Opla-dee Opla-dah…blah blah blah…

Week three and still working on meeting my basic objectives – work and a permanent address.

Life with Zelda continues to be an adventrue and there sure is plenty of yard work to keep me busy, including picking up lots of presents left by the dogs in the yard, if you know what I mean. Color me stinky.

I had a hot prospect for a living arrangement with what seemed to be a very nice landlady. However, the room she advertised still had her ex living in it. And we were required to employ all manner of subterfuge in order for me to actually see the room. Finally, after many emails and phone call we set a meet time for 9 pm. The street was particularly dark and her house didn’t have street numbers on it – hence the heightened excitement I felt or maybe I was just a little scared and probably had to pee.

After stumbling around on the very dark street, I got a little creeped out and just started calling out her name in the area I thought her house should be. The Gods were feeling charitable that night and she came  bounding out of her house and flagged me down.

Sadly, the house itself was less than ideal – I would have to share a bathroom with two twenty something males (visions of soap borrowing plagued me), I’d have to use the furniture already in the room which was very massive oak stuff that was better suited to a bouncer in a country western bar than moi, no off street parking (did I mention the street was dark and narrow?), the yard she said I could use for a garden seemed unworkable since her pitt bull showed no signs of wanting to share her poop box with a stranger (and I couldn’t shake the vision of her eating my little dog for an appetiser one day while I was out buying groceries), there would be a total of four room mates (yes, that was my pizza, bub) oh and did I mention that her ex was still living there?

I told her to call me when/if the ex moved out. Confident that would never happen. Although she did call me the next day but only to tell me he wouldn’t be out until the end of this month. Yeah, right. Honestly? I was relieved, it saved me from having to tell her I didn’t want to live in Grand Central Station and share a bathroom with strange boys. (Although if I’m still homeless in a month I may happily lower my standards). Pray for me.

I did hear from another fellow today who has a single guest house at a reasonable rent and there is even a little  yard for the dog – sounds promising. Definitely lighting a candle for that one.

On the work front, I’ve been referred to four MLM schemes, er… scams er…prospective businesses and I dutifully visited websites and watched videos but I just can’t envision myself with my own online Kmart store. My bad. Though I’ve also spoken to a few prospective clients and was given a couple of actually viable leads as well. So hope springs eternal. Not the least of which is a request from Zelda to do some collections for her. While this may sound good, it is always a bit risky to work for friends, particularly when they are currently doing you a favor. If I am successful at collecting the bill for her, I’m already assuming half my commission will go right back to Zelda – given her recent charity to me how could I not throw a little dough her way to offset some costs? You just can’t get away from that six degrees of separation thing, huh? No matter though, if I have to give someone money, there is no one I’d rather give money to than Zelda anyway. You know?

I am slowly getting used to living in a doll house sized room and have learned that moving slowly and making no sudden moves is the way to go. Also managing to stay on top of things and now only worry about 12 hours a day about forgetting something or someone or somewhere that I was supposed to do something about, with or for. It’s an improvement, folks, baby steps…you know?

Anyway, somewhere in my frantic/zen mode of thinking today while obsessing over the things that worry me (like today it was coffee and half and half, yeah, you read that right) and everyone else really, I realized that we’re all idiots (I mean that in the nicest way by the way), we humans. We spend far too much time worrying and calculating and obsessing. And honestly, I have come to love using the public park as my office – all the local color and the nutjobs that hang there make it so challenging… I just have to watch out for the deserted peanut butter and jelly samiches on the seats. Later…

Oh yeah, the picture has no relation to this post except that the beagle is Zelda’s dog, trying to prevent Maggie from leaving the room. Cute, huh?