I’ve been much too depressed to blog lately. Mostly because I can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t sound like a complaint. Unfortunately, I don’t mean to complain, it’s just everything is so crappy right now, that the simple facts sound horrid. Well, they don’t just sound horrid, they really are.
Out on the farm we have not been able to take showers now for 6 weeks. We take “pioneer showers” where we wash out of buckets. Just this weekend we upgraded from having to draw the hot water for bathing and dishes directly off the hot water heater and carry buckets of hot water up from the basement to a single hot tap in the kitchen. For about the last 5 weeks we have had no water in the bathroom, now we at least have one cold tap in the bathroom. However, to flush the toilet we need to manually fill the toilet tank with a hose run through the back door from a garden spigot. If we weren’t drop dead broke we could have had showers about 3 weeks ago, but there was simply no money to pay a plumber to fix all that’s wrong with the plumbing. Leif is slowly fixing it on his own.
The bugs are so thick here that even sitting indoors you get eaten alive by mosquitoes and we’ve all been moonlighting as tick buffets. I was lucky enough to contract Lyme Disease and have just finished 3 weeks of antibiotic treatment.
I have two weeks of summer school left, but luckily the on campus component is over so I no longer have to drive an hour and twenty minutes each way twice a week to class. It is doubly lucky because the gov’mnet in their infinite wisdom decided that I no longer can be eligible for food stamps. Not like I liked having to use them in the first place, but it did at least save me from having to stretch my nickel sized budget to cover a dime’s worth of bills. The silver lining here then is when my food stamps got canceled I no longer had to drive so the gas money could be converted to food money saving me from having to make the choice of going to class or eating.
I managed to get probably 90% of the stench of weasel and chipmunk shit out of the laundry room, but when it’s really damp it still smells of mold, mildew, animal excrement, and a faint odor of cigarette smoke lingers in the rooms we haven’t pulled the carpet out of yet. There is still a hole in the laundry room floor, but at least I don’t have to breathe in weasel stench to do laundry. And, we finally got both the washer and dryer running, just the washer only runs on cold, and that, can you guess? has to be brought in via garden hose through the back door.
I’m still living out of boxes because 1. we’ve run out of places to put our things 2. I’ve run out of caring anymore.
So, without boring you with anymore of the minutiae of life since being exiled to the country, I’m struggling to find any happiness, or even any bit of hope, these days.
Poor Leif, now he’s gone and broke my heart and added a new layer of misery to my broke-ass existence. What evil is this you might ask? Today we escaped the farm to go grocery shopping and conduct some business in town. Leif has been wanting another young dog to play with Vera and so he’s popped into the shelter a time or two to see if he could find a dog to adopt. Today he says, “Would you like to stop at the shelter and see what they’ve got today?” And like an idiot I said, “Sure, I’d like to see the animals.” Can you guess where this is going?
Well, apparently on one of his previous visits he saw a middle aged beagle and thought it would be a perfect dog for me and more sedate buddy for Rupert. The beagle was still there, and Leif was right. It was love at first sight for me. He was well mannered and absolutely adorable. He was found as a stray so he didn’t know his shelter name, but he knew sit and did the prettiest beg you’ve ever seen. The shelter wanted a $275 adoption fee, and that’s when my heart broke. I don’t have $275 and I had to leave the poor guy at the shelter. But the whole way home I kept thinking about him. Leif liked him too and said maybe it would be something for me to work for and cheer me up, but unfortunately it’s had the opposite effect. I’m even more sad now than I was before. See, there’s no way I’ll ever be able to adopt that darling four legged little guy. It’s not just a matter of starting the “Bring the Beagle Home Fund” and putting aside some money next time I get paid. I don’t have a job and won’t have any more income until I either get one or until I’m again eligible for financial aid in September. By then my beloved beagle will likely have a new home, or worse yet continue to spend week after week in a shelter on a hard concrete floor enclosed by chain link walls. Either way, it’s depressing to think about.
*Sigh* If I wasn’t dead broke I could now be gleefully posting adorable photos of me and Rupert with “Bingley,” what Leif suggested I name the new guy. You know, that name would suit him perfectly.
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