Monday, January 4, 2016

#ROW80 1ST QTR 2016 – POST1 – GOALS

This is gonna be one of those “goals, schmoals” kinda posts, because Jim died last May, and other than playing in the symphony, practicing and playing lots and lots of Runescape and making sure I have a viable clan (we will be eleven years old this month), I just really haven't felt like doing a whole hell of a lot of anything. I know that grieving takes time and that we all grieve in our own way, but this is a bit different.

Jim was not the love of my life, nor had we been together all that long, but he was a dear and cherished friend; someone I met when I was homeless and we took damned good care of one another. We recognized the humanity in one another, although we were worlds apart. He came from a very bucolic and rough background; worked all his life and could barely read, but he had common sense and compassion. A rarity seen in this world. He had been treated very badly by his spouse and ended up in a place he never belonged and had no way to cope with it. He was healthy enough when I met him, but there was a deep sadness there, we all could see. All I could do was mitigate it for him and make his final days, days of fun and laughter and let him know that he had friends around him who did love him.

When someone close to you dies, I don't think you can't help but reflect on all the other losses in your life and there have been so many in mine. I am alone, and there are times when I think I cannot bear the loss of one more friend, one more acquaintance, see the name of someone I may have known tangentially without completely losing it, but I'm not built that way, just as I am not built to knuckle under to any kind of force, or sickness, or malaise or illness of the mind. I am so much like my mother, but on steroids, in that sense. I possess strengths I didn't even know I had; but, I am alone. As was my mother. So, I guess it is how we are made and our destiny. The fault lies in our stars.

For my part? I was treated horribly, as has been discussed in this blog by an ex-husband, when I was at the very least, at my most vulnerable. Screaming at me to "get a goddamned job!" when I was totally blind, with congestive heart failure, I had to endure his horrendous insults, making no secret of the fact that he had a girl friend and accusing me of murdering a sick and dying feline. This is just the tip of that ice berg. I fled the home, knowing that I would have to in all likelihood take a lesser settlement. I still cannot see well enough to drive and although I can play, I cannot play as much as I would like to, because I cannot drive. I have a motor disorder, likely exacerbated by his treatment, akin to PTSD and my life is diminished due to his greed and his need to stick his dick in any old thing. The irony is that Bill Nunnally works in a Social Worker-type environment for Teri Saunders at HeartlandforChildren.org, yet he will have little to do with the “clients”. When he was interning, I did much of the running around to see the young girls when they were released. You forgot about that, didn't you, Lithia?

I have no agenda in releasing all of this information other than setting the record straight. I had my faults as well. I drank too much. Who wouldn't. That shit ended, when I left the homestead, but I never pretended to be something I wasn't. But this post isn't about that; it's about goals.

Right now, I'm not sure, where I am. I have been editing the original posts that I wrote for “Homeless Chronicles in Tampa” when I created the blog and I would like to publish those as an e-book. I've thought about dabbling in some fiction, but that is hard for me, and I'm not really creative enough to come up with some of these great plots, like Alex Cavanaugh, orJemima Pett or Damyanti G. So, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I do know that I need to write more, as I did in the early days of #ROW80, when Andi-Roo first suggested I get into this, so I'm going to go back to what works.


Write a post a day, see what happens. It can't help but sharpen my writing craft and maybe along the way, I'll come up with some ideas for flash fiction or something. Who knows? 

Friday, January 1, 2016

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM NEBRASKA AVE, 33605, 33602

                      courtesy:youtube.com 


Here in the Land of Nod (by which I mean, the nodding junkies at the bus stops), we have much to celebrate, and even if we didn't, we'd celebrate anyway, 'cause that's what we do down here in da 'hood! We are gifted this year with the Perfect Storm of 1) Pay day (on the 31st, rather than the 3rd, as that falls on a Sunday, and the 1st is a Holiday and Federal Law dictates we be paid on or before the 3rd), 2) New Year's Eve on a Thursday, 3) Friday is New Year's Day and 4) there are still 2 whole days to celebrate/shoot up/become comatose/whore/pimp/drink/commit various crimes/ and shoot lots and lots of guns, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I've probably left out a few things, but, you get the picture.

Me? I ran like hell to the bank on Thursday, got my rent money, a few items to tide myself over until Monday, and prepared to wait out the siege. I was not disappointed. I shut off the living room that is the front part of the house, and kept Mama and I in the back. I figured I could count the bullet holes in the wall come daylight. This house is basically held together by many layers of paint, seeing as how the termites ate every viable piece of wood ages ago, so I'm pretty sure even with oh, say, 197 coats of paint on this fucker, it's not going to stop an AK-47 round, every celebrant's go-to choice of noisemaker around here. Someone once suggested we “pressure wash” the thing, and we all fell down laughing. Only if one wants to make it easier for the peeping toms and voyeurs.

The other great thing about da 'hood is they don't just celebrate New Year's Eve. They celebrate the 54th of January, too. Just a while ago, I heard a “pop-poppoppop-pop...pop” and then “oops!” I did not go to see what the “oops” was. No one started shrieking and there were no sirens and helicopters, so, it couldn't have been very dire.

Tomorrow, I'll get up early, tear into some Mendelsohn, while everyone nurses a hangover, or is still drunk, as the symphony starts again come Tuesday. In the meantime, Happy New Year, everyone, from my 'hood to yours!