Tuesday, June 23, 2015

I AM TIRED

I'm having a blue day.

Nothing specific has happened, per se, but it feels like the world has just gone to boogers and lately it feels like just existing in it is a chore.

Don't worry, I'm not about to off myself or anything, but seriously, if I had a real opportunity to just unplug from everything and hide for a while, I think I'd take it.  The big problem with that is I'd eventually have to come back to it all.  You can't really hide from it. 

I know a lot of this stems from the fact that I had a very sheltered life for a very long time.  When you are safe in your own home, with people who care about you, you don't have to think about it. It's easy to forget/ignore the homeless, the mentally ill, the poverty, the neediness, the lonely, the sick, the children who's parents don't care about them or that abuse them, the racism, the sexism, the dishonest, the violated and the violence. Technically, I still live a very sheltered life, since I'm (thank God) not actually experiencing these things first hand.  I see it at work a lot these days, though, and it scares me. It's constant. People come to the church all the time with their hands out, sometimes they are legit and other times they are scamming us, but all of them have sad, pitiful stories. I don't believe most of them anymore, because I'm getting so cynical, but that doesn't mean I'm immune to them.  There are enough of them that are true.  There are days when I feel like I'm trapped under a big, heavy blanket and it's smothering me. The really bad part  is that I'm not even dealing with the biggest part of things, I'm just in the wings.

You can do things to try and help, but it doesn't feel like it makes much of a difference.  Sometimes it feels like the ugliness is winning. 

Thursday, June 11, 2015

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) At the end of last month, I had to go to my doctor's office to get a prescription refilled.  I was literally only in the office for about 10 minutes (which was way less than I thought I'd be in there) and I was so glad, because I wanted to get breakfast before I had to go to work and I didn't want to be late.  However, when I got down to my car, the battery had died. I was going to be late after all.  Boo.   I had to call AAA to come and deal with it.  Well, I called Steve first so that he could come and rescue me, but he reminded me that we are members of AAA and we kind of pay for them to come and do this kind of thing, so I called them.  Whatever.

Anyway,  when they got there, it turned out that my battery wasn't just dead, it was really-most-sincerely-dead.  It had apparently had enough of a charge to turn on my radio earlier, but not enough to hold a charge and keep it, if all they did was jump it off.  So I agreed to let them put a new battery in my car.  It wasn't cheap, but I figured that it would be worth the money if my car didn't die while I was at work and trap me in the ghetto with no one to help me!  I was so pissed off at my stupid car!  It's been giving me trouble for years.  Not bad enough trouble to get a new car, but there were strange electronic hiccups and bits falling off of it all the time.  I was ready to drop-kick the entire car into the ocean, but before I could do that, I'd need a battery to drive it there. When they pulled out the old battery, it actually turned out that my POS car wasn't as much of a POS as I thought.  Although I'd been having issues with my car always doing something strange, it wasn't the car, it was the battery.  The battery hadn't been changed since 2006, when we'd bought the car.  All those alarms going off, indicator lights flashing, and the car turning itself off at red lights had been my battery slowly dying.  I credit my car for somehow managing to work, albeit with the problems it had, but all the while doing it with a battery that was flickering in and out of consciousness.  That battery had worked longer than any the AAA guy had ever seen.  So, I'd like to publicly apologize to Lois, my car, who I verbally abused for reasons that were not her fault. Sorry, Lois.

2) Have I mentioned that I hate this part of the year?  It's like the whole world goes crazy.  Not zombie apocalypse crazy, but just crazy enough to unsettle me until July or so. Maybe I just hate June. Bad things sometimes happen in June. I'm ready for June to be over.

3) I finally got my permanent crown!  Yay!  It's actually much better than my old crown, which felt like it was a size bigger than any of my other teeth.  I didn't have to be sedated to have the new one put in, thank goodness, but it was still unpleasant.  They accidentally cemented my new crown to the tooth next to it, and then spent 15 painful minutes trying to break the cement with dental floss.  They kept pushing down hard and snapping the floss, and when they finally broke through it, I think that they damaged the tooth it was cemented to because it's been almost 10 days and it still hurts to chew on that side. You guys know how much I like to eat, so chewing is important.  At any rate, I have the new crown, and it looks nice!  It'll also make it that much easier to identify my body in case I'm murdered and discovered months later in a shallow grave!  Silver linings!

4) Well, I managed to look wildly racist this morning, so that was fun.  We have a rule that, because of the neighborhood the church is in, I am not allowed to let people inside the church while I'm here alone unless I know them.  That probably seems like common sense, but that rule hasn't always been in place.  We have people that often come here asking for help.  I used to let them in to hear them out, but after some people at a church across town were killed doing the exact same thing, the rule was created. So this morning our doorbell rang and it was three black men asking for help.  I told them, through the speaker, that someone would be with them in a second, but then remembered that I was here all alone. I'd forgotten the pastor was dropping someone off somewhere, so I went to the door myself and they asked if anyone could give them a ride.  I knew our pastor would do it (he's cool like that) but I knew I couldn't let them in.  I had to tell them that I couldn't let them in, which made me feel about in inch tall, but they seemed understanding about it. They all stayed outside. While they were outside waiting, one of our church members - a white lady- rang the doorbell and I didn't think twice about letting her in.  It wasn't until I was unlocking the door that I realized how it looked.  So, you know, now I'm probably the racist lady who works at the church.  Great.

5) Sorry if I sound glum.  I've had a really weird week.  It has made me tired.