Day Thirty-Five

    ****NAMES CHANGED TO PROTECT PORTLAND'S STREET KIDS***** 

I wake up early and unable to fall back asleep. It's no later than 6am. I reach for a Clododine and a Zertec in hopes that they'll knock me back out. I read until they kick in then fall back asleep for a little over an hour. When it's time to leave I make my bed in hopes that I will be allowed to stay downstairs for another night.

I tell Kitten Lady I will meet her back at OI after she gets her dose and spends time with Houdini. She doesn't show up at all for breakfast which means that she had to go to a group session. I decide to go to Cricket to get my phone fixed. This takes over an hour. The manager gets in my face and is nasty to me. He tells me I made a "bad decision" by not buying insurance or coming in sooner to get my phone fixed and he has the audacity to call me a liar. I'm not having this. You do not treat customers that way. I don't care that I look young and homeless. I am a paying customer and deserve to be treated as such. I get the number to flag that store at corporate and tell the guy to his face I will be reporting him. "You obviously haven't worked in customer service very long." I say to him.
"I'm old enough to be your dad." He yells.
"Really? Why don't you act like it?"

Obviously, my phone issues do not get resolved. I go to the library until lunch where I go to meet up with KL. Lunch is again lasagna and spaghetti. I'm hungry so I suck it up and eat the herb and butter spaghetti by putting it on buttered bread to make it more tolerable. I ask Beard Man which shelter I am sleeping in now. He says that because of some regulations or whatever I have to go upstairs or start sleeping outside. As lame as it is I know my jig is up and that I need to stop fighting to not be promoted up to the big kids and instead focus on the perks of the higher up level. 

Jamie comes up and asks me, "Did she show you the kitten yet?"
I drop my fork, "Kitten?" I stare at KL. She is not smiling about it either.
"Yeah I got her a new kitten," Jamie says, "She's so cute she looks exactly like Tailia."
"Yeah," KL says blandly, "I haven't told her yet I thought it'd be a surprise."
Jamie walks off and I look at KL waiting for an explanation. "She does not look like Tailia. Not at all."
"Do you even want the kitten?" I ask her.
"No." She says, "She just came and handed her to me. She did it when you weren't around on purpose. She knows I can't say no."
"We need to get rid of it," I say, "We can't go through this. Not again."

We go outside to look at the kitten and KL is right. It doesn't look like Tailia. In fact she is the exact opposite. Gray with long hair. She is the most pathetic kitten I've ever seen. She is completely limp when you pick her up. She doesn't move. There is poop on her back legs. She has obviously not been taken care of. And it is her pathetic-ness that makes it impossible to turn her away. The way she flinches when we grab her  makes us think she has been abused. Jamie is keeping her brother. I sigh and say, "Well at least she's quiet."

We go outside of #1 to sit and hang out. KL lays down on the big bench outside. I decide to call Playdate PDX to see what's going on with the job. The manager guy answers and gives that bullshit jargon about too many qualified applicants. This does not make sense with everything else leading up to the interview. The fact that he only gave my interview 5 minutes. All I could conclude was what I already thought. He found out I'm homeless. Kitten Lady is livid when I tell her but I'm not. I really don't have the energy to feel mad. I don't know what to feel. I just want to sleep. That's all I want.

I lay down by KL on the bench. Jamie says her kitten is breathing hard. I look at him and say, "He's overheating he needs water. Cats do that when they are too hot." Jamie doesn't move to get the water though. She keeps talking to the kitten telling it to breathe normal. I tell her four times to get water before I give up and tell myself it's not my problem. I feel terrible thinking that but Jamie needs to learn to be responsible for her animals. She constantly goes and picks up kittens then sells them to street kids when they could have perfectly respectful homes. Furthermore, she keeps the kittens until they get big and she's bored of them. When she's done with them she either gives them to a street kid or lets them loose. I have serious issues with this and I don't want to help her with her kitten shenanigans even in something as small as getting the cat water.

I fall asleep hard which is a surprise. We nap until dinner. I'm hungry when I wake up so I go up to get  food but when I see the spaghetti and lasagna I want to cry. It's just cruel to serve it for both lunch and dinner. I go back dinner and tell KL it's lasagna once again and she groans too. We decide to go to Fred Meyer to get a decent dinner that is not lasagna. Our "decent" dinner ends up being cookie dough.

We sit in Fred Meyer for a little while then head down closer to shelter. We go into the dollar tree to get candy and pops. KL fingers one of those little magic wash cloths with cartoon characters on it that they sell for little kids. I know she wants to steal it but I say, "No. Don't do it. You know I hate it when you steal." She puts it back down and we head out.

As we are walking I say, "See, isn't it nice not to steal?"
"Sometimes you just have to though," She says and empties her pockets that are overflowing with stolen candies.
"You bitch." I say.
"You know when I'm not using I don't really steal. I just have an addictive personality. I always have to be doing something naughty."
I roll my eyes.

I sit on the bench by the store. She isn't feeling well still so she lays down on the concrete to sleep. People stare but I hardly notice. Some guy brings out a dog that runs to kiss us. I pet him and rub his belly when he rolls over. The dog owner laughs and says, "God he's such a slut." I'm happy that someone from the ritzy expensive apartments can be kind enough to let us pet his slutty dog and still treat us like people despite KL laying on the concrete and my dirty clothes spilling out of my bag.

Jamie is supposed to sneak the kitten in for KL but of course she doesn't show up in shelter. KL and I are both feeling pretty rage-y at this. She purposely left us responsible for a kitten we didn't want. Then she bails. I can't sneak the kitten in either since I have to move into the upstairs. I'm pissed.

KL says she thinks she can get her up regardless and we hug goodnight and she goes up. I wait with Houdini and Crochet Buddy to get let in for upstairs. They tell Crochet Buddy they screwed up his paper work and he has to go back downstairs. This rather pisses me off.

It doesn't get better when I realize I have to do orientation with Nerdboy Wonder. This makes it take ten times longer than any normal orientation would. I learn all sorts of things about him that I don't want to know including all about bowel movements and transfusions. Finally the staff lady has mercy on the two of us that do not want to know all about Nerdboy go and she deals with him. I don't think I've ever been so happy to get away from somebody.

When you stay in upstairs you have to do a chore. I pick cleaning the kitchen area because that means you can use the radio and have music. I accidentally bleach my shirt which makes me rather unhappy but besides that it's incredible to have radio. It's an attachment to the world outside of street life.

Upstairs Houdini tells everyone I am his sister. I joke saying, "Can't you see the relation?" People look at  his dark chocolate skin and my pale white and laugh. I want to take a shower and go to bed but they are out of bedding. I find a pink fitted sheet but no blankets. Staff tells me I can take a shower and lay down and they'll bring me in a blanket when one dries.

I shower then find Rocky playing Nintendo 64. I watch him play for a little bit finding a bit of happiness in the vintage game system. I share a room with Vampire Girl and Ginger Kid's girlfriend. Vampire Girl seems happy to see me again and I'm sort of indifferent. I am not thrilled about Ginger Girlfriend though. I really despise her self righteous boyfriend. It's a quality that peeves me almost as much as people who chew gum too loud. She has no identity outside of him from what I can tell.

She asks me to play rummy with her which surprises me. She deals them out but Vampire Girl comes in wanting to sleep so it ends up being a rain check. I decide to try and sleep without a blanket even though I am one of those people who have to have a blanket to sleep.  The beds are much more comfortable than in downstairs. They are softer and the part that's supposed to be a pillow is much larger. I actually dislike the big pseudo pillow. It's too high and firm in my opinion. The softer bed comes as a surprise to me. It actually takes me awhile to adjust to it.

I end up falling asleep without the blanket. When I wake up in the middle of the night I sit up and a blanket falls off of me. One of the staff covered me while I was asleep. I think that it's sweet before I pass back out.

--mm