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2005-01-29 @ 11:16 p.m. |
So what are you guys wearing while you're reading this? I'd love to know. I'm still wearing my gym clothes from today. A light turquoise wife-beater which accentuate my small but exquisite breasts (oh witty, they're only exquisite if you squint). Black cotton pants which I'm realizing are too damn big. And a sports bra. Oh, did I forget to mention panties? Well, so I did. :-) My legs are really sore. I'm really pushing myself on the treadmill. My mother keeps getting alarmed when I tell her my heart rate is at say 114. And I'm like, Mom, having my heart rate at 114 is saving my life, not ending it. because ya see, she doesn't understand the concept of exercising. She thinks bending over to pick up an errant donut crumb off the rug is a form of aerobics. I mean this whole exercise thing is new to me. I've always been a person who walks, but suddenly I'm a person who is checking out their heart rates and calories being burned on a large metallic machine. And let me tell you, I'm even starting to eye those machine where you wrap your thighs around the metal bar thingies and lift weights. Can you imagine? Soon I will be cracking walnuts with my bare thighs. Soon I will be The Thigh-man-nator. I really do need activity though. Because when I'm not "engaged", I'm usually on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. I came close to having one of those yesterday. I met my first client. I've had this job for nearly three months now and I was supposed to get my first client in mid-December. What is this? Nearly February? But in reality, even though I've wanted the paycheck, I've never actually wanted to do the job. I mean, meeting with actual human beings and being their support systems. heh, heh. Me being someone's support system. I can't even be my own support system most of the time. I feel like a fake. So I met with my boss Friday morning. She is in such terrible shape health wise. Just terrible. She was off from mid-December to mid-January. And even now when I stop at her office she's rarely there. When I got there, she was absolutely cringing in pain. Besides emphysema, she also has severe back and neck pain. Her discomfort was making me uncomfortable, because she was making so many pain noises as we were getting ready to go to the client's house. I finally asked if she had taken anything for the pain (yeah, a dumb question, but I had to ask). She said she had taken two muscle relaxants, a codeine, and two Tylenol. Whoa! So I then gallantly offered to drive. Maybe I was a little afraid to ride with someone who was so loaded on meds. Ya think? I'm a little nervous anyways, but she said no, because it was too hard for her to get in the passenger side of the car. Darn. I had actually also hoped to drive because she's a heavy smoker and I knew getting into her car was going to be like getting into an ashtray on wheels. And I was right. As soon as I got in, I realized there were cigarette ashes everywhere, not to mention a cigarette smashed out in a soda can on the dashboard. And then as soon as she got in, she asked if it was ok if she smoked and I gave her a big N-O on that Good Buddy. Absolutely not. I felt like saying, not only for me, but for yourself my good woman. You've got emphysema. Doesn't that not mean anything to you? Like imminent death? So we drove to the client's apartment. I was all jumpy in the car. Partially because I was nervous about meeting the client and also because I thought a car was running a red light and we were going to die. When we got there, my boss groaned. It was in a second floor apartment and by time she reached the second level, she was nearly in cardio-arrest, panting and wheezing and shaking. I kinda felt like I was with MY MOM, because that's pretty much how she acts after a flight of stairs. So I met the girl. She seems really somber and I had a hard time coming up with conversation. She had all her curtains drawn. And it was sunny out and I felt like saying, "hey, that could be why you're depressed, you've got all your curtains drawn on a sunny day!" But I decided to pipe down since it was our first meeting and I didn't want her to tell me to fuck off just yet. After I got back to the office my boss asked me if I could make a poster for one of our support groups. Yay! That's really the only fun I have on this job. When I get to do what I used to do for a living. Graphic design. So I just made a basic poster and printed it out on our color printer. Man, I love that color printer. I've never had access to one of those before. They are so nice. After I got home I got the most amazing piece of mail. Three and a half years ago after I applied for something called Section Eight, which is government assistance towards my rent, I finally heard from them. It's been a long, long wait. When I had originally moved into this apartment, which is actually too expensive for my budget, I had hoped I was very, very close to getting the funding. But then the funding started drying up (thanks Bush) and then the list completely stopped moving several months ago. And it had stopped at the people who applied TWO WEEKS before me. Fuck! So I had pretty much given up ever getting any help. And its been rough financially. I've basically lived on about $200/month for the last 4 years. And that's for everything. Electricity, phone, AOL, insurance, everything not covered by food stamps, everything for my car. And I've only survived because of food pantries, occasional graphics jobs, and lots of invitations to dinner from my mom and Married Guy. So suddenly I have this letter from Section 8, saying I have to complete all this paperwork within 10 days and then they'll probably help. So what did I do? Total meltdown. But shouldn't you be happy and excited about this latest development, witty? Well, yes. But I wasn't. I've been under a lot of pressure lately. Having this little P/T job has been good, but it has also been potentially affecting some of my health benefits. And my mother has been trying to get me to quit my job, since she thinks my health benefits are more important than working 3 hours a week for $8/hr. On some days I agree, and on some days I don't. I guess I'm really confused. As usual. I then wrote an e-mail about the length of "War and Peace" to my case manager and entitled it Angst Alert. I guess I'm somehow afraid that my little P/T job will somehow make me ineligible for Section Eight. And I've been waiting 3 1/2 years for that son-of-a-bitch and I just don't want to lose it. And naturally with all the Goddess d' PMS powered sobbing, I also had to shove in about ten minutes worth of Married Guy angst. He's always good for at least 10 minutes a day worth of crying...still. I even managed to have a dream about him and kidlet last night, which had me waking up sad and weepy today. But my mom decided I had snap out of it and she started talking about all the apartments I've lived in. She thinks I should write a book about them. I am what you could call a Serial Apartment Mover. I've lived in almost 30 apartments in my life and almost every one of them have had some kind of hellacious apartment living horror story attached to them. And my mom kept saying "And you could write about them and make it funny, even though they were tragic...ha ha ha." heh...kinda like my diary....that nobody knows about...heh.... We talked on the phone for over two hours. It took nearly that long just to remember all my apartments and their idiosyncrasies. I'd actually like to move from here, if I get Section Eight. This place is okay, but its very tiny and in the summer, I am tortured by the earth shattering rumblings of a giant medical building air conditioning unit right next to my bedroom. It goes on and off about 30,000 times a day and literally drives me insane. I can't even open my windows in the summer, because its so loud. But of course that takes money, which I don't have, and I don't know anyone who I can borrow from. I'd really like to move back over to the East side of town again though. I really liked it out there. Almost everything I do, is on that side of town. "A" is over there. The gym is over there. The yuppie grocery store. My two favorite places to hike. Married Guy used to be an excuse to live on that side of town too, but I guess that's a moot point now. But I like it over there, because its more wooded and hilly and its just a nicer part of town, with the kind of people I like to associate with. After I finally hung up from my mom, I got a call from UPS. It seems they were unable to find my house on Friday to deliver a certain package. And I was so mad, because this package had things in it that vibrate and stuff. :-) So I had to give the woman a detailed description of where my house LITERALLY was located. And I was like, my God UPS, I live in an actual house...as in you can see it from the road....as in it has big street numbers on it...as in ITS A FREAKIN' HOUSE fer chrissakes!!! For a brief time, even though they called me a 7:40 p.m. I really thought that some studly UPS man would make a mid-evening delivery to me, and I was pacing my living room waiting. But it didn't happen. And then I wondered...gee, do they deliver on Saturday? So, for one brief night, I actually slept in a night gown because I was afraid if some UPS guy rang my doorbell really early, I might be too rattled to find the proper combination of clothing to answer the door in. But that didn't happen either. And then I waited around until almost 1 p.m. for the UPS guy to arrive, and he never did, so I not only missed the matinee showing of "Sideways", I also realized I probably won't be seeing my vibrating box until Monday. Argghh!! And then I realized, hey, maybe that's the problem. All the eligible men of the universe ...just...can't...find...my...house. Older Entries |
Lyrics by Lennon/McCartney. All angst copyright by awittykitty |
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