"I won't ask HIM to help me again!"

Last night I told the manager that the noise upstairs is unbearable could you please ask them to quiet down?  (assuming he'd call them on the phone and tell them politely)

INSTEAD!   He walks to the motel room and bashes on the door for a good 15 minutes!  He is demanding they open their door immediately!  It is after 10 at night and the tenants are yelling back at him.  Mgr. threatens to call security.  There is a great deal of cursing and god knows how many people got involved because the fight went outside and sounded like more folks joined in.  I found the whle thing pretty scary and i put my ear against the door to try to make out the details.

After at least 45 min. of ruckus my motel phone rings.  I don't pick it up because it's either the mgr. telling me that he took care of it, or it's the other neighbor who figured out it's me and is pissed!

Funny, I had just watched a special on "John Gotti" the godfather and learned how the Mafia works.  This mgr obviously likes to handle problems Mafia style, and likely woke up everyone in the motel because of it!

"My current environment"

It's one room.  It goes for 900 a month.  There is no heating system whatsoever.  It's freezing!  2x a day I run the shower and just sit in there for the heat and sauna effect.  It's not disgusting but it's not as clean as I'd like.  Hair on the pillowcases.  The towels smell bad.  They are thin and ragged with swiss cheese holes in them.

Very noisy, there was hammering in the middle of the night.  Loud stereos alot of street noise.  Don't feel particularly safe.  My key doesn't work.  The lock doesn't work right.

No body was there to check me in I ended up having to call them on phone even though I was in lobby.  The guy seems pretty dumb.  His hands are blackened and greasy and it repulses me that I had to handle the same key he just handled.  He has an open wound on his hand and says he "might be going in for surgery tomorrow"

He says there is free coffee and buns, but do I want to eat food that has been handled by those hands?

"Survivor"

In the last 48 hours I have met 2 very interesting survivors.  One with real good social skills so we had a nice exchange.  He is my teller.  Strikingly handsome strong upper body.  The first time I met him was because of my inability to stand in line and he was helping folks who had "sit down business"  All I could see was his upper body since he was sitting.  Boy was  I surprised the first time when I saw him roll away from his desk in a wheelchair.  Today he told me his story.  He was in college on scholarship when he got into a car accident in 2010 that left him paralyzed.  I said:  "I'll bet you were an athlete weren't you?"  He said "Yes, they were football scholarships"  For a long time he had a weak immune system and kept getting sick.  (like me)  I told him about my invisible disabilities that make it nearly impossible to roll over or sit up in bed, get dressed, or even get out of the bathtub.

The next survivor I met; Bonnie* is about 45.  She said she was the biggest addict in Las Vegas and everyone knew it.  She is homeless with 6 children, single, and 2 of her kids live in the same room as her.  She is a manager in a restaurant and going back to college!

All I can say is WOW!

"Is there anywhere safe to live?"

Few of my residences since 2/1994 have been safe.  From 8/2011 to 8/19/2012 I had my own apartment in Mountain Town.  It was also a very dangerous place to live.  Again the authorities did not help me resolve those problems.

Additionally my landlord was out of compliance with city codes as well as fire codes.  Despite my protests about bug infestation nothing was done.  Anyway,I spent the year advocating for my rights as well as the rights of my fellow tenants.  Any surprise that when the lease came around for renewal the landlord "opted not to renew"

I am homeless again.  From 8/19 to 9/3 I stayed ina motel with the following conditions:

toilet didn't flush
bed feels like rocks
motel room ensconsed with mold
carpeting so disgusting and filthy i couldn't walk on it barefoot
no frig
no microwave
room wasn't cleaned prior to my arrival
had to buy my own bath stopper
shower water comes out as a trickle
all surfaces need to be cleaned
had to buy my own mattress topper
infested with bed bugs

Wanna know what the rent was?  900 a month or 225 a week!

And this my friends is how millions of Americans are "living"

Last summer when I endured conditions like this, I complained to the city because I assumed it was violation of code.  IT ISN'T A VIOLATION OF CODE IT TURNS OUT!   It turns out that the motels are not required to comply to city code they get to do their own thing!  Unreal.

You know what's even more unreal?  This motel I stayed in, the condtions were better there then at my last apt. because there is heat and air conditioning!

"The most beautiful sad blue eyes/the motel homeless"

There is a man who rides the bus with his 2 children who I have been "studying" off and on since I started seeing him on the bus.  One time I heard him telling his 9 yo girl, something to the effect of "so I beat the shit out of him until he was lying stunned on the bar floor!"  (I felt so sad that these children have parents like this-but this is not all that different from the majority of the parenting I see)

The other night the man, 2 kids and a woman in her 40's boarded the bus.  I was fairly certain she was the mother, even though she never looked away from her texting for nearly the entire bus trip.  The father and the son have the saddest blue eyes I've seen "in my life".  Neither parent ever smiled.  The father kept correcting the girl, telling her she was too loud, but I didn't perceive it that way at all.

Anyhow, 2 young men about 20 board the bus, they are , I'm pretty sure, travellers, as opposed to official homeless, and one has a mandolin!   They had made inquiry on which stop they should get off at.  I told them they could get off at either one, they are equidistant, and that I will ring the bell.

The mother came out of her texting world and emphatically corrected me, taking over the directions and telling the boys that I am wrong, that one of the stops is a slightly longer walk.  It turned out that the family LIVE at the hotel that the boys were looking for.  That would certainly explain the depression I see in this family's eyes.

When the mother found out that the boys are travelling across country from Pennsylvania she said:

Woman: "You are making the biggest mistake of your life.  You are going to be so sorry you left Pennsylvania.  Mountain Town is  a horrible horrible place and people are so horrible in the world/ it is too dangerous for you to be travelling!"

Young Man-"Much to the contrary we are meeting so many good people and we are having a wonderful time!"

(Oyy Veyy!  First of all, does she honestly think the boys are going to turn around and go home because she has had such a hard life?)

The mom didn't hear me but I said to the boy:  "That's crazy!"  You have to do this.  You can't stay home and live in fear because of what might happen!  You could stay in a 2 block radius your whole life also and see just as many bad things!"

I gave them some hippie references to which they replied they would love.  They just came from a Rainbow Gathering.  I gave them:

http://www.ic.org/

and

http://www.thefec.org/

I don't know.  I think it's a shame when parents have had a hard life, that they instill the misery in their kids, sharply decreasing their chances of being happy.  But also I do know what a nightmare it is that this family of four are living in one room in one of the flea bag motels........................