my boring life story

Okay. I’m warning you, this one isn’t pleasant. I’m writing about it anyway because I need to grouse about it somewhere, and if I put it on Facebook I’m gonna have a hard time. I am already having a hard time, so why add to it.

I haven’t been doing great anyway. I am probably diabetic, and I can’t keep up with a supply of test strips because quite frankly, I’m broke. (That final payment for the phone went through. I’mm down to… two bucks and some change? I think?) I’m still eating crap and I never feel good as a result. I am sleeping with my feet elevated every single night for the first time in my life because I have had intermittent problems with swollen feet and ankles since age 18 and that has progressed to regular problems, and my previous method of coping — propping feet up on a coffee table during the day — is not available to me here. I’ve noticed that my also intermittent problem of heart palpitations gets worse if I am leaning back in one of Dad’s recliners, which is fucking weird, but that and other little issues have now got me wondering if I have atrial fibrillation (Afib). And of course there are the uterine fibroids and the ongoing hormonal fuckery of perimenopause.

So on top of all that, I had a large late lunch or early supper of gumbo and potato salad… and not long after that I had to shit, and turns out I’m constipated. I am attempting to manage it, involving a decent dose of magnesium oxide and then a laxative I happened to still have in my personal stash, but it is slow going and involves multiple toilet trips, apparently.

During my second one I heard Dad shuffle back to the hallway just outside the bathroom and move around and pause and move around and at one point I heard him open what I thought at the time was the dryer door (more on that in a minute… you won’t like it) and shuffle around some more and I thought, Here we go, he needs the toilet too, I better hurry and turned out I was right and he asked if I could get done soon and I did and he went in. Problem solved.

I thought then.

I went back into the bathroom maybe half an hour to an hour later because I needed a run on the porcelain throne again. At least every time I go in there I’m productive, but it’s never everything that needs to get out. I’m in constant low-level pain at the moment and very not happy about it. But I got done — well, for some value of “done,” as I’m still not emptied out properly — and then approached the washer and dryer because, well.

Well. Since I moved back in here I have been circulating my clothes out of my clothes hamper, where I had packed them the night I was evicted, then wearing them and then washing them and putting them into the dresser properly, with the intent that when I got the hamper emptied — it is not a large hamper — I would use it to corral the car-related stuff I still keep in the trunk of my car. Today I realized that what was left in the clean hamper and what was in the dirty clothes hamper in my room (that one came with the room) pretty much made up a laundry load. So I washed it all.

Dad has recently done laundry and had left it in the dryer. I had thought when I heard him open what I thought was the dryer today that he was taking that stuff out finally, because surely he had noticed I was running the washer. When I opened the dryer I saw that was not the case. So I took his sheets out and put them away in the bottom drawer of his dresser. Then I turned my attention to the washer to change my load over.

First thing I see is this towel that looked oddly out of place. It also looked strangely dirty. I went to take it out and it unfolded halfway. It had two wadded washcloths in it. Stained in some brown substance. There was more of the brown substance in solid bits all balled up in there.

Motherfu–

I attempted to get as much of the shit as possible down the toilet and then took the rest of the bundle out of the washer and it’s sitting on the bathroom floor. I am washing my clothes again. I am not even attempting that towel and two washcloths. He’s got plenty of both. He can buy more if he wants.

I mean. I get it. He’s seventy-two. That’s a difficult age for things like personal sphincters. Nobody likes being in a situation like that. But we usually leave the washer open between loads and it didn’t even occur to him that it might be closed for good reason. He didn’t even look. He just chucked his crap, literally, into the midst of my clean clothes. I’m lucky it didn’t fucking leak.

Probably it didn’t fucking leak.

I can’t know for sure. Also there’s the psychological effect of this on me. Hence the rewash.

This pretty much answers one question about me, though. I’ve gone back and forth on whether I would want to do personal care for an elderly person as my paid employment? No. Nope. Really not. Am not fucking doing that. It’s enough that I will have changed two children’s diapers, and cleaned up two children’s puke that as often as not also wound up on me, and cleaned up after this one old man. He gets an in. No one else does. Especially not for free. I’m done.

No one’s going to be my personal care anything when I get that old. This culture does not give a single fuck about old women. It’s going to be some shitty publicly-underfunded old-people home where they leave me in my dirty Depends all damn day. Certainly no man would ever go that extra mile for me. (You’ve seen what old men do with wives who need personal care. They rope the eldest daughter in — no wonder my daughter wants to be a man — or they hire a care attendant or they chuck wifey into a nursing home.) Why the fuck should I for anyone else? On so little pay? Or none? Dad only gets the in because I have free housing here. That’s it. That’s all. He squeaked by. And even then, only up to a point. I’ll throw out his shitty towels. If he wants any more involved than that, he needs to get a permanent home carer or move into the veterans home.

So there you go. I just hope I get his literal crap into the trash before he notices I’ve noticed. I’ve had an unpleasant enough day.

Oh, and he’s drinking. I told Doug about the first bottle but have not yet mentioned the second. Dad bought this one two days ago and he’s already more than halfway through. I fully expect to be abused by one or more people if he kills himself on that shit. That’s all anyone seems to know how to do, shit on me and never ask questions then or later. I should care more about the effect on my dad than about people’s opinions, but no one has declared Dad legally incompetent. My hands are tied. Worst case scenario he kicks me out of this house and then what do I do? Mom has a spare room, apparently, but I don’t want to live with Mom’s husband. Man gives me the creeps. He’s ten years younger than her and ten years older than me and that really is not what you’d call a situation devoid of potential for fuckery. The bad kind. And I have no other options. MAYBE Doug’s house. He’s in Oregon. I’m surprised my car got here. It wouldn’t get there. There’d be no fucking jobs even if I did. That wouldn’t last long.

…

Oh, hey. My guts hurt less now. So that’s a win, I guess.

Okay. I need to get some pieces written for Substack. My thought is to write enough material to post two or three times a week (I can schedule them) for another month or so. I also want to set my homepage back up with a WordPress install. Text doesn’t parse correctly on self-coded pages and I don’t have the patience or savvy to play with htaccess. I also need to think about how to set up more bracelet listings and also my Sandor Clegane drawing on Etsy. At least two of those might bring some decent income. Might. If I’m very, very fortunate.

Shaddup. I know.

Sigh.

My birthday three days ago was a fucking joke. They are every year — the one good thing in all that time was the way Matt kept buying me art supplies*, and now I’ve lost most of those — but this was my half-century and I had half-hoped to mark it with something memorable. In a fun sense, I mean. Nope. Shit out of luck. Again. But Carrie bought me an iced latte at a Jennings coffee shop the next day, and has promised to take me to a Chinese buffet soon. Not my favorite place to eat but they usually have some good dishes there which I enjoy, and I don’t dare ask about the Japanese habachi and sushi buffet. It might be good. But it might be a nightmare! And Japanese food’s always more expensive than Chinese and I don’t want to be a moocher. Oh well.

Also, I fucking love Carrie and I wish she and Dad had worked out. But maybe this is better, because they got to keep being friends and he’s needed that support from time to time. He used to rescue her all the time when they were younger so it’s really you have scratched my back and now it’s my turn to scratch yours. That’s so awesome, though.

I have gotten my driver’s license changed over from Ohio to Louisiana. Ohio’s DLs are good for a four-year period and mine was nearly up. Also, vehicle registration is due for renewal once a year unless you specifically ask for two-year renewal periods, which of course cost more, and are due on the vehicle owner’s birthday. Unfortunately, my arriving in Louisiana on the 21st was really bad timing because I’ve had too many customer-facing jobs and that specific part of December would have coincided with everyone panicking about getting their vehicular shit done before holiday hours and closures kicked in. I knew that, so I put it off. I shouldn’t have. I knew I had time to get it done before my birthday, which is on the 10th, but I didn’t know we were going to get an awful rainstorm on both the Friday and the Monday prior. I wanted to get it done BEFORE my birthday, not ON it. Just felt like that was wiser.

No harm done. Probably by sheer dumb luck. I should have put in my change of address as soon as I got here, but when I first tried to get it done I was stymied by a shitty cellular connection, which is my only internet access anymore. I hadn’t been wanting to drive much due to the car’s starting issues or I could have gone over to Carrie’s or else sat in Walmart’s parking lot in Jennings or something. Anyway, I’m not randomly changing the subject: the change of address notice they send you is adequate proof of address at the OMV. (Ohio calls theirs a BMV. Louisiana’s is the OMV. It’s what the rest of you call a DMV.) But I finally got it sorted and the notice arrived in the mail that Monday before my birthday. I just didn’t retrive it til the fucking rain stopped. Holy cow it was bad. We had schools closed. Usually we just shrug off rain. Not this time.

I could rant about shitty website design and shitty phone app design that don’t account for one-bar cellular signal, but you’re bored already. Just know that if you go into web design or app design, that’s a definite issue and y’all all know the government’s not going to bother sorting it out the way they did electrification of rural areas a century ago. Uncle Sam does not have remotely the same priorities now. So we’ll just have to adjust. Knock it off with the bells and whistles and just go for functionality. Thanks in advance.

Anyway. I’ve applied for a few jobs (Carrie told Dad I’ve “applied for all kinds of jobs” — not anything I told her, but apparently a conclusion she has drawn — which has mollified him, and I haven’t had the heart to clarify the situation for either of them) and heard absolutely nothing back, which didn’t really surprise me. It was the same in Ohio for two years straight, or else I’d get some temp thing and the client would drop the hours. Or I’d blow an interview. Or something stupid like that. Quantum was sheer dumb luck and turned out to be bullshit in disguise. I mean, clearly not bullshit enough as they are still in business and gaining more clients all the time, but give it another couple of years. As it is they keep having to hold more new-hire training classes, and that’s not all owing to the new clients. Some of it is the poor management. Well rid. So they didn’t hire me because I was somehow compelling. They hired me out of desperation. The pay rate and benefits reflect that too. Particularly when you consider THEY provide some of those benefits. In-house bells and whistles. Lots cheaper. So I’m not counting on anything like that happening again. It will be a matter of grabbing something that will pay my bills without driving me straight loony, and I don’t have a lot of bills at this point. And then it will be a matter of taking my time to train into something. I half want to go whole hog into proofreading (please do not look at my grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills here as evidence of anything; this is an informal blog, and I don’t fucking give a shit) as self-employment, and half want to train into something that translates into in-person employment from which I can then segue into self-employment somewhere down the line, but just have the latter as a side gig for now. I’m thinking option two may be better. I can’t tell for sure yet. Even if it isn’t the better option, probably best to go with it at first and then if the in-person work turns sour, I’m already more than halfway to the other goal.

Failing that I suppose I could do portraits for pay. That’s not guaranteed. If I were a shoo-in with that, though, I wouldn’t bother with an in-person job. My car is on its last legs (wheels?) unless I come up with the money to do what needs to be done at this stage to keep it in good shape, so being able to work without commuting is basically my Holy Grail. Dad may be a possible source for repair funds, though. He indicated as such yesterday. He benefits from my car running too, so we’ll see how that works out in practice.

But it isn’t just the balky starting — and I’m thinking now that it never needed jumping, but that it starting after a jump was coincidental, considering that most of the time it wasn’t even immediate but put me through a few more half-assed non-starts before finally, grudgingly getting going, at which point it functioned fine. I think the initial assessment of battery, starter, and alternator was correct and something else is going on. My thought is “old battery cable,” or something else along that circuit which has suddenly worn out and only half works. I cannot prove it, of course. I dread finding out how much finding the problem and fixing it will cost.

ASIDE FROM THAT, though: I had been looking for the power steering fluid tank the other day. I had gotten mixed information online about Hyundai Sonatas and where the power steering fluid is, and it turns out that some years and possibly trims have fluid-based power steering and some don’t. Apparently mine is one of the years/trims that does not. So whatever’s going on with my power steering is likely wholly mechanical. That won’t be good. If I don’t need it to continue steering safely, I won’t bother with it yet. We’ll see.

Also, while I was discovering that little quirk, I noticed the coolant tank. On this make and model, and possibly on a lot of the more modern cars, you don’t dump coolant straight into the radiator. You fill a reservoir tank instead. I actually really like this feature, because if you’re dangerously close to running out of coolant then you’re panicking and you don’t want to have to wait for the radiator to cool down. It’s just a little plastic tank with a pop-off non-locking hinged lid (helpfully marked Coolant) to one side of the engine block, right next to where the power steering fluid tank would have been if I’d had one. And the coolant level was down to the needs-a-refill line.

PANIC PANIC DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

So I resolved to get more the next time I was at Walmart with Dad. Well, the next time we went I started the car before he came outside to go to town so I wouldn’t feel like a gigantic fanny trying to start the stupid thing while he sat there wondering what in the ever fucking fuck now. Got it started without too much trouble and sat there letting it run for a bit, and I noticed white smoke coming out the exhaust. It was not cold enough for my exhaust to be visible. I remembered the coolant tank being low and remembered a smell I’d started noticing in the past couple weeks sometimes when I’d just started the engine and had thought, Oh, shit. The coolant is leaking and somehow I am burning it. Quick Google. Vast majority of the time when this happens, including the white exhaust, it is a blown head gasket. However, when that happens the coolant gets in somewhere where it mucks up some sensors, and then your Check Engine light comes on. Mine hasn’t yet. So I’m thinking we’re still early days if it is the head gasket. But one more thing to panic about.

Did refill the coolant though. And so far, maybe a week later, I’ve had a little loss but nothing to write home about. It’s barely below the top-limit fill line. I’ll keep an eye on it.

I still have to fix that stupid tail light, too, because I am not out of the woods with legal shit for my car until I get the vehicle inspection done, which they give you a month to do. I am out of money thanks to paying for the taxes on the car title transfer AND having to make that last payment for my phone, which I had absolutely had to replace because the battery was swollen on the old one. I need to look up, next time I’m at Carrie’s, how to replace my car’s entire tail light fixture because love ya to bits Haynes, but YouTube videos are more helpful. Whatever fucked up that brake light’s socket (I can no longer install a bulb in it — it’s fried) also melted the opening the bulb’s supposed to go through on the install, and it’s warped and it breaks bulbs. No good. Everything else on that wiring harness still works, but it’s all going to have to come out. My one sticking point aside from price is whether I will need any special extras to get the job done. Adhesive, for instance. I need to find out.

And. AND! I’m not a hundred percent sure the brakes will pass muster. They work. But they’re getting mushy, which indicates something with the fluid level and/or cylinder (the one time I’ve had an outright brake failure, the cylinder had ruptured, and they got good and mushy before that happened — that was more than twenty years ago and I have never forgotten Poplar Avenue in Memphis in the rain), which is going to be more money out my pocket that I don’t fucking have. But I’m going to let that slide just a little bit longer. If they are the reason I fail inspection, they should be the only reason I fail, and I’ll get a sticker saying I failed inspection which should keep the cops off my ass for a little while longer. They don’t exactly give an A for effort, but they won’t ticket you for not even making the attempt, either. I think it also buys me additional time.

Are you bored again? Let me tell you what being poor is. Being poor is boredom and wasted time. So much wasted time. Oh my GOD the wasted time. Am I bitter? I’ve earned it. Fucking deal.

I do have one possible out, though I’m not sure yet how realistic it is or whether it will even happen. My aunt Matilda’s ex-husband, the father of all my cousins by her, passed away last November. They divorced at least a couple decades ago, and neither of them ever remarried. Far as Social Security is concerned, that makes her his widow. So she’s now gone from well less than a thousand a month in benefits to $3000-plus. She is now talking about replacing her Honda. Cool bit is it’s two years older than my car but about four thousand miles less in mileage, and I wouldn’t be doing much more with it than commuting and errands here.

State of Louisiana tells me my car’s worth six grand. Not sure how, and I surely would not be able to sell it for that much, but okay. If I could get at least three grand off it I bet she would take that as a down payment, and we could work out payment terms on top of that. We’ll see. My first impulse is to just keep up with my present car as there’s no expiration date for repairs — whereas there would be for a car payment — and no potential for misunderstandings between relatives. But if I like the terms I may take that risk. She swears it gives her absolutely no problems. I mean… it’s a Honda. Poor woman’s Toyota, basically. They’re decent cars.

(I can’t help thinking she’d be willing to sell it for its Blue Book value. If she is, I’d be home free because it wouldn’t even be $10k. Probably not worth much more than mine, in fact. We’ll see.)

I at least have an idea for employment for some amount of time, and the place is a mile away from my house. I will make plans to visit Carrie on Monday and will stop by there on the way. (Cold or not — we’re catching the edge of the vortex here early this next week — my car’s got a fucking heater and it, thank fuck, still fucking works.) They seem to have had poor luck finding someone. I’ve never operated gas-station pumps, but these are the old-fashioned kind and likely will be simple to learn. (There are two pumps: 87 octane and diesel. That’s it. You need rocket fuel, you outta luck, boo.) And, hey. If I can figure it out there, that’s experience in a gas station later if need be. I think the owner kind of knows my dad, which will also help. So we’ll try that, and we’ll see. Even if the fucking car breaks down, it’s a mile one way. My fat ass needs exercise anyhow.

Speaking of. I have had problems with random heart palpitations for a long time now. I thought for a while it was stevia setting them off. Then I thought maybe it was one of the “natural ingredients” in a particular root beer I had been drinking when that shit all started. But they never completely went away. And these days I find they pop up when I’m stressed, and they like to pop up when I’m using one of Dad’s recliners, especially when I am leaning back. I’m starting to wonder if this might be atrial fibrillation. I just have a feeling.

I did get notification a few days ago that I have been accepted on Louisiana Medicaid, which I already knew from the Healthcare.gov website but now I have paper documentation, so it’s wait again (SEE WHAT I SAID ABOVE ABOUT FUCKING WAITING) to get my card. Then it’s start investigating all this shit. Afib is a major risk factor for stroke, and too many people have already had those in my family, especially on Mom’s side. I have other risk factors for stroke too. I am not going to go in for any pharmaceutical cocktail but if they tell me I need to do a blood thinner, I could get on baby aspirin and/or garlic tablets. Not a big deal. I already knew I need to lose weight. Maybe if a doctor is fussing at me, Dad might start taking that seriously. The big battle there is that he thinks I only have to cut fat and calories. No, Dad. That never works for anybody, Dad. Even if they lose the weight, they lose too much lean mass and the problems remain and their stupid doctors go Well, I Guess This Must Be Hereditary, Here Are Some Prescriptions and next thing you know you’re taking pills to offset the effects of the pills you are already on and you feel sick all the fucking time. Nope. Not doing that. Next fucking question. But it’s going to make things interesting in terms of eating healthier. I’m so fucking tired of people always judging and sabotaging me about that. It’s hard enough pushing myself. I shouldn’t have to push other people away at the same fucking time.

(Is ANYONE who is close to me ever going to be genuinely supportive of my self-improvement efforts? Ever? Am I doomed to be alone? It’s really starting to look like it. Fuck all y’all.)

[looks back at blog entry]

…Holy shit, I don’t think I meant to be this verbose.

I have more shit I want to talk about, but I’ve written enough, I guess. I will try to remember to do this more often or else there’s no point. Also, if I’m consistent in my updates, I will have more time and space in which to write about all that other stuff too. Sounds like a wiener to me.

—–
*Ah ha, you’re saying. Matt bought you art supplies every year. Surely this means he wanted to be supportive of your artistic inclinations. Well, sure. If he hadn’t dicked up the entire house and left me no room to work. I had been sorting that out the last couple years I was there, in fact — and then he decided to go off the rails. OH NOES HOW DARE I TRY TO IMPROVE MY LIFE WITHOUT RUNNING OUT THE DOOR. CLEARLY I AM NASTY AND UNREASONABLE. Asshole.

If you follow me on Facebook, you are aware of what’s been going on. If you don’t, you mostly aren’t. I may fill in the in-between dates here with my Facebook posts as a source at some point, but it’s not terribly likely unless I get more organized with my time.

I did end up leaving a different note to Elizabeth than I posted in the previous post. Either I have just edited it or I will when I both have the time and think of doing it. Hopefully I’ll notice this paragraph and just get it done. I like to keep records of some things.

Long story short (but this is still a long post — if you don’t like reading, you can fuck off right now):

–I couldn’t drum up the other $500 for the month of December. By the time Elizabeth came around asking on the 16th, I didn’t even have a week’s worth. She made zero effort to meet me halfway on maybe prorating some days. She didn’t have to, either, but the point is she didn’t. It went immediately to “get out.” I suppose I should count my lucky stars she gave me any time to pack at all. As it was, she was her usual flaky, capricious self and went from “get out by midnight” to “get out by 9pm.” And the “family” who wasn’t going to be able to move in until after the end of January were suddenly available, and apparently it was her daughters. I don’t know how many daughters this woman has but if one of them’s the one who vacated the place six months before I moved in, this stinks all kinds of ways.

–The eviction didn’t bother me quite so much — and here I must inform or remind everyone reading this that I did complete the original lease; this was an eviction from a post-lease informal month-to-month arrangement that was supposed to last until the end of January (this month) — as what else she said as this was happening. Apparently she has expended a great deal of energy doing… something… to do with me, and she was tired of it. I do not know what this was supposed to mean. We had a talk on 3 December about the general direction of my life and she asked me to come up with some sort of game plan consisting of three specific goals for the near future and then watch some Brené Brown video on YouTube within ten days. I completed the first part of that but not the second and I heard not a peep out of her after I completed the three to-do tasks and informed her of same. Whatever energy she thought she was spending, I heard nothing about it.

This is a familiar theme, though. People tend to work up some kind of problem with me in their own heads and by the time I hear about it, they’ve long gotten fed up with their own version of events and I’m not only supposed to be aware of it but also be properly sorry for it. Meanwhile, if I have a specific grievance that any reasonable person would have about someone’s specific behavior that has actually happened, I have unreasonable standards and I should not be upset since, after all, the offender can’t read minds. That coupled with once again being proven right when I was suspicious of a woman being just a little bit too friendly and familiar from day one has left me relieved the eviction process wasn’t more acrimonious.

Yet. Still half holding my breath in case she really goes looney-tunes. I did complete the original lease, though, and I paid for the half-month I had before she kicked me out and I have the receipts for all those money orders so the most she can come after is the electric bill, and she never gave me that. No email, no photocopy, no nothing, and no proof that she had even tried to convey it to me. Good luck with that one.

(I wouldn’t have a problem with the idea of paying it, but she kept putting off giving it to me until the debt would have been prohibitive even when I was working at Quantum and it might as well be on the moon now. It couldn’t have been that important or she’d have taken that hundred-mile walk across the driveway to pass it to me. That’s her problem now, or she can cry to my credit report. I don’t care anymore.)

— All that aside. So, I rented a storage locker which, ironically, was walking distance from where I had lived with Thea in Clintonville (the U-Haul over on Sinclair, just north of Morse and the I-71 Morse/Sinclair offramp) and got enough of my stuff into it that I could sleep in my car. I exited the apartment between 7pm and 8pm with a deadline of 9pm. I slept at my usual rest areas for the next few nights because even if I’d had money, InTown Suites (my previous housing solution before going homeless) was not taking any check-ins for the rest of December. None of their three locations. Not even when you’d think they’d have had an operational front desk. No idea why.

— Right when it was getting cold, my car decides to have trouble starting. At the rest area. Pretty much in the boonies if you don’t count Galena and Sunbury. (I kind of don’t.)

Praise everything praiseworthy: roadside assistance was not a pain in the ass this time. But that did not stop me panicking. I finally caved in and unblocked Carrie and Doug and told them what was going on.

— This precipitated, the next day, an hour-long conversation with Doug after an hour-long conversation he had with Dad in which Dad invited me to come back and stay with him. There are conditions. I don’t know how quickly I’ll meet them but I’m happy to. I knew this was my one shot at getting decisively out of this mess and I’d be a moron not to take it. I still spent the day weepy because I didn’t fucking want to go. I had made a sort of fucked-up home in the Columbus area over twenty fucking years and I hate leaving what I know and love. And there are no real memories of my daughter anywhere else. (I can look out the front door now and show you the mobile home where she took her first steps in 2006, but that’s all.) But you do what you need to do. So I put on my big-girl britches and got one last sushi lunch at Tensuke, one more bubble tea at Kung Fu Tea, and one more car picnic at Whetstone Park (lower level), where the view wasn’t even good because if you’re a sap you’d argue the sky was empathizing with me.

I was also promised $1000 in aid money, which Dad and Carrie sent to me through Walmart the next day. (The way Dad couched it, it was two years’ worth of Christmas money which, yes, he’d been in the occasional habit of sending Doug and me $500 each per year around the holidays, and I’d missed 2022 and almost 2023.) Got the oil changed. Ordered a palm-sized USB-charging jump starter via Amazon to pick up at the Amazon locker at Whole Foods in Dublin. Sold some more media (twenty bucks for, among other things, a complete Game of Thrones box set and a book that hasn’t been published since the 1980s and is a collector’s item now AND I got checked out by a man who pretends to be a woman — fuck you too, you won’t be missed), donated some stuff to Goodwill, emptied the storage locker. Strongly considered getting the starting problem looked at but it didn’t seem to be predictable and Advance Auto Parts informed me that the battery, starter, and alternator were still all good, and the amount of moving personal property around I’d have had to do to earn back what I’d have had to spend on a repair would have been ridiculous and exhausting. I decided to go all in and just make the trip. I left Ohio between 6pm and 7pm on the nineteenth of December.

It was a much less eventful trip than the one to Ohio in 2022 or even the one to Louisiana from Ohio before that in 2021. All that delivery-driving has made me a much more confident driver, and I wasn’t quite as much in a hurry because Reba invited me to stay with her halfway through my trip. I also got to avoid the Atchafalaya Basin bridge, which made me very happy.

I still don’t want to be here. I’m happy enough to see people but I don’t belong here any more than I felt welcome in a place that took two decades of my life. I will feel even less like I belong here when the hot weather gets here. Even worse when, not if, Dad dies — the only question is when that will happen. I honestly do not know what’s going to fucking happen afterwards and it’s freaking me out more than a little.

There has been some talk on Doug’s end about moving me and Dad out to Oregon to live with him. I don’t really want to be there either — even if Dad wanted to go, and I’ll tell you right now, he won’t. For my part, I hate Oregon what with all the bullshit happening in Portland, I don’t want to live in the west at all, and I am extremely worried that things would go well for like six months with Doug and then go straight to hell again. I know exactly two other people in the entire state of Oregon (unless some of my Facebook friends are also there) and they’d as soon shoot me as help me or even associate with me again. And at least one of them is terrified of guns, so that’s saying something. No bueno.

But Aunt Emily seems unusually interested in reviving connections between herself and Dad and me. She invited us over for a holiday-season shin-dig at her place and came over today with pie and stayed for over an hour and a nice chat. The other day, Aunt Matilda was here. I may have pissed her off talking about Dad’s drinking in the past, but maybe we can reach some sort of détenté now. And now she is talking about selling her car and seems to be open to selling it to me. And both of them have made a point of mentioning what a good artist they think I am. I feel like there is some possibility there. Like maybe I don’t have to feel like an isolated freak so much anymore.

It probably won’t last — if nothing else, life happens and I’m easy to forget — but it’s nice to think about.

Meanwhile I’m still trying to puzzle out the car situation. I at least can put off worrying about the car insurance, since now the payment’s due in early February instead of the 18th of this month. It’s a mixed blessing. Toggle (which is part of Farmers) doesn’t cover anyone in Louisiana at all, so I had to go with a different insurer. Progressive refuses to insure my make and model due to high theft risk. (Have they SEEN Acadia Parish? Nothing fucking happens here and if someone tried to steal my car, like as not their fucking cousin lives two trailers down and would recognize them on the spot.) Two others also didn’t want to insure me and wouldn’t say why and another one was way too expensive. For baseline liability. GEICO it was, so it’s more expensive AGAIN than Toggle was after I’d moved to Dublin. GEICO is Matt’s old carrier and I used to be on his policy and GEICO never forgot, so I got to find out he owns a Honda CRV now and, given it’s a 2009, I’m guessing that’s Thea’s. Spending money was always the one thing Matt was willing to do. At least in this way it works in my daughter’s favor. Wish my parents had wanted me to have wheels. My life would have turned out so much better. Now that I’ve way digressed, I’ve been too chickenshit on account of the potential expense to pursue actual car repairs. I need to get over myself. I am not sure I’ll get things registered on time either. I’ll be cutting it close with my driver’s license as it is.

I’ve put in one job application so far with Major Retailer. I probably will not get it. I have other possibilities though. I will get onto those Monday when I go back to the OMV about my license — assuming I can, assuming I have the right kind of proof of residence. I will probably be rained on again. I will just have to deal. But Carrie’s super helpful about letting me use her internet connection, so that’s where I’ll job-hunt.

I’ve even worked out a way to start back up with my Substack and other blogging and also my Etsy listings. I’ll just write things up and save them as text files and then add them in when I can connect. Someone is actually a paid subscriber to my Substack again and I feel bad there’s been nothing new for her to read. What I’ll probably do in that case is write a bunch of pieces and schedule them one by one. I don’t have to schedule anything here. I will just date these things and time-stamp them a minute before midnight. Easy enough.

I can’t believe I have less than a week left in my forties. Whose fucking idea was this? Not mine.

Okay. Sleep now.

Note from 14 February 2024: I left this on the odd little table or whatever-it-is in the living room of the apartment my landlady evicted me from. I wasn’t going to be a problem as I was vacating, but I wasn’t going to leave without a last word, either.

I ended up neither texting nor emailing her because in the end, it didn’t matter. I figured by the time I was going to get anything important in the mail, I’d have a post office box to forward it to. Turned out I moved back in with my father several days later, so I had a real address. Same deal.

—

Elizabeth-

I wanted to clean up more for you, but you took three hours off my prep time. I was afraid that if I left to get a storage locker you might renege again and I’d come back to my property damaged or worse. Can’t have that.

So I’m actually out early but you’ll need to do a little cleaning. U-Haul closes at 7. I need the locker more than I need to make you happy.

For the record: I am neither a criminal nor a drug addict. I can’t otherwise explain your attitude beyond the rent situation. I do understand the rent situation. But things you have said make me wonder if you are afraid of me. So let’s clear that up now. You’re wrong about me. The end.

Yes I left the laser printer on purpose. I am tired of moving that thing. It works but may need maintenance. Or sell it or donate it. I don’t care.

Whatever housewares I left are yours. What would I do with them in a car?

Your relative downstairs [in the downstairs apartment] smokes weed.

I will text you once with my P.O. box and then block you. Will also email you, ditto. Whatever comes after that, that’s that.

Thank you for giving me a safe place for half a year. Not really giving, I paid for it, but you know what I mean.

Dana

I’m not posting about this separately on Facebook, though I will link to this there, and don’t count on me doing much replying right now.

I got a visit from Elizabeth today. I have been informed that my sitting up here not bothering anyone is taking up too much of her energy. I could count on one hand how many times we’ve interacted in the past month. That’s right, month, not just the past two weeks but anyway, that seemed to be the most important thing to her, even more important than the rent, which I had only managed half of. I had hoped to be able to give her something for the third week by the end of this weekend. Maybe I should have told her that days ago but we’ve seen I can’t trust people already and I had no reason to believe this was any different.

So I have until midnight tonight to vacate.

9pm. I can’t even have that last three hours. I can do it, but I won’t like it as well. More later.

I have basically no money. I have to rent a locker again or I will not be able to sleep in my car. I’m going to sell a couple things today and maybe I could get a room from that but I won’t hold my breath. I would be better served bearing down and getting a weekly room somehow. It won’t be InTown Suites. They refuse to book anyone until the beginning of next year. Already checked the site. All three locations.

So it was, “you are taking up too much of my energy” and “your actions affect people around you, you know.” She reminded me a bit of Dad there. Not so much his words as his attitude. Acting like my mere existence, not bothering them, not doing anything to them was somehow the worst possible offense ever. Look, I get it. Half rent is no good and I’m no longer on a lease anyway. That bit right there would have been sufficient reason to say “please leave,” though in her shoes I might have said “you have until Monday” given that IT’S THE WEEKEND. “I’ve been in your shoes” You got rescued by a man who sells real estate, lady. Don’t talk to me about shoes.

I said it though, didn’t I. This is the sort of woman who starts out all kind and affectionate and then turns on you. Saw it coming miles off.

I hate the way most of society ignores people like me in my particular situation but it beats being told someone cares about you only to have the games played. I’ll say it again: we have not interacted all that much. There were times I’d even ask her reasonable questions about things, and this was back when I had the Quantum job, and she wouldn’t answer. Pat was still alive at that point and that was what took up her energy. Not me. I make a great scapegoat. It never ends.

I feel like I want to ramble on about this but it will eat into my time. Storage place closes at 7pm. What a joke: it’s the one near where I used to live. Good thing I know I can handle being near the old house. It’s half the price of the Worthington unit. Wherever I end up, as long as I pay they won’t care.

Oh and if she thinks she’s ever going to come after me for my part of the electric bill, nope. She can go crying to my credit report. I literally live across the driveway from her, and not once has she said “okay I have the information together, come get it” or “can I come over with the bill, are you home.” It was “I don’t have your email address.” Well, you had it at one point. You must not have cared enough, then. Nothing I can do for you. Sorry.

I’m thinking about talking to the shelter in Delaware. It was implied I could do that after 30 days. It’s been well more than 30 days. I don’t want to be there again, but there are worse outcomes.

I also wonder if she’s the reason I got booted from the rehousing program. Which could have gotten me out of this mess. I won’t ask, though.

Anyway. Onward.

Got in a more full day today. It was still only low $100s. But Fridays have been iffy for a while.

Was around Polaris/Worthington/Westerville and there’s this one spot with this church, I’m trying to think, maybe Worthington-Galena Road and Sancus? Anyway, sometime last year there was this black guy out in front of the church holding up a sign encouraging passing drivers to smile. As I passed that same church today I thought, “This is where that smile guy was.” Glanced to my right and THERE HE WAS. He just seemed so joyful and I smiled and waved as I passed him and suddenly I was blinking back tears.

If I avoid people a lot right now, that’s got to be one reason. It’s easy enough to talk about shit with a keyboard and usually I don’t get too emotional but if I’m face to face with a person I’m too vulnerable and, well, we see where that got me.

I have to say this because I’m not sure Thea even knows about this blog but I want her to know something. Dawn tells me about you. Not a lot. Mostly she shares pictures you’ve posted. You two have been Instagram friends for years. I told her I would not be surprised if you remember she’s there and this is your way of telling me you’re okay. In case I’m right and you peek in to see if I’ve noticed, there you go. I’ve noticed.

I know about the voice change too. If you do read this I’d like to request that you stop the testosterone now. See, the voice change is permanent. I hope that’s what you really wanted, because you will never get rid of it now. Look up detransitioners on YouTube and you will see what I mean. They can only detransition so far. I’m not even asking for that. Whatever you get up to, you get up to but to continue to take T is self-harm. It already was, and it will only get worse from here.

I will warn you that if you heed my advice you are going to possibly go through hell for a while, because one of the side-effects of upping testosterone levels is elevated mood, and one of the side-effects of stopping it is depression. So don’t do it until you have proper support. The fucking clowns around you right now mindlessly cheering you on because they will believe any stupid bullshit a hippie tells them do not know about these issues. See if you can get in to see an endocrinologist. Ask to be monitored. Get your therapist involved too. If they’re a gender clinic therapist, fire them and get a real one. Your dad no doubt still has good health coverage. He wouldn’t have settled for anything less, what with his health issues. Take advantage of it while you still can. It ends at age 26 for you. But yeah. Get off the T with an endocrinologist and your therapist monitoring you CLOSELY. Maybe take a gap semester and do it so you don’t fuck up your grades.

I’m serious. You broke up with Willow because you want kids. Silly reason. You could have used a sperm bank, but if you don’t want to do that, that’s fine. But the point is you’re going to fuck up your uterus now. If you want your own kids, don’t do that. And don’t say “I’ll use a surrogate,” either. That’s fucking evil. Never use another woman as your brood mare. Never ever ever. That goes for adoption too. You don’t have to like all women and you don’t have to believe women are perfect. I don’t like all women and I don’t believe women are perfect. But don’t reproductively abuse women, either.

I’m half convinced that’s what your dad wanted out of me all along. It certainly fits the evidence. I think he had a vague notion he would knock me up, win custody from me in court, and then give you to his then-wife. (Marti, called Vivien when I knew her, goes by Kit and pretends to not be a woman now. Perhaps you’ve gotten acquainted; all of a sudden she wants to be friends with your dad again.) If I’m right, he fucked up his own plans by lying to her, which prompted her to divorce him. This was very early in your life and he hadn’t had time to make a court case yet. Joke was on him. And in the end she was able to have her own baby anyway. Hadn’t convinced herself she was an It yet, so could still manage it.

Anyway, don’t be like your dad. Not in that way. There are some traits he has that I wouldn’t mind seeing in you, but that’s not one of them. Don’t be a user.

Tonight I was at Meijer to pick up a little food — it is always a little at a time with me, money being what it is — and this woman parked next to me with her little girls and I thought, Enjoy it while it lasts. They’ll be gone in a blink, got out of my car, turned around to go into the store, and the car parked behind me had Stitch on their dash.

I can never see Stitch without thinking of Lilo and how much you loved that movie. And you have always been a little Lilo to me.

Stitch not fluffy. Stitch very sad.

It’s really early morning, nearly 2am, but I probably won’t write later today, so I don’t care. If I change my mind I’ll just tack more onto the end of this post. Okay? Okay.

I keep running into the same old nonsense with trying to catch up the month as I ran into trying to be on time for the month in the first place. There is a strong possibility I will be back in an extended-stay suite by January. I don’t know for sure, but if it happens, don’t be surprised. I won’t be.

For example, we saw that I was dealing with heavy-period garbage, and then on top of that things have been crappy pay-wise when I did manage to get out and about, and on top of that on Tuesday I wanted to get out and do some driving and… the driveway was blocked because one of Elizabeth’s helpers was moving firewood from the far side of the lot up closer to her house. There is one driveway, it’s single-wide, and if I can’t get down it with the car then I’m not getting out of here with the car. I could have asked to get past them but I don’t want to draw attention to myself because I’m not sure how much Elizabeth has noticed because last she knew I had a new temp thing going on. Right. I haven’t talked with her about that. I didn’t see the point if I have to vacate the premises at the end of January anyway. If we were looking at the potential to renew the lease it would be a different matter. That’s not going to happen, so right now I’m in hypervigilant mode and trying to stay out of her way.

At least if I leave early the worst she’ll be able to say is I didn’t give notice but the lease is no longer active, so that hardly matters. What’s she going to do, tell some future landlord of mine that I didn’t give notice on a month-to-month? Come on. And that’s if I use her as a reference in the first place. I probably won’t.

Anyway I was going to go on. I wasn’t done. So the period thing, the driveway, and then I’ve had two bills hit in the past week. Both minor, neither more than $50 (and under $75 both together), but that’s the razor-thin margins I’m working with right now. I have no wiggle room. I might even have negative wiggle room. I really don’t know. But I’ve got another one coming up in the next day or so that’s another $11, and then on the 18th or maybe 19th I will owe insurance which will be another $100. Then Christmas is coming and that will be enforced downtime for at least a day and a half (early closings Christmas Eve). That screaming you hear is my brain trying to claw its way out of my skull. I am so tired of this shit.

I know. I bought it by quitting Quantum. I am well aware of that. I don’t have to find this shit fun just because I do stupid things. Even if it’s written somewhere that I have to, it’s written lots of places that men who like wearing lipstick are women and that’s not fucking true either. I’m not going to find this situation fun. Ever. You can just fucking cope.

I’ve given it some thought and I have sort of a game plan for at least securing employment. It won’t matter whether I keep this place if I can pay for the extended-stay suite without driving six damn days a week for at least six hours a day, or at least not in my own vehicle. So. One possibility in Delaware. One possibility along the High Street corridor not far from where I’d live there if I could. A couple possibilities here in Dublin.

I need to get those applied for by the end of the week. At least one ought to bite. You would think.

And from there, maybe we’ll see.

God knows that no one is yet supporting me in my preferred endeavors except one lady on Substack. That was a nice surprise. I need to write more there. But there are many things I want to write about and then I get in front of my laptop and I get a mental block. I’ve been talking for a long time without people bothering to listen. I’m mentally exhausted by it at this point. People were not listening before I left Matt’s two years ago either. But it feels more real now because with people still around it was easy to assume that my thoughts and feelings were incorporated into sort of the fabric of our lives and people were aware of them. Even though there was no reason for me to feel that way. It was an illusion. Dispelled now.

(Whatever Matt tells you about “feelings” he had for me, one reason I never trusted him again after all the shit from 2004 to 2007 was that he never engaged with me on social media again. To have written me off and not bother looking at anything I had to say, that was a pretty clear sign he’d washed his hands of me from way back. So much of the ill will between us could have been prevented had he told the truth and listened to my side of things. Not just recorded my words in his head to parrot back at me, but actually comprehended them. He didn’t do either, so here we are. And remember, he got mad at me for rolling my eyes when he’d interrupt whatever I was doing or reading to talk about his workday. Actually interrupt. Not even a “can we talk, let me know when you get to a stopping place.” Just immediate blah blah blah like I had nothing better to do but change gears immediately for him.)

But it isn’t just writing I want to do. I need to list more bracelets, make more jewelry, and start a regular drawing practice. At this point it’s too late for anything but priority and express mail if I do happen to sell anything in time for Christmas, and that’s not likely to happen. At least the listings are cheap and last about three or four months. I just feel a bit put out that people were going “ooh” on Facebook but nothing’s nibbled. Well, I’m going to list more anyway, and they can bite me. At some point, someone will nibble. That’ll be a nice little windfall. Certainly a better outcome than trying to just sell the beads.

God. It’s 3am already. (I took forever to write this little bit. Like I said. Block.) Another fun thing I had to deal with was waking up with the shits when I wasn’t done sleeping. Hopefully it’ll go better this time. Off to bed.

I mentioned in the previous post that when Shark Week rolls around, there are two or three days where it gets really heavy and I can’t predict which days those will be anymore. It used to be just the first two or three days. In the past several months it’s mixed things up so that I might be okay the first three or four days and then suddenly, BAM. So I never know what I’m getting ahead of time, I just sort of know roughly when Shark Week’s going to happen. (Lately it’s been pretty much the first week of the month.)

Well, this time around the first couple days were just sort of boring and then after I fucked up that prospective temp job, BAM. I did get in a day delivering and was pretty happy about that, and then almost had a massive accident here at home. So I’ve been laying low hoping it will calm down. It’s a good thing I did fuck up the temp job. I’m trying to imagine asking to run to the restroom often enough to prevent massive leak and it would have been a nightmare. I have a whole system down for slowing down the deluge, but even with that I go through a super tampon in an hour, if I’m lucky. (Needless to say, I keep iron supplements in stock at home.) After that I’m on borrowed time. It would have gotten ugly.

I still mean to do a whole breakdown of why employment is difficult for me. There are a whole lot of factors, only some of which having to do with my actual personal shortcomings that I might have a prayer of any control over whatsoever. I am just not in the headspace to do justice to it right now. This situation here is a big part of it though. It’s a catch-22 because menstruation is not a disability or a disease, BUT, when things go wrong with female plumbing it can go in that direction, AND, gynecological care is seriously fucking lacking worldwide and disgracefully low-quality for a first-world country (the United States). If they just go in and yank the babymaker they will fuck me up on at least two levels. Then I need recovery time. I am completely alone now and that’s not fucking happening. So I need to just stop my periods if I can but (1) birth control might not work well with me because I’m too fat and (2) even if I sign up for ACA health coverage in time, and that’s debatable considering how my life’s gone, that doesn’t kick in until January. ARGH.

I have a thing going if anyone fucking cares. God, it could actually get me ahead. You’re not going to get it in time for Christmas, but you’d do me a big favor. Look! Not asking for free money! How ’bout dat!

Okay. On to bed.

I got through the day okay, even got a decent amount of sleep though it had to happen earlier than I’d hoped, because about 5am or so I just couldn’t stay awake anymore. But I got laundry done, some dishes done, etc., and got out the door with plenty of time.

I get there and at first I’m not sure what I’m seeing. It’s not the main Carrier facility — it’s a special “postal mail solutions” outfit, and it’s in a building shared with another company.

The parking lot was TINY. There was literally nowhere to park. All spaces were filled. Cars spilled out into the access road and lined the FIRE LANE. Where you are not supposed to park, ever.

I was early, but not terribly early and I thought, What the fuck? I mean, clearly people found parking because all the spaces were taken. I had gotten no instructions on where to go if there were no spaces left, however. I didn’t want towed, I didn’t want vandalized, I didn’t want my car hit by some idiot who couldn’t navigate a parking lot. Some of the cars looked quite the worse for wear as it was.

I was already having second thoughts with all the having to prepare because there was most of nothing we could take inside and my period is starting. (For those just joining us: mine gets really heavy two or three days out of the week and at this point I can’t predict when those days will be, only guesstimate when the week will happen. I have fibroids, which are the main cause of the problem. Actually diagnosed. Seen on an ultrasound two Decembers ago.) I was already not sure they would even let me in with the cargo pockets on my pants. Stuff they said to me in orientation made me wonder about that, but I had nothing else in which to stash a spare pad and a few wipes. And now no place to put my car.

After my previous experiences with this agency and the app, my overall impression is “they have no fucking idea what they’re doing and I’m sure to be a casualty when something else goes wrong.” I noped out of there. I will figure out something else.

—–

The one good thing that came out of it was there were these room-darkening curtains in one of the cabinets in the dining room, and I set those up in the bedroom. Not properly; I don’t really have good tools for putting up the curtain rod, not if I value my hands. (They like to swell up if I have to use a lot of torque with them. I have no idea why, but this has been a problem for literal decades.) But there was also duct tape or some similar kind of tape in the cabinet, so I used that. Will I have to clean the curtains later? Probably. Do I care? No. This was the darkest I’d been able to get a sleeping place in almost two years. It’s really nice.

Did I mention there are also glow-in-the-dark stars on my bedroom ceiling? That’s always kind of cheery when I go to bed.

When Thea was little I used to fantasize about taking some glow-in-the-dark paint and painting stars on her ceiling as little dots and doing the actual constellations. She had a ceiling fan and I had a feeling I’d get started, do about a quarter of the job, get tired and quit, so it never happened.

It’s just as well because that’d be one more thing I was bitter about now. “I wore out my fucking shoulders for you and you just throw me away?” I mean, I was the reason she had anything resembling her own bedroom too but NEVER MIND.

—–

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to just love again. I don’t even mean a romance, though that too. Like, at all. Ever.

Okay. I have taken care of the issue with my rent. Or I am in the process of taking care of it. After much anxiety and stalling, I texted Elizabeth and asked if I could come over (she lives literally right across the driveway), and she was cool with that, so we had a nice long chat. The upshot of it is I’ve given her the $500, she’s fine with me catching up the other half plus late fee, and I showed her my informational flyer for the temp job starting late tomorrow night. And she has something of a therapist or therapist-like background and we got into a little nitty-gritty which, she’s been wanting to chat more with me about my situation for months, but Pat’s final downward turn obviously took precedence.

And she teared up a couple times about that, but she was remarkably calm overall, considering.

I wasn’t so much. I’ve had trouble crying for most of the past two years but for some reason, it wouldn’t leave me alone in that living room. I suspect a lot of it is being tired. I’ve been trying to push my sleep forward and failing miserably at it. I have a blackout curtain in one of the cabinets in the dining room and I’m thinking about taking it out and duct-taping it to my bedroom window. (I have tools, but nothing that would make installing a curtain rod easier, and my hands don’t respond well to that particular type of manual effort, which is weird since I use my hands so much. They swell up. It’s a whole thing.) The light is the likely culprit. That’s a very nice west-facing window and if the walls weren’t painted very dark teal and very dark purple, that room would be very fucking bright during the day. Probably a big reason Elizabeth’s daughter painted the room those colors, is my guess.

Anyway. I seem to be becoming some sort of special project. Elizabeth and Pat have/had both been homeless before so I suppose that’s some experience I can draw from. I don’t know where all that will end up but for now I’m supposed to come up with three goals and also watch some Brené Brown stuff.

If it keeps a roof over my head and doesn’t ask me to give up my dignity, I’m somewhat willing to give it a shot.

The goals, if I understood correctly, are supposed to be about Me Stuff. Not mere survival but steps I want to take for myself to do more than survive. I will ask her again when I’m reasonably sure she’s awake just to make sure we’re on the same page.

I also need to remember to ask my temp-agency onsite reps about that payment card they gave me and how to make it into an instant pay situation. If I can do that, it’ll make everything a lot easier. I think all employers should use an instant pay system. Let the employee choose whether to get same-day payouts, but let it be an option. It was a huge help to me when I first started at Quantum and the Salvation Army was playing games and I would have wound up sleeping in my car again for a week before I finally signed the lease. No danger of that yet here — at worst, I’ve bought myself two weeks’ shelter with that half a grand I paid Elizabeth today — but let’s not even get to that point. Also I’ll want more food-shopping Very Soon Now.

—–

Did I mention here a while back that I would hear funny noises outside at night, or was that on Facebook?

Finally figured it out. It’s the frigging American flag outside my main living-room window. It’s made of substantial fabric and so when the wind kicks up, it really whips around.

I will say this for the folks here: they replace flags when they get ratty. Some local businesses could take a page.

—–

I did some driving today, but started much later in the day than I’d hoped to, and then got tired sooner than I’d have preferred, and on top of everything else lost my motherfucking mind and went to Delaware. So then I had to drive back from that. Tired. I will have to try to stay up until noon if I can. That will give me eight hours if I get up at 8pm. I have one source telling me to show up by 11:15 (shift starts at 11:30pm) and another saying show up at 10:45 and I do believe I will go with the latter because it seems a safer bet. But I need to do laundry anyway, so that is an excellent excuse to not go to bed for a while. I got some more Splenda and I have a decent supply of coffee, cinnamon, and half-and-half so if I need caffeinated in the next few hours, I’m solid.

—–

Car notes: I need an oil change soon and I also need to get some power-steering fluid and this other stuff that goes in the same reservoir which helps condition seals and things in the power-steering system. The steering has gotten pretty loose. You can drive a car that has a power-steering system if the PS goes out, it’s just more of a pain in the ass. I also don’t want to actually damage the system, so there’s that. If all it needs is a fluid top-up, sorted. If it’s still fucked up after I top it up, we know it’s something else, so still sorted. Sort of. Halfway.

I could also seriously use new wiper blades. “Oh sure, give me the cheap ones,” I told Take 5. The cheap ones are never actually cheap from a mechanic anyway, and I’m getting better ones next time and putting them on myself. Sorted. Just like the cabin air and engine air filters a few months ago. You want HOW much to do that for me? Around $150 for the both together? Nah bruh. Fuck off. My delicate little ladybrain handles both just fine, thanks. So, more importantly, does my budget. Thus it will be with wiper blades. Alleluia, amen.

—–

I hate being tired. Oh well. Laundry!