It’s No Good

So now we’re well into the fall. My Employment Insurance has been approved with no waiting period – so to speak – as I am on a Temporary Lay-Off which means that I’ve only lost my job for the time being and will be called back once the company can afford me. Pretty straightforward EI claim as they’ve got none of the normal verifying of the reason why an individual is applying. In Ontario, this means that if you are implicated and found even partially responsible for your job loss, EI can deny your application. This also prevents people from quitting their job just ’cause and then apply for EI. Both of these situations automatically disqualifies the individual. At that time, 2005, I was entitled to 60% of my salary but as next to no taxes or deductions were subtracted, it was almost the same amount as my normal salary with all of the required taxes etc were calculated. In my near addled junky mind, all I could think was “Sweet!” Business as usual.

And it was for the first couple of months…sweet, that is, but like anything else, this didn’t last. One of my friends ended up becoming our dealer after we ended up having a falling out with our original one. My friend was, and as far as I know, still prescribed massive amounts of narcotic analgesics.  On the first Wednesday of each month he receives/ed 720 8mg brand name dilaudids prescribed by his family doctor.  I had filled this prescription many times in the past for him, and as he was/is not on any sort of drug plan, it cost him about $320CAD every month.

He received these due to some injuries he had sustained during a work accident. As far as I know, him and two other workers somehow ended up being literally buried alive for a large part of one of their work days. When they rescued them all, he had broken both of his legs, some ribs, his right hand and one of the fingers on his left hand. I know that he also sustained some nerve damage in one of his hands. As far as I remember, he ended up being in hospital close to six months. Anyway, initially he never actually used any of his pain meds as he quickly learned that they were much more valuable to him if he sold them outright. Before greed overshadowed everything, he sold his pills at 10 for $100,  though this didn’t last very long, or 2 for $25 or $15 each. Do the math. He made a shocking amount of money from this endeavor and as he didn’t even use the pills at that time himself, it was all gravy.

Kind of ironic, but as long as there were pills easily and readily available, life continued on, and with it, the feeling one didn’t have so much as a care in the world. Not surprisingly, this illusion could disappear in an instant and with no warning. The first time you woke up only to discover that the well had gone dry wasn’t so bad. You hadn’t yet trained your junky mind and body to go into automatic and painful withdrawal at this mere suggestion. Not yet, but very soon. By the end of this first day without the ready availability of pills, you actually managed to finally hookup. The moment you fixed, you felt returned to normal. Two weeks later when the same situation presents itself, your mind and body are less forgiving and understanding. Start to feel anxious and nervous the longer the day stretches with no sight of relief. Well into the evening, you impatiently wait but you’re really incapable of doing anything much else as the waiting taxes every fibre in your body, and now it had started to become more and more frequent and difficult to find opiates on a daily basis.

After a short time, our bodies started to go into withdrawal when no opiates could be located, and this wasn’t pleasant. This had started to bother me as obviously having to endure ever increasing periods of withdrawal was by no stretch enjoyable and I started thinking more and more frequently that there had to be something more than this. Also, our main connect had started to lose track of the picture, and had begun treating us with disrespect, and had begun to take us for granted. For the most part, Jim and I tried to buy these pills in bulk. There rarely were no more than maybe a half a dozen smaller purchases throughout the month. Now, one would thing that if one of his customers was buying 260 units monthly that perhaps he would be able to cut them a bit of a break, but sadly no. He charged us groups of ten – sometimes on the very rare occasion groups of twelve – which translated into 26 groups of ten units each, charged at $100 per group, which adds up to $2600 each and every month!

When I say that we were regulars, I truly mean that we were indeed that. I am in no way attempting to inflate our use, and in fact, am extremely ashamed and embarrassed even sharing this info, as it paints a pretty distasteful picture of what we allowed our addiction to become before we were finally able to put the breaks on it. Now for just over 24 months dealing with him, we never deviated far from this number. We almost always paid in advance, and always paid cash – no bartering or asking for them up front, etc. If we did have to request a front, it was rarely for more than a few days. Now, I get why he didn’t want to cut us too sweet a deal as he had begun to rely on our money each and every month. Who wouldn’t want to receive this amount, especially considering there was no work needed at all whatsoever in getting it? No hustling, no nickel and dime sales, less traffic coming and going to his house because he didn’t need a dozen or so more customers minimum to replace the two of us.

TO BE CONTINUED…

NO LONGER NEED – OR WANT – THE CHAOS PART THREE

OK, so the original reason that I started my rant the other day regarding my former dealer was the fact that we unexpectantly ran into him and his girlfriend, and this meeting was still fresh in my mind. Considering the size of the city that I live in – just shy of 400 000 – it’s surprising, but by no means disappointing, that I’ve managed to avoid them these past three years. Yes, while it is very true that once we decided to clean ourselves up, Jim and I moved to a completely different part of town as well as severing all ties with the members of this lifestyle. Essentially, we isolated ourselves, and made sure not to leave any forwarding address.

As this town in reality is only so big, it was a matter of time before we ended up running into them, or at the very least, a mutual acquaintance – I hesitate to say friend. Also, as he was one of the primary dealers of pills three to six years ago, we were bound to run into some of his former customers as they, too, attempted to quit the pills, and clean up. Of course, as is normal amongst these types of cliques, gossip can run rampant, whether its actually true or not is an entirely different issue! So, for the past six months, I couldn’t help but hear what was being said about them, especially as they had recently had a little baby girl. There had been some pretty gruesome stories floating around about her especially.

She never did manage to quit the pills while she was pregnant, and in fact, while she was in the hospital delivering her daughter, she still somehow managed to continue to use. Apparently, so the doctors and nurses would not notice any track marks along her arms, she had been shooting into her neck. Naturally, she tested positive for drugs so right away, the social workers took her baby away from her. Luckily, her daughter was given into her mother’s care so she is able to see her as often as she wants. Now, whether or not,, she actually takes advantage of this situation is another matter all together. I guess she was given six months to get herself all  straightened out if she wanted custody to be returned to her.

Now, if her mother has the baby, then at least she will be denied nothing. She will be given every creature comfort imagined, especially lots and lots of love and attention. Her mother and step father are exceptionally wealthy and will be able to well provide for their grand daughter without any difficulty. Of course, their daughter could also live at this same standard save for the fact that she has messed up far too many times for her parents to continue to indulge her each and every whim. Those purse strings have long since been severed. She’s her own worst enemy. Her parents have given her far more chances than she should have had considering all of the things that she ultimately did to them. they’ve been way more patient than I think I would be. I say this from complete first hand experience as I have had frequent as well as extended interactions with both of her parents, as well as her older sister. Her mother, is in fact, a year younger than myself.

There is so much more detail that I could go into, but I will have to save this for another day, as I don’t really have the time right now. So to whomever made the comment about our dealers not really being our friends, this particular situation doesn’t quite apply to that statement. Yes, I am aware that no dealer is ever your friend. Its business plain and simple. This particular arrangement was slightly different as I mentioned a few posts ago, that in fact, one of our friends of longstanding – just over twenty years – ended up becoming one of our dealers by virtue of him having a product to sell that we wished to purchase.

Anyway, I’ve somehow managed to lose my original reason for this post so let’s see if I can somehow get myself back on track. OK, so we finally ran into them the other day. They were in pretty rough shape as both of them were pretty sick, and it didn’t look as if they were going  to have any luck locating what they needed.  As a last resort, they were going to grab a bunch of speed in the hope that this would help with their withdrawal. I’m thinking not so much, but I’m so not an expert in this particular area. Anyway, she and I chatted for a bit about her current situation, and she expressed that she did want her daughter  to be able to live with her, but that she didn’t think that she would be able to give up the pills, or more importantly the chaotic lifestyle that she has come to know as normal.

Its a really sad and tragic situation to everyone involved.

NO LONGER NEED – OR WANT – THE CHAOS

One of the first things that Jim and I did once we had both reached our stable dose of methadone, after paying off all of our outstanding bills, both legitimate and not, was move as far away as possible from the locale that almost proved to be the scene of our undoing. Just as quickly as we were able to move, we both got rid of our jobs, and found brand spanking new ones. Obviously, we felt very strongly that the only way that we would ultimately be successful with our recoveries was to make a complete break from the lifestyle that ended up getting there. We, literally, needed to start all over again from little more than nothing, other than our strong belief that we could succeed with this in the end. 

 

Surprisingly enough, this ended up being easier than we expected. Paying off our rather large debts that we had managed to collect over our most recent habit, ended up not taking as long as I had thought this would. Its bloody amazing how much disposable income we ended up having available to us once we no longer needed to spend anywhere from $1800 to $2600 each month to feed our habits. I started MMT in February 2006, while Jim followed me about three months later. By October of the same year, we had managed to pay each and every last penny off that we owed.

Without exception, all of the legitimate businesses that we had outstanding debt with were thrilled to accept our money. In fact, so were all of our dealers – we rotated through three separate individuals at this time in order for us to purchase what we needed on any given day. For the most part, all three were pretty dependable connects although around the time that we both started MMT, London was in the middle of a bit of an opiate drought. Even with these three, it had started to become more and more frequent and difficult to find opiates on a daily basis. This had started to bother me as obviously having to endure every increasing periods of withdrawal was by no stretch enjoyable.

Also, our main connect had started to lose track of the picture, and had begun treating us with disrespect, and had begun to take us for granted. For close to two years, we had purchased from him 240 8mg dilaudid pills – a third of his legitimate script – each and every month, without fail. Now, if we take the time to do a brief bit of math, this translated into a substantial amount of money. He sold his pills for $15/piece if one was to purchase them singly. He would give you a bit of a break when you bout a couple, selling them at two for $25. Now if you happened to have $100 at your disposal then you could get ten pills for this amount. Now, obviously, for the most part, Jim and I tried to buy these pills in bulk. There rarely were no more than maybe a half a dozen smaller purchases throughout the month. Now, one would thing that if one of his customers was buying 260 units monthly that perhaps he would be able to cut them a bit of a break, but sadly no. He charged us groups of ten – sometimes on the very rare occasion groups of twelve – which translated into 26 groups of ten units each, charged at $100 per group, which adds up to $2600 each and every month!

When I say that we were regulars, I truly mean that we were indeed that. I am in no way attempting to inflate our use, and in fact, am extremely ashamed and embarrassed even sharing this info, as it paints a pretty distasteful picture of what we allowed our addiction to become before we were finally able to put the breaks on it. Now for just over 24 months dealing with him, we never deviated far from this number. We almost always paid in advance, and always paid cash – no bartering or asking for them up front, etc. If we did have to request a front, it was rarely for more than a few days. Now, I get why he didn’t want to cut us too sweet a deal as he had begun to rely on our money each and every month. Who wouldn’t want to receive this amount, especially considering there was no work needed at all whatsoever in getting it? No hustling, no nickel and dime sales, less traffic coming and going to his house because he didn’t need a dozen or so more customers minimum to replace the two of us.

Towards the end of us dealing with him, he started to act illogically and then some. Paranoid much. He started to see people in his bushes and trees in his garden, and all that tends to accompany this sort of mental breakdown. Funny what a hardcore amphetamine addiction can do to you! And he had a raging one at that. Old story of him starting to spend more money on this than the amount of money that was actually coming into the house! He still was getting our full funds and obviously still more from other sources, but it never seemed to be enough. He actually was about to raise his selling prices – which one tends to have to do when your new girlfriend is pocketing a couple of hundred of your units on a regular basis! This starts to add up and negatively affecting one’s bottom line! I was prepared to even deal with this, but when he started to get mean by holding our addiction against us by playing little games of pretending that he was down to his last two pills, etc, well I quickly started to lose my patience. Suddenly, the thought of him even fronting something to us was no longer going to be an option, and when he did decide to be all magnanimous, it literally became a joke. On a number of occasions, in the dead of winter when our truck was in the shop having a new engine installed, he had us walk 45 mins to his house, and when we got there, he was prepared to front us no more than three pills. WTF? Proverbial straw, anyone?

What I ultimately found utterly repugnant in dealing with him was the rude and disparaging way in which he had started to treat us the last six months of our doing business with him. In hindsight, I know now that this treatment wasn’t specifically directed at us alone, but that also, is so not the point because I felt that we should never have been lumped into his “loser pill popping” customer that he had always loathed and despised. Firstly, he wasn’t someone that we had just recently met, but an actual friend of ours going back just over two decades. We also were in no way associated with his brand spanking new 21 year old junky girlfriend, who he had gotten when he traded in his high school sweetheart, who was also the mother of his three daughters. Ashley sure knew what side her bread was buttered on thats for sure. She played him beautifully, especially seeing that the prize at the end of his tunnel was his monthly script of 720 pills each and every month. Just her presence meant that each month, it could literally be assured that a good 200 pills would come up missing. You could also be assured that she would hotly deny having any knowledge of where these missing items might happen to have ended up. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math on this one, that is for sure! Anyway, long story short, both Jim and I got ourselves to MMT tout suite! Didn’t even take the time to look back, either.

At least he has now gotten his karmic reward, three years later. No time like the present is my saying and as I’ve mostly been a pretty patient person, I had been in no rush for him to get his just desserts. As I mentioned earlier, another reason for his anger and bitterness three years ago was a direct result of his massive speed addiction. This would most definitely still be an issue today for him, if he was even able to afford it to be! Unfortunately, his lovely girlfriend has managed after all these years of getting him good and hooked on his pills. Prior to this, he never, ever bothered to touch them as they had been his means to an end for him being able to buy piles and piles of speed!!! Now as many of you are all too aware, once both partners in a relationship start sharing an opiate addiction, it replaces pretty much anything else of importance. As its an expensive addiction, once hooked, some decisions need to be made. Most people find it hard to carry out two addictions full time once opiates are thrown in the mix, and its really not much of a surprise that rarely anything else is able to beat opiates. All or nothing generally.

Anyway, this is pretty much all that I’m able to type tonight so I’ll try to finish the rest of my story before the end of the weekend cause its just too, too much. Briefly, we ended up running into the darling couple a day ago, and to say that both of them are in grave need of choosing a different path to take, would be the understatement of this century. He was beyond sick with withdrawal and to be honest, I’m not even sure why unless he’s already managed to go through his monthly allotment of pills. If true, then this would truly suck, as I know from years past that he’ll not be able to refill his script until February 6 at the earliest, still a good two weeks from now.

TO BE CONTINUED…

MAINLINER

FROM THE ARCHIVES ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 2005 07 29

OK it has been a crazy day at work which kind of sucks for a Friday as I tend to like to ease into my weekend. I apologize in advance to anyone actually reading this entry as my thoughts are all over the place plus combined with the fact that I am also working I suspect that this entry will have absolutely no flow. That being the case, for some reason there are a few things kind of bothering me today that I need to vent about and this, I guess, is the place that I can do it.

Went to my girlfriend’s before work today cause I owed her a little bit of money and I wanted to get that out of the way. Not only is she a good friend but she is also one of my dealers, one that I am ever slowly fazing out because it is getting harder and harder for her to separate work and business and as a result I am now having difficulty also so…Slightly veering off topic now. Told you there would be flow issues. I was a late bloomer so to speak as far as drugs are concerned. I never actually tried any until a few months before my twenty first birthday when I smoked my first joint. Now I am fairly confident that I have made up for lost time. And except for a six year period about a decade and a half ago when I didn’t use or abuse anything except for cigarettes and alcohol I have pretty much used some sort of drug every day since my first joint.

This being the case, I also want to state that I think that the reason(s) I still use and abuse and don’t seem to have this overwhelming guilt about my usage is that I really haven’t had any dignity stealing experiences relating to my use. By this I mean that I have never had to use my body in any shape or form to acquire whatever happened to be my poison du jour. I know alot of female addicts who suffer terrible self-esteem issues because of some of the things that they may have done to get that much needed fix. I am not judging. I know how lucky I am to be in the position that I am in. I was lucky. I have never stolen to feed my addiction – well, I didn’t return all of my father’s painkillers to the pharmacy after he had passed away but I rationalized that one away. And I did bring back the majority of the stuff that my Mom had given me to return so…

Now I know that this seems to be going nowhere but trust me I have a point. OK so I have never had to sell my body or my firstborn or my husband but over the past year I have been loaning my vehicle to my friend to use while I am at work and for the use of it I usually get some sort of tip. Call this a rental charge. Now as we are first and foremost friends she tends to take a lot more liberties with me than I suspect she would with someone else. I know she does. She has become sloppy in what I think her responsibilities should be when she has my truck. Like I will ask it back at a certain time and she will show up three or four hours later or she won’t be here to pick me up when I am done work or even better she will end up giving some lowlife creep a ride in it and then suddenly $750 worth of my husband’s tools are missing. And she tells me that she only left it unlocked for about five minutes while she ran into her house to get this guy looked after. Yeah well that is all his friend, who was literally waiting in the bushes, needed to grap everything that was in our backseat. Then she says that this could have happened to anyone. Well, no that is not true because scum like him would never have been in my truck so he would have no idea what goodies I had stored there. Plus she doesn’t think that she should be held financially responsible for these items yet the outstanding bill of $385 that I have with her has to be paid immediately or else.

Or else what? I won’t get any more of your crap dope? I won’t be left standing outside for an hour and a half at night in a rainstorm waiting to be picked up by my vehicle? I won’t have stuff that my husband, not even me, uses to make a living stolen from my truck while you are looking after it and then don’t do crap about it? I won’t have to put another $1200 in repairs into the truck a day after you have had it for a three day period in which you towed a trailer that I specifically told you not to tow? I have put $5200 in repairs into the truck since Christmas plus have also paid the $440 a month we have to pay to get the stupid thing insured.

Anyway it is times like this that I end up getting kind of depressed about my habit. I feel dirty or compromised or something that I can not quite articulate. I resent my usage I guess. Like I said I think for the most part I have been really lucky. I have never had to pawn all of my worldly possessions. In fact I have only been to a pawn shop maybe twice in my life and the visits were totally not related to dope. I have never been homeless or even jobless. I have never been really hungry. Like there have been lots of times that I haven’t wanted to eat but I pretty much have always been able to eat. I sometimes shudder when I stop to think about the shear amount of money that I have probably spent over the last twenty years but it is not as if I can take that money with me either so I can usually shake that thought pretty fast.

Again I am not entirely sure what I wanted to really express today. I was just mad and what actually set me off is that when I went to pay part of my debt she of course was out of pills – so, yes I am actually at work having not gotten anything prior which is a minor miracle in its own right – so I said that I would grab a bit of speed instead. I just wanted a quarter so I gave her another $30. She said that she didn’t have any broken out that I would have to take a half but that I could use this as a down payment towards the next time she needs the truck. So I look at it just as she is hustling me out the door and I say to her that there is no way that this is a half and she said that I would have to weigh it at home. Now she knew that I was on my way to work and that I did not have any scales at home so I don’t know what game she was trying to play. I said no that it was a quarter and that she in no way was going to get the truck and say that she had already given me something. Yuck, feel gross just writing/typing this out.

Policy of Truth

OK it has been a crazy day at work which kind of sucks for a Friday as I tend to like to ease into my weekend. I apologize in advance to anyone actually reading this entry as my thoughts are all over the place plus combined with the fact that I am also working I suspect that this entry will have absolutely no flow. That being the case,  for some reason there are a few things kind of bothering me today that I need to vent about and this, I guess, is the place that I can do it.

Went to my girlfriend’s before work today cause I owed her a little bit of money and I wanted to get that out of the way. Not only is she a good friend but she is also one of my dealers, one that I am ever slowly fazing out because it is getting harder and harder for her to separate work and business and as a result I am now having difficulty also so…Slightly veering off topic now. Told you there would be flow issues. I was a late bloomer so to speak as far as drugs are concerned. I never actually tried any until a few months before my twenty first birthday when I smoked my first joint. Now I am fairly confident that I have made up for lost time. And except for a six year period about a decade and a half ago when I didn’t use or abuse anything except for cigarettes and alcohol I have pretty much used some sort of drug every day since my first joint.

This being the case, I also want to state that I think that the reason(s) I still use and abuse and don’t seem to have this overwhelming guilt about my usage is that I really haven’t had any dignity stealing experiences relating to my use. By this I mean that I have never had to use my body in any shape or form to acquire whatever happened to be my poison du jour. I know alot of female addicts who suffer terrible self-esteem issues because of some of the things that they may have done to get that much needed fix. I am not judging. I know how lucky I am to be in the position that I am in. I was lucky. I have never stolen to feed my addiction – well, I didn’t return all of my father’s painkillers to the pharmacy after he had passed away but I rationalized that one away. And I did bring back the majority of the stuff that my Mom had given me to return so…

Now I know that this seems to be going nowhere but trust me I have a point. OK so I have never had to sell my body or my firstborn or my husband but over the past year I have been loaning my vehicle to my friend to use while I am at work and for the use of it I usually get some sort of tip. Call this a rental charge. Now as we are first and foremost friends she tends to take a lot more liberties with me than I suspect she would with someone else. I know she does. She has become sloppy in what I think her responsibilities should be when she has my truck. Like I will ask it back at a certain time and she will show up three or four hours later or she won’t be here to pick me up when I am done work or even better she will end up giving some lowlife creep a ride in it and then suddenly $750 worth of my husband’s tools are missing. And she tells me that she only left it unlocked for about five minutes while she ran into her house to get this guy looked after. Yeah well that is all his friend, who was literally waiting in the bushes, needed to grap everything that was in our backseat. Then she says that this could have happened to anyone. Well, no that is not true because scum like him would never have been in my truck so he would have no idea what goodies I had stored there. Plus she doesn’t think that she should be held financially responsible for these items yet the outstanding bill of $385 that I have with her has to be paid immediately or else.

Or else what? I won’t get any more of your crap dope? I won’t be left standing outside for an hour and a half at night in a rainstorm waiting to be picked up by my vehicle? I won’t have stuff that my husband, not even me, uses to make a living stolen from my truck while you are looking after it and then don’t do crap about it? I won’t have to put another $1200 in repairs into the truck a day after you have had it for a three day period in which you towed a trailer that I specifically told you not to tow? I have put $5200 in repairs into the truck since Christmas plus have also paid the $440 a month we have to pay to get the stupid thing insured.

Anyway it is times like this that I end up getting kind of depressed about my habit. I feel dirty or compromised or something that I can not quite articulate. I resent my usage I guess. Like I said I think for the most part I have been really lucky. I have never had to pawn all of my worldly possessions. In fact I have only been to a pawn shop maybe twice in my life and the visits were totally not related to dope. I have never been homeless or even jobless. I have never been really hungry. Like there have been lots of times that I haven’t wanted to eat but I pretty much have always been able to eat.  I sometimes shudder when I stop to think about the shear amount of money that I have probably spent over the last twenty years but it is not as if I can take that money with me either so I can usually shake that thought pretty fast.

Again I am not entirely sure what I wanted to really express today. I was just mad and what actually set me off is that when I went to pay part of my debt she of course was out of pills – so, yes I am actually at work having not gotten anything prior which is a minor miracle in its own right – so I said that I would grab a bit of speed instead. I just wanted a quarter so I gave her another $30. She said that she didn’t have any broken out that I would have to take a half but that I could use this as a down payment towards the next time she needs the truck. So I look at it just as she is hustling me out the door and I say to her that there is no way that this is a half and she said that I would have to weigh it at home. Now she knew that I was on my way to work and that I did not have any scales at home so I don’t know what game she was trying to play. I said no that it was a quarter and that she in no way was going to get the truck and say that she had already given me something. Yuck, feel gross just writing/typing this out. 

Can You Say Doormat???

Well most of my mood is my own fault but still…My head is just aching and I am really hot and sweaty right now plus I didn’t plan well enough that we have nothing for tonight. We just split an oxy 80 but until the morning, that’s all she wrote folks. Grrr. Plus I had to walk almost all of the way home after work – well, not to my home. I had to walk to my dealer’s house cause she was using my car while I was at work. So I am waiting after work for her to come pick me up and after about 25 minutes I am starting to get really pissed as this is bull. If you have someone’s vehicle, the least that you could do was to show up on time!!! I kept ringing her house and her cell but no answer so I call the cell phone of the person that she was with today when I got dropped off to work and he informs me that she is dead asleep and that he was going to go over to wake her up. Beautiful. I told him to tell her that I had started walking and to look out for me if she managed to get in the car. Of course, I see her when I am two blocks away from her house. I even was pretty restrained. I didn’t yell or even bitch. Just got in the truck. When we get to her place there are two people heading towards her house and she says to the other person to let them know that she has nothing. After they are gone I ask her if she has a half or any pills and she is like, no, I just told them I didn’t. I take a shot this time and said that I thought that she just might have put something aside for the people whose vehicle she was using. I mean, she had the car since midnight on Tuesday and we got nothing for its “rental”. I got a half earlier today and gave her $20 for it and now I have no intention of giving her the other $30.

She has been borrowing it on a regular basis for the last six months cause it is just sitting there doing nothing while I am at work so she might as well use it but lately she has become extremely presumptious with its availability and the way she treats us and it. She rarely brings it back to us at the requested time and we hardly get anything for its use. She used to at least give us a quarter or two pills each time she used it but now I have to say something each time and her weird rule is that if you ask for something then you have to pay for it. If she offers it to you that’s another story. I could really care less if she even gave us anything for it half the time either but what I really would like is to be able to run a bill until pay day. The most it ever is when we can do this is about $145 plus it is not as if she really has to track us down but she is even making a deal of this. Every time I see her when I do have an outstanding amount she asks when I plan on paying it. It’s damn right insulting. I don’t need to be reminded each and every time who has the “power”. Believe you me, I know.

So after tonight’s performance, I have decided that I am never going to loan the car again to her. It is so not worth it. If I screw up my budget and am short money then I will just have to suck it up and go a day without dope cause in the long run, that will be a whole lot easier…

Waiting for the Man

I just don’t get it – it is now 3:19pm and I was dropped off to work an hour and a half ago. My boyfriend was to pick up another friend, they were to go over to collect some oxys around the corner from my work and then drop them off to me. Realistically, it should have taken no more than 40 minutes maximum and I am being way generous with my time. I made the trip last night and had to first go across town to get Jamie, then halfway across to get the pills, take him home and then take myself home. The entire trip took me one hour and 15 minutes and I had twice the amount of driving easy. I don’t know, maybe she is not there today which would suck big cause I am starting to get mucho sick. My eyes have started to run, etc. And of course, I know the dipshit won’t answer his cell phone cause he is way late for work already and is avoiding his boss. Guess that there is not much to do but wait….Sucks to be me right now I tell you. Two bloody days in a row now.

Happy Canada Day!!!

I can not believe that it is already morning. Happy Canada Day I guess…I still work my normal shift so I had more or less blocked out the fact that it was a holiday which may actually leave me in a bit of a precarious position dope wise today for work – I’ll think about that later. On the positive side, I do get paid two and a half times my normal pay for working today so that is kind a sweet – half a week’s pay for one day’s work basically – not bad even if the government will end up taking most of this “extra” money. Whatever.

Today has to be better than yesterday cause if it is not, I am sure that I will end up losing it. My day pretty much went south the moment I got up. First off, my girlfriend and I were to go downtown to get our OHIP cards as both of us never did get a card with our photo on it. Both of us had the original white with red stripe card from years and years back. We were going to bus it and had planned on being on the 11:45am bus as this would end up giving us loads of time before I had to go to work – I work at 2pm. Jim hadn’t left for work yet so he said that he would drive us and even though I was a little skeptical about him getting us where we wanted to go on time, I said yes, sure, that would  be nice as it certainly would save us from having to walk in yesterday’s God awful humidity…Suddenly Sara is running out to me in the living room stating that it was 1:15pm, dadadadada and yadayadayada. So I hustle Jim together because I had just remembered that I had to go to the bank as tomorrow the banks were all closed for Canada Day and I still needed to deposit rent which is automatically withdrawn from our account on the first of every month. I also receive postdated monthly cheques in the amount of $275 – that is another story for another day.

Evrey month I end up going semi ballistic searching everywhere for these stupid post dated cheques so a friend said that I could give them to my bank to hold onto and that on the first of each month, my bank would deposit them in my account. Seemed like a brilliant solution to my current disorganization so after cashing last month’s cheque, I handed the teller the remaining six post dates. Actually just before I handed my babies over I confirmed actually what was about to occur. The teller stated that they would keep my cheques at the branch and that I could expect it deposited by 10am on the first of every month. A couple of things before I continue. This was not my home branch but she said that this was no longer as important as it used to be and that you could actually go to any TD Canada Trust for any sort of maintenance of your account i.e. address change, new bank card, Visa application, you think of something, it could be done…Cool. Except for a handful of branches in this city, TD Canada Trust is open Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm and then on Saturday from 9am to 3pm. The remaining branches do not open on Saturdays and are only open during the week from 9am to 6pm. Of course, I give my post dates to one of these oddball branches and of course I want that $275 as soon as I can and as Friday is a holiday and this branch wasn’t even open on Saturdays, I would end up having to wait until Monday for my money. While I was depositing the rent, I expained about these post dates and asked the teller – a different one than last month although she was also there but serving another customer – if she could just grab July’s cheque for me as I would just take it to one of the other TD’s that were open on Saturday.

She looks at me kind of blankly and mutters something about me putting a stop payment on it so I attempted to clarify by stating that it was not a post dated cheque that I had written but one that had been written to me and that this branch was looking after this cheque and five others for me. She then stated that they do not keep post dates on site but that they are all sent down to some central processing center or some such nonense. I tried to ask why I was told otherwise but I never actually did get an acceptable answer.  I said that I would never have given up my cheques had I known that they would be leaving the branch. I asked them as they were not open Saturday and I assumed neither was the processing centre - I was right - that I would like them to retrieve the cheque and I would pick it up later in the day. They asked me how they would do that and I answered that I assumed that they used some sort of intercity courier between branches and could they not do that. Apparently not. The processing centre is located in town so it was not as if I was demanding that they courier a cheque down from Toronto or something like that.

LATER: OK I have so forgotten my train of thought cause I had to walk away from this entry for like four hours. I know that all that rambling was about to lead up to something but now for the life of me, I have no idea exactly what that something is. Oh well, as they say it must have been important. Well, as I kind of remember the mood or theme that I was going for, I certainly can share another feel sorry for me anecdote. For some reason, I got a killer headache at work. I kind of over did it the day before and I think that I ended up taking the same if not more before I got to work yesterday. I know that I felt so incredibly tired and it was a real struggle to keep my eyes open. I rarely have a yearning for it, but yesterday I wanted speed so badly that at 3:30pm I called my boyfriend to go grab me some to help me get thru the rest of my day. I am still waiting at 6pm and by this time, I was starting to do a slow boil. When I called home, he was still there. He said that he had fallen out and I have to admit that I may have over-reacted just a tad. I basically demanded that he get his ass right down here and do me that long overdue favour so he did. I gave him some money and realistically he should have been back to me within the half hour. I am even allowing for chit chat time cause she only lives about six minutes away from my work.

I ended up taking $260 out of the bank. I reasoned that if they could not deposit my cheque until after the holiday then my rent should not come out either so I took $260 from the rent money that I had deposited earlier which will then be replaced with my cheque on Monday. Seemed absolutely flawless to me. So I go back to my desk to wait. Now I have a timer of sorts on my computer here at work and I happened to notice that the counter was fast approaching an hour which meant that Richey had been gone almost an hour and no sight of him so I got up off my ass to call him. He does not answer his cell so I call TS’s house. When she answers I ask if he was there and of course he was. Talked to him for a bit to ask him what he was doing and he said that he hadn’t been looked after yet. Excuse me? So I said give the phone back to her and I then asked her if there was any reason that she had not got to him yet. She said yes, cause she didn’t have anything. OK, so why the heck wouldn’t you let him know that at the outset rather than make him wait an eternity. Believe it or not, by this time I was done work so I just told him to come and get me.

There actually are a couple more what went wrong stories that I could recount but I am no longer in the mood. Time to move on from yesterday cause today is not shaping up much better!!!!OK need to at least pretend to do some work