I think my gig here at my friends' house will soon come to an end. Call it intuition born from experience or just good old-fashioned paranoia, but I see the writing on the wall. My dog apparentlyy peed twice on the carpet while I was in NYC for two days interviewing for a job. Although, my friend only told me about the one time, so I had that information to go on.
Well today, I woke up early and took him for a walk, determined to stick to the schedule of taking him out every fouur hours. Then went back to my room, with him in tow, to work on growing my programming skills and staying well out of their way. At one point, Jacques got up and and I let him out of the room, intending to follow him, but got hung up on something I was working on. I heard the kids playing with him in the hallway and then the little girl took him into her room and closed the door to keep him in there. I think this makes him anxious and so he peed in her room (though I didn't know that just yet). She let him out a few minutes later and he scratched on my door to be let in. Ten minutes went by and my friend's husband (whom I met as a co-worker about 13 years ago in SF, CA) called my name and gave me a huge chewing out about the dog having a "real problem" with peeing in the house. And the evidence right there in the girls room.
My other friend was very upset at the whole thing and broke a bowl in the kitchen while I cleaned it all up. Thing is, the pee is a cinch to clean up as I have a special solution that kills the odor and breaks down the enzymes in dog urine so it lifts right out of the carpet in seconds. But I don't think that's what they were focused on. It's more about the complexities of inviting someone into your life with the best of intentions. Telling that person they have a home and to relax, go ahead and eat the food, use the electricity, yeah, bring the small dog. And then forgetting what all of that actually entails when you already have two children to take care of and a job to work and on top of it all, a house to maintain. I don't blame them at all. I know how someone staying for free somewhere eventually, despite everyone's best efforts, adopts the target on their back. It's simply inevitable. I knew it would happen if I couldn't find a job and a place soon.
So yeah, I should have remembered that and stayed put in Western Mass where I at least had housing. The money I borrowed from my grandmother could just have gone into rent there while I job hunted. But I was so damn desperate to get out of there... So here I am.
I've already called the United Way to figure out what housing options I have in the Boston area. I'm just being proactive in case I don't get this job in NYC. Experience has taught me to spot the signs of deterioration in a relationship ahead of time and to act quickly to figure out a safety net for when things fall apart. Which in my life seems to be every six months or so because of finances.
So tommorrow I'll be contacting the Transistional Assistance program to see about food stamps and the like. Thing is, I didn't have any money last tax period so I didn't file. I filed for an extension the year before that, so if they need tax papers from me for the food stamps and for applying for housing, I'm also shit out of luck. Let's just hope the job thing works out. Irony is, if it does, I'd be earning more money than I've ever made in my life.
I really wish things could just stablize for once. I need to get back to my writing life. Not my survival mode life.
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