Good and…(later)

"Good" and quite possibly "oh shit!".

Good because I woke up, got in the car, and drove up to North Portland to get a free flu shot. I saw the news the other night, and people are dying in other states – the west coast looks fairly good, flu-wise, but in other parts of the US, hospitals have tents set up in the parking lot because so many people are sick and going to the emergency room.

(Mitt Romney should be proud. He said in the campaign that poor/uninsured people could "always go to the emergency room". Of course that is the most expensive health care around, and so maybe he owns a lot of hospital stock)

I saw the news and thought I should get the shot this year. I don’t get it every year, I’m pretty healthy, but omg, watching the news made me think, "well, better safe than sorry" and I googled "free flu shot Portland OR" last night. As it happens, free shots are being given out today in Columbia Villa, a Housing Authority complex.

I wrote a story set there.

Columbia Villa. I took a charter bus there in 2011, with Housing people from elsewhere in the country – I guess it’s a kind of showplace now, but 25 years ago, it was not a good place. Driving there today, in my little car, I ended up going the same way I did in the bus, and omg, how dim was I then??? It was tight in my CAR; I can’t believe I took a full size bus down some of those roads and didn’t hit anything.

( the bus did brush a mirror on a truck and folded it forward, but I pretended I didn’t see it. Bus driving was NOT a good job for me and I’m grateful I didn’t screw up worse on that job )

I drove from SE to N Portland, and ended up in the wrong place at first, because although I had written down the address from online, the address I put into my GPS was based on memory, which was WRONG, and I ended up miles away from where I thought I was going. Kind of a tour of North Portland… It was either that or get pissed at myself, but after 14 15 years of dealing with the effects of the brain injury in 98, I have learned it’s far better to laugh and start over than it is to get mad at myself. I’d get lost without the GPS in unfamiliar places, but you have to enter the right address to get to that place you think you’re going.

There was no line at the shot clinic, and the old guy giving the shots and I had a nice conversation – I didn’t even feel the needle, and now I have some protection against a few of the strains of flu out there. I "told" the GPS to take me home, and by golly, those things do give you a tour, don’t they? Supposedly, it gave me the "fastest route" (or maybe I have it set for most fuel-efficient route) and took me through places I haven’t seen before on my way home.

Ok. Well. I’m getting close to home and I figured that I might as go pick up the anti-depressant prescription I dropped off last night, and drove on down to Milwaukie to get it. And drove right past the store and two more miles down the road before I figured out I missed it. Doh!

I was still laughing at myself, thank god, and turned around and drove north again and found the Fred Meyers I had dropped the script at. Fred Meyers is a BIG retailer and there’s no excuse for driving right by it – "you can’t miss it". Except I did. ha ha ha, dumb cat.

I had dropped of that prescription the night before and it should have been all ready for me.

Note, please, that "should have been". They couldn’t find it. I had to laugh, really laugh, and told the clerk, "well, that’s appropriate – it’s a new anti-depressant for me, ha ha ha".

(people respond much better to the happy, laughing cat than they do to the hissing and snarling cat, I’ve found)

They couldn’t find my filled script, so gave up and made another batch of pills for me – and then found the original script. Some more confusion ensued when they asked me to pay for it.

"Umm, VocRehab is paying for it for me – I gave you all the paper work last night…"

That got cleared up, finally, with some more laughter by me – it was either that or snarl and bitch and moan and be a bad cat, and that would ruin many people’s day, and I guess I’m on the manic side of this mental illness thing, because even though I was laughing and joking about it, they were still looking at me kind of funny.

There really was and is brain damage SS guys, pay a fucking tention. I look ok, mostly, but I’m not.

***

Ok, so all of that was the "good" but you know there’s more to it, don’t you.

Unemployment did NOT come today. A letter says "we can’t pay you, please call"

OH SHIT

Kind of perfect timing for this anti-depressant stuff, isn’t it. This is not a good place to be homeless. It rains and snows, sometimes, and the temps at night are life-threatening. I hope this stuff kicks in soon, because the humor has gone out of my day and I’m looking at losing everything, what little I have.

I have less than 150 dollars, all together and the things I have in this apartment.

Maybe I have too much and the universe is correcting that error.

That Unemployment number they gave me is always busy; no one answers because it never rings. The other "toll free number " "is not in service".  The more I think about it, the worse I feel….

Good and not so good and isn’t life an adventure?

***

later

The employment dept. did not answer their phone until after the end of the business day and when they did, I had to push buttons on the phone but never spoke to a person – "Call back before the 18th", the phone said and hung up.

It may be that I am totally without income now.

I kind of wish those anti-depressants had been prescribed last week, so they would be working by now.  I guess I’ll have to face this alone.

It’s "Oh Shit" time.

 So my world ends with a whimper, not a bang.

by the way, I used up more than half an hour of phone time.  All those calls to a busy number are counted as a minute each, so that eradicated a lot of my 250 minutes a month.

Cue whimpering sounds

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