Day By Day

Well our first day went as well as I had hoped. It kind of dragged the first part of the day but once we had finished lunch, the rest of the day went along at a nice pace. My nerves are not so much of an issue any more which obviously is a good thing. Right in the middle of all this chaos I decided that lowering my daily dose of methadone would be a great idea. Duh!!!

The first week that I dropped – I went from 80ml to 75ml – didn’t even seem to notice the drop although I somehow managed to go to the clinic each day at approx the same time so I was on a pretty regular 24 hour schedule. Today I didn’t manage to make it to the clinic until just after 6pm and by this time, almost thirty fours hours had elapsed since my previous dose. While I didn’t feel that it was glaringly apparent I was out of kilter, I definitely felt a little off.

I had none of the tell tale typical “withdrawal” side effects but by the time I was finishing up work for the day my body certainly was starting to feel achy all over as well as becoming kind of stiff. My skin also started to become extremely sensitive to near everything. The contractor that arrived to steam clean the bedroom that is to be Sara and Katie’s had been working barely ten minutes – plus I was three rooms removed from the room that he was cleaning – when I could feel my skin start to break out rapidly in hives. I could not get out of our new apartment fast enough. It was most disturbing.

So what we’ve decided would be the smartest thing to do is to go to the clinic each day in the morning before we have to start work. Even though we have yet to move over to the new building, we have started to manage it and currently we are working Monday to Friday 9am until 5pm so we’ve got plenty of time to get our daily dose prior to work. This way also, we’ll have the benefit of the methadone’s full effect I should imagine as well as continuing with a fairly regular schedule.

Plus the last thing that anyone really wants to do after a full day at work is to have to face a crowded forty minute bus ride halfway across town. Much better to get this all finished first thing. No more worries.

Bright Beginnings

OK so in just over an hour I am due to start my new job. To say that I am nervous would pretty much be the understatement of the century. Yes, I am definitely excited and extremely grateful that I have a new job to go to considering it has barely been two weeks since I lost my last one. But, still…

I’ve not yet recovered from the fact that very shortly we’re to lose what I have come to consider our home. We’ve been displaced for all intent and purposes. It sickens me and has made me more bitter than anything else has ever done before in my entire life. This alone is something to be sure.

Back to Back Part Deux

So back to what I had started to say about back to backs and everything involved in these kind of things. September is by far the busiest month for apartment buildings and ours was no exception. We had over twenty back to backs. Now, when a new tenant signs their lease and any accompanying paperwork at the Rental Office, their Rental Agent is supposed to advise them if their unit is going to be a back to back unit. They are then supposed to place an additional stamp on their lease with this disclosure which states that the new tenant is fully aware of this fact. The tenant by signing this addendum to their lease, are then essentially agreeing to accept their new unit as potentially incomplete, but that this state will be temporary and will be corrected by the property owner in a timely manner.

Now up until the mess that ended up being caused in September, we went on faith that the Rental Agents were in fact doing their job correctly and that any and all of these types of situations were being handled properly. Can you imagine how you would feel if you showed up for your brand spanking new apartment only to find that everything promised to you had not been fulfilled? Understandably, you would be furious. This is what ended up happening to us in September to almost half of our units. Not that it matters much now because he no longer works for the company, but one of the Agents was neglecting to do this very critical part of the rental process. Not only did he fail to stamp their leases with this addendum, but he didn’t even bother to verbally advise them of this potential situation.

Now, very often, a potential back to back doesn’t always turn out that way. An old tenant can move out days or sometimes weeks before the last day of the month allowing us the opportunity to get in there to get everything completed early. There are also instances when a new tenant does not need the unit on the first of the month which also allows us time to complete everything prior to the new tenant moving in. These situations tend to be exceptions rather rules of course.

Now on the first of September our first set of tenants for the day arrived almost an hour early. They had been scheduled to move into their unit at 8am which is the earliest that we start any move ins anyway but phoned me just after 7am to see if they could start early. I was barely up yet as I had spent most of the night working and had barely had a chance to lie down more than two and a half hours at this point. Now the unit that they were moving into had not been handed over to us until 6pm the following evening which was about five hours later than technically the unit should have been be handed to us.

This unit also required a lot of work as the previous tenants had painted all of their walls different, darker, colors than what is considered standard with this company. Tenants are normally required to return the walls to the colors they had received them in or pay an additional amount to get them painted back to apartment beige! These tenants paid the $300 penalty but this didn’t help us any when the painters needed to put almost three coats of paint on each wall. This ended up really impacting us time wise when it came to us getting this unit into move in condition. Combined with not getting their keys until dinner time, we just weren’t going to get this unit ready for the new tenants no matter what we did. We simply did not have the time available to us.

Now of course, the two girls moving into this unit had not been advised of the fact that they were renting a back to back unit so they were obviously freaking out when they saw that the work had not been completed. They fully expected to be walking into a pristine unit. Both of them were all of nineteen years old at the most and both had brought both sets of parents with them as well. Their fathers were positively the worst. They started yelling and screaming and carrying on without pause. And this my first move in of the weekend! As this was our first September move in with this company, I went and got one of the other Building Managers. I grabbed Jack as he had pretty much given us most of our company training as well as pretty much mentoring us since the start. He for the most part had been above awesome in my books!!!

He explained the situation to them and discovered during this time, that the tenants had not been advised that their unit was a back to back, etc. He asked them what we needed to do today to make them happy and we proceeded to do our best to accommodate any and all of their wishes and believe me these little princesses had many. The icing on the cake just happened to be the fact that the parents were extremely great friends with the owner of the company that I work for and of course, they promised that he would be hearing about what had happened this weekend, etc, etc. Most excellent, n’est pas?

We asked him to refrain from saying anything to the owner until the end of the weekend. If we could complete all of their requests before the start of the work week would they be satisfied enough to let everything go? Absolutely, no problem. We all worked like mad to get everything peachy keen for these two while moving in the other twenty units without much more mishap. Now right from the start, one of the two girls rubbed me the wrong way. She was demanding and condescending and no where near as nice as her room mate. I was soon to learn also, that she had quite the creative imagination and was spiteful enough not to consider the possible ramifications of her actions.

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TO BE CONTINUED…

Back to Back

I live in a city that is often referred to as a university town. Why you may wonder is it called something like that? Well, first of all there is a highly regarded university located here as well as one of the provinces first community colleges, the University of Western Ontario and Fanshawe College respectively. I managed to attend both of these, earning my Bachelor of Arts Honours in History from UWO and my Business Diploma with Marketing major from Fanshawe. Both of these institutions manage to attract a large number of students.

Normally the population of London falls slightly under 400 000. Each September, this population manages to increase by over 10% when approx 40 000 students descend on this city. Incredible. Many of these same students tend to depart the city at the end of their exams some time in May but a few of their numbers do remain behind to enjoy London’s very laid back summer.

London also happens to have the distinct advantage of being located almost exactly distance wise between Toronto and Detroit, which just happen to be much larger and livelier metropolises but less than two hours drive away respectively. For many, this is idyllic as one can live in a nice, quiet city most of the time but be barely a stones throw away from any and all crazed entertainment should one desire.

Now, one familiar with the rental biz would know that if a tenant is set to move out on the last day of his lease, which also tends to be the last day of the month, and a new tenant is set to move into the same unit the following day, which generally is the first day of the next month, that this particular situation is called a back to back. Building Managers, as a rule, loathe and despise this situation for a number of reasons, the least of which is the small amount of time remaining to get the unit to move in condition.

Regardless of the time of month or year, before a new tenant is able to move in, certain things have to happen. The unit has to be completely repainted and by this I mean all walls, ceilings, doors and cupboards. Some may only need one coat but some require two. Either the carpet has to be replaced or steam cleaned depending on its state and age. Same goes for the floors in the kitchen, bathroom and entrance. Obviously all appliances must be spotless and replaced if necessary. Any other repairs need to be completed as well as any cleaning of the unit and balcony. At any given time this is quite a bit of work.

Now the building is not responsible for completing all of these tasks but we are responsible for coordinating them and ensuring that they are all finished in a timely manner. Normally this isn’t too difficult to do but in September this can very easily turn into a logistic nightmare as it ended up happening to us this fall when we had to complete twenty three back to backs…

TO BE CONTINUED…

Liquid Lunches – A SHORT STORY

I like to call myself a functioning addict or a responsible junky – an oxymoron if I have ever heard one. You ask what makes me so different or special from other junkies or addicts? Well, nothing really except the amount of work involved. It is much harder to be a functioning addict. You are forced to live two very separate and distinct lives. Your public face is the only face that anyone is allowed to see. no one can be allowed entry into your private world. This you keep very well hidden from view.

No one can know that your half hour lunch is not sitting down at the nearest coffee shop consuming today’s special washed down with a couple of cups of coffee. No, instead you have quickly headed over to the local public library and have locked yourself in one of their bathroom stalls. Once you are safely behind its closed door, you carefully remove a brown eyeglasses case from your purse only you don’t have a spare pair of glasses in it. You place a strip of toilet paper across the back of the toilet bowel and gently place a spoon on it.

You grab one white pill out of your baggy and place it in the centre of the spoon. With the end of your lighter, you carefully crush it until it is a fine white powder. Next you rip the packaging off of a new syringe and open your small bottle of sterile water, placing the tip of the syringe in it to draw up 50 units. Carefully you fill the spoon with water.

Lifting the spoon up into the air, you flick your lighter and aim the flame so that it is centered beneath the spoon. The water starts to bubble and the fine powder dissolves. Breaking some cotton off the end of one of the many q-tips you have, you drop it dead centre into the warm liquid. Quickly you suck the liquid out of the spoon into the syringe. Sit back for a second to breathe a sigh of relief. No clumsy accidents. So far, so good. Taking some more toilet paper, you wipe your spoon clean before returning it to its case. You make sure that your small bottle is properly capped and your baggy zipped up tightly. You crumple the syringe’s wrapper up tightly and place it in the case also. You will have to dispose of it later.

Enough time should have passed so that the liquid had cooled. You perch your rear at the edge of the toilet seat making sure your feet are square to the ground. Taking a look at both arms you decide which one to go for this time. The left looks as if it will yield the best results. You tap your forearm a few times and flex your hands. Carefully you remove the cap from your syringe. Taking a deep breath you stick the needle into your skin gently pulling the plunger back a fraction. A rich red floods the barrel. Bulls eye. With as steady a hand possible and a silent plea for them to remain that way, you depress the plunger at a uniform rate until all of the liquid has disappeared.

Bliss. Now not too quickly, you remove the point from your skin, firmly pressing some tissue over the bloody hole. Once the bleeding has stopped, you qrab the point of the needle with your bloodied tissue and twist it until it snaps off. Throwing both into the toilet, you flush them down the drain. You recap your now empty syringe and return it to its place in the eyeglass case. Wrap two elastics around the case and return it to your purse. You certainly can not be too careful. You want no rude surprises should you ever drop purse with contents spilling everywhere. Too big a risk to take for the functioning addict.

You gather your stuff and exit the stall, stopping to wash and dry your hands. Look for your comb to run through your hair. As everything went smoothly, you still have time to freshen your makeup. Touch of lipstick and a brush of powder and you are good to go. With one final glance back at the mirror, you open the bathroom door refreshed and satisfied by your half hour lunch break.

IT’S NOT A HABIT

I started methadone for the first time in August of 1999. By then I was a solid year and a half into a pretty heavy opiate addiction. It had started with dilaudid but as soon as we were able we had moved on to heroin. We live in a funny city. While it is reasonably large with close to half a million, it is near impossible to find heroin here. Except for a time in the 1970’s – so I have been told – it is one drug that does not seem welcome. Very white collar town so there is lots of pot and cocaine. Crack has had some effect as has speed but not like those other two. Because this is also very much a university and college town, there is also lots of ecstacy and its ilk. By the time I had even given a dilaudid a try, I was about two years deep into a large coke and speed habit. Funny can’t even remember what that was like but I know that we were using every day and had been for a long time. Then along came a little yellow pill and it was as if nothing else existed. It was wonderous and it didn’t take long to develop a tolerance for it.

Thank heavens we knew someone that could get us heroin. He was out of town three out of the seven days and he happened to be working in a place that was literally drowning in it so every Thursday night right after getting off his bus, he would drop by our place with our weekly package. Sunday night we would wave him goodbye as his bus left town, our money in his pocket. This went on for over a year.It started to get quite expensive as all habits tend to but this one also felt different. Where before, I may have been a bit of a bitch if I couldn’t get blow or speed, I could get by at least but not this time. When I was without I hurt, I felt sick, I was in severe pain. I couldn’t or wouldn’t want to go to work and I had always prided myself on never letting any of my vices interfere with work and to be honest, life in general. Suddenly I had become single minded, nothing else mattered but not feeling sick anymore. I had to have a hit no matter what. Came close to bankrupting us. Sad but at least we had a house to sell to get us out of debt. And selling this one, our favourite, meant that we still had two others left although they were nowhere near as nice and they were in a much rougher part of town but that didn’t seem to concern us so much anymore. We moved. We had to. We had someone else very important in our life now that very much needed to be accommodated.

I had never lied before but suddenly I found myself doing just that. When my family doctor confronted me I couldn’t admit it at first. I was every which way of denial until I couldn’t take it anymore. This drug eventually wears you down, strips you of every vestige of dignity and self respect. I fessed up and when he started talking about getting us into a methadone program, I pretty much said yes just to humour him plus he said that as soon as we were on the list, he would be able to help us out and get us from having to buy our dope on the street at ridiculous prices.

I had never actually intended to follow thru with the methadone. The moment we were accepted our doctor wrote us each a prescription for 30 dilaudid a week. It was as if we had hit the jackpot. Between us we had 60 pills that would normally have cost us almost $20 each – quite a savings. He said that he could keep us supplied until we reached a high enough methadone dose that could sustain us on its own. I figured that we would ride this out as long as we could. Looked like it would be at least eight weeks that we could get our prescription and I figured that was long enough for us to get our finances back in order. We would in theory save a lot by not having to buy opiods for a two month period. As it was we were spending about $700/week and that was barely keeping us from getting sick so I knew that we were living on borrowed time if we continued spending at that rate. We were long overdue for a financial break.

But a funny thing happened while we going to methadone. It started working. I stopped grieving for any of the others. I went a day without a hit, then two and then a week. A week turned into a month and then two and three and we were still going. Suddenly two years had passed and I no longer did anything except for my methadone. I didn’t even drink anymore. I forgot about heroin and dilaudid and morphine – oxys had yet to make their appearance but that was only a matter of time. The methadone made me so very tired though even if it did seem to work a small miracle. I would start to nod off at the worst possible time something I rarely did while addicted to the others. I needed to stay awake. So before we knew it we were back doing speed but this time we vowed that we would keep our spending under control and we did for a long time. Speed wasn’t the same anyway now that we were on meth. Yes, you could kind of feel it but you never felt as if you were way out there. Oh well, it was still better than nothing. And we were spending about half of what we used to spend on the other.

Suddenly twenty seven months had passed. We were starting to get tired of the daily grind of having to grab our methadone. Yes, for the most part normalcy had returned to our lives. We fell into our own little routine. Gone were the hours upon hours dedicated to finding that one hit that would take away the pain. I could go back to work full time, we both could. Methadone gave our life structure once again. My credit card debts were now paid off. We had sold the other two houses and purchased a three story apartment building. Our self confidence and esteem had returned. We didn’t want or need methadone any more. It was time to say goodbye. I had two weeks vacation at Christmas 2001 but a week before my vacation started I got a terrible flu. I was down to about 20mg of methadone a day. I felt so sick that I just didn’t feel like grabbing my methadone one day and the next and the day after that. I just stopped going and when my flu ended, any withdrawal that I may have been going thru had also ended. It was hard to tell one from the other so I kept telling myself that there was no withdrawal just crappy flu symptoms.

Fast forward three and a half years. I am once again severly dependent on that little yellow pill. Well now it is the little white pill. No more #4s for us, we now need #8s. We are back spending ridiculous amounts of money and are consumed by abject fear whenever we find that we have run out or that none of our dealers is holding. It is no longer pleasant. But what of the intervening three years you ask? Well that is obviously a story for another day…

TO BE CONTINUED

ORIGINAL ART

Just some more of my art that I found…

Can you tell who I like?

Strange Behavior!

Wow, this computer that I’m currently working  on is really acting up. It is as if it has  a life of its own. It just suddenly started making  these clicking  noises and at  first I had no way of knowing which program  was  causing this  sort of behavior. Plus some of the keys are not working at all the way that they are supposed to. I’m  actually using my daughter’s computer while she is sleeping although am not sure how long my patience will  end up lasting.

Anyway, I ran into someone  that I haven’t seen in well over a year.  She was one of the few people that I actually liked in that whole group of people that did pills. It’s too bad that she is still involved with the whole scene for a number of reasons the most important being the fat that she is now eight months pregnant. More than anything, I can’t believe who the father is. Doesn’t really matter here cause no one else will know but still. goodness grief. To top it all off, the father of her child is in jail right now. Somehow I thought, or was hoping at least, that she was better than all of this.

I sure was incorrect. The big irony here is if it hadn’t been for her, I’m  not sure that I would be in methadone right now. Almost two years ago this coming January, I happened to run into her at our dealer’s house. She was feeling a bit agitated for some reason so I invited her to come home with me. Normally she would have refused but this particular time, she accepted. She happened to have some time to kill before she had to be downtown for her doctor’s appointment.

She asked me to come with her and I accepted. Turns out is was for her initial methadone intake. At the time, I had kind of been toying with the idea of returning to MMT but had yet to make that initial step in their front door. With her now, I thought maybe this was a sign, that it was now my time. The nurse had extra time on this particular day so she did my blood work and also took all of my personal info. I was then given an appointment to return to speak to one of their doctors. Although it wasn’t for nearly four weeks, I managed to keep this appointment and on this same day, they started me back on treatment. Ironically, she never did go back for her second visit and to this day, is still actively using. Sad.

Some old art of mine that I recently found.