my boring life story

Today was an off day. Remember me complaining about Shark Week not having begun yet? Well, it’s here. First few days are usually the worst. I’ve got pads, I’ve got wipes, I’ve got some food (trying not to go too crazy, I’m behind already for my final rent payment)… brangit.

I did sleep in late. Not sure what that was about other than the temps are dropping and maybe that’s making me extra-sleepy. No idea. It was close to 2pm when I finally got up and it wasn’t lounge around in bed for hours and then go “oh shit,” it was flat-out sleeping. It’s not like I have curtains on the bedroom window. Probably the cloudiness outside didn’t help. I don’t get the sun through my bedroom window til later in the day since it is west-facing, but even around noon I start noticing it if I’m not up already.

I was going to mention a critter count yesterday and then I didn’t even post. I saw a groundhog RIGHT next to the road at one point. Then later on I was in a neighborhood and had to slow down and almost stop because — of all things — a squirrel decided to stop in the middle of the street FOR A SCRATCH. What the hell, little tree rat. You trying to die? But the person behind me wasn’t all that close and had time to see what was up.

Did I mention the squirrels I had seen some time back — a few weeks ago, maybe? Had to be a mom and baby pair crossing the road. The second one was noticeably smaller than the first one. Little’un panicked about halfway across, froze, then ran back the way it had come. There was oncoming traffic, but they saw it in time, so it got lucky. Damn.

If they would just sit still and I could go over with them between my tires it would be one thing; they’re small enough to miss. The problem is they always manage to panic just when you are deciding to do this and then you end up clipping a leg, clipping a tail, or worse. The ONE time I got caught by this, the poor little guy went into spasms on the side of the road, just flipping around. Spinal damage. Fatal. I felt horrible. No doubt little squirrel felt far worse. That was more than 20 years ago and I still haven’t forgotten. I don’t care how little they are, hurt is hurt. I’d rather not. I wish more drivers felt like I do. So many fursplats on the side of the road this time of year testify otherwise.

Anyway.

Had an incident recently where an ambulance showed up on the lot and the EMT came knocking on my door. Did you call an ambulance? says he. No, I says. What’s your house number? says he, and I tell him. Oh, that’s not it, says he. What number did they give when they called? says I. He tells me, and it’s the landlord’s house across the driveway, so I redirect him.

The ambulance did not turn its siren back on when they finally left, so I reasoned either Landlord had had an accident or a spell and had needed medical attention but not hospitalization, or else the end had come and they were taking him away. No one said anything to me over the next day or so, so I started thinking it was more the former than the latter.

Then yesterday or the day before, not sure which, I was driving back from somewhere and it was dark or nearly so, so I could glance through their front windows on the way back to my driveway and I saw his hospital bed and him in it. So that answered that question. With his end-stage prostate cancer and the fact he’s outlived his prognosis by at least several months, it could go either way really. And most of the time prostate cancer is a chronic condition that older men just live with. He should have played the Powerball.

Speaking of which. I was in the Saturday drawing. First time in my life I’ve ever bought a ticket for a number draw; I’ve had them bought for me once or twice before now but never done it myself. I thought: worst-case scenario, I’m out two bucks. I’ve wasted money on worse. The weird thing is the numbers were very close to the ones I paid for. As if I were about five books down on the library shelf or something. Like the universe taunting me.

I will tell you what. Unless I get into a better place in life all on my own, this won’t be the only time I play it. I will likely only play when the jackpot goes over a billion; I only waited as long as I did this time because I didn’t know it had already. But when it gets that high it becomes stupid not to play. There is near certainty you won’t win if you play but if you don’t play, there is absolute certainty. If I have to live on the margins anyway, let me camp out on that one too.

And if I ever win I am not telling you fuckers. Well. I might tell YOU. There are people I know who won’t find out, though, at least not directly from me. If you only like me when I have money, then you don’t like me and you don’t get any. I will make exceptions for my kids. Only because they didn’t ask to be here, and they still won’t know until I kick off. I won’t even leave them a note. Just whatever property I willed them and then the money. Let them draw their own conclusions. I won’t have to suffer anymore wondering what those are.

But of course this is never going to be an issue. You know this. I know this. Moving on now.

Nobody won it Saturday, either; I wasn’t the only one disappointed. I’m debating whether I want to throw another $2 away or just wait and see what happens. Given my current state of affairs, I am probably better off playing. But always one ticket at a time. I am only desperate. I am not stupid.

Well. Not entirely stupid. I’m taking days off again, but it’s that stupid Shark Week. I can’t function at my best when I don’t know when (not if) I’m going to have a bloody accident right out there in public. I am honestly not sure what’s going to happen with my working life, either. I can put things off for a bit now that it’s gone and happened because it’s still pretty reliably happening every 30 to 34 days, but at some point pretty soon I’m going to have to shut that shit down one way or another. Surgery is likely out of the question due to the recovery time I will need, even if I got insurance tomorrow, and I almost could. That leaves me going back on the Pill for the first time in more than two decades. I don’t want to shut my cycle down but honestly, what good is it doing me at this point when I wind up bleeding like a stuck pig. If I do get insurance none of it should, in theory, cost me anything; if I can’t get insurance for some reason, I have certain telemedicine options now which didn’t exist 20 years ago and which shouldn’t set me back too much. One example I looked at charges $25 for the consult which includes followups for a whole year. I’m pretty sure it’s that $25 that one time for the whole year, but even $25 monthly would be a bargain. And the prescription itself can be as low as $15 for the cash pay option. We’ll see.

I also worry about my car. When am I not worrying about my car. I need some Seafoam soon to sort of clean up the fuel system a bit and I think I want to add a few quarts of oil. Not to the fuel system, obviously. (I have to specify this explicitly, otherwise someone out there’s gonna be an asshole.) It’s maybe 3k miles since the last oil change, but I was advised at some point that my car’s an oil-burner, so it needs topped up now and again. Can do. Not a problem. I just don’t like the way it sounds. Better safe than sorry. I do see a huge difference, even on a long day driving, in my mileage compared to when I was staying in Whitehall. So I’m still at an advantage being in Dublin rather than having to commute here. Can’t hate that.

But I still have to watch out. So I’m thinking give it another day or so and then apply at Big Retail Store. Actually two different ones along that same corridor. If worse came to worst I could walk to the one or bus-commute to the other and it wouldn’t be a fucking crisis. We’re going into the holiday season and it would be weird if they both said no. I mean, they could, but it’d be weird. If they’re paying at least $15 an hour and I have time to delivery-drive I will probably be okay until I get November’s rent sorted. After that, it’s whatever. I’m already mostly resigned to going back to ITS again. At least the one in that general area is in okay shape. At least, the room I stayed in was. Except the bathroom door, but it’s just going to be me and I am not particularly worried about the bathroom door.

I want to talk about other stuff but you don’t want to know how long it took me just to get this out. Also I faked the time stamp because I started writing after midnight… this is just silly. It’s okay. I’m not a news reporting service. But I really should get to bed soon. Maybe I’ll talk about that other shit later.

Had an incident today where I got a message from Uber that a customer had complained I’d had someone else deliver to them. I’ve only had one delivery today where, if the delivery called for customer interaction, I handed the food off to an intermediary. That was out in Plain City at some kind of warehouse place where a lot of construction was going on, and the gate I was supposed to go into was coned off and there was no way in. Someone working at that outbuilding offered to take it to him and communicated with him on his radio right in front of me. Part of me wants to be nice and wonder if this was some kind of language barrier, because this guy was some flavor of immigrant Muslim (I could hear his accent over the radio and, well, his first name made it pretty obvious), but mostly I hate dealing with them, people from India, and sometimes people from Asia, not because of their races or ethnicities but because they seem to have this cultural thing going on that tips are stupid (I don’t think he tipped me, not more than fifty cents or so) or should be as minimal as possible and then — and I’ve seen this working at Quantum too — they will also get attitude at the drop of a hat if they don’t understand what’s happening. Especially if a woman is involved.

It wouldn’t be so bad but Uber considers this a strike against me and I have no idea if that’s permanent. I’m debating contesting it, but Uber doesn’t give a shit. I’m replaceable. And before anyone comes at me with “this is what you get for gig work,” nearly all employers are like that. All that posturing they’re doing about needing workers? They don’t fucking need workers. They need to manage their businesses better and they’re already making plans for robots and AI. Hey, this is the world you wanted. Low, low prices and maximum convenience. This is how you get it. Enjoy. And you can watch my life fall to pieces from the comfort of your fucking phone, eating your cheap food, living in your shoddy LuXuRy ApArTmEnT HoMe where the fake hardwood floor’s already peeling up.

Yes?

Oh well.

Mom called, I think two days ago, while I was out driving and I meant to text her back and flaked. She got hold of me again this evening, this time by text and I wish we had kept it at texting, because she’s super hard to understand now. I am not sure what’s going on there. It’s like she had a stroke or something, except I think she’s still “all there” mentally, or as much as she ever was.

And speaking of that. Apparently her sister Norma has dementia and they’re giving her a few weeks to live. Mom says she fell recently and hasn’t been the same since. I don’t know, I just know I’m not equipped to go home about it and Aunt Norma and I were never close anyway. She was godmother to my brother Chan, who might be upset if he misses the funeral, but given that even he couldn’t be arsed to tell me our brother or grandmother had died when they did, I can’t be arsed either. But it’s weird. She and Mom and Ruth and Ricky seem like they’ve been around forever and I suppose on some level I almost thought of them as invincible. But here we go. Norma’s the oldest. It begins.

And speaking of brothers, for some reason Mom wants to send me one of Chaise’s guitars. I don’t know why she still has them; he died at the end of 2010. But she wants to send me the acoustic. I’ll believe it when I see it, but she now has my address here. I just hope that if she does mail it, it gets here before I move out. Coming back to beg for my dead brother’s guitar would be tremendously awkward. Especially if Elizabeth and I never get the electric-bill situation sorted. My one consolation is that even if I don’t get my new address to my mother in time, the postal service will forward parcels for at least thirty days. I might be okay.

“But you don’t play guitar,” you might be thinking. You are correct, but I’ve been wanting to learn for a long time. Self-teach, at least. I had dabbled in it somewhat when I still lived with Matt. I can’t pay for lessons, but there are library books and YouTube videos. I’ll be fine. Or more likely I’ll do like I did with the keyboard: acquire it and then let it collect dust forever. But it’s all good. I lost the blanket his grandmother made me (we were half-siblings, so she wasn’t my grandmother), but maybe I’ll have something else of his now.

That said. One more thing I fret over and I’m not sure what to do. I know full well one of my problems is I have shitty family ties. With all their faults, I was happiest when I actually kind of got along with my family. That I’ve kind of been kicked aside and forgotten has rankled for a long time. Mom forgets about me a lot even when I am in town, sometimes to a very hurtful degree — and this is unrelated to whatever’s going on with her currently; it dates back decades — but I suppose having unreliable people around who I can at least talk with sometimes would be better than the pretty much no one I have now. And Thea has written me off. So there are times I think about going back home.

I am not sure what the point would be, though. I’ve got no one to stay with, my car’s very likely on its last legs (if not last, certainly second-to-last), I have no idea whether I could even get a job when I got there, I’ve got nowhere to stay (if Mom were single, I’d consider asking her — but her husband creeps me out, for some reason), the bugs… don’t even get me started, and I don’t fancy being in Hurricane Alley. I don’t know.

Maybe I’ll figure it out. Probably I won’t. There’s a reason my life’s a mess.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rent paid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So… No great loss, I guess.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway. Bird sightings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay. Bed.