Oh Man, Life. Oh Man

One journal would not have the sufficient capacity to outline the series of events that has been happening since I last wrote. Most of it would not be in the interests of most anyhow who would have little care in the day to day struggle of some random nerdy artist girl. So as usual, I’ll parse it down to the most relevant events and maybe you’ll have an idea of what life’s been like that I can’t even afford to summon up the willingness to blog as I used to. Lesse…

-I had a job at a boutique shop that you prolly heard about. Was fired a week into it due to selling cigarettes to a minor when I should have gotten her ID. Lucky me that I just happened to make the mistake with an agent from the Revenue of Taxation. Was kinda bummed out for a while about that.

-Me and my roommate’s van was out for weeks (from the last week of August to around the middle of October). He forced his van up the hill we’re currently residing (and the hill is quite steep) while it was out of gas and blew something out, rendering the thing undrivable.

His first mistake was trusting one of his friends to fix it, a guy who has no formal teaching or license in auto mechanics but trusts him to be the best around. After dicking around for four weeks (4 weeks) , he finally got around to settling down with the thing and even he admitted he had no idea what was wrong with it. What they suspected to be the fuel pump that blew out turned out it wasn’t the case when the van still wouldn’t start.

Then he tried the mechanic from the tow shop our landlord works at, confident he could fix it. Guess who felt stupid the next day.

Finally, my roommate did the first smart thing he did since our van broke down and told our tower landlord to just take it to someone with a diagnostics machine…someone reputable who could actually fix it. The van ended up going to a mechanic on Swamp Road. Mention this to anyone on Guam and they will groan sympathetically. It took him…oh, iono. It –seemed- like ten weeks before he finally fixed it. All throughout the time he gave us every excuse in the book- the O2 sensor was bad, you don’t have the right fuel pump, the computer box needed to be replaced. On the day he finally drove it up to the house claiming to fix it, a day prior he was telling us another part needed to be replaced right before his house’s power was cut off. It runs, but it had a host of major problems that weren’t there when we first gave it to him. And the little shit still had the nerve to keep calling to ask for his pay.

-Due to van catastrophe, we pretty much ran ourselves broke (we were borrowing money and scraping up whatever savings we could, most of it being used on the van and keeping ourselves alive). We couldn’t work because we had no car to get anywhere, having to pay people to lend us rides. We finally applied for financial aide when our van was finally fixed and it took a load off the majority of our expenses, giving us some reprieve to get back on our feet.

-I grew more eager with my art upon joining PMD-Explorers. Figured its Pokemon that perked me out of my artist’s block, but I’ve come to accept that Pokemon is a vast opportunity to practice design on different creatures as well as getting back on the RP groove that I’d lost years ago. The group unfortunately has its set-backs which I attempt to ignore, though for how long is questionable.

-I attempted to make money off commissions in desperation. My concentration isn’t the greatest working on it, however, I’ve been doing my best to have it all done.

-I nearly got into a fight with the neighbors over an off-comment. Let’s just say I have a way with words that ticks people off, though I don’t mean how they interpreted it to be. And not with the intention to set someone off enough to beat my ass- I’m such an asshole trolololol. But in all seriousness, the incident made me hellbound to move the instant I’m able to- everyone in that place is quite intolerable. It was bad enough that I’m kind enough to clean the house after everyone, but it only encourages them to pick after themselves less and less to a point where I can’t even go out for a day and come back with beer cans littering every table and floor with leftover food and ants swarming over them, every eating utensil that I spend a good chunk of my day washing carelessly thrown back out. There isn’t even a fucking sink to wash that shit in- it’s a faucet over a small canal, and I squat and bend over it for a good half an hour scrubbing and disinfecting the dishes because they are literally just thrown out in the yard. One roommate goes through our water and coffee like a fat kid on crack, and the other is so cheap he won’t even go to refill the five gallon bottle for $1.25, even when he has a job, is getting our rent and retirement benefits and we aren’t getting squat.

Not to mention that ever since the car wreck (if you haven’t heard yet…yes, I’ve been in a head on collision and lucky enough to get off with just seatbelt bruises), just driving anywhere stresses me the fuck out. Of course, that’s only true if its someone else (especially my roommate) driving, and I can drive on my own just fine. Its that crushing feeling of having no control, of anticipating the moment where you just feel a sharp jerk and hoping that nothing smashes your head in. After every drive my nerves are just shattered, and of course it doesn’t help that my roommate is an asshole driver. I desperately need my own car.

-We had put an ad on the paper for caretaker and carpenter services and had a few people interested. I’m currently a caregiver for an elderly man and the man that hired me offered me to work in his daughter’s boutique nearby, letting me be more accessible to helping him while also doing a little more than working a day a week. Hopefully that works out. Although taxing, I do actually like doing it.

That’s life as it is now. I’m living well but broke as hell, but hopefully I’ll be getting back to that ‘start to live my own life’ plan that seemed to be indefinitely on hold. I’ve gone through such moments of desperation that I’ve actually started to pray…I don’t have much religious faith, but when you’ve got nothing left to lose, I guess its all you’ve got.

~Taddle