed. It’s due tomorrow, not on the 7th or 8th or 9th. I won’t have the money. I’m surprised anyone responded to the GoFundMe, but it still wasn’t enough to cover everything that had been coming due. I will probably ask Dad about it tomorrow just to get that out of the way. Unless I chicken out. I’ll probably chicken out.

(He’s not as sharp as he used to be — not that he was ever 100% sharp, he tends to favor playing dumb and ignoring inconvenient realities most of the time, which makes it even weirder when he decides to lecture me. Like, NOW you’re gonna face facts? Great. At my expense, I notice — so where he previously would have asked me about the insurance by now, I suspect he usually forgets.)

If I remember correctly, you get at least a week you can run late with GEICO before they boot you off your policy. It’ll be hoping I don’t get pulled over, but I don’t drive very far anymore and I tend to be quite careful. So if I chicken out, probably I’ll be okay for a bit.

[knocks on head]

I also need to get in with a mechanic this week. Which is going to be more asking Dad for money, though I will be less hesitant about this one. I need to get the starting function repaired, whatever’s causing the foulup in it, and I need to get inspection-ready. Period. After this week I start having to worry about getting pulled over. I do not know whether lack of inspection sticker is a primary or secondary offense. At least if it were secondary I’d have to be pulled over for something else first. But the starting needs to be fixed regardless. Given that the battery stays charged I don’t think it’s the alternator nor a battery cable needing replacing. I don’t know enough about the electrical system to guess what else it might be. Closest I can get is maybe something’s wrong with the starter that wouldn’t come up on the diagnostic gadget they used at Advance Auto Parts.

If I can get that fixed I suppose I’ll go to Pizza Place and inquire about delivery-driver jobs, or go online and see if they’re taking applications there. It’ll go nowhere, of course. But it’ll be one more application I’ve done.

Another thing I may do if things are still go-though-late with the insurance and the car is starting okay and the inspection’s done is go to Lafayette and make a couple delivery days of it. I’m still active in the Uber app and they think I’m still on Toggle. (I am pretty sure I changed my address in the app, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to matter. Idiots.)

Which actually gives me another idea once I’m through this crisis. There’s another app that deploys personal-care people who don’t do the wiping butts thing but whose services are paid through various health insurance plans. I think I might look into that after all. I am not in a place right now where I need to be making X amount of money per hour, and when I looked into this previously it seemed as if their pay might be decent. We’re talking things like taking someone grocery-shopping. I already do that with Dad. Not a big deal.

I have not given up on doing my own thing. I just keep being forcibly reminded, every time I try to do anything in that vein, of how limited I am due to lack of workspace. I don’t want Dad breathing down my neck and I don’t want him complaining about all my supplies. I don’t even have that many supplies anymore — it’s like he wants me down to a suitcase and maybe two pairs of shoes and one book. I have no idea why, but he’s not the first person to treat me like I’m a r*t*rd with no rights since this whole debacle began and I’m fucking fed up with it. I’m fifty. I’ve been in two major relationship situations, though Matt less so (and much more time). I’ve had lots of life experience. I have the Stuff that goes along with that, including a hell of a lot of photos. AND I HAVE A RIGHT TO KEEP IT ALL. I have bent WAY over backwards to try to fit myself into other people’s realities. I am TIRED of it. FUCK. OFF.

But yeah. I need to get myself to the point I can Do Stuff and not have to sit on my bed for it.

I’ll figure it out.

So we went to Lake Charles two days ago. I hadn’t been there in close to two decades. Last time was my first visit to Louisiana after Pawpaw Calvin died and I went to see Aunt Norma. I have never spent enough time there to have any sense of the layout of the city — I have a vague outline of Lafayette in my head, by contrast.

Accordingly, we did go to Golden Corral, since I had no idea where else we could potentially go. I have to say the building looks much nicer than any of the GCs I ever visited in Columbus, though they all seem to currently be closed with the possible exception of one in Whitehall and you never know, they might be getting renovated soon. Anyway. Dad’s stated reason for liking GC doesn’t really resonate with me. There were fewer food options here, it seemed to me, than there were at the one I’d most often been to in Columbus, and most of what there was did not particularly interest me. I did like the fried chicken. I don’t know what they bread theirs with but it is nicely crispy and nicely flavored and not excessive.

I did not get dessert there. I asked for a Sonic milkshake instead. They have been flogging their peanut butter and bacon flavor combo for shakes and burgers for weeks and I thought, Really? but although peanut butter on a burger does not appeal to me, the shake sounded really good. I got a small one to be on the safe side. If I ever do that again I’ll probably get the kid size, but it wasn’t too bad in terms of effects on me. And that’s my fucking birthday cake, almost a month late. Sorted.

(It is no one’s fault that my birthday stuff was late. It’s not like anyone owes it to me anyway, and life just happens. I’m just saying, it was late. Statement of fact.)

A note: Sonic needs to have a peanut butter and banana shake with bacon bits in it. Call it the King Shake. Hahaha.

Dad’s doctor visit went okay. I am confused why the guy who opened his head in the hospital works out of an orthopedics office, and forgot to ask what his specialty is. I’m guessing that when they have what I’ll call a mechanical situation afoot with the inside of someone’s noggin and not something that started with the brain itself misfiring, an orthopedist might be appropriate? Or maybe that practice has a few neurologists on staff because when one is having bone issues, often one has nervous system issues too? No idea.

In any case, he says the blood they had been seeing on Dad’s brain has receded a LOT and his brain has expanded back out to fill most of the space the blood had taken up. Excellent news. I then had to watch my father lie to his doctor about having quit drinking, but other than that he doesn’t have to go back and he’s pretty happy about it.

Know how I know? Well, we went to Sam’s after the doctor’s office to pick up supplies for the house and then after we got home, we went back out to Lyon’s and Walmart for a few other things and the whole damn way he was talking my ear off. Dad is usually quiet on car rides. Might occasionally think of something to discuss briefly or make a passing remark but there’s no conversation to speak of. He was positively garrulous this time — this after a long day with NO NAP. This man naps at least twice in daylight hours normally, but we went sunrise to past sunset and he was awake the whole time. And talking my ear off. Me nervous the whole time because most of that trip is 55mph, my headlights aren’t bright enough (I go around with my brights constantly on at night — you can’t tell anymore with all these fucking SUVS and their bright-ass headlights everywhere), it was darker outside than I’m used to (no more city lights), and I was trying to focus. But we got through it pretty well.

So anyway, one of the things Dad got was seafood for a fish fry yesterday. I probably should have taken serving sizes more in hand. If I let him, he will fry a ridiculous amount of food and then I make myself half sick trying to keep up. That sort of happened this time too. I did not feel at all well when I went to bed last night. I have a feeling that if I’d tested my blood sugar I would not have liked my number. But I had been thinking for a while that I might be low on zinc, and one of the seafoods he fried was oyster, so I figure I’m sorted for a little while.

I also made potato salad for the first time in my life yesterday. Dad’s is very simple because he doesn’t like onions nor quite a few of the other things people put in potato salads. The kind I grew up with was just like his, omitting onions but Reba would add pickle relish. Dad likes pickles so I’m not sure why he leaves the relish out now. I don’t so I’m happy enough about that, I suppose. Anyway, I followed his directions and basically tasted as I went because I don’t think he uses specific amounts and by the time I was assembling the salad, he’d fallen asleep (another nap) and I wasn’t going to wake him to ask. I got it to where I figured it was close enough, put it in its container, and stuck it in the fridge and hoped for the best.

So today he pops his head in my bedroom doorway and goes, “You know that potato salad? Yeah… it’s not good.”

“Really?” I said, guessing what was coming.

“It’s delicious.” Figured. And I was pleasantly surprised.

I may tweak it here and there if I make it again, depending on how much of a spice collection we might have assembled by that point. I don’t remember him adding black pepper, for instance, and I did that this time. The freshly-ground stuff, not the shaker. I thought it’d be nice. No complaints from him there. If I add something like onion or garlic powder next time though, I’ll have to be careful. Too much and he’ll notice and be annoyed. But at some point, if I ever have my own kitchen again and if I’m still eating fucking potatoes at that point, I might try adding paprika. It will be like deviled eggs, but with potato added.

Or actually, for now, I might split the salad into two containers and just add paprika to one. I know for a fact I will like it, and he can try it if he wants, and at least I won’t wreck the entire thing if he doesn’t like it. He’ll have his own.

It’s Gumbo Day (it’s raining… again), hence the potato salad. The whole time I was growing up I don’t remember us having potato salad with gumbo but for some reason, he’s fixated on that now. It might be something he forgot about for a long time and then got reminded once he was living here again. Or I’m misremembering, because we had potato salad plenty of times when I was a kid and, statistically speaking, you’d think we’d have had it with gumbo at least once. I’ll have to ask Reba.

Dad made a crack the other day about how I could bring a boyfriend over and we could make a fire in the firepit and sit outside around it. I have no idea why he would even say that. I mean he can see me as clearly as any other man can and do I even look like girlfriend material? Hell no. I didn’t say anything in response. There’s no point. He is not what I would call in extreme mental decline but he doesn’t always remember conversations and anyway, if I told him I’m not interested in looking he’d be like “but who is supposed to take care of you when I’m gone” because based on other conversations we’ve had, he has zero faith that I’ll support myself if he’s not here, and I suppose that lack of faith is not entirely unjustified. But we’ve seen what happens when I hitch myself to some guy’s wagon. I go crazy in the traces and chew myself loose, or the man drives drunk and wrecks the wagon. I just am not interested in that sort of thing anymore. It isn’t “being asexual,” which people can’t be anyway — that word is being misused now. It is simply being fed up with making the same mistake over and over again and expecting a different outcome. I am not in fact insane, so let’s stop doing that. He’d have to be fucking exceptional before I would take a chance on a guy again.

And Scottish. Scottish would help a lot.

Won’t happen, but definitely on the wish list.

I also need to be self-supporting before I even think about looking. Because that’s part of the repeating the same shit over and over again, otherwise. If some guy sees me as a charity case in any way, shape, or form, I will move from the “potential wife” category to the “personal whore” category and he’ll never take me seriously as a human being. It is what it is. I don’t want a guy who thinks like that in the first place, but if they want your ass badly enough and you tell them the boundary ahead of time they’ll just lie to get into your pants. So I might as well adjust my situation rather than hope he’ll act from right principles. Is that manipulation? Of course it is. It’s also fucking necessary in this case. What the fuck ever. The other aspect of this is at least it’s a win-win manipulation situation. I’ll be better off and I’ll appeal to his better nature. If anyone has a problem with that, y’all just have problems, period. I can’t help you.

And before all that I need to make sure the equipment isn’t about to kill me. My primary care provider (PCP) change came through and I got my new card in the mail. So I will be calling this week to set up a new patient visit. I also got my dental cards and I’m two years overdue for that. Let’s fucking roll.

If you were wondering about my uterus, and you weren’t, that’s still going on. Not heavy, but not just spotting either. For the whole fucking month. I think it has been a literal month now. I have no idea if I’m about to start my Three-Day Hell Streak, either.

I am about to start dealing with this but have to decide on a plan of attack. I have to job-hunt, but I have to deal with Three-Day-Hell which is incompatible with the sorts of employers who might condescend to hire me for shit wages. Shit wages always mean insufficient restroom breaks. Always. They also mean no time off in the first few months for proper surgery recovery. Which will probably mean I need to start out with some sort of hormonal intervention. I may be following my daughter’s lead (she stopped her periods because she kept having a personal issue that her periods seemed to be aggravating — I hope that’s the only reason, anyway) and stopping my periods for a bit. Not menopause. Just playing with the hormones for a certain outcome. I don’t want to do it but it seems the most realistic of my options right now. Even a hysterectomy would fuck things up for me on multiple levels.

But we’ll see what the doc (or actually nurse practitioner) says. I have a feeling they’ll agree with my plan of attack but who knows. People will surprise you. You won’t always like it.

Okay. I’mma go eat gumbo. Later, gators.

(Who the fuck is reading this, anyway?)

(Don’t answer that.)

I think I have hit upon an accidental solution to always having to wear those annoying reading glasses when I am writing on my computer. I don’t have a desk anymore (haven’t in ages; even in Elizabeth’s apartment I had no additional furniture to what was already there) and so my laptop usually lives up to its name. Well, if I’m on my bed or in one of Dad’s recliners, the screen’s farther away from me than when I used to sit in “my” chair at Matt’s house

(I wonder what happened to that chair? I suppose he might have moved his furniture to Colorado, but it’s equally likely he got rid of it and started over)

and so it falls within my field of Reasonably Good Vision and suddenly I can see what I’m doing again without strain.

It won’t last, of course.

(Nobody tell me I can set my monitor for large text. I don’t want to be old yet.)

I’m not on the internet as I write this but I’m pretty sure I mentioned already that my phone’s back on but if I didn’t, it is. I need to transfer some money to my Credit Builder card again for the hosting service and then after that I have to fret about the auto insurance but after that, things cool down for a while. Shan’t be resting on my laurels. People have been incredibly kind versus what any of them owe me, which is precisely nothing, but I only sold something on Etsy because I cried about my brokeness and a friend came through for me. I need to treat that more like a job. It’s hard to do without the constant internet connection. I will have to figure it out. I can draw and that’s awesome, but each work is one and done. I need to do some things that can repeat on auto-pilot. That’s why I also set up the Cafe Press site. I always wanted to have a little tshirt and bumper sticker shop anyhow. I’ve dipped my toe into that possibility several times over the years but it never took off. Maybe now it will. I have to be persistent.

I wish I could do delivery to fill in until I can work out the rest, and if I get really desperate I will probably try it for the next couple weeks once I get the car sorted, but it’d be taking a huge chance since minimum coverage is so expensive for me here and Uber only insures if I have comprehensive and collision. I dunno. I could probably fudge it for a little bit. Not an ideal situation. I probably won’t try it. I would if Lafayette were closer.

Speaking of insurance, Liberty Mutual was one of the companies that rejected me when I was searching for coverage here. I got a letter from them recently. Know why they ixnayed? I’m not enough into debt and I’m not making payments on a car. I hope Limu Emu eats Doug. Fuck that guy.

Oh you know what though? If I get the car sorted enough I might go over to Major Pizza Chain in Redacted Town. I keep pondering that and I keep forgetting again. That might not be so bad. I know it would be with my car instead of a company car, and that’s not ideal, but a pizza restaurant also usually has a territory, unlike Uber. So I wouldn’t be doing a hundred miles and more per day. They also pay an hourly rate before tips, unlike Uber. And if shit was really slow I’d probably be helping in the kitchen, and that’s food service experience. Not a bad thing to have.

This is idle speculation. If I do it it’ll be out of desperation to show Dad I’m trying, also out of desperation to keep my few bills paid and put some money aside. If I don’t have to do this specific thing I will not do it. It’s not my first choice.

A Facebook friend, who I think is Irish, upon seeing some of my work recently, asked me why I don’t quit fannying about (her words) and just be an artist for a living. My mind had already been going in those circles pretty hard given everything I’ve gone through in the past couple years. People think I’m a fucking joke and not worth the respect there ought to be between an employer and an employee. It’s not a special vendetta; they are like this with everyone. They are just worse with older people, I suspect. It’s too late for me to build any sort of Muggle career anyway. Whatever skills I pick up from here will have to be used unconventionally. It is what it is. If they’re just going to fuck me about and I’ll be poor even with a job then I might as well be poor without one as long as I’m still earning income. It is easier to fire a bad customer than it is to fire a bad boss, in terms of outcomes.

We’ll see what happens. It’ll be as much a surprise to me as it will be to all of you.

I can’t remember every item in my complaint litany about my health but right now, it seems like my left knee has improved and that weird pain in my shin is gone. Considering the weird swelling in my left ankle I had had before that, I am more than a little concerned about traveling blood clots but I’m waiting for my primary care provider to change in Humana’s system before I go trying to chase all that shit down. And the heart palpitations come and go and sometimes I wake up feeling like shit, and I did this morning. Period is still going too. Not heavy but just has never quit this month. It has literally been going for almost a month now. The one mercy in all this is I’m not getting severe headaches. In the first year after I moved out of Matt’s place I got those from time to time. Based on circumstances I suspect it was more magnesium deficiency than stress, though the stress didn’t help. I have been very consistent in my supplementation since I got back here and I swear it’s helping. I don’t care if it’s placebo effect. It works. I need magnesium anyway so really it’s a win-win situation.

Now if I could sort the rest of it out. Another reason to make more money, job or not. I could feed myself and stop with this junk nonsense. Some of it I could quit right now but there would still be junk in my main meals and that I can’t control so much. Maybe if I show Dad my horrible lab numbers when I get back to the doctor, that will drive the point home. “Yes I’m buying my food. Here’s why. Quit bugging me.” He will be so confused, because healthy isn’t what everyone’s telling him it is, or he’s got entirely the wrong idea about it. I don’t know which and I do not care.

I wish I could figure out what the fuck is up with this O key. (Letter, not zero.) It has not broken off. I can tell. Or else something is broken that I am unfamiliar with, but I see nothing indicating a break. I can snap it back on. Problem is it keeps coming loose again. None of the other keys do this. It has been a longstanding problem. I thought at first I’d gotten food caught in there. This was back at Matt’s. THAT far back. I’m curious whether I can replace the keyboard and it would actually work. I have my doubts, but I’ll look into it. I tried that with my last computer and it was a dismal failure. That was a cheap piece of shit, though, not a Dell.

(I AM REALLY LIVING UP TO THE NAME OF THIS BLOG I WILL TELL YOU WHAT)

Lake Charles tomorrow. I was supposed to come up with someplace I wanted to go and eat for a belated birthday lunch. I have no idea what is in Lake Charles. I guess they mean pick a chain restaurant? Apparently Dad usually wants Golden Corral when Carrie takes him there, and I’ll probably just ask for that. Everybody can get something they like and no fuss.

I had hoped to go to Bridge Park for my birthday. That is just a leetle out of our way.

Maybe I should make a list of stuff I wish I could do. It’d be something to aim for.

Phone is back on.

Stuff is still coming through and I should be able to rescue my hosting service as well. Looking forward to it.

I should be able to get a whole lot of bracelets photographed tomorrow. Dad will think I’ve lost my mind. The weather this week is pretty though and I’m a moron if I don’t take advantage.

Okay. Need to update WordPress. Then got to git. This was a little bit of a weird day but at least I’m not completely cut off from the world.

You’ve probably seen updates by now. I’m being more productive with writing in general, actually. Which still isn’t very productive, but it’s a lot more than I was doing. I’ll take it.

Anyway, some of the updates were here in the blog and some were elsewhere on the site. I’ve started telling ex stories. Not “story” like “making it all up,” but you know what I mean. Unless you are an ex reading this who is in severe denial. That’s fine. You just sit in your wrongness and be wrong. Not for the first time.

I’ll get around to Matt eventually but I’m dreading it because anyone who’s wasted twenty years of your life is also going to hand you metric fucktons of material. I’m thinking I may just go with major highlights, but I know my tendency to run away with myself when complaining about something so I’m just going to have to tinker with that one for a while. See what I come up with. See if it’s enough. The others should be pretty easy though. Even Eddy was, and he fucking died.

At this point, actually, we’re up to two extinguished old flames that I know of, one an ex-boyfriend. I wonder why I refuse to label Eddy as a boyfriend? I wasn’t any closer to Wayne than I was to him. Well, it also matters what the guy thinks, and Eddy never even told me he loved me. I’m not sure Wayne did either, but I know I was meant to think of us as An Item. I don’t remember how I know, but I know. So there it is.

And hell, I’m getting older. The actual body count, not just me joking about body counts, is only going to grow. I’m kind of stunned Marc is still alive, now that I mention it. That likely won’t last much longer.

Some people may be curious why I’m writing about any of them. I just want to. It really doesn’t go any deeper than that.

I suppose on some level maybe I hope that if some Prospective Dude comes along and sees I’m a tattletale (grasser), and he’s an asshole LARPing as a decent guy, my blabbing might be enough to scare him off. Maybe not for the really psychotic ones, but everyone else in that category probably. Fine by me.

It’s probably also going to scare off the good guys who are very private, though. I suppose that’s a mixed blessing. I don’t want something like this to be why a relationship lands on the rocks. Why do I have to accept a guy who’s bad with money or drinks way too much or has no social skills or fucks around but he doesn’t have to accept me writing about my life? Who comes up with these bullshit rules anyway?

Seriously, men need to develop some basic self-awareness. You’re not fucking prizes either. I once was eating at a McDonald’s where Jennifer Hudson was singing on the flatscreens and this greasy-haired guy in a trucker cap who was sitting closer to the TV yells “LOSE SOME WEIGHT!” and stood up and turned… and I swear to fucking god he looked like he was carrying twins. And she did lose weight later. And I guarantee you he’s still a fucking troll. “Oh, Dana talks too much.” You watch furry porn at 3am and turn your undershorts inside-out for another wear, Brentley. You studmuffin, you.

(Matt, for that matter, looks like a haggis on an upside-down muffin cup when he’s in a kilt. After years of not wearing his, he suddenly took an interest in it again after I got obsessed with Rory McCann. Yeah, absolutely no one can tell what’s going on there, sport. God only knows why. He didn’t even really like me.)

Heard from Doug today. I don’t know if he told Dad my phone’s off, and I don’t know how much he’s followed on social media, but he definitely tried to call my number and failed to get through for obvious reasons. We commiserated about living being too fucking expensive (did you know it’s more “convenient” to drive 45 minutes to the nearest Cricket store to pay your bill than it is to just get the fuck online and pay your bill? Me neither, but Cricket charges a $5 convenience fee for that 45-minute trip) and basically shot the shit. I have no idea how either of us ever got this far. He probably doesn’t know either.

I’ve had weird shit going on. I don’t get the left lower quadrant abdominal pain as often now as I did there for a while, but I got it yesterday. I don’t know if it really is diverticulitis, but I’m pretty sure constipation plays a role. And then I had this weird pain in my left shin yesterday and it still twinges off and on. And last night I actually had trouble standing upright and ambulating. I don’t think it was bad enough for Dad to notice. I finally decided I was probably just sleepy. I think I was right? I have no idea, but the dizziness or whatever was gone this morning. I don’t know if I mentioned the odd swelling in my left outer ankle several days ago (a couple weeks?) but the itchy bit I scratched isn’t all the way healed. It’s also not infected, so I’m counting my blessings. Endless left-ear problem that’s probably mild psoriasis, given my luck. Random persistent itchiness in random other places that’s probably fungal. I fight it when it pops up. Thank you, Lotrimin. And then there are my weak-ass hips, almost literally. Last time I was here Dad was all about blaming that on my obesity. No, but my lack of exercise is definitely the central problem unless I’ve got some unrelated disease process going on. My hip hinges are out of shape, and being fat and being out of shape are not quite the same thing. My hips would have wound up just as weak had I never gone fat but had been inactive like I have. I don’t know what it’s going to take to beat this into people’s thick skulls, but I find most people don’t want to think in any great detail and I can think of better ways to exercise my HIPS than to wear out my RIGHT ARM administering corrective IQ points. I’m so fucking tired of people.

(No, sex is not a good way to exercise them. But exercising them might safeguard any future sex life I might ever have. A very good reason to sort this shit out once and for all.)

I have to remember I have bracelets to mail. Things are kind of messed up insofar as my Etsy pay because I remembered, belatedly, that if I let it deposit to my Chime account then it would go into my overdraft black hole. So I switched it to my PayPal, which also functions as a bank account now, but that’s going to take a hot minute for the account to verify with Etsy. (Or Stripe actually. Confused yet? Just smile and nod along.) So that’s not going to be available for postage even though payday is Monday. But I still have postage stamps. It will probably still mail at first-class rate. I figure I will go into the post office, ask them whether they can weigh it for me (unless there is already a scale in the lobby, in which case I will skip that second step), and then stick on enough stamps to cover the postage. Not difficult. I wasn’t using those things anyway. This is a Facebook friend so as long as she tells me if it does NOT get to her, I figure we will be okay. This friend goes way back. She actually started following blogs of people I knew in Ohio when those people were in North Carolina — so, about 2000 I guess? — and then somehow followed things around and found me in that first couple years. We’ve been friendly ever since. I suppose it helps she wasn’t caught up in that fractured and fucked up community, just a spectator of it. Lucky.

Another Facebook friend paid for an annual subscription to my Substack. That runs five bucks a month if you go month-to-month and $50 a year if you pay ahead for a year, which is two free months. The problem is that last I looked, yesterday (Saturday), the payment hadn’t hit and isn’t even in my account over there. Substack just has her listed as an annual paid subscriber in my subscriber list. I don’t know what will happen or what’s going on. I guess I will just have to wait and see. Depending on what’s going on with Etsy payments, if that hits my Chime account tomorrow then at least I’ll be halfway out of my hole and maybe, since a payment will have hit, Chime won’t shut me down. Stranger things have happened. Even if it hits PayPal instead, I’ll send it over to my Chime because I will have paid for postage for my Etsy sale and that won’t be a problem. If everything hits at once — Substack and Etsy — I’ll be happier than a pig in shit, obviously.

I have to go to Carrie’s more often in any case because I need to check to see if I’ve heard from anyone. Even if I can’t get my phone turned back on right now, I’ve started using my Google Voice number on applications. I need to see if there are any important messages. Even after I get my phone turned back on (or new service started — I have some options), I need to apply more often for work anyway.

But I can only do that for just so long in a day. I need to do a portrait, too. If I can get a portrait knocked out, I can do a listing on my Etsy shop for pencil portraits. Could you imagine if I started bringing in income for that? Oh hey, guess I don’t need a job then. I could get set up as a proper business and then just do self-employment and income taxes quarterly. With not having to make a car payment, not using my car as my primary income tool, and not having to pay rent (for now), I would have time to get earning.

Not just with portraits. Which reminds me. I need to design some bumper stickers and a mug or two for my Cafe Press. Heh heh heh.

I posted on Instagram the other day about my letter-O key cap falling off my keyboard. It’s been going loose for ages and it finally popped off. I saved it because I was at Carrie’s and honestly could not tell if it had broken off or merely come loose. Well, today I finally took a close look at it and it looks to me like it has just come loose. So I popped it back on and we’ll see how things go. If it falls off again I will likely attempt to glue it on. I’m afraid to do that because if I fiddle where I should have faddled, it may stick on too well and then I won’t be able to use the fucking key. A new laptop computer is not remotely in the budget at this time. I’ll be typing all my O’s with zeroes. It’ll be nice and humiliating.

(It’ll also be funny. So I’ll do it anyway. It’ll be a laugh. The only real problem I can potentially see is if I have to type in a password somewhere. There are at least two workarounds for that.)

(By the way, it is grammatically correct to pluralize single letters using an apostrophe and an S. That is the only time it is grammatically correct to pluralize using apostrophe-S. Bet you can’t guess why.)

So as I write this, we are in the final hours of my phone connectivity. I actually do not know when it’ll be shut down. It could be tomorrow morning. It could be tomorrow evening. Both have occurred in the past. Obviously, I’m hoping for evening, but I have no control over this.

But a visit to Carrie’s is hardcore on the agenda because her husband Stanford came home the other day while I was there and out and out offered to fix my problem with the license plate. He’d already looked at it and had an idea how to proceed. I have tools and I’m not afraid to use them but I don’t have enough tools and haven’t encountered this problem before, and it touches on a legal issue — proper identification of my vehicle — so this is not something I want to dick around with and risk the plate falling off. I also do not want to find myself back in the exact same fucking place in a year with more bolts falling apart or out or whatever. So I’m of a mind to get it the fuck right the first time. If Stanford can help me with that, fantastic.

And also because I need to check up on what’s going on. I found out I have an annual subscriber on my Substack all of a sudden. She’s on my Facebook friends list and so she saw me talking about my fiscal issues the other day. Problem is the money is not coming through. It won’t be enough to pay the phone bill because I am nearly thirty dollars overdrawn, but even after fees I think it’ll get me out of the hole. But I need to see if it’s actually coming through. If my phone’s cut off first thing in the morning then I’ll only be able to answer that question on a wifi connection. Woo fucking hoo.

I have a GoFundMe up also but I doubt that’ll go anywhere. I had a marvelous stroke of luck when I set one up a year ago due to my car problems: I had a $300 donation almost immediately, and then I think a $20 or $25 donation a day or two later. I did a second one to try to keep my apartment late last year (August or so? Maybe later? Not sure?) and was utterly ignored. This could go either way. It’s only for three hundred anyhow so I can make sure my car insurance won’t lapse early in February. If the Substack subscription comes through, though, even if someone only drops me fifty bucks on GoFundMe then that’s my phone bill probably sorted. I need that for job-hunting, so that is not a bad thing.

Unless my hosting bill hits. And that went from almost $20 to almost $25 to almost $35 a month in two fucking years. There’s no fucking reason for that. I don’t think they even sent me notice they would do it and I haven’t exactly been a problem customer. I’m trying very hard not to bail, but if it goes up again in the next five years they’re going to lose me. The other irritating thing they do is bill my credit card several days before the actual due date, hence my having to worry about this hitting tomorrow. At least if I get the phone paid before the hosting hits, they can sit and stew for a few more days and hopefully I will have something figured out by then. Or I’ll lose my hosting in a few more days. Either way.

In other news: I’m about to build a FUCKING ARK. Fuck this rain. FUCK IT. I am DONE. HOW MANY FUCKING WEEKS OF HEAVY RAIN NOW. Two? Three? It’s fucking pouring again RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

It was too much of a drought in Ohio last year. It wasn’t much better the year before. So I am not used to this shit in Louisiana at all, and the ground’s too flat with too high a water table. I suspect the only reason this fucking shitbox hasn’t fucking floated the fuck away already is because the drought left the ground with some capacity to soak some of that rain up. It’s not happening fast enough, but it’s better than nothing.

The trailer annoys me because it’s $575 a month for two bedrooms, one bathroom, everything old and superficially “renovated” — not really, it’s all old as hell and shabby as hell and the one clever thing I can see is the living-room/kitchen flooring, which was salvaged from a basketball court — and no central A/C in goddamn USDA agricultural zone fucking nine. Roaches. Mice. Now probably mold. And $575 a month, did I mention. Utilities NOT included. What the fucking hell.

And Dad’s letting things be damaged and not reporting them. I am unclear on whether he glitched and forgot about the leak near the bathroom or whether he doesn’t give a shit or whether he’s scared to say anything. I mention the latter because he just got done telling me the other day that he would rent from Carrie’s son Corey, who is becoming quite the young property owner around here, except Jodi (his landlady) has been a real friend to him especially following his brain event. So it’s like he likes staying here, I guess, so doesn’t that mean he actually cares? And surely he isn’t missing that the floor’s fucked up, so the only option that leaves is “scared to say anything because what if he has to move suddenly.” It’s not like he can’t get into a different place. He’s got the savings for deposit and first month. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on there. He might not even have to leave the trailer park. Corey owns a trailer here now and will be leasing it. Assuming someone hasn’t snapped it up already.

I will say something after the rain lets up, as no one’s going to want to go under this shitbox until all the mini-lakes and baby swamps recede anyway. I realize I’m taking a huge risk if the floor damage is severe enough that we have to vacate. If worse comes to worst I will see if Doug’s okay with me selling the fucking car, getting a small U-Haul (maybe a van), driving cross-country, and moving in with him. He already invited me to come stay with him, with Dad along of course. Even if that car is only $3k I should be able to keep up with my bills for at least a little bit. It should give me time to build up income of my own somehow, too. It’s a risky idea, and I fucking hate what Oregon has become, but it’ll be my Hail Mary if something goes horribly wrong. But it beats Jodi suing Dad’s estate or something. Dad has a place to go even if the trailer park’s a no-go; he’s reserved a spot at the veterans’ retirement home not ten miles from here. Dad is just too stubborn to go there, but he could if he had to. I’m the one who’d be fucked.

In the meantime I am way too warm because he wants it 74 to 80 degrees F inside when it’s sixty degrees F and up outside. There’s a wall A/C unit in the living room but it’s unplugged. There’s another wall A/C in Dad’s bedroom — what was my bedroom last time I was here — but hell will freeze over before he turns that thing on, and then HE WILL TURN ON THE HEAT because hell’s too cold. I am going to be one suffering motherfucker by the time June gets here. Probably not even that long. I already find myself on the back porch being eaten alive because the air’s fresh but the mosquitoes like all the free food I take out there.

And Dad chain-smokes and watches TV way too loud. The TV I can sort of deal with. Maybe. The smoke tends to drive me outside in the daytime. At night there’s really nowhere to go. Nighttimes here are unpleasant, and that’s being kind.

There were a few reasons I wept when I realized I’d have to come back here.

But unless a Hail Mary situation comes up I cannot make any more relocation decisions off-the-cuff. I need to get my ass to a doctor and get some things sorted out or at least Officially Diagnosed. I need to work harder at establishing independent income. If I can get that car fixed appropriate to its mileage and amount of wear, I’ll be in a better position to sell it if need be. I could probably stand to get that fucking proofreading course done too, but given my track record so far (four years since enrollment! no time limit, at least), I don’t hold out much hope for that one.

I probably should start chatting up local relatives about building our family tree, too. I took the first step last time I was at Carrie’s. I finally installed Family Tree Maker again. Booyah.

Wish all my problems were that easy to sort out.

I’ve got three days left of phone service unless something changes for the better very quickly.

I do have the option of asking Dad for money. I don’t know that he would go for it but it is an option. I’m trying very hard not to do that. I am already causing greater expense in his budget just by being here.

I’ve been realizing lately just how fucked this whole situation is. I feel like maybe some employers won’t bother with me because I have an Ohio phone number. I can’t see why they can’t just write off phone bills on their taxes, but who knows. But even if I apply for a specific job through Indeed and not through an employer site, which means they could contact me through the Indeed app, that app does not work even when I have a connection (apparently the connection is too weak) and I’ll only know I heard from anyone when I get email notifications. I don’t get those very often at Dad’s house because the signal is so bad. Trying to do anything else by phone is iffy too. If I can’t pick up cell signal I can’t get phone calls.

Landline is not an option. That rotted a long time ago and the phone company did not bother replacing it. I hate this fucking country. Throw everything away, throw people away, then complain no one wants to buy into this shit anymore. Why should we? We’re just thrown away.

I need to draw a sample portrait and advertise for drawing portraits but (1) Dad will probably get on my case about it and (2) probably no one will bite. I’ve been showing off stuff I’ve done and made for fucking months, and no one cares. I’m supposed to follow everyone’s Facebook pages, join everyone’s fucking groups, buy everyone’s stuff, and almost no one will so much as share my shit. But they’ll sit there and tell me they like it. Sometimes. When they’re even paying attention.

I’m going to do it anyway, but I’m fully prepared for my efforts to be for nothing. As they so often are.

I’m so tired.

Aha. Here’s one for ya. If any of you were offended by my Shit Laundry story from a while back, I’ll humiliate myself now. So I woke up this morning with a headache and having to pee, and then realized I had to fart, and you know how you can usually tell whether it’s a dangerous fart and should be held in til you get to a toilet? This one did not feel like that. Until I was already in the middle of it and then thought, Actually, I dunno… It ended without incident… and then I leaked. It wasn’t even a wet fart, it was a dry fart and then a leak.

Air serving as an asshole cork. Who knew?

My period’s been going for two fucking weeks and good thing, too. The pad caught most of my fart aftershock and the little bit that escaped did not soak through. Luckily because I’m on my last pair of clean indoor pants. (Not underwear. American pants.)

I am not sure what’s going on with any of this. I’m going to go with: I have been eating like shit — not eating shit, eating LIKE shit — for two fucking years now. I already wasn’t in the greatest shape from a health standpoint. I’m actively surprised I don’t have twice-weekly migraines, it’s been THAT bad. I suspect I missed out on that only because I started supplementing magnesium. I started supplementing magnesium more than two years ago because after I moved in with Dad in late ’21, I started getting insane muscle cramps. It isn’t the water. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t use water softener since the trailer park went to city water. (That happened back in 2000, another time I was living with him.) It’s all the fucking junk depleting my magnesium. Which I already wasn’t eating enough of in my food. And I’ve got gut stuff going on. I suspect my gallbladder has given up the ghost, just going on symptoms. I also fit the profile. Not that fair, but white and definitely fat and well over forty. My core muscles are fucking trashed. I probably have rosacea. And my knee has been acting up since I fell on concrete at Elizabeth’s place. I can sit on my knees and be no more uncomfortable than usual, I can walk okay, but trying to straighten my left leg from a seated position makes that knee crackle, and sometimes it hurts when I walk. I don’t dare check my blood sugar — the strips are expired anyway but I know I won’t like what I see and I can’t do anything about it. Mister Multiple Decade Diabetic In Kidney Failure refuses to clean up his diet, opting only to eat less of it, and his doctors mislead him on what cleaning it up means in any case. Like, this isn’t 1980 anymore. The science does not agree with you. Quit feeding us bullshit. But him making bad choices means I have to eat bad choices. I’m not the one buying the food. I could be working full-time right now and he’d still fuss at me if I bought the food. I’m supposed to be saving all my money. For retirement, apparently. In something like seventeen years. On shit wages.

I said I was tired, right

Confirmed something I have suspected since I came back here. Deborah is here doing her biweekly cleaning, and she asked me if Dad had ever told Jodi about the leak. Leak? Either the washing machine or the toilet, she says. She can tell it’s been soaking into the floor. I knew the floor was different from when I was last here, but it never occurred to me Dad might not have reported it. Dad had told Deborah a while back when she first alerted him that he would let Jodi know about it and from what it sounds like, the floor’s gotten worse even since then. So I get to go talk with Jodi. Dad isn’t exactly demented, but his thinking’s gone a little funny around the edges (even for Dad) since October, and he will forget things you wouldn’t expect to forget. I’m concerned. I don’t know if Jodi will need us to vacate while this is getting fixed. If the floor still seems solid enough, and it kind of does, maybe she’ll just need to get the leak fixed for now. If she decides to redo the floor too, who knows what’s going to happen.

Won’t fucking happen this week probably. It’s raining to beat the band. There’s some standing water in the trailer park already, and this is just day one. We’re in for at least two or three more days of this nonsense. If it were normal rain, we have skirting and it’d still be dry under the trailer but that’s probably not the case right now.

One thing I absolutely hate about Louisiana or anywhere in the Deep South is the everfucking tree roaches. They at least do not normally take up residence. They just sneak in from outside to look for snacks. But they’re big and they’re horrifying and they give me the heebie-jeebies every time I see one. Well, I’ve seen three in this place since I got here. First one was ON MY BEDROOM WALL. To be fair, I had just moved into the room not a week before, and either it had been in there a bit with no one bothering it and then freaked out when it realized I was there, or it just happened to sneak into the house and that’s where it ended up. Dad keeps roach spray around. The stuff works. I almost feel bad because they don’t die quickly, but I can’t have that running over me when I’m sleeping or crawling onto me in the living room or whatever. It’s irrational but there it is.

We also have mice. I haven’t seen them, but at the same time I was freaking out over Roach One, I could hear movement in my room in the closet area that really couldn’t have been anything else. I think I’ve scared them out of there, but now there are mouseturds in the oven drawer. You know, the one below the actual oven where you keep baking sheets and like that? Yeah. Dad keeps some pots and pans down there and Mousie has taken several dumps in one of the skillets. I have to take everything out of that fucking drawer and set traps if I want this to stop. I have to wash pots now before I use them just to be on the safe side. If they’re pooping, they’re peeing. Unsanitary all around.

I’ve been in sort of a mode of wanting to cry about my general economic situation again. You’ve seen some of that in this post. I know some things I can do to maybe move in the right direction but have been dragging my feet. Here are two things I definitely need to do:

1. Get the goddamn car in to a mechanic. I have the number, Carrie has helped me confirm it is the right one (she’s got his wife in her contact list), and so now I just need to get the ball rolling.

2. Get on a reliable internet connection a lot more often than I do. Whether that is at the Iota library or whether it is at Carrie’s place. Either way. I need to apply to jobs regularly, and I need to hype up my stuff for sale regularly.

I just feel like this is all going to be for nothing.

It’s like I stopped existing and no one’s ever going to see me again.

…

As a weird postscript, yesterday Dad and I did some running around. We stopped at Walmart for some groceries and Dad’s Social Security has already come in, so he did the thing he does sometimes near payday and got a bit generous, and asked me if I still like to read. We were passing the media section. He pointed at the books and suggested I find one or two. At first I wasn’t sure I’d see anything I wanted but as I was walking back to the end of the aisle I had started on, I noticed a new Stephen King novel, Holly (meaning part of the same series and universe as Mr. Mercedes), and Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck. Oh, what the hell. I’m still peeved at King for capitulating to the genderdorks but Dad was paying for it, not me, and I’d gotten Manson’s book at the library ages ago and thought it looked interesting but had never gotten around to finishing it. It seems to contain some useful (and realistic) pointers for reconfiguring my stinkin’ thinkin’, so I picked it up.

King’s an ethical wuss (also probably eating-disordered with some weird prejudices toward meat-eating people, which is odd as I’m pretty sure he’s not vegetarian) but has always been a good storyteller, and I got through Holly in an evening. In one chapter, the wife of a man Holly is interviewing is reading the same Manson book I had just acquired. In another chapter, it is mentioned that Holly owns a Columbus Clippers hat. Columbus as in Ohio. The story does not take place in Ohio. Pretty sure it’s in Illinois. (I’ll look that up one of these days if I’m online and remember.)

So, like, what the fuck was that about. I don’t know why stuff like this happens. It’s not often, but it’s always weird when it does.

I still think my time here’s temporary.

I have no idea what that means yet.

Finally got to Carrie’s today. If you spend much time here you may or may not have noticed some changes. I revamped the “ex files” section. I will add more to it, obviously, or else it will look stupid sitting there without much content. I just can’t guarantee how fast that will happen.

I’m debating with myself whether to include photos. No decision I make about it will be a done deal, of course. If I add pics now, I can remove them later and vice versa.

I didn’t apply for any jobs today but I did message an employer in Eunice through the Indeed website to see if they’re still hiring for housekeeper and what level of experience they want. I need to make a special point to get connected at least a few times Monday. Connectivity here has been horrible lately and I can’t let it screw my chances. I will have trouble getting phone calls for the same reason, but at least through Indeed I’m likely to be contacted through the site and app.

I also need to get my ass moving on Etsy listings. I’m running out of time and I’ll be losing my phone in about eight days if I don’t get that sorted. Mind you, me making the listings doesn’t mean anyone will actually buy. Same old frustration.

Carrie insists I am welcome to come over any time she’s home, so that’s something. Weather starts warming up next week, at least for a bit. It’s also supposed to rain, so it’ll still be iffy, but we’ll see.

Dad’s on his third bottle since I got back. He bought this one yesterday and he is already more than halfway through it. His general demeanor today was what I’d call less than sober. It is the nature of an addict that they will come up with any excuse to continue, and I know that. Dad is also known to lie about his drinking status, and so it’s very possible he had not actually quit for a month and a half like he told everyone before I got here. I still think I drive him to drink somehow. It is just a thing I will have to live with because there’s no way to get an honest answer I would trust.

Still general health weirdness. This month it’s the period that never ends (what is this, going into week three? I need to look) and some fuckery with my left ankle. That’s bound to be a bad vein. I have been coping with weird edema issues with my feet and ankles since I was eighteen — I wasn’t even overweight then — and it’s only gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. This is a relatively new wrinkle, though. I’m keeping an eye on it.

I’ve said a few times that I was accepted on Louisiana Medicaid but I’m still waiting for the goddamn cards. Hopefully soon.

I have this favorite Scottish comedian I follow on Facebook and he likes to respond to his fans fairly often. Today it was bullshitting about how he got his eyebrow scar. We longer-term fans already know the story, but this not only wasn’t true but was a wondrously creative tall tale involving a dolphin in which he joked about which other animals look like a shark. Just the dolphin, he said. I said well, last I heard from him that’s also women with big noses. He got a kick out of that. “You’ve been watching my old stuff.” Yessir. You funny. You cute too. Always helps.

He does look a bit uncomfortably like an ex-boyfriend of mine. Definitely not the same guy — comedian dude has a better sense of humor, for one thing, and the ex is Irish-American, not Scottish. It’s just strange. I must be really into Celts.

(Still quite fond of Rory. Rory is unavailable. Too bad.)

I still miss Columbus. I don’t see that changing. I cannot even consider going back there if I haven’t got my ducks a little closer to in a row.

Okay. Tired. ‘Later.