Wednesday is For Weirdos (Especially Me)
Up in the middle of the night. Between Jim elbowing me hard in the boob in his sleep and my sudden realization that I'd washed a load of towels right before bedtime but not put them in the dryer I'm up. I hate it when I wake suddenly, sit bolt right up and remember something I left undone. So I'm up finishing up laundry at 1 am local time. Plus my burn is hurting spectacularly so I'm waiting for the pain pills to kick in so I can get part two of my sleep.
Yay! Insomnia! Yay! Pain!
This afternoon Jim had his meeting with Pastor 'Whoa Dude' as I think of him. Turns out my sixth sense about Maggie was right. There have been many attempts to help her from the church and some of those rich sad sacks she was complaining about. She apparently has some, uh, habits and hobbies she spends her wages on a little too freely, and it's the same old song every month. I feel bad for her, but I knew there had to be more to her story than people ignoring her. I was sorry to hear this as I like her a lot. I hope she gets better for the sake of her child if no one else.
Jim was relieved. He'd started to fret and worry about her situation, but after hearing the history of her and the church has realized you cannot help everyone. She's got something of a victim mentality that's also in play here, and has resisted mightily real help for her problems.
One of the things I realized during our trip back to the States to evict our tenant is that people can get into these crazy mindsets, cannot see they are shooting themselves in the foot and resist change mightily. When we did a walk through inspection of the house I was dismayed to see that our tenant had been camping in our house, beds all mattresses sitting on the bare floors, pillows on the floor instead of a couch and chairs, a few folding lawn chairs and plastic table. It was sad. Not one photograph or wall hanging, or posters, not one personalized touch anywhere. She'd been in the house seven months at that point, and she was literally camping.
One of the big things that sort of shook me up was a cheap pressboard shoe rack in the middle of the bedroom, lined up with immaculate expensive athletic shoes. She had something like a dozen pairs. Not a literal pot to piss in, but she had her Air Jordans and Kanye West kicks. I was reminded anew of my years doing child abuse investigations and visiting homes that had no real furniture and scanty food, but always had a huge television and the latest video game system.
For me those very expensive sneakers while her kids were sleeping on sloppy old mattresses on the floor is just wrong. What's that Bible verse about what we love we'll store up? I wonder what type of mind thinks spending money on piles of sneakers, cigarettes and cell phones, of which there were plenty, while living like that is a good thing?
I think it's things like that which reveal our problem mind sets. Everyone has them, but for most of us we have enough self-pride, don't know if that's the word, or just cannot live that way, to have ourselves squared away enough that we have those family photos, real beds and furniture. Living like humans instead of bare bones existent.
All I know is through the years, through Army housing, BAQs, through rent by the month apartments, our cheap plastic paneled bedroom in Dota and rentals here I've always had to do what I could to make each of those temporary places our home, to make them home-like. I guess I don't do camping and I don't understand it. A bedside photo of family, a colorful throw over a worn sofa, matching towels. It's always been important to me to have order and that attempt to be a home.
Maggie is another camper whose mind set isn't serving her well. Must give this more thought and see if there is any way to help her besides funding her. I don't get it, the chaos, the drifting and the lack of home. Like I said I'm always trying to make every space like my home.
Jim's been attending a language school all week so our weekly sojourn to the grocery store was delayed. The funny bit about that is by going later than usual we got to see all the American expat eccentrics we know, even the sofa pee-er J.A., his next door neighbor Derwent (with his shopping cart filled with vodka and no food, just like J.A.s yet they accuse each other of being crazy alcoholics) and Jerry. Jerry cracks me up. He's in is mid 60s like Jim, but unlike Jim I think he must have burned out a few more brain cells back in the 1960s. Sweet but dingy. A few days ago we spotted Jerry getting into a cab, taking it exactly a block before getting out. I asked him today what that was all about and he said he didn't like the vibes the cab driver was giving off. The wrong aura.
I don't know nothing about auras, Willis, just mindsets. I do know one thing, there seems to be a large pool of functional alcoholics in this area and drugs are everywhere. I'm not sure how I feel about that because with my upbringing I'm sometimes very triggered by the antics of alcoholics.
The store nearest our house has the four for the price of three special every Wednesday and it brings out all types. We see them all down at the Mega Super. But it's better than shopping at the gringo-ridden Auto Mercado with high prices and hordes of very entitled Americans.
Yay! Insomnia! Yay! Pain!
This afternoon Jim had his meeting with Pastor 'Whoa Dude' as I think of him. Turns out my sixth sense about Maggie was right. There have been many attempts to help her from the church and some of those rich sad sacks she was complaining about. She apparently has some, uh, habits and hobbies she spends her wages on a little too freely, and it's the same old song every month. I feel bad for her, but I knew there had to be more to her story than people ignoring her. I was sorry to hear this as I like her a lot. I hope she gets better for the sake of her child if no one else.
Jim was relieved. He'd started to fret and worry about her situation, but after hearing the history of her and the church has realized you cannot help everyone. She's got something of a victim mentality that's also in play here, and has resisted mightily real help for her problems.
One of the things I realized during our trip back to the States to evict our tenant is that people can get into these crazy mindsets, cannot see they are shooting themselves in the foot and resist change mightily. When we did a walk through inspection of the house I was dismayed to see that our tenant had been camping in our house, beds all mattresses sitting on the bare floors, pillows on the floor instead of a couch and chairs, a few folding lawn chairs and plastic table. It was sad. Not one photograph or wall hanging, or posters, not one personalized touch anywhere. She'd been in the house seven months at that point, and she was literally camping.
One of the big things that sort of shook me up was a cheap pressboard shoe rack in the middle of the bedroom, lined up with immaculate expensive athletic shoes. She had something like a dozen pairs. Not a literal pot to piss in, but she had her Air Jordans and Kanye West kicks. I was reminded anew of my years doing child abuse investigations and visiting homes that had no real furniture and scanty food, but always had a huge television and the latest video game system.
For me those very expensive sneakers while her kids were sleeping on sloppy old mattresses on the floor is just wrong. What's that Bible verse about what we love we'll store up? I wonder what type of mind thinks spending money on piles of sneakers, cigarettes and cell phones, of which there were plenty, while living like that is a good thing?
I think it's things like that which reveal our problem mind sets. Everyone has them, but for most of us we have enough self-pride, don't know if that's the word, or just cannot live that way, to have ourselves squared away enough that we have those family photos, real beds and furniture. Living like humans instead of bare bones existent.
All I know is through the years, through Army housing, BAQs, through rent by the month apartments, our cheap plastic paneled bedroom in Dota and rentals here I've always had to do what I could to make each of those temporary places our home, to make them home-like. I guess I don't do camping and I don't understand it. A bedside photo of family, a colorful throw over a worn sofa, matching towels. It's always been important to me to have order and that attempt to be a home.
Maggie is another camper whose mind set isn't serving her well. Must give this more thought and see if there is any way to help her besides funding her. I don't get it, the chaos, the drifting and the lack of home. Like I said I'm always trying to make every space like my home.
Jim's been attending a language school all week so our weekly sojourn to the grocery store was delayed. The funny bit about that is by going later than usual we got to see all the American expat eccentrics we know, even the sofa pee-er J.A., his next door neighbor Derwent (with his shopping cart filled with vodka and no food, just like J.A.s yet they accuse each other of being crazy alcoholics) and Jerry. Jerry cracks me up. He's in is mid 60s like Jim, but unlike Jim I think he must have burned out a few more brain cells back in the 1960s. Sweet but dingy. A few days ago we spotted Jerry getting into a cab, taking it exactly a block before getting out. I asked him today what that was all about and he said he didn't like the vibes the cab driver was giving off. The wrong aura.
I don't know nothing about auras, Willis, just mindsets. I do know one thing, there seems to be a large pool of functional alcoholics in this area and drugs are everywhere. I'm not sure how I feel about that because with my upbringing I'm sometimes very triggered by the antics of alcoholics.
The store nearest our house has the four for the price of three special every Wednesday and it brings out all types. We see them all down at the Mega Super. But it's better than shopping at the gringo-ridden Auto Mercado with high prices and hordes of very entitled Americans.
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