yesterday

yesterday my car would not start and a man closed his shop to come install a battery for me . I was impressed with his kindness and many other attributes. It cost me just under $203 (including the $20 tip I gave him) This and a couple other things were enough to nearly max my one and only credit card with its $1000 limit. I had been assiduously working to get it paid down and was almost halfway there. My checking account currently boasts a balance of under $10. As you can guess, I am not a financially successful person. I have no savings. I do work a lot but it is not nearly enough to even put me on footing anywhere away from the edge of the edge. But good enough. I feel ready to leave this life and I say that because there is little help for the poor who need it. I am amazed at that. I have a friend, one of two that I did a grooming fundraiser for last summer to help (in my very puny way) her fight against cervical cancer. She won the initial round, and while never feeling good, she WAS cancer free at her 3 month check up. But not so by the 6 month checkup. Now, her cancer is termed "incurable" and treatment is going to consist of trying to slow its spread. Her daughter reopened a fundraising site for her and so far it has 2 contributors, me at $170 and another person at $50. Wooohooo! that's gonna do her A LOT of good, huh? Even though it isn't much I at least wanted her to know I was making an effort for her. It is so pitiably little that I wonder if I even should because it might buy her gas to get from Price to Salt Lake but it isn't going to touch her need. I wanted to donate dog grooming proceeds on Wednesdays (my only "day off") and I will for tomorrow and I have 3 dogs so that should be another $105 but then I will have to divert my efforts to saving to pay for my auto insurance and try to get the card back down some.

The other person I did the fundraiser for last summer was fired yesterday. By another friend. She briefly worked with me and I was finally relaxing just a little about her situation. She has 5 kids and lives by what i can only think is Grace. I love both friends and here I am trying not to spill every thought in my head because, well, people's privacy. We are ALL imperfect and most of us are developing (I say "most" because I don't feel I have changed significantly for a very long time) Part of me wanted to quit in solidarity with my fired friend. Not from anger at my firing friend, analyzing my feelings there and trying to sort out what happened will take time. I know it will be worthwhile time because thoughts associated with this friend are always worthwhile but they are going to be hard for me. I am sure she felt it was something along the lines of "needs of the business" I hear that phrase a lot from many corners. I can see that businesses do have needs, but I cannot consider them paramount. To me, businesses exist to serve needs of people, both as consumers and as producers. One of the reasons I like my current job (which I ONLY have because my firing friend who manages this business actually hired me when I would not have applied. I thought I was probably never going to be able to work for anyone else ever again-because of my last job. Long story) I am woven through with love and shock with each of these friends. but from my perspective one is falling off the precipice and I never would have fired her. She was trying hard to learn the job. But it's not my decision at ALL and I am trying to keep my feelings and responses closely controlled. It's hard. If I wasn't SO broke I would be giving money to my fired friend as much as I could. Right now I can't. I have no idea what is going to happen to her because she is losing her subsidized housing. /where is she going to go? We met in school. She is not well founded scholastically but she has a quick bright native intelligence that keeps getting squelched because she has 5 kids, all difficult in one way or another and no money. To me it is the saddest story. and I dont want to come off like I am blaming my other friend. I deeply value that friendship. She is also very intelligent, capable and ambitious and the best thing about her was discovering her heart. I didn't know my fired friend was going to be fired until minutes before it happened but in another way I was fearful that it would. Complex thoughts here. Anyway, I don't know what to do. I don't know what I CAN do. I'd beg from some rich person but a) I don;t know any an b) rich people do not fucking CARE. And while money would help my fired friend, is there maybe some, like, soul reason she is experiencing what she is? Or is it just rotten luck and totally deficient economics?

In other thoughts I was very touched 3 times by things Bruce did yesterday. They are little things, but big to me. One was that I was in bed and had a oad of laundry going. I wanted it moved to the dryer  but I didn't want to get up, partly because i am just exhausted lately and partly because our old dog was napping in his bed beside me and i didn't want HIM to have to get up. I asked Bruce to move the clothes to the dryer and he did it in a heartbeat. Later I was trying to find my glasses which had fallen off the nightstand and having searched by hand (I am blind as as can be without them) I couldn't find them even though the space they were in was small. So I asked him to help me and again he came immediately and found them. Then, when I was late coming home, he thought I was working 2-6 yesterday because I had been given time to get my car attended to (which I greatly appreciated) he called and left a message, somehow my phone ringer was off and when I got home he let me tell my story of the day and he FELT about it. I am so grateful for Bruce.

As I was in bed this morning considering life I was thinking about an idea I came across from reading The Tao of Equus (I had looked at this once in a shop when Bruce and i were so rarely out together, but had put it back not wanting to spend the money and Bruce saw this and bought it for me. It's a really good book. Anyway, the idea was that nomadic societies are morally superior to permanently based societies. At first I guffawed at this but the more I think about it the more i agree. nomadic societies make themselves fit in the world, they do not fit the world to their comfort. And relationships are more important than possessions. Possessions are vey liited due to the need to be mobile. If I were a fit person I would seek this kind of life.

And so goes another post which just skms the surface of what I would like to say but never effetively do. Oh well