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2006-11-09 @ 7:49 p.m.
just when you think you have it bad....


So I had my job interview yesterday. Yup. Ever have one of those interviews where the next day you still don't know if you were totally cool or a total flake? Well, that's kinda how I'm feeling today.

In preparation for the interview I went to their website and it was very nice. I hit all the links. Saw all the info. They even had pictures of their employees which I thought was pretty cool. So I was ready for the question, "What do you know about our company?" Oh plenty, baby! Plenty! Okay, so I've only shopped there once. But dang, what an awesome website! I guess that was a fairly good answer. I don't shop there mainly because a bar of soap made from the essence of feng shui organic coconut blessed by a zen high priest during a full moon costs $21. I'm more of a Dollar Store Girl ya see.

She then asked how I thought I would fit in. First of all, Aquarians don't really fit in anywhere. We're basically square pegs in a world full of round holes, but I played along. Okay, not really, I had to think fast and come up with some half ass, yet wise answer about how my essence would somehow surely enmesh with "The Others" and how our biorhythms would surely all be in sync and how after work we'd get together and play "Twister" except instead of the usual colored balls it would be multi-colored Gandhi's heads. Can you imagine that? "Right foot Gandhi head RED!"

So by then she was kind of looking at me like I was a total Granola-Head. The secret is...heh...I'm not. I only play one on TV. So I tried to change the slant of the conversation slightly by tellingl her I was also an artist and most of my friends were artists and the people out in the store, were...I don't know.... "of my tribe".
bullshit alert.....whoop, whoop, whoop!

To be honest, I don't know who "my tribe" is. I think they left me in the middle of the night and took off for Lake Donner or something, because I still wasn't sure if she was buying it. She then at least took my cue and said she could never do art and finally hit upon something I'm good at. Pumping people up. I did it at my old job. I'm the master at it. I told her that anyone could do art and that there's no such thing as a mistake in art. She liked that. She then asked me the deadly question, "If you have all these talents and skills, why are you applying for a cashier job?"

Ummmm....errrr.....ahhhhh.


I just told her I was coming back from being on disability and getting back into the work force. I also told her I had some physical limitations and explained my inability to stand a full 8 hour day. I figured it was probably best to be honest...especially after my last job fiasco, and we kind of left it at that.

Afterwards, since it was only an hour away from my art class, I just went to Panera's on the Boulevard for dinner. I had a coupon good for a $8.99 crispani pizza for free and it was delicious! Panera's is like a total yuppie outpost. My brother always like to say "its where the beautiful people meet." I did feel a little naked being the only person in the entire place without a brand new MAC laptop snapped open on the table. I know. My bad! But hey, I'm a food stamp chick eating a free pizza from a coupon....so back off.

Charlemagne was hosting our art class. I keep telling him to call if he needs help, because our new intern never arrives early enough to help him set up, which is, well, kind of her job. So he was his usual manic self, running around tossing furniture asunder. And we had one of those tediously boring 9 foot tall models who weighs about 83 pounds. She kinda looked like Doogie Howser with nipples...poor girl.

It was just the usual night. I chatted with "L" the Hippie Chick, Zue gave me dating advice, Charlemagne, when he pulled out some rope from the staging area, looked at me and said, "Do you want me to use THIS on you?"

"YES, a thousand times yes!!" said the sad, lonely 48 year old woman, whose ambitions to get tied up by a muscular French Guy keeps falling on deaf ears.

Afterwards Sci Fi Guy and Charlemagne got into this weird game called "Special Delivery", although Charlemagne was not exactly a willing participant. Do you know what it is? Its where you come up behind someone and give them a singularly powerful upward karate chop to the twigs and berries area from behind. I watched in amazement as Sci Fi Guy chased Charlemagne around the room. It was so juvenile. And I was strangely protective of Charlemagne's berries for some reason.

And then just when we were leaving a woman that several people seemed to know, came in and asked to use the bathroom. By then it was nearly 11 p.m. She finally came out and told us she was homeless and had no place to stay. She told us her story for a while. Sci Fi Guy and "L" finally left, but Charlemagne and I stayed, trying to figure out how to help her. We suggested the local Salvation Army, the women's shelter, SROs, the lobby of the hospital. She wanted to check into the local ER loony bin, but we both nixed that idea, since that place isn't fun.

Fifteen minutes later? witty is driving with a homeless woman in my car. Yup. She said she had a person she could ask to stay at their house. I usually wouldn't do this and as we were walking to my car, I tossed off the fact that I had just spent my last $8 on my art class, as in I don't have any money to rob, lady. Was that wrong? Don't really know the homeless-woman-in-your-car-at-midnight protocol.

So I drove her to the first person's house. They said no. I then asked where to. She asked if I could take her back downtown to a certain coffee shop. Driving there she said she needed to go to this medical center out in The Village in the morning. Oy! So I told her I lived out in the Village and we turned around. Wasn't sure if the Medical Center would be open, since rich people generally don't get sick after midnight, and I was right.

While we were driving, I was telling her about all the services available at the place where I used to work. We even had case managers who only dealt with homeless people. I also gave her a list of things to do to straighten out a missing SSI check and to get some safe housing. She kept calling me her angel. I felt bad for her. I finally ended up leaving her off at the yuppie grocery store where I just worked. They're open 24 hours a day. I figured she could sit in their cafe and hopefully they wouldn't toss her out since it was raining. She wasn't real raggedy looking.

When I got home around 1:10 a.m. there were 5 messages on my answering machine. My mom was wigging out. And then she called like immediately. When I told her what I did...driving a homeless person around looking for a place to go, she went ballistic. She said, "But you're scared of everything!!!!!"

True. But I also have this thing where I put myself in other people's places and I can't imagine what it would be like to be homeless at midnight and not having anywhere to go and having a bunch of people standing around saying, "No, you can't crash at my house. Sorry." I mean, I wouldn't necessarily have a stranger sleep at my house, but I wasn't about to drive away leaving someone standing in the rain.

I guess it just made me appreciate my life, though somewhat poverty-stricken, a little bit better.


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