Good morning, world.
I'm on the couch waiting for the baseboard heaters in this room to heat up. In the meantime I'm sporting a 10-year-old bathrobe (it fits, it doesn't fit, it fits, it doesn't, it fits again but now I can't find the belt. I probably took it off and contemplated hanging myself during the last "doesn't fit" phase), a faded pink tank top with a broken spaghetti string (don't worry: I tied it in a bow and it works fine. A little lopsided, though) and some pajama bottoms with sheep gracing every square inch. My feet are on the ottoman and there's a throw to keep them warm. My slippers were massacred in pooch poop incident on the stair landing a couple of days ago. They're in a tied up bag in the bathroom waiting to be saved. I don't know how to save them, but I don't want to let them go, either. It's tragic when good slippers go bad.
I'd buy more slippers but we have a slight problem: we're broke. I don't mean a little broke, lambs. I mean I have a frightening lack of cash to do groceries with (we'll be eating a lot of sandwiches), some bills are going unpaid (well, for a few days anyway, and they won't be considered "late" yet), there's no money to have any coffee outside the home, and I get a half tank of gas to last until March 8th. Even after all that we'll be in the negatives until April.
Where did that bathrobe belt go?
Alright, alright. It's not as bleak as it seems. As a teenager and young adult, I walked the welfare lines and timeshared a kitchen with a very social cockroach family. When I lived at the downtown YM/YWCA, I knew I had reached my floor by the unique bloodstain pattern on the linoleum outside the elevator. My first apartment with Geekster involved sharing a common hallway with a couple of drug-dealers and their very large rottweiler who had a hate-on for sober tenants. Nutritionally speaking there was always the fear- and often the reality - of subsisting on noodles and canned soup for 30 days straight. The food bank? I knew the location of three, and I used them. I still love macaroni and hot dogs, bologna and mustard on white bread and all those other sodium-packed, vitamin-inept staples of the financially challenged. Maybe this month I'll have an excuse to eat some of them.
So, while I say we're broke right now, I don't mean that we're poor. The Maven likes to keep things in perspective. There's food in the house, two cars in the driveway, satellite reception on three televisions, a cellphone in my pocket and plenty of food in the pantry (which, incidentally, has two broken doors on it, but more on that later). This isn't poor. This is... unpleasant.
Have I mentioned Gutsy's new hearing aids are coming in tomorrow? We're taking a trip into the pretty town of St-Line-De-Credit to pick them up. Le sigh.
The good news is that all this money business has propelled me forward in my soon-to-be lucrative career as a freelance writer.
"Wait a minute, Maven," you interject. "How do you know it's going to be lucrative? There's a lot of competition in writing. What makes you so special?"
Sweet little lamb. It's all very simple. Freelance writing is about two things and only those two things:
1. Writing
2. Whoring your writing
Would you be here if I couldn't write? Would I have three children if I couldn't.... Uh, you get the point.
The money is as good as mine.
Whorishly yours,
The Maven
I'm on the couch waiting for the baseboard heaters in this room to heat up. In the meantime I'm sporting a 10-year-old bathrobe (it fits, it doesn't fit, it fits, it doesn't, it fits again but now I can't find the belt. I probably took it off and contemplated hanging myself during the last "doesn't fit" phase), a faded pink tank top with a broken spaghetti string (don't worry: I tied it in a bow and it works fine. A little lopsided, though) and some pajama bottoms with sheep gracing every square inch. My feet are on the ottoman and there's a throw to keep them warm. My slippers were massacred in pooch poop incident on the stair landing a couple of days ago. They're in a tied up bag in the bathroom waiting to be saved. I don't know how to save them, but I don't want to let them go, either. It's tragic when good slippers go bad.
I'd buy more slippers but we have a slight problem: we're broke. I don't mean a little broke, lambs. I mean I have a frightening lack of cash to do groceries with (we'll be eating a lot of sandwiches), some bills are going unpaid (well, for a few days anyway, and they won't be considered "late" yet), there's no money to have any coffee outside the home, and I get a half tank of gas to last until March 8th. Even after all that we'll be in the negatives until April.
Where did that bathrobe belt go?
Alright, alright. It's not as bleak as it seems. As a teenager and young adult, I walked the welfare lines and timeshared a kitchen with a very social cockroach family. When I lived at the downtown YM/YWCA, I knew I had reached my floor by the unique bloodstain pattern on the linoleum outside the elevator. My first apartment with Geekster involved sharing a common hallway with a couple of drug-dealers and their very large rottweiler who had a hate-on for sober tenants. Nutritionally speaking there was always the fear- and often the reality - of subsisting on noodles and canned soup for 30 days straight. The food bank? I knew the location of three, and I used them. I still love macaroni and hot dogs, bologna and mustard on white bread and all those other sodium-packed, vitamin-inept staples of the financially challenged. Maybe this month I'll have an excuse to eat some of them.
So, while I say we're broke right now, I don't mean that we're poor. The Maven likes to keep things in perspective. There's food in the house, two cars in the driveway, satellite reception on three televisions, a cellphone in my pocket and plenty of food in the pantry (which, incidentally, has two broken doors on it, but more on that later). This isn't poor. This is... unpleasant.
Have I mentioned Gutsy's new hearing aids are coming in tomorrow? We're taking a trip into the pretty town of St-Line-De-Credit to pick them up. Le sigh.
The good news is that all this money business has propelled me forward in my soon-to-be lucrative career as a freelance writer.
"Wait a minute, Maven," you interject. "How do you know it's going to be lucrative? There's a lot of competition in writing. What makes you so special?"
Sweet little lamb. It's all very simple. Freelance writing is about two things and only those two things:
1. Writing
2. Whoring your writing
Would you be here if I couldn't write? Would I have three children if I couldn't.... Uh, you get the point.
The money is as good as mine.
Whorishly yours,
The Maven