8/29/11 "Just one day"

Muscles  in arms, legs very weak.

  Hands and fingers also very weak, tough to hold a pen today.  It's like hundreds of bee stings in my hands and feet, 24 hours a day/ that's the nerve damage.

  My bedroom has been filling up with cigarette smoke and gas.

  It really doesn't matter how many times I move, I end up with heavy indoor toxins. Unless one has the means to purchase a  house way out in the country there just is no way around it. Noise pollution and air pollution are a HUGE  part of life for the poor.

My roomie discovered that the source of the gas coming into my bedroom is the 70's chevy van that the neighbor backs into the parking lot under my bedroom window. Neighbor admits bad gas leak but doesn't care that he is poisoning me so refuses to move it. I will settle this and he's not going to like how I settle it.

Dogs bark all night, and the other neighbor started his construction job in the yard at 4:30 a.m.  I am losing my mind. 

 Sleeping 2 hours a night if I'm lucky.

 After more then 18 yrs of living with similar conditions I can respond in 1 of 2 ways:

 a. give up and just accept the conditions or wake up and think:

 b. THis neighbor with the van is going to be very sorry that he fucked with me!

I've come to the sad conclusion that  "peaceful conflict mediation"  rarely works with fellow urban apt. dwellers in the average poor neighborhood!

Ran into Linda* at the bus stop. She was in the bunk bed above me for almost a month at the so called Christian shelter. She's my age with Down's but insists she has no disabilities.

She theoretically has no income but has been staying at the "ex-con" inn for 8 weeks. It costs 450 a month. I asked her how she is paying for it. She said her mother and the church. She said that her mother refused to help unless she cuts off ties with the "so called fiance in prison" Linda refused, so the mother gave in and helped anyway. Linda showed me a pic. of the convict and said she is moving to CA in Dec. and they are going to live happily ever after. She said she'd be "bedding" the guy in the motel room next door if it weren't for her promise to the convict. Linda looks alot like Shrek's wife.

So, somehow, Linda finds money to send to the guy in prison. When she bumps into me she monologues me and doesn't care what I or anyone thinks about her choices. When she told me that her mother gave her the ultimatum, I said I agreed with it, but Linda just rolled right over what I said and kept talking.

Thus is the life in this small mountain town, where most are unemployed, underemployed or homeless, unless they happen to be tourists on their way to the big sites............................