They keep you awake at night when you’d rather sail off to dreamland, I know nothing about them because sleep comes to me only when I’m too tired to keep my eyes open. This is not an essay about your furnace turning on at 1:48 am, the branch blowing against your window just before the first sliver of light appears on the eastern horizon or the mouse wending its way home just above your bedroom ceiling as you lie unwelcomely awakened, staring at nothing in particular. This is about things that go bump in my day, which keep me out of the mainstream of life and distracted to my profound dismay.
I MUST FIND AN EMPLOYER. The interest alone on my Circuit City and J.C. Penney accounts is eating me alive. I’ve had to pay my 2005/2006 Ameren/CILCO bill plus the current bill — about $400 a month — and that means that I’ve not made a payment to the roofing contractor and air conditioning repair people since Decenber, and I’ve not made a full payment to either since last August. I went from last April to October with no heat and hot water because Ameren disconnected it. They reinstated it only when I agreed to their payment plan. Even today I go down to the water heater to turn it from low to high heat only when it’s time for a shower, and back to low afte rthat. I’m resigned to ASKING for them to disconnect me this April because I’ll be damned if I want to pay to keep my water heater’s pilot light on during warm weather. I spent half of last year blending a gallon pot of boiling water from my electric stove with three or so inches of cold water from the tub faucet to take the shallowest baths you ever saw. My friends didn’t seem to know the difference so it must have worked okay. This circumstance goes bump in the day as I administrate the web pages, including a half a bleeping day spent correcting an arts web page I thought I had finished and didn’t get to a journalistic commitment because of the diversion. Facing this grim prospect is a thing that goes bump in my day.
My teeth look like a white picket fence. I must find a dentist who can help cheap. I cannot substitute teach if things get worse. Reciting poetry, singing my songs: out of the question if one more tooth checks out of my upper palate.. Hell, I may stop going out at all.
BUMP . . . . .BUMP. . . . .BUMP . . . .
I MUST FIND AN EMPLOYER. Real estate taxes are due soon. I came within less that 24 hours of having my tax bill put up for auction last September because I was so late paying the bill. I will not have the resources for the first payment this year that I had for the final payment last year. Solution? I think I can save myself the bother of asking the Republican National Committee for a loan. The answer must come from an employer.
BUMP . . . . BUMP . . . . .
Compared with the above, not being able to use my kitchen sink since July 2005 seems laughable . . . . . . . . BUMP . . . . . and I’ve done okay withoutout a microwave oven which broke last month . . . . BUMP. . . . . I had hoped to really get rolling with the journalistic piece slated for weeks away, but a local politico asked me to give him some feedback regarding his new web site before it’s uploaded from development mode to the web. He will pay well, but I’m feeling rotten about poor progress with the journalistic pursuit and I won’t get to that until Thursday at the earliest because I’ve been blessed with a sub teaching assignment Wednesday. . . . .BUMP . . . . . Time management is a challenge some weeks. I’ve been lucky in March. Shaved my Lincoln beard off Monday morning. I want to eliminate the possibility that a potential employer would not hire me because of the beard. I’m NOT a frikking hippie; never wanted to be. . . . . . BUMP . . . . BUMP
What I’m saying is that if an employer turns me down, I don’t want it to be because of the beard. I want it to be because I have Jack-O-Lantern teeth, I may be setting up housekeeping in a refrigerator crate and because I can’t write worth a damn! That’s a fair enough expectation, don’t you . . . . . . . . .BUMP . . . . think?
Live long . . . . . and proper.
