Friday night/Sat. edit

It is Friday night.  I’ll work tonight (really very early tomorrow morning) delivering the Saturday papers.  It is Friday night for everyone else, but I will be dropping the Saturday papers – this job is rather confusing sometimes.  All the clerks I see in the 24 hour stores think of this as Friday night, but the papers clearly say "Saturday" on them.

All of my papers will come at once tonight.  During the week, the papers are printed for different counties.  I deliver in Multnomah county and in Clackamas county- the pdx and the south routes.  I’ll get all the papers and start in Multnomah county and then go south, unlike the rest of the week, where south is first and then Portland.

***

I will be seeing, as I always do, the sunrise.  It is my favorite time of day, when the colors come back to life and the blacks and grays of night gain color and are reborn.  I’ve always been a nite owl, or rather, a very early morning cat.  I love that time of day- the sky’s colors, the rising dawn, the quiet and the peacefulness of the beginning day.

*

Back in 1983, I was assigned to a ship being built in Bath, Maine.  On my first drive up I-95 from Virginia (where our crew gathered), I stopped in Providence, where K* was going to school.  I had fallen in love with her when I met her in the summer of 81. 

She had stopped in California to visit her Japanese friend Mika, a classmate of mine at the private school I had graduated from the year before (1980).  Mika was living here in the US, near me, and invited me over to meet her friend, K*. 

I had fallen in love then.  K* came to California that year for the holiday season, but she had brought along her "new" boyfriend, and I had been crushed to see that- I joined the Navy.  Well, not only because of that, but to also escape the life I had been living there in Pasadena.

My parents had been dead for 4 years by then, and the estate was not supporting me in any way as it should have.  I was living in the YMCA.  It was cheap, but hopeless. 

My brother meanwhile, because he was "An Artist", was living in a very nice two bedroom apartment, driving a nice Datsun pickup truck, and being fully supported by the estate.  Uncle Dick, the estate’s executor, supported my brother fully like that because he was "An Artist". 

I was nothing to him.  He went through the motions of supporting me – he paid for the Y and gave me fifty bucks a week to eat on.  That was it.  I was VERY resentful, so when my high school buddy asked me if I wanted to join the Navy with him, and the woman I loved had a new boyfriend, I really wanted to escape it all and go away- far away.

K* had stopped in California on her way to Art School, and was living in Providence, going to one of, if not the top, Art Schools in the US.  Providence was on the way to Maine, so I figured I would stop by and say hello. 

By that time, the boyfriend was history, and when K* saw me at her door, she fell into my arms (literally).  The apartment door clicked shut behind her and locked her out, but from that point forward, the locks in her heart were opened, and have never really shut again.

*

That summer, I was in Maine during the week for the ship, but on the weekends, I was in Providence.  I’d leave Bath on Friday afternoons and drive the 200 some miles to Providence and leave there very late on Sunday nights so I could get back to Maine by 7:30 am on Monday.  I saw lots of sunrises driving through Boston and New Hampshire.

I see the same thing now, almost all week, although, I see it in Portland, Oregon, here on the west coast, where I belong.

Sorry everyone, but The West Is The Best.

*

I meant to write this:

I paid what I could of my rent on Wednesday, the fifth – wrote a check for the amount I could afford, and St. Vicent de Paul paid the rest.  My home, and my cat, were saved.  Breaking my foot three weeks ago, I missed a week of work, which destroyed my finances, so I was short of the rent money and needed to ask for charity.

I can access my bank account online, and I see that my check has not been cashed.  I know that if/when it is, that I will have less than 30 dollars left until the 18th.  These are desperate times indeed, so I was planning on going to get some donated food from the Oregon food bank.

I am avoiding panic and despair.  Mostly.  I am resigned to being down and out.

But, they have not cashed my check.  there is far more money in my account that I thought there would be.

I don’t know what to do- I am not as poor as I thought, but if I spend money I don’t think I have, it will get worse.

*

It has been an interesting life.  It is an interesting life.  It will be an interesting life.

Back to work Cat.

*****

edit

Ok, they did cash that check, but I still have 67 dollars- more than I thought I would, so all’s not lost yet.  Good thing, cuz I ran out of Iamms for the cat and even a small bag is 10 bucks.  My foot is feeling pretty good, so instead of driving up to the supermarket, I’m going to walk.  I have two, maybe three days of gas left for deliveries this next week, so I will not spend a cent more than I need to so I can buy the gas I’ll need until next Monday (the 18th) when I will get paid again.

I’m gonna

pray that something works out. 

It will, one way or another.

The bank  won’t loan me any more- got thousand bucks from them awhile back, but almost all of it went into the van (which runs good, right now).  I’ve got very little that I can sell…I’d get maybe, what?  A buck each for my cd’s?  And not enough to be worth it to sell the DVD player and the VCR- when you gotta sell, they buy cheap and you get nothing but a little. very little cash, and to replace ’em is, like, not do-able.

My camera will not be sold.

Unless I have no choice.

Paris Hilton THINKS she’s living the simple life – I KNOW I am.

*****