Updation
Wow! I’ve found yet another thing I love about being back in Arkansas. This brings us to about six things now.
The thing I love today is that I just found out that the library loans out these little mini-notebooks for two hour stretches within the confines of library itself. It also rents out more gargantuan-sized notebooks that you can keep for two week stretches (I’m on the waiting list for one of those). Since I fried my laptop in Ft. Worth, this is all good news indeed. I would also like to mention that this library has a fantastic coffee shop, though you aren’t allowed to bring the mini notebook into the coffee shop area. So I’m sitting up here on the library’s second floor, trying to type on the mini keys of this mini notebook, dreaming of the coffee on the first floor.
I have a break from work, and I thought I’d use the time to catch you up on a few things (@#$&! apostrophe button on this thing is in the most awkward place).
The Living Situation: I’m still at Shanti’s, sleeping on a daybed in the living room. This does not make for much privacy. It does make for celibacy.
I suppose I’ll be here for a few months longer, while I try to save enough for my own place. I still dream of a tiny space with room for art projects and a quiet corner to do some writing. That’s really all I want. Oh, and a washer/dryer, central heat and air and a dishwasher. Nothing more than that. Maybe a fireplace and hardwood floors. That’s it.
(This frickin’ mini notebook is obviously built for elf fingers. Please pardon any typos.)
The Car: It’s spilling oil like the Exxon Valdez.
The Job: When I first arrived back in sunny exciting Arkansas, I picked up a few extra dollars a week cleaning Shanti’s son’s apartment. Then, I started helping him with menu planning and grocery shopping, as “Victor”* is both developmentally disabled and a diabetic. This lead to my being hired permanently by the non-profit agency that recently began helping with his care. I’ve known Victor for many years, and I guess it seemed easier to hire someone he already knew and trusted than to have to start from scratch. I don’t think I have an official title, so I just call myself Victor’s “person.”
The job pays a whopping $9 per hour, a rate that I haven’t seen since my daughter was in diapers. I go in at 7 a.m. and leave at 9 a.m., then return at 3:00 p.m. and work until 9:00 p.m. This weird schedule has to do with meds and appointments and classes (Victor’s, not mine). Frankly, I’m drooling over that six hour gap, because I’m beginning to think that just maybe, I’ll be able to rent one of these little dwarf notebooks and get some writing done a few times a week.
Anyway, I love hanging out with Victor. He’s about my age, and his reality is a lot cooler and more interesting than mine. We discuss James Bond a lot, as well as airplanes, Star Trek, our lack of dating action and the Abba International Fan Club, of which he became an official member on Christmas day. Victor doesn’t understand meanness or cynicism. He hates it when I curse, and one time he called the T.D. Jakes Prayer Line about me because I said the word “crap.”
I’ m not making fun here. I really love Victor. He certainly has no more quirks than I do, they’re just different quirks. For one thing, he has Asberger’s Syndrome. Supposedly, he’s a little below average IQ-wise, but I seldom notice it. He can give detailed information about almost any airplane ever built, he keeps up with me on the exercise bikes at the Y, and his art work is amazing. I love our conversations. The job is like hanging around with my twelve year old brother all day. At his best, Victor is enthusiastic, innocent and sweet. At his worst, he’s paranoid, frustrated and fearful. He’s been in many group homes and dealt with dozens of agencies over the years, and has had many frightening and painful experiences. That all seems to be changing now.
In other work news, I got an ACTUAL WRITING ASSIGNMENT. You know, the kind you get paid for and stuff. It was for a newsletter for some community colleges in another state, and the woman who hired me was happy and said that she looked forward to my future contributions. Thank you, Writing Gods!!!!
Speaking of getting paid for writing, I’d like to thank those of you who’ve made donations to this site, most recently a Texas reader whom I’m sending big hugs to. Thank you for keeping my spirits up, my gas tank full and my incentive more incentivey. I love it that you loved that post…
Oops. The mini notebook meter’s about to expire. Back soon…
*I really do have to work on coming up with better aliases.
Jingle Baby
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Kozy Kwanzaa!
Here are some 1st week photos of my new (and first) grandtot, Tyler Josephine, born December 17th.
She weighed 6 pounds, 13 ounces
and was 19 3/4 inches long.
She arrived via C-section. Her mom seems to like her a lot.
The rest of us are pretty crazy about her too.
Especially Theo, who now has someone his own size to play with.
The Welfare Dog
Yesterday, I went to a “Congratulations, You Finished Rehab” lunch, which, socially, was right on up there with the “My Son’s Going to Prison” barbecue I attended several years ago. Anyway, yesterday we celebrated by feasting on ribs and greens and candied sweet potatoes and apple pie, as the “rehabee” regaled us with the details of detox. It was a lot of fun.
Our hosts were a happy, easygoing couple, longtime friends of the guest of honor. I admired their dog, a strange looking black block of a Chihuahua, who has a habit of greeting guests happily, then snarling and growling threateningly when they try to leave (or move, or eat). He has a face and personality that only a mother could love, if that mother was blind and a little mentally off. He was mean and obnoxious, but very interesting as doggies go, and so I asked his owner how she and her husband had come to acquire him.
Apparently, a few years ago, the couple lived in another city, in a nice big house on a street full of dilapidated small ones. The dog lived across the street with a woman who had a penchant for pot, beer and other recreational drugs.
“That dog was pitiful,” his current owner relayed. “He was always running around loose. That woman didn’t care a thing about him. I kept telling her I’d buy him. ‘I’ll give you a hundred dollars right now,’ I said, but she wouldn’t sell him. So I waited until I knew she had no money or pot or beer, then I went over to her house with fifty dollars in my hand, and she sold him on the spot.”
I laughed at our hostess’s cleverness, and this seemed to encourage her to tell more.
“Yeah, after that, when that woman would see her little dog with me, riding in our Mercedes, she’d say, ‘Little Oreo done went from the poor house to the big house.’ “
It was true. This ugly little dog was now living a charmed life, with owners that loved him and spoiled him and cared. Before, our hostess said, he had a shoestring for a leash and the pothead woman made a sweater for him by cutting off the sleeve of one of her old t-shirts.
“Once, he broke his leg and she set it with a popsicle stick and duct tape.”
By this time, I was almost curled into the fetal position, I was laughing so hard. I kept picturing this little Welfare dog, with his shoestring leash and duct taped leg, hobbling around wearing an old ragged t-shirt sleeve. I was half expecting to hear that he was fed rocks and had a twist tie for a collar. Did he have to walk fifteen miles in the snow to go to obedience school? Did cats make fun of him?
Anyway, he seems to be doing fine now, ordering his people around and growling at strangers when they try to go home. I finally was able to leave, happy to return to Theo the Wonderdog®, who, incidentally, looked quite stylish in his orange hoodie with the fake fur trim
