My City Was Gone, But Not For Long

I got in the car to run some errands and go to the bank a couple of weeks ago, and – knowing I might be waiting in line a little while – I’d taken my MP3 player with me, which I don’t usually do if I’m just running the usual errands. My MP3 player pretty much stays on shuffle.

I plugged it in and started the car, and The Inmates’ 1981 version of The Standells’ “Dirty Water” started up. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I’d go to check the weather online and type in my zip code and the next thing I’d see, on the pages with the weather forecast – ads for water damage restoration experts.

My auto insurance company has finally stopped sending me e-mails asking me if I need to get my car checked out since there has been severe flood damage in my area. No, thank you. I’m just fine.

I know there are people right here in Shelby County, and nearby, and up yonder a little ways, in just as desperate straits as people in Nashville and Middle Tennessee – and in some cases, maybe more. But still, overall – as a whole – we got off easy, here in Memphis, this time. The tornado warnings here that same weekend were pretty scary, but the last time we had a really bad storm like that, I saw debris on the street and trees pushed over dotting the landscape on my little route from here to Kroger. This time, the following Monday, I think I counted only one house that had some limbs on the curb. The north part of the county got slammed, and there were spots of bad flooding even here in the central city – but still, overall and as a whole, the majority of us, we were fine.

But you know, as far as the cities go – in a lot of ways, I’ll always be more connected to Nashville and Murfreesboro and Middle Tennessee than I ever have been to Memphis, even though I was born here and have a long history here and strong connections here, including having had strong family connections here. And probably more than I ever will be to Knoxville. Don’t really have any to Chattanooga, other than a family member living there for a while who no longer does.

But I spent some pretty crucial years in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, as well as a pretty significant number of days throughout childhood and my teen years.  My phone number started with 615 (back in ancient times before there were more than two area codes) for a good portion of the Eighties. It’s almost as much home to me as Northwest Tennessee is.

What a month it’s been. The week after the flood, I was kinda just feeling shellshocked, although I hadn’t actually DONE anything but sit here at the computer catching up on all the news in between periods of working. I kind of drifted off to Facebook for an evening on the following Monday, I think, and got into digging thru old high school photos various friends had posted, after having spent about 15 hours straight reading flood-related updates on Twitter and the Web. Feeling guilty the whole time, because I could get away from it all for a little bit while so many people I know couldn’t. Because they were right there in the middle of it.

Then I was committed to something work-wise from that Tuesday onward, and it was really the end of the week before I really had a chance at all to truly even attempt to catch up on what all had transpired since Monday and the big day of the flood. Couple being completely and totally swamped (no pun intended) with work with the fact that the fourth of the Christian-Newsom trials started that same Monday in Knoxville, which I would have liked to have been able to keep up with throughout the week but there just wasn’t enough time in the days to do so; checking on updates of online acquaintances who have been been dealing with a nightmarish tragedy of the non-flood type; and scrambling to put Band-Aid fixes on what I guess is just going to keep being an ongoing calamity of sorts here on the home front – even if I’d had four or five clones of myself, I’m not sure there would have been enough for me to go around.

So, the flood…

For the benefit of what few of you here reading don’t already read everyone else’s oft-more-updated and finer blogs in Nashville and in Tennessee, the Nashville flood finally got some national attention, though I’m not sure it really would have much if not for all the Tweeting and blogging there was about it. MSNBC was one of the first to give it decent air time, here and with another mention from Keith Olbermann that I think, in particular, was much appreciated by the community at large.

My buddy Travis Harmon – certainly the most successful of the bunch from that wide circle of friends from old ‘Boro and college days – and his comedy partner put out probably the best edition of Red State Update ever, and made me laugh (and laugh and laugh and laugh) and cry at the same time. Many of my personal friends and acquaintances up there have been volunteering their asses off all month, and continue to. I’m so proud to know all of them.

My mom – back in one of the few sectors of West Tennessee that mostly escaped both wind and flood damage almost completely last week – usually gets her faculty a little gift for Nurses Week every year. This year, she made donations in their names to one of the community relief organizations that WKRN had listed on their website instead of gifts. She said it just seemed like the right thing to do this year. I’m very proud of her too.

So many of my friends wrote great truly stuff that week. This was one of the very best, as was this post that led me to it. This was another one that particularly touched me. This angry one from one of our own forced to watch it all unfold from thousands of miles away clear across the country, expressing all the frustration pretty much all of us who still had power and Internet access were feeling that day. And pretty much everything over here all week long, but especially this one. I wish I could list more, and there are more I probably haven’t gotten around to seeing yet as I’m still (always) catching up. But they all outdid themselves on the writing thing that week, especially those many that were smack dab in the middle of it all.

Most everyone I know was okay and while many had flooded basements and such, overall everyone I know made it through and, most importantly, alive and uninjured. I’m thankful for that. I know everyone up there, though, has continued to be almost all exhausted beyond belief, though, mentally and physically.

I still have a little bit of a nagging worry – because I have known SO many people throughout my life from all over and have been fortunate to have made many friends throughout – that news has yet to turn up that won’t be as good. I think I’ve now accounted for most everyone I “need to know about” – if not directly, I’ve seen them Tweet or someone else mention them on Facebook or Twitter or on the phone – and have racked my brain all month long trying to figure out who hasn’t crossed my mind that should have by now.

One friend who didn’t get too lucky was an old college friend and ex-boyfriend who arrived home after a week in Chicago to find thousands of dollars’ worth of musical instruments, studio equipment and gear swimming in his basement. He was prepared for it, as his neighbor had been able to reach him by phone and warn him, and luckily the water damage was limited to the basement only – by about a half inch below the upstairs door. It was a too-close call for the rest of the house, but things could have certainly turned out much worse.

Unfortunately he got hit by a double whammy, though, as he still owns and rents out his mom’s old house in Bellevue, and it was nearly completely submerged. Last we spoke, which has been a while now, he still didn’t know where his renters had fled to, but presumably by now they’re probably some of the folks out there having to sift through and throw away most of the entire contents of the house. I know he sure wasn’t looking forward to the expected hassle forthcoming with his insurance company and was already preparing himself to be SOL.

Lots of teary moments that week, often over the oddest of photos, of all the many horrific ones that were hitting the Internet out of Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Lots of times just sitting there gaping, open-mouthed.

Highway 96 from Murfreesboro to Dickson was my usual route back and forth between college and home for me. Naturally, if I had five bucks for every time I was back and forth on I-24 between Murfreesboro and Nashville, whether going out downtown or going to work, I could have probably retired on that. I worked at Southern Hills, so you Middle Tennesseans know what my usual route to work was. To see that intersection in Franklin on 96, and those stretches of I-24, with cars and trucks nearly completely submerged – just surreal.

The (current) Opry House, which wasn’t very old when I attended a rock concert there in the garishly neon, New Wave, how-many-items-of-Esprit-clothing-do-you-have-in-your-closet days of 1983. My friends and I thought it would be a kick to get matching outfits made for the event, and – though they were each made of different colored material and design – we all showed up in matching camouflage miniskirts (with equally matching skinny ties) and just about every color of chunky neon jewelry you can imagine. I think we probably all looked like Catholic schoolgirls, except in camouflage instead of plaid – which I guess was unintentionally ironic, since we were from a small town in West Tennessee where dates on the weekend during duck and deer season ended at 8 pm, because your date had to go home and go to bed so they could get up at four in the morning and go shoot stuff.

So I was looking at the flood picture of the Opry stage that first week, and in my head seeing clearly what the stage looked like from the floor, standing in the third or fourth row in from the stage that night in 1983. Remembering that I was looking, basically, up – since I’m short anyway, but still, it was relatively high off the floor.

Realizing that that water I was looking at in the picture was quite a bit – a lot - higher than I am tall.

I wrote in a post that’s yet to be published that the Opryland Hotel’s what really did me in, sifting through pic after pic as I was early in the week. I know it’s silly, and I know they’ll repair it and build it back. It’s just seeing a place like that where you have a really strong, clear and special memory so devastated – that’s when it really hits home, when you’re having to watch like this from afar.

And speaking of home over here in West Tennessee… although I had heard and read about and seen some of the horrible devastation in Dyersburg, pictures that were forwarded to me of the flooding in Jackson struck it home even more.

Though things have progressed a great deal in many of the smaller towns, when you’re from Northwest Tennessee, Jackson’s a big hub – that’s where you go shopping for Christmas or your prom dress, that’s where you go to the orthodontist once a month, where people end up in the hospital when they have things more severe than the smaller ones can handle, where folks go to the doctor regularly – all those things. Many friends and old classmates live there. I lived there once briefly too, matter of fact.

The pictures from Jackson were as awful as the ones I’d been seeing out of Nashville and Middle Tennessee all week. A main stretch of road with vehicles as submerged as all those pics from I-24. A Sonic Drive-In with water up to the lighted menus, menus that are generally quite a bit higher than the bottom of your average car door’s window.

Virtually almost all of West Tennessee, as well as so much of Middle Tennessee, has now been declared a disaster area by the Federal government. Of my two little hometowns here in the West, one is in one of only maybe two or three counties in West Tennessee that were not. My other home county is.

I know a lot of people who were watching from other places on Twitter and Facebook and the like, and folks from other places reading Nashville and Tennessee bloggers’ blogs – and probably especially people who live in cities and areas that do experience such devastating flooding fairly often – maybe thought we’d all gone mad, overboard with it all.

But it just doesn’t happen here. Not like that.

Not but in a few pockets of the state (like up around Reelfoot Lake and off the Mississippi to the north), and certainly not like this. And absolutely not in this state’s largest cities.

Tornadoes – we know tornadoes, yep. We are all too familiar with tornadoes. Maybe not quite on the scale of, say, Kansas – but we know tornadoes.

Floods like the one earlier this month – they just don’t happen here. Not at all in Nashville since the 1970s – and bad though it was, that was really nothing compared to this one.

So yeah. Most of this state, except for those in the mountains in East Tennessee – we’re a little loopy right now, still. We’re better than we were, but things are still pretty bad for a lot of people down here. We’ll be okay, eventually.

But so much help is still needed, and will continue to be. It was heartbreaking a couple  of weeks or so ago to see one of my friends who’d gone out to volunteer and help Tweeting for more help, because apparently a lot of elderly people showed up at the location and she was only one of a few (if not the only) volunteer that showed up. I know a lot of major relief efforts went on all the following weekend after the flood, and I’m sure the larger ones have been more successful than that one was. I hope not too many of the smaller ones had problems like that one did.

It’ll be a long ongoing process for a long time, and daunting. In Nashville, the potential economic repercussions alone are a little bit terrifying. Not only are many of Nashville’s biggest landmarks and tourist attractions, and other large industries, going to be under repair for some time – some of the largest are out of commission for possibly the rest of the year at the very least, and literally thousands of people are about to be (or already are) without jobs.

And the same goes for other places in Tennessee, with varying degrees of what and how much those counties are going to be hit economically. In a state that has already been struggling with disastrous state budgetary issues, widespread unemployment, and general economic downturn statewide for some time now – it’s no wonder if everyone’s holding their breath to see where we go from here.

Some resources for those who want to help (many of these are also aggregating efforts for other Middle TN counties as well):

• The United Way of Metropolitan Nashville – you can also text RESTORE to UNITED (864833) to give $10 to help victims of the Nashville flood.
• Hands On Nashville – also in the process of major relief efforts for Nashville
• DonateNashville.org - a Craigslist-type resource recently put together by The United Way of Metro Nashville and Cool People Care to more efficiently organize directly what people need and what people have
• The Red Cross – you can also donate $10 to the Red Cross to help the flood victims by texting REDCROSS to 90999
• Cool People Care also has some great “We Are Nashville” t-shirts for sale with proceeds going to help flood victims

Speak to Power has put together some listings of resources for help, donations and more in several of the worst hit counties in West Tennessee also:

• Dyersburg – Dyer County Relief & Donation Resources
• Tipton County Relief & Donation Resources
• Shelby County – Millington Relief & Donation Resources
  

My hat’s truly off to Christy and Morgan (and anyone else helping behind the scenes that week) at The Nashvillest, who did an outstanding job of collecting, organizing and getting information out on the Web through this whole ordeal that week and just really became the central point of Internet communication regarding the Nashville flood and continue to be. I should point out, too, that the website is not their job – they have full-time jobs elsewhere – yet they still managed to kinda outshine the local print and television news media when it came to the WWW. The local media still did a good job and continues to, but in this situation, they kinda got pwned as far as getting critical information out on the Internet goes.

(Sadly The Tennesseean‘s website, though better than it was in the past, is kind of a great big cluttered mess and I really don’t know how anyone finds anything on there. Messy, messy, messy. I’m not a big fan of the Scripps template that The Commercial Appeal and the Knoxville News-Sentinel are using these days, but it’s 110% better than the garbled cluttered up mess I see every time I go to The Tennesseean looking for something. And while I know newspaper and television news sites pretty much MUST have ads on them these days, and that’s fine – it’d be nice if someone would come up with a solution for nearly all of the media sites nationwide where advertisements wouldn’t cause the page loading issues they do. There’s nothing more annoying than going to your local TV news station’s site when the tornado siren’s going off outdoors… only to see the page hanging FOREVER when it’s trying to load via some ad supplier’s domain.)

Anyway, so there. I would say that’s all, but yesterday the floods came back and a little too close to home for me – way too close to home for many of my friends.

Summer hasn’t even really begun in Tennessee and, this year, I don’t think winter can come too soon.

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On a final note – I’m going to make a valiant attempt to start posting again at least a few times a week, if not more. Even if it’s stupid. I’ve been so busy for so many months now and it really has been almost impossible to get here and post most of the time. But I feel better when I do, so I’m going to make an effort again and guess we’ll just see what happens. I’ve decided it wasn’t just because the week of the flood was so grim and critical – it just felt better, being on Twitter more, being here more. So there you go. It might get really dumb around here, but I guess that’s okay too.

I’m As Tired of This Woe Is Me Stuff As You Probably Are, But Bear With Me Another Sec

So one of the things I’d been meaning to write about this week was sort of a little clarification to what my situation is/has been. I know (especially after talking with KathyT this morning, and talking with her and Aunt B. and Kat Coble in recent weeks, though I can kind of tell from what Kathy said today that I probably don’t really understand the full scope of all this just yet) – anyway, I know there’s been some stuff going on on my behalf, more or less, and I really don’t have words to express the gratitude and appreciation I feel about that, no matter what Kathy is bringing to me Sunday. When it comes to things like that I pretty much just dissolve into tears and sniffles, I’m worthless that way.

Anyway, that said – even though I know anyone and everyone involved would probably insist I don’t owe anyone any explanations – I feel like I still need to sort of clarify some things and attempt to explain a little, or at least some of what I possibly can publicly, about how and why things got this bad. Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot I can really go into here on the blog, for several reasons.

As many of you will remember, things were already kind of bad and shaky prior to last fall, though looking back NOW, those struggles look like a piece of cake compared to what I’ve been dealing with the last many months.

The best way I really know how to explain what’s happened now is for those of you that have traditional jobs, or have had them up until recently, to imagine not getting paid since, say, October or November. Or imagine only getting paid enough every month to pay your rent or house payment.

That’s pretty much exactly what I’ve been dealing with, more or less. I can’t really say more publicly – not because of anything illegal, or anything of that sort – just out of respect for other people’s feelings due to the circumstances, I am choosing not to talk about it at length publicly. I have shared more of the details with a few, and if I know you, I’m happy to forward a copy of the e-mail I sent in those cases, or they can, or whatever, or we’ll talk about it over a meal sometime if I ever get to Nashville again or whatever. I don’t mind my friends knowing more about the situation, I’m just not going to blog about it on that public level.

But that’s pretty much what happened, and I’ve been scrambling ever since trying not to drown under what’s been a flood of never-ending stress and anxiety and I suppose terror, even, because of all the behind-ness that situation has wrought. All that behind-ness usually made even worse because, for a while there, every month would roll around and something still wouldn’t have been taken care of, so now there was an urgent need to get this paid or that paid – which has meant ongoing late fees and, on several occasions, overdraft fees trying to keep something or another from getting canceled or cut off. I’ve probably paid another year’s worth or more of car payments alone just in late fees all these months, but there was nothing else that could be done about it.

In all the cutting back and cutting out, somewhat fortunately I guess there were a few things that weren’t an issue when things grew so dire. I actually cut out cable a few years ago, when I still had a regular paycheck coming in, because I was spending so much more time online anyway and everything I watched much was available online, I just really couldn’t justify shelling out that kind of money every month anymore.

Same thing with my cell service. I’ve never been a big cell phone user and mainly carry mine for emergency purposes more than anything else. I couldn’t justify all that contract money anymore so I went to cheap and prepaid ages ago, and not only have been all the better for it but have more coverage than I did with my previous provider anyway and rarely any of the problems I had before with dropped calls and such. My mom has used the same prepaid service for years so now that’s just part of my birthday present every year, air time, and I never use a whole year’s worth in a year anyway.

So those were not issues – everything else has been, in any case. My mom wasn’t going to let me starve or anything, and has gone far and beyond the call of duty again and again and again all these months trying to help save me from disaster, to the point where she really has no extra to keep sparing. What I hate the most is that, for months and months, she believed everything was going to be okay the next month because I thought it was going to be – only for that month to come around and nope, and there we’d be scrambling to keep my utilities from getting turned off or this paid or that paid. She didn’t go on her usual vacation last year because of me, and if it weren’t for Social Security kicking in this year, I’d probably already be homeless and she would not be on vacation right now. Then there’s the boyfriend who is unable to work right now and wants nothing more than to be able to provide for me/us, and maybe in a couple of years we will be a two-income family and all of this current stuff will just be a bad memory – but that’s then, and this is now, and now sucks.

Anyway, as I wrote before, after this many months of struggling like this, it had gotten to be end of the rope time, there was nothing left. Have sold almost everything I had left to sell other than the one thing(s) that are the only “family heirloom” type thing that is just mine, no one else’s, that I have left, stuff I mentioned in a recent post – and that may well still go, and is not worth all that much anyway. Well, there is one other thing, but I’ve got to get up home to be able to do that and haven’t really been looking forward to dealing with that anyway (i.e., potentially shipping some things that are very, very breakable) and am actually probably going to make a blog post about it next week – this is something that is not only a pain to think about selling and shipping via eBay or something, but is also something really only a small percentage of people would be interested in owning. I’m thinking with the power of the Internet, I might find that person between now and Christmas and solve this problem; otherwise, it’ll be going up on eBay probably about the time people start Christmas shopping.

But yeah, really, like I said – think about your job, if you have one. And then think about not getting paid or only getting paid one bill’s worth every month since last fall, and that’s pretty much right where I am, and have been.

Other possibilities – there’s so many people going for every job that comes up, and a friend of mine here in town who is in charge of hiring where she is told me lately it’s nothing like it has ever been. Instead of 25 or 50 resumes coming in for every job she posts, she’s getting 200. Then there’s the other ones – the ones I’m way overqualified for and so is most everyone else – someone I know who hires for a place like that put it this way: why would he hire anyone that’s likely to leave as soon as the economy gets better or something else comes up? He, too, is seeing hundreds of applications for every position that opens, and in the case of his business, he says about 90% of them are overqualified, or maybe qualified to have HIS job – but not the position that’s open.

But the other thing is – and I think maybe there are some others out there that missed this, because Kathy didn’t realize it, though I know not everyone missed it because several, including The Awesomest Squirrel Queen in the World, commented on it when I mentioned it before – I actually AM working, besides what I have not been paid for. I actually really like my new gig doing QA work, it doesn’t pay much but it’s steady, but at least it does pay SOMETHING. I also do some other freelance work to bring in a little, and then there’s my other venture, which many of you have been aware of for a while, which is still continuing to steadily grow, though penny by penny, and that’s pretty much literally. It is growing, however, and I’ve built a foundation of what should (unless the whole industry hoses) continue to be residual income that grows. As it is, what started out as a little venture with big plans brought in over a year’s time what would have been nice “extra” money… if it hadn’t almost been my ONLY money.

I really do almost nothing BUT work to bring in what little I do – if I’m not working on one thing, it’s something else, or something else, or doing QA work, all day every day. Sleep for three or four hours, get up and scramble to bring in some money some more. Just been a constant ongoing thing and probably needless to say, I stay exhausted.

But I am, much like I said before, finally at a point where if I can just get a grip on the backlog, getting by month to month again is within my reach. It may require 80 hours a week of doing QA reviews, but I’m finally to a point where being able to get by every month, even if it’s just barely squeaking by, is possible.

But that’s what’s so frustrating about all this backlog that has just been stacking up and stacking up all these months struggling through this and staying perpetually behind – two months behind on this bill, a month behind on that bill, every once in a while three months behind and barely saving myself before cutoff/cancellations or losing everything. That much stress and anxiety is not good for anyone and it’s just consumed me daily for months and been downright frightening plenty – I probably need to be on medication at this point but much like my glasses that have needed to be replaced for a couple of years now, teeth that need to be fixed, my stupid broken windshield that got broken while sitting in my driveway during a storm (yep, that’s my luck) and some other stuff that I have just had to put on hold (including stuff people normally absolutely do not NOT pay every year – read into that what you want and you’re probably right) – well, anything extraneous is just out of the question completely right now. My glasses may be all scratched up and my prescription’s probably long since changed again, but as long as I can see out of them, whatever, and I still have a partial supply of contacts left from a few years ago that probably also need a prescription change, but for going out of the house purposes, they’ll do just fine until I can actually do something about it all again.

Anyway, so there you have it, what I can say publicly anyway, and I don’t want to keep going on about it here but it’s sort of my understanding that several people have been involved in trying to help and even though I really don’t know the full scope of it all yet, I just wanted to clarify and better outline a little more than I did before, maybe. Especially in trying to give an example of what it really is I’ve been dealing with, and also – especially after realizing that Kathy didn’t realize I am working at all – to clarify that I am doing work, and doing other things to try and fix all this. It’s just not much money, but at least it’s a little.

I’m also going to do something that I never intended to do, but it was suggested to me by someone else that maybe I ought to put a donation button on the blog in case there were those that wanted to help but didn’t want to take a chance on embarrassing me by asking, or whatever. Believe me, at this point with things as bad as they’ve gotten and after months and months of struggling and dealing with this stuff, I’m beyond any embarrassment or anything of the sort about accepting any help and stuff. I know some have already done plenty and they’ve done enough, and I’m not going to think anything negative about anyone who doesn’t, but for anyone else who just happens along and wants to, or has, I’m humbled and beyond words when it comes to appreciation and gratitude of those who do or have. So there it is and I’ll be putting it in the sidebar to stay, I guess.

I just can’t really put into words how not only depressing but just plain frightening it’s all been. My anxiety and stress levels have been so high and so constantly for so long, and with a pretty huge family history of both stroke and heart disease, even all the more frightening to be that stressed out all the time. There was a very scary couple or three days in December that I really don’t ever want to relive again, and I’d like to think I’m handling all that anxiety and depression a little better than I was at that particular time, but then there’s weeks like last week, when ’round about Wednesday evening, it occurred to me that the reason I was feeling sick and dizzy was probably because I hadn’t really realized it, but I had spent most of the last three days holding my breath repeatedly because I was so worried about how I was going to take care of what needed to be paid that week. That kind of anxiety.

I just want to be able to breathe again, and not be in a constant state like that almost 24/7 for weeks and months at a time. And be able to sleep more than a fitful three or four hours waking up worrying some more. And maybe only spend, say, 18 hours a day desperately trying to make some income instead of 20 or 22. That would be an improvement.

I do know this. I may not have much else left at this point, but my family and loved ones, and friends blogger and non-blogger alike, and an awful lot of acquaintances as well – you’re all just treasures. I wish I had the right words to fully express how grateful I am and how much I appreciate and heart all of you, but as I said above, times like that, words just start failing me and I just start getting teary-eyed and sniffly instead. So please just know I do. If you’re reading this, then you are most likely one of those treasures and you’re just so fabulous I have no words left to say but that I’m proud to know you and that you crossed my path, wherever and however you did. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

The Usual, Unfortunately

Here’s yet another example of how rotten my luck is (and notably has been for some time).  I was getting ready to work on a project a couple of days ago that I badly needed to work on and finish before Christmas got much closer, and as I sat down at the computer all motivated and ready to get productive – the power went out.  Because at the house next door, they were chopping limbs off a tree… but had to get the utility company to kill my power line to do it.

The power was out for, I don’t know, seven or eight, maybe nine hours.  Just mine.  Not the house where the tree is.

In fact, the worker chopping the tree got through about 3:45, and had made several calls, but over two hours later, the utility company had yet to come back and put the (live) line back up.  So I called them too.  They finally showed up after 7 p.m., and by then it was really too late to do anything.

There’s something else I need to get done, but I need a large shipment of (free) Priority Mail boxes from the postal service to be able to do it.  I’ve been waiting a while.  I realize it’s the Christmas season and all with the mail, but just yet another monkey wrench thrown my way.  At this point, even though I badly need to get this done, I’m thinking maybe I’m better off waiting until after Christmas anyway.  Maybe people will have more money to spend on stuff they want but don’t necessarily need (which is what this project mainly consists of) by then.

In any case, I just can’t really catch a break lately.  There’s always something somewhere throwing a monkey wrench into everything.

I applied for a couple of jobs recently.  The very next week, both organizations announced major layoffs and a hiring freeze.

I’m very tired of things like having to choose between buying groceries or putting gas in the car.  Or whether to buy food to eat, or buy paper towels and toilet tissue.

It’s too bad I have to buy groceries at all, since it seems like nearly all the things I have to buy that are necessities have gone up 75-100% practically in the last few months.  Some of them have even gone up that much – yet the packaging has gotten smaller, there’s less of whatever it is in the package.  Other stuff is the same price but now, like, 11 ounces of whatever instead of 16.

Seems like I’ve been saying for months when will this all end?  Seems like it’s not going to.

People close to me will help, but by the time I’ve gotten another round or two of groceries and other necessities or bills paid, there’s nothing left and I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to make $1.49 or so stretch out for weeks again.  I need to put gas in the car again later this week and I’m thinking, OK, now how am I going to do that?

I eat maybe three, four times a week.  I know that’s not good.  But I do things like last week when I made the mistake, after having craved it for days and being hungry as heck anyway, of spending a little extra (less than ten bucks) on a spaghetti dinner from a fave joint around here.  Now I’m wishing I hadn’t and had that ten bucks back.

I have cut back virtually everything, pretty much, until there is no more.  The utilities are almost two months behind again, as that’s pretty much stayed for months now – it’ll get paid somehow.  I wouldn’t have Internet anymore I suppose, except since that’s my sole source of income I can’t very well not have that – of course if the utilities get cut off – well, you know.

Christmas?  I don’t get to participate in Christmas for the second year in a row.  I mean, we’ll have it, and it’ll be fine and nice and all that.  But I can’t buy anything for anyone, and just be opening presents I’ll wish nobody would have bought me since I can’t do anything myself.  I do have one thing for my sister that I just happened to wind up with, but I didn’t really intentionally go out and get it as a Christmas gift.  That’ll be it.

I’ve built up some residual recurring income.  It’s small now, but it will get better.  It’s just stuff that takes some time to grow and is going to continue to.  But it’s not going to solve any big problems right away, that’s for sure.

I do some work but there are issues with that too.  Always issues.  I’m actually constantly working, almost around the clock, sleep here and there when I finally crash, get up and get to work on something else again.  It’s some income, but not enough.  Working on other things too but again, more stuff that’s going to take time for anything to come of it.

I’m just really, really tired of it all.  Sorry.  I probably wouldn’t read here anymore for all the repetitive doom and gloom there’s been either.

Dobie is in such decline that I don’t really think we have much longer.  He is so frail and skinny now, it just breaks my heart.  And that in itself – him getting so frail and thin and pitiful, as well as blind – has posed all kinds of new problems, like today when he got stuck somewhere I wasn’t sure for a while I was going to be able to get him out of.  Last week he got a foot and claw stuck in the old furnace grill and I wasn’t sure I was going to get him loose from that either.  I keep thinking what if he does something like that sometime when I’m (rarely as I am) away from home and is stuck like that for hours?

He and the only other extremely elderly pet left are really throwing me for a loop.  Neither of them are eating as much as they should, although the cat is really doing all right otherwise for her 17 or so years.  It takes her hours to eat when she does eat, though, and she spends most of her time in there talking to her food.  Which is kind of funny, yes, but she’s always had this habit of talking to inanimate objects, starting with a roll of duct tape that was on the floor once years ago.

I always was big into Christmas.  I was thinking the other day of how nice it always used to be between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We’d have the tree up and on every night, and my parents had all this Christmas music on a couple of reel-to-reel tapes that were usually playing every night, and I’d just hang out laying with my head under the Christmas tree listening to music and looking at the lights and ornaments most every night.

Back when people used to have time to enjoy stuff like that, anyway.

I’d do the same at my grandmother’s house.  I remember what all the Christmas decorations she used to pull out every year looked like – probably because I was always helping get them out and put them up – even though I haven’t seen most of them in 25 years.  I guess my aunt still has most of them, I don’t know.  I don’t think there’s really anything I wish I had of all that stuff, except for maybe the little lighted Christmas trees that probably actually originally belonged to my great-grandmother.  There were two of them – one was silver and one was green – they weren’t anything special, just aluminum or tin with a light inside, and colored cellophane or something that made them look like they had lights on them.  Probably from the Fifties or Forties, maybe earlier.  They always sat on the end tables in my grandmother’s living room which, before that, was my great-grandmother’s living room.

I’m older now than my mother was when I left home for college.  Have I already written that here before?  I can’t remember.

So, enough joy and good will to men from me for now.  Maybe sometime I’ll have something better or funny to write about, there just isn’t lately or I’m too busy anyway.

I was about to write that at least Tojo has been staying mostly out of trouble lately, but I just reached over to move him as he was standing over Maggie looking like he was about to jump on her (again), and he bit me (not hard).  So there’s that, too.

Double the Horror, Double the Poverty

Last night was depressing.  I went to the grocery store.

Back in the spring, I mentioned that I had noticed a lot of the things I pretty much HAVE to buy on a regular basis had gone up relatively significantly.  Well, now (in just the past week or two), they’ve gone up AGAIN.

40 lb. bag of (store brand) dog food – up from $7.99-8.99 in April 2008 to $13.99.

20-ish lb. bag of (commercial) cat food – up for around $11 to $15.

Box of (store brand) dog treats – used to be two for $2, now $4 ($6 somewhere else for something similar).

Kitty litter – I always buy cheap kinds and store brands because my cats simply usually prefer them.  The store brand cat litter at my usual grocery stores is now costing what Tidy Cats, Fresh Step, etc. USED to.

All totaled, well over $15, possibly even up to an additional $20 a month or so if you’re a pet owner.

So yes, that is all pet stuff and I suppose some people would scoff that pets are a luxury (even though they’re the only “kids” I have).  So let’s look at stuff for ME.

Nearly all the food and personal items I buy for myself are, these days, generic and store brands.  Nearly all of THEM have increased in cost similarly.  Thank goodness I don’t habitually eat very much or often – which is bad, I know – but the simple fact is right now I couldn’t afford to eat TWO meals a day, much less three, so right now my borderline eating disorder is a blessing.

One of my preferred easy quick cheap meals is not so cheap anymore.  Formerly 89 cents, I discovered just over the weekend the price had gone up to $1.09.  And now it’s gone up to $1.29 SINCE the weekend.

Here was the real shocker for me, though.  I actually noticed this at another store last week, but thought maybe it was just one of those things, since I was at a retail drugstore where things sometimes are higher than they are at, say, Kroger or Wal-Mart.

But no.  Angel Soft toilet tissue, usually acquired for $1 or less per four-roll package many places – now pushing $2, at $1.85.  This isn’t Northern, this isn’t Charmin, this isn’t Kleenex – it’s ANGEL SOFT, for goodness’ sakes.  Granted, even if I had lots of money I’d probably buy it anyway instead of the others.  I like it just fine, think it’s great anyway, and after what a plumber once told one of my best friends after a thousands-of-dollars plumbing repair job, I probably will buy it forever (well, if I can afford to).

And I have long lamented the high cost of feminine hygiene/protection products for years, as that is something most women HAVE to have on hand and cannot do without, yet even the store brands are often horrifically expensive.  I have always considered that one of those things that’s just simply not fair and borderline sexist.  Fortunately I stocked up on that stuff a few months ago with the generous gift of a kind friend of a Wal-Mart gift card.  I am NOT looking forward to seeing what that stuff costs when I’ve depleted my current stock.

But seriously – do you see what I’m getting at here?  This is GROCERIES, people.  This is generic and store brand people food, as well as pet food.  This is “lesser brand” TOILET TISSUE, for Pete’s sake.

And most of it’s nearly DOUBLED in cost in just the last four months.  100% inflation, folks.

Gasoline prices were bad enough, and I realize they have decreased somewhat (at least temporarily).  It still sucks that I have a compact car and it costs over $50 to make a two and a half hour trip to my hometown there and back, and that I’m 42 years old and my mom has to send me the money if I want to come home for the weekend.

But this – this is groceries – and TOILET TISSUE, for crying out loud – doubling in cost.  What happens next year?  Tripling?  Quadrupling?

I can’t afford any of it, and my income is tentative enough as it is.  What really sucks is that I’ll still be owing taxes next year on what pitiful, way below average “poverty level”, amount of income I have actually earned this year.

All I’ve been hearing about lately is people getting laid off, hundreds here, a few there, hundreds more over there.  I suspect few of you reading right now could tell me you’ve gotten a raise this year that’s helping to offset this incredible rise in not only cost of just living, but cost of necessities.

I know I’m sounding like a broken record here lately.  I don’t know how many times I’ve asked this in the last five or six months, and I’m getting kind of tired of asking it and wondering about it at this point, but anyway…

Where does it stop?  When does it end?

You want my vote in the Presidential election?  Then tell me it is going to stop, and where it’s going to stop, and when it’s going to end, AND make it happen.

Preferably before we’re all homeless and out on the street, starving, and having to tear up family Bibles and dictionaries and encyclopedias because we can’t afford to buy four rolls of toilet paper.

No News is… No News

Wow, I am so shocked about something I just read in my hometown newspaper, I’m almost speechless; and, in fact, jumped over here to write about it while I’m still processing the shock before I finished reading the rest of the paper (or the rest of the article, for that matter).

Yesterday it was announced that the Tennessean is cutting service to ten counties west of Dickson. I probably shouldn’t be quite as surprised as I am, as we’ve been discussing media matters (as in old school vs. current technology) here around the regional blogosphere for some time now, and I guess the writing’s been on the wall – especially now, with these outrageous fuel costs in this country. Still, the actuality of this has me stunned.

I wasn’t all that surprised a little over a week ago when my hometown newspaper announced that The Commercial Appeal, Memphis’ daily newspaper, was going to cease circulation in my home county (and, I would assume, my other home county next door where I went to high school). This is strictly my opinion, but I think the CA shot itself in the foot a few years ago – a foot that was already tenuous, at best, in Northwest Tennessee – when the decision was made to decrease news coverage of most anything north of Jackson.

Initially, that included the obituaries, which was about the only reason I still subscribed to the print version of the CA the last ten years that I did, so I could keep up with things like that that I needed to know back home. A little later – and after what I would assume were many complaints (I know they received two for sure) – they revised the decision a bit and began to re-include that region in the obituaries, but they never did quite get back up to speed with it and they frequently missed a lot, and pretty much the same with the news in general.

It just never did quite get back to speed and return to being the “overall” regional coverage and inclusion of all things not only Memphis but the broad surrounding area that, frankly, to me was always far superior to The Tennessean until maybe seven or eight years ago. I stopped subscribing to home delivery in the early part of this decade, partially due to the rising cost and the convenience of being able to read it online anyway, but mainly because of the decrease in regional coverage from north of Jackson. The decrease in general news coverage was actually pretty gradual over time, but the day they killed the obituaries was probably the death knell for a lot of people with the CA - both those living in Northwest Tennessee and those of us with a vested interest in the region.

So it’s not really a surprise to me that the CA is quitting Northwest Tennessee. I expect there were very few home delivery subscribers – if any – left, and doubt there were many buying it out of what few CA stands were still left around up yonder.

And when it comes down to it, like I said, the CA‘s foothold in the region has probably always been tenuous at best because that’s basically a Nashville news area – just about smack in the middle of the two, but just a little closer to Nashville and (more importantly, probably) an area which has been served by Nashville television and radio lo these many years. Before other stations started creeping in and then cable just exploded into a million channels, you had the three big Nashville network affiliates plus the PBS station, and then the alternate network stations in Paducah, Cape Girardeau, Jackson, and the other PBS station in Lexington, and that was it. You had to get closer to Jackson to get Memphis TV stations.

So, being almost all Nashville news towns TV-wise, that area has always been pretty pro-Tennessean vs. The Commercial Appeal as well, so – again – the CA‘s demise in that area’s not surprising. You had people who subscribed to both – we did, my family – but we were likely in the minority. We actually subscribed for years to home delivery of the CA daily and Sunday, and only subscribed to the Sunday Tennessean, but then again we had a daily paper in town most of my life. Until about six or seven years ago, anytime I was at home visiting, I went out on Sundays I was there and picked up both the Memphis and Nashville papers. Our preference for the CA was probably partially due to my parents both having gone to college in Memphis, but also I think we just generally all agreed the CA was superior to the Tennessean.

But that’s not at all true of most folks up there; like I said, those are mostly pro-Tennessean towns just west and just east of the Tennessee River, so I’m just really shocked that the paper is going to discontinue all service up there – not even in stores or on the paper racks. And so soon on the heels of the CA‘s same decision, and especially when the Tennessean‘s always been so far ahead of the CA in popularity (and, one would assume, sales). But in this case, I guess better sales (for whatever that was worth in this day and age) no longer makes up for the astronomical rise in fuel costs, as well as other expenses.

But even though I haven’t actually resided in Northwest Tennessee since 1985, it is kind of freaking me out to think of both those papers not being there – at least the Sunday editions. This is actually a pretty large area we’re talking about and – man. It’s weird to think about, and it’s going to also be really strange not to see newspaper racks around up there (or at least not but a couple).

If I wasn’t so hyper-aware of the issue, maybe I wouldn’t even notice they’re not around anymore, I don’t know. But right now I’m just picturing in my head the sight of outside the post office in downtown Paris, by the door of all the convenience stores in Paris and Camden, the racks by the cash register of dozens of other stores – all those places that I knew, if I wanted (or needed) to run out and get a Sunday Tennessean or CA, they’d be there. And now they won’t be. And that’s weird.

So that pretty much leaves a fairly large area without a large newspaper service, not even on Sunday. Well, there is one large-ish paper – if you could even call it that – not as big as the other two, still around (for now). But if you can’t be nice, and all that, you know. That’s why I’m not going to say anything else at all about that one.

I don’t know. It’s weird. I think we’ve all sort of seen this coming, but just now with this it really and truly seems like the real beginning of the end of an era now, to me anyway, and that’s of course from a total layman’s point of view. But not only am I just freaked out about what if I am back home and want a Sunday paper and have to drive an hour in either direction to get one, of course; I’m concerned for the friends (like this one and this one and this one and this one) and family who are right at the heart of it all too.

No Sunday papers in a ten-county area, gas prices looking like they’re pushing towards five bucks a gallon, and I just noticed my dog’s usual (and previously relatively inexpensive) dog food has gone up nearly an entire four dollars a bag. My salary’s certainly taken a big hit this year catastrophically – and I’m obviously not a “normal” case – but even if I was still working the same job, I’m pretty sure my salary wouldn’t have gone up much (if at all), and I imagine many others are in the same boat. What’s next? I’m honestly beginning to dread to even wonder.

PS Murphy Just Loves Me

Oh, I forgot the best parts/slash/salt in the wound about that last post about me being short $1.16.

1. I had to spend $2.68 on a flea collar today, which was the first flea collar I’ve had to buy in at least 10 years, maybe 15. I’ll spare you the yucky details, but (of course) it involves Tojo the Psycho Cat.
2. I actually did receive a check in the mail for $9.50 today. Unfortunately, my wonderful mailman I’ve had for years (and always came in the morning) has apparently either retired, quit, or is on an extended vacation, and in his place is a creature who it would seem does the route in reverse – therefore being late as all get out, sometimes after business hours no less. And is about the unfriendliest sourpuss of a postal worker I’ve ever seen, though that’s beside the point. Anyway, the check arrived too late to get it in today’s deposit at the bank.

The hits just keep on coming and my luck continues to suck. But again – California!

One of These Days I Might Write Happy Stuff Again

I am exactly $1.16 short of being able to pay my already overdue car insurance payment. Don’t that beat all, as they say? (Well, they do say that down here anyway.)

Car payment’s due tomorrow. Going to have to be a few days late, obviously.

This might all be just a little bit easier to tolerate were it not for the fact I had to put nearly $5 of gas in the car the other night just to be able to drive the 15.4 miles from the Wal-Mart in Olive Branch to my house.

But hey, I guess it could be worse. I could be living in California.

The 92 Cent Post (Worth about $0.00)

Lots of good discussion floating around the regional blogosphere this past week or two regarding the gas price crunch and the basically terrible state of our current economy in general, most notably this one at Mack’s (with heads up from ‘Coma) and this one at ‘Coma’s, which was really about the awful recent presidential debate and those asking the questions’ failure to ask about pertinent issues for most Americans – which probably for a lot of us lately is, like, hmm, do I eat, or do I put gas in my car?

I won’t go over the big laundry list of stuff I had to add to the discussions from a single, never married, no kids person who doesn’t make much money’s point of view all over again, but the Cliffs Notes version is I have cut back just about all I can until there’s very little to cut back. I don’t have cable or any TV service at all anymore. I don’t carry mobile phone contract service anymore, I have prepaid that I really only use mostly for emergencies and the occasional important necessary call (and really always did anyway, so paying for contract service for 10+ years was stupid on my part but again, I cut that out a long while ago). I can’t cut out Internet service, no, because then I can’t work.

But I’ve cut out or cut back thousands of other things. I don’t, as a rule for around the house, buy soda anymore, don’t even buy tea or juice – I drink water. Me, who has never really liked to drink just water unless I HAD to – water. I still drink coffee, yep, but mainly because I have a surplus given to me from the last two Christmases. One, the biggest bag of coffee you’ve ever seen in your life, but that’s another story.

Even things that most people consider absolutely essential, I don’t do. Like food. I eat one meal a day, and what I consider a meal, many of you probably would think it about 1/4th of one. Now, granted, I’ve got terrible eating habits anyway and have kind of eaten about once a day for years – if I remember to, sometimes I don’t so that’s zero meals a day some days. Right now, I’ve got enough food in the house I’m not going to starve, for a couple of weeks anyway, even though most of it I kind of look at and go “eh” about. Snacks – nope. Fruit – I’d love to have fruit around, at least bananas or something, but a lot of that’s gotten too expensive to think about buying on a regular basis too, especially when you spent four months mostly out of work.

Anyway, I said I wasn’t going to go through the laundry list of stuff and there’s plenty more, but I’ll stop there and just say it again – I’ve cut out and cut back just about all I can, some on purpose and some things just happened that way. There’s just not much else left to cut.

With all this discussion going on lately and especially folks talking about how the gas crunch is affecting them and their families if they have one, I realize one of my pet peeves for years is now pretty much a moot point. In talking with my close and married friends and knowing various things about some of their financial statuses, it used to bug the living hooha out of me that, comparing their situations with various aspects to mine, getting married could have solved most of any of my financial problems or hardships over the years. That just used to drive me insane and many, many times over the years dealing with various things – insurance issues, tax issues, and on and on – I often felt pretty much penalized for having remained single and/or childless all of my adult life.

I know that’s not so true now, not with the rather horrifying state of today’s economy. What perks married folks get nowadays aren’t making so much of a difference when it costs $40-100 to fill up your car with gas and everything in the grocery store is edging up to costing a fortune.

I had running jokes going for years with two of my closest male friends from college about marrying either one of them someday, both of them who were/are well off and without a lot of financial concern even in today’s awful standards. At one point in the Nineties, with one of them, I was about thisclose to biting the bullet with one of them and just saying okay, I give up, let’s do it.

Anyway, yeah. Right now everything just sucks and I’m sick of it.

Yeah, I’m working now, but two of the three pay on a monthly basis only and I won’t get any significant pay until late May. Most of you know I’ve started a new venture to try and bring some more income in, but again, it will likely be late May to June before I really see anything from that. And having had a backlog of 4-5 months with very little to no work nor pay – I’m not exactly starting in the black to begin with.

We won’t even talk about Tax Day last week. Why anyone in my position OWES money is beyond me, unfortunately I will be owing even more before this is all over with. At least next year might be a little bit of a break, but only because I barely worked for 3-4 months so, you know, double-edged sword there.

I drive a compact car. A COMPACT. And yet it’s costing over $30 to fill up the tank from empty. Come on.

My washer and dryer both died some time ago so I’ve been relying on (A) the laundromat or (B) the not-that-often trip to my mother’s to get any laundry done. I need to do laundry right now. People keep asking lately about visiting or getting together, got a friend coming to town with his band in a couple of weeks, got another friend coming in from Chicago shortly after that. Everything I could wear for such an occasion needs to be washed. I can’t spare the cash for the laundromat right now.

Today was maybe one of the most telling days of all for me. I have a total of about $0.92 in cash to last me until the end of this month… with almost ten days to go.

First of all, an unfortunate error in subtraction has left me exactly 13 cents overdrawn at the bank. You know what they’re going to do to me with overdraft charges over that, I’m soooo happy. I’d have gone and thrown some of that 92 cents I have left in there to cover it, but by the time I discovered it today, it was too late anyway.

There were some household items that were badly needed, and I had a Target gift card that, for whatever reason, I thought was $25. It turned out to be $20, so while at the register I wound up putting a couple of things back.

I had a Wal-Mart gift card too, with about $12 on it, from some Christmas last year or the year before, I don’t know which. Only problem is there are virtually no Wal-Marts very close to me, here in the center of the city. No matter which one I chose, I was going to have to drive clear across town, so I decided maybe I’d head to the one in Southeast Memphis or in Olive Branch (cheaper tax wise).

But I don’t have enough gas in my car to get there or to any of them. Sure enough, when I was leaving Target, the almost-empty light came on. It went back off a little up the road, but it’s still close enough to empty I can’t drive out to the ‘burbs to spend that $12 and however many cents. The 92 cents in my wallet to last me until the end of April isn’t going to get me too far at the gas pump.

I know things will get better for me, at least eventually. But today, I’ve just had it.

Sorry, I got nothing else today. And that’s pretty much literally, obviously.