Wednesday, May 31, 2017

New Procedure

I am posting, it is Wednesday night, the last night of May, 2017.
Tomorrow, I might be paid back the 120 or so bucks that I lent out.

Playing By Ear

  • Hearing 70%
  • Antibiotics All Used
  •  
It has been a week since I went to the hospital for the ear infection thing.
As I sit here now -the antibiotics ran out today too, by the way- I can hear better, maybe 70% by actually doing something that I believe "lower" animals do, which is to contract certain muscles around the cranium, usually accompanied by other craning attitudes, in a manner that the passage to the ear drum is pulled open, or wider open.

It could be that, in the animal kingdom they have to have their ears protected against sudden stabs by the talons of a birds of prey, so that their ear canals are naturally kind of tucked away, and to hear at their optimal level, they pull their ears open.

But, my hearing is back to about 70%, and maybe even a bit better when I use muscles which are artifacts of an age when men's ear canals were protected by flesh and they could pull their testicles up into their mid sections.

I won't busk tonight, as there is a 50% chance of rain, and it is a Wednesday night, and I am supposed to be paid back tomorrow or "Friday, at the latest" and will get another 5 bucks tomorrow from Travis, who has been on the scene, lately.

Travis called a few days ago, wanting to store his cat at my place for a day or two, while he moves from one place to another.
It was a slow couple of busking days, and I was still kind of waiting upon more improvement in my hearing before going back out; and he offered me 20 bucks in return for the favor, and so, Tuesday, Travis arrived with some of his stuff, and the ordeal began.

A lot of time was taken up in just getting the cat to the place.
Travis (who is a guy who crashed at my place for the 10 days allotted to "guests" in response to a CraigsList ad that I had placed, offering my couch as a place to crash for 20 bucks a night.
Travis wound up being a cool guest, except for the fact that he had tried to, it seemed, monopolize upon my time.
I don't think I posted to this blog once, during the 10 days when he crashed at my place. If I did so, it was with him sitting next to me waiting for me to finish so that we could return to what ever it was that "we" were doing.
He asked if he could walk with me to the store when I was going there, the first day that he stayed.
This, I was amenable to, as I saw it as myself showing him where all the nearby stores were and "teaching him the ropes" (of walking to the corner of Broad Avenue and Canal Street and buying stuff).
But, this had meant myself pedaling my bike at walking speed the whole way to keep pace with him as he walked (and talked enough for both of us, apparently) and I was glad, upon his return that he then knew where all the stores were, and could then go there on his own.
But, then, he continued to want to come with me, even using the curious interrogative: "Can you bring me to Family Dollar later?" one time, and it almost seemed like he wanted my attention "the whole time" that he stayed at my place.

I had forgotten a lot of that, frankly, when I agreed to babysit his cat for 20 bucks.

Where I made the mistake and where it turned into a 15 hour ordeal to get his cat was when I suggested that I come along with him when he got the cat from his place, so that I could help him carry some of his stuff, and so that he didn't have to be abandoning the shit-hole apartment complex which was being sold at auction and from which all the residents were being forced to leave, carrying arm loads of his stuff, walking through a mostly empty place that looked like a bomb had hit it; alone.
I offered my help as a truly "friendly" gesture.
Then;
Hour 1: Travis couldn't cash his check that he/we had waited for (so I could get my 20 bucks) at the first place, so he desperately hopped on the first street car to come along and was headed for the Quarter.
I texted to him that he should go the The Unique Grocery, where, if there was a problem, I could vouch for him, having been a regular there long enough, etc.
But, I guess that meant I was hopping on a street car, trailing Travis, on my day off.
No problem, I grabbed a Starbucks coffee and met him at the store, got my 20 bucks, and then we were off to get his cat.
Hour 2: We had to go to my place to get the cat bag that I had borrowed from Rose (saving Travis the 20 bucks that he was ready to buy impulsively at Wal-Mart, demonstrating a mindset that I had once been a slave to which was basically geared to solve every problem by throwing money at it, to thank God that you do have all that money, but then to throw it. Might as well just get a brand new bag at Wal-Mart in order to transport the cat once or twice a year, type of thing...)
Sure, then we had to sit down and smoke a bowl and then sit there while one of us embarked upon a pot induced preamble until the other, realizing that it was already...
Hour 3: ..and we had the cat bag and now needed to get the next street car to the next #94 Broad Avenue bus and then get the cat and come back, a couple hours of "work," at most.
But, then, I was talking about food which made Travis decide to buy me lunch at the McDonald's that we were passing on the way to the #94 Broad Avenue bus.
A half hour later, we emerged from McDonald's to see the next #94 go past. We would have to wait a half hour for the next, no big deal.
Hour 4: We got the Travis apartment in a part of town that was definitely under at least 8 feet of water during the hurricane and had been bought and sold on the cheap, and finally to someone too cheap to change a light bulb or stop sewage from bubbling up from the ground in the middle of the "courtyard."
Well, it started raining.
"It's raining pretty hard, why don't we just chill at my place, smoke up and just listen to music or we could watch something," said Travis.
Hours 5 and 6:
It was still raining, but it was getting dark and Travis and I still had to carry his large screen TV and other things past vulture-like figures slouching over the second balcony railing in front of windows in front of venetian blinds that looked like Pablo Picasso had had a go with.
Hour 7:
Who would have known that it would take Travis so long to get this cat that he adopted as an adult into a bag that turned out to be kind of small for a cat bag and which smelled like Rose's cat and Rose, too, being assisted by a strange guy who smells like his own cat.
Hour 8:
We leave the place with the power turned off and the door locked for the bus stop. We just miss the next #94 bus. No problem, we will wait a half hour -no, wait, after 11 PM, they start running every hour instead of every half hour...
Hours 9 and beyond:
We got the cat to my place. Harold and the cat hissed at each other. Harold chased the cat to under my bed where it basically remained the whole day that I babysat it.
Except when it moved to a hiding place.

It was in a closet on a shelf that looked like it had two pillows piled on it, taking up all its space but actually had enough space for a cat to hide in. To hide in well enough so that its owner (and the friend that had been lasso-ed into the project as soon as he had taken the offer of 20 dollars) would have to spend one whole (additional to me) hour looking for it.

Now, it is about to go past midnight and into the month of June around here.
I think I'll have a cup of coffee. I might hang around the parking lot area, ostensibly walking Harold, so that I might see Rose and Ed coming out of their place shortly before midnight, and might get them to say that they would come back and give me the 120 bucks shortly.
Bumming cigarettes off Travis had been a bummer.
Having him buy me lunch was cool, but, all in all Travis' day took up my whole day.
I like the guy, but I am reminded of his tendency to try to set up a monopoly on someone's time.

Oh, the "new procedure" is to read my comments upon yesterday's post, after I have written that day's.
This will mean no more instant answers to comments, but it will keep me on track with what I sat down to write instead of answering comments...

3 comments:

  1. Travis sounds like a real loser. How does he come into money at all, being as helpless as he is?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just another comment because I have to comment on your page to access mine. Hope you're not in jail!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Travis puts in his hours on the computer doing the equivalent of penny per word type tasks;
    But, I believe he is a social misfit who rarely, if ever leaves -only goes out to score pot; wearing dark shades once a week...
    I noticed that he has pat answers for a lot of things; the default answer, I guess; to keep him from having to interact...

    ReplyDelete

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