Happy death day to my gram
1999 - 2026
27 years ago today
4:07pm
Library
I spent almost the entire afternoon trying to get stuff so I could eat more cheaply the rest of the month. I feel incredibly stressed out and stupid. I was just feeling better for a moment and now I'm stressed again.
I had a good morning - there's a repair person at the day shelter and they fixed my cart. Apparently the thing was made with rivets instead of bolts, and the rivets are held on with extreme pressure. They put a new screw through the wheel and bolted it - the chopstick I had stuck in there helped the wheel turn but made the cart feel like it weighed 1,000 pounds.
I left the day shelter feeling cherry and got to the library out of breath and exhausted - even with the new wheel. I don't think it's the cart's fault - I'm still getting stronger and used to doing physical activity again.
I think I made good choices with the stuff I bought but it's hard to calculate. I'll have to wait to say for sure - I guess I could do an "unboxing" stream today. Something new.
My brain is just screaming : are you sure that was the right stuff? Maybe you should have waited. Yes they sounded like a good deal, and were less expensive than the other option, but are you sure you needed that most? And then I imagine myself using the stuff and feeling so much better. I needed other things too that will have to wait. I already have some naproxen, I still have some tiger/bobcat balm. I could have bought a USB heating pad maybe, but I slept with my coat last night and that worked out fine. I'm worried about having food, especially on the days when there's no day shelter time. I found a place with a microwave but I needed my own bowl to cook stuff in. I think it will make my life better everyday if I could just eat more food - and less sugar. Go back to my mostly ramen diet and eat the salads at the day shelter. It is awesome that they have PB&J for dinner and usually muffins for breakfast at the night shelter but all that sugar is fucking with me. I think it does something puffy to my face as well.
So yeah, ramen, instant potatoes, cheese, some kind of hot sauce. Solid gold.
I have plenty of bras, underwear, socks - clean now too thanks to the laundry machines at the day shelter.
I have a week's worth of clothes and if I shower every other day then I can change my outfit often enough - it's pretty much the same thing in different patterns but I love it so whatever.
I could have bought glue to fix my umbrella - just remembered - but it's okay. It will hold out for tonight. I still have $10 in walmart cash too - I will need more tiger balm and cocoa butter and peppermint soap in week probably.
I really want to take this medical specialist class at PCC but it's $2,000. I asked the day shelter if they might be able to help me out and they said they needed to talk about it.
It's weird to see classes offered the same way you'd pay for anything else online - but I would love to just know what they teach people in the class.
I have about an hour before my room time. What can I do right now to make things worthwhile?
Did it start to rain?
Looks like it's circling around 60 - 40% chance of rain hour-by-hour so...if it's light it's not so bad. I found a way to wrap my cart in plastic wrap too - it's my coat I don't want to get soaked if I need it to sleep and the umbrella is delicate right now - I needed some special glue to fix it.
The person who fixed my cart today seemed so familiar it's still kinda driving me crazy - I can't place where I met them before - they were friendly and seemed positive though, so that was nice.
I haven't watched Hasan yet today. There was an election - I'm tired. It feels like we are all stuck in someone else's plan and it's gonna be their bullshit agenda until I am like 50 maybe. And yeah, the agenda feels like bullshit because I think people are being put through hell just to see who would survive and it seems unnecessarily cruel. How much better they would have functioned and what cooler things they might have done if they weren't possibly designated as "expendable" a long time ago and are being utilized as minions to keep them on lock. I can't control the situation, I just don't want to become that myself. How else do you explain the way people seem to spend their days if they're not getting the chance to be their own boss somehow or aren't part of something that helps people - the staff at the library, the staff at the grocery store, the staff at the shelters - they have a mission of their own even if they don't own the place. But people who seem to be hired to stalk someone - being kept in a state of misinformed paranoia or just a bogus narrative - in order to keep them busy - that's a horrific situation. I think that must be what's going on - like someone made them into a domestic military of sorts but it's to keep them busy. Hard to explain - it's just a general observation.
There needs to be somewhere to go where people can sleep if they're tired, even if it's during the day. There's a girl here who has gotten kicked out of the library like four times in the past week for falling asleep. I know it fucks with my ability to make good choices and I get upset easier if I am running on a low battery - that's why I try to sleep almost immediately when I get into the shelter at night. Waking up at 6am is a lot easier when I remember waking up at 5:55 when I was a kid. It's weird what feels - better somehow - like you feel like a stronger person than you would have been if you'd had a different life.
It gets re-validated every day.
This morning we talked a lot about how Portland seemed to change after 2020. I just wish it felt more like we were looking for answers and less like people keep trying to see "what scares you". At one point a lady said "it's like playing russian roulette walking around alone as a woman" and I said "yeah well they're playing russian roulette with me". She suddenly walked away and came back a little later after we changed the subject.
We also talked about infections and how you need to take care of a wound because bacteria could end up killing you. They said it saved their life to get admitted to the hospital, and someone else got sick and they told them they should go to the hospital too for the same reason - and they haven't been back. Another girl had a burn on their leg - apparently they sat too close to the radiator on the max and it almost put a hole through their skin - and they were debating about suing - that the hospital that did a skin graft on their leg said someone else had the same probably and got $200,000 over it. I showed them my foot from after I got evicted. I wonder if the more times I explain what happened to me to people, maybe they will care different. That they hear a lot of crazy shit every day and who knows what's what. But I don't know - I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. If they don't care, they don't care, but I just thought maybe more people would be responding like "yeah that shit happened to me too!" and it turns out a bunch of people are actually housed, they just needed extra help. Or they aren't sleeping in the shelters at all for some reason. But almost no one has said that they got evicted too. Maybe it just happened a really long time ago, or they don't feel like they are owed or were wronged the way I do. Or, worse, they are more mentally fragile and their landlord fucked them out of their housing. I remember one lady who said her landlord just told her to get out - which immediately isn't right - like they didn't go through all the official paperwork or give them a chance for a hearing or anything. I said yesterday on the stream that it seems like every time I try to help, it just doesn't matter. The response is always like "eh it's too complicated whatever" even when it seems like they had a solid case to be pissed.
Weird change of topic but I'm getting anxious that stuff I bought needs time to charge and I won't be able to charge it before I have to go.
I couldn't have gotten the stuff any sooner.
The energy in here is really weird right now. I just want to be alone.
