When I arrived home from the asylum, I found a letter stating that I had yet another overdraft charge. I seem to be utterly incapable of keeping track of my balance and the $25 fees add up. I decided that I should just cash my SSDI check instead of depositing it and handle things in cash. I headed out to Arlington center, and only fell once on my way there and was able to get up quickly. I did end up sitting on a bench for 15 minutes shortly thereafter waiting to regain my coordination.

My first stop was Leader Bank. There I was told that since they are not publicly traded they are exempt from being required to cash treasury department checks for non-customers. No luck. I went on to Bank of America. There I was told as a non-customer I had to have two forms of identification for them to cash the check. I only had my licence with me. Strike two.

I decided to try my luck at Cambridge Savings Bank. I knew my account was negative there, but I hoped they would cash my with just one form of identification anyway. The teller told me the system wouldn't let her do it because my account was overdrawn. I asked by how much, and it was only $3.76. Aparently I had a little over $20 in the account when the overdraft fee hit. Seeing as the amount was so small, I told her to take the $3.76 out of the check, cash my check as a customer with one form of identification, then close my account. She did, and I'm now done with banks (except what will be my monthly trip to cash my check).

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purpleglitter drove me to my therapy appointment at 5:15. I signed in at the front desk and waited. 5:30, no therapist. The receptionist paged her. 5:45, no therapist. The receptionist paged her again, then noted that my appointment time was actually at 6:00 and not my normal time, and that's probably why my therapist wasn't responding. I had things to do, so I just left.

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purpleglitter dropped me off at the corner and went up to her house to bake merryperseis's birthday cake. I fell heading from the corner to my house, spilling my Monster. Several people asked if I was okay, but no one called anyone on me. I got back in the house and ended up lying in bed for some stupid reason and fell asleep. I drifted in and out of sleep and seizure for a couple hours, having nasty dreams that everything was getting worse and that I was being locked away forever. Finally, merryperseis came into my room and helped me out of bed. I ended up falling on the floor in the hall and sat there until I felt balanced enough to go down the stairs.

-----

recoiling, purpleglitter, and iamacliche were downstairs and we had quite a wonderful time celebrating the anniversary of merryperseis's birth. Towards 1:00 I started feeling very twitchy again, and couldn't really get up from the couch. All the non-residents of the house_of_clocks had left, and merryperseis had to go to purpleglitter's apartment and pick up my meds, my Metamucil cookies, and mazzycat's tuna for me. I was planning on just crashing on the couch, but did eventually make it up to my room and to sleep.

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Everyday is an adventure nowadays. Some moments I feel so elated I could fly, others I feel suicidal hopelessness, and others I'm simply on the ground. I have some very difficult moral choices to make. The kind where there is no good choice and I must find the one that is least wrong.

Another day today. Another day again. Days just seem to come one after another these days.

I went to the bank today. It's amazing how much one check clearing late can screw you. I'm done with banking, I don't trust those fiscal whores at all. I'm closing my account tomorrow and handling everything myself. The cost of a few money orders here and there will be nothing compared to the craptastic banking fee system.

I just got back from the bank, where I bounced another check twice. That brought my total overdraft charges to $100. I got them to knock off $25. I'm not going to use checks anymore except to pay bills. I just can't keep track of them. From now on, I'm doing my business in cash.

I can't find my afternoon Geodon. I haven't taken it for about a week, but haven't noticed due smoking pot. Now that I'm not smoking pot, I can really tell, I really fucking need my afternoon Geodon. I don't know where the bottle is. I take 80mg in the morning and evening, but only 40mg in the afternoon. I take 40mg in the afternoon. I can't break an 80 in half because they're capsules. I can't take one because that just means I'll run out early and be in the same mess at some future date. I just have to find the prescription and hope I can get it filled at this point. If it has been less than 30 days after I last got the afternoons filled, I can get it filled again. I have the script, just not the money. It's only three bucks, but I don't think I can make it to the bank. And I might not be able to fill it anyway. I really need my meds. I really hate needing my meds, but I need them.

Did much better today. Almost made it. I've decided not to count incidental foods such as lollipops at the bank and 15 calorie sugar-free popsicles at purpleglitter's. I ate mac 'n cheese for breakfast, ramen for lunch, mac 'n cheese again for dinner and sunflower seeds as my healthy snack. I did eat some cookie substance, and that is what I missed the goal by.

finished packing the books
now i'm making some mac and cheese
then i'm going to shave
head to the bank
pick up some paper towels and cleaning supplies
and head back to the house_of_clocks
fun fun
at least i'm getting stuff done

2mg of klonopin
2mg of ativan
i should be asleep soon
but for now some stream of consciousness
i had a good day
except for all the hiding under the covers
i sleep a lot
sleeping is like hiding
i have strange dreams
but reality is surreal, too
i don't know where i'm going
i thought i had my bearings
but i seem to have lost them again
must get back on course
i need to do something
i need to be doing something
i'm lost
i'm very lost
i don't know who i am anymore
i once wrote a letter to myself
but i lost it
i don't remember what it said
i was supposed to read it
it told me who i was
but now i don't know
it's been a long time
a very long time
and i'm still searching
for something i may never have had
questions
i'm going to be 30 very soon
three decades
what have i done with my time?
glass prisms in the window
streetlights shine outside
the night is calm
i want to go to spy pond
but too late for that
pills pills pills
i wish i had some pot
i would so love to get stoned
or drunk
or anything really
acid or ecstasy would be nice
find out stuff
i want to find the answers
i didn't meditate tonight
should have
too late now
i'll remember to do that tomorrow
tomorrow
gotta deal with the bank and phone company tomorrow
fun fun
someday i'll get the phone reconnected
i also need to get the party invites sent out
gather up email addresses
i'm going to go to sleep now
sleep
sleep
sleep
good night

Ate at Yee’s Village with purpleglitter and riga_mortia last night. They both have been extremely helpful to me in many ways lately. I’m very grateful to both of them for their support.

riga_mortia and I are going to be pen pals! We live really close to each other, true, but we’re going to start writing letters back and forth, anyway. I’m very excited.

-----

Today, purpleglitter and I ran errands around town. We both voted and picked up cat supplies. I dropped a comment in the comment box of Cambridge Savings Bank. It read something like:

I love CSB. The candy and the coffee is a wonderful touch. It may seem little, but it makes the banking experience feel much more personal. I’m always recommending CSB to my friends.

I felt good leaving a good comment. CSB is so so much better than Fleet. Fleet simply sees customers as dollar signs. At CSB I feel like a person.

-----

On the agenda for tomorrow, I have a meeting with Susan, my MBHP intensive case manager, and Harriett, my community case manager. My lawyer has informed me that she wants to be present for the meeting as well. This should be interesting.

Tuesday morning, riga_mortia and I set off for Plattsburgh, New York. We got out of the house very early, and made good time to South Station. The air seemed hopeful and the prospect of leaving the city for a few days was very exciting.

Things started to go wrong when we got to the ticket counter at Greyhound. They ended up charging us a rate several hundred dollars over what they had quoted us over the phone. Not knowing of any other choice, we forked over the cash.

Quickly, I realized I had forgotten my ID. Realizing that this meant that the trip would be much more problematic, we went decided to take the next bus out, and take a taxi back to riga_mortia’s house and pick up my ID.

My ID wasn’t at her house, and we were running out of time, so we called another taxi to run back to my house, as I was sure I must have left it there.

On the way out to the taxi, riga_mortia had a nasty fall onto an evil metal thing laying on the sidewalk. She ended up with a nasty looking wound on her knee. I got our luggage together and she limped into the taxi.

My ID wasn’t at my house either. To add to the fun, we quickly discovered that riga_mortia had left her purse in the taxi.

grrldan arrived home and offered his help. And what a wonderful help he was. He patched up riga_mortia’s knee very skillfully and made us both much-needed cosmopolitans.

I decided to call the liquor store I had gone to the night before, in a last hope that it was where I lost my ID. I got on my computer to get the number for the store and found that my monitor had completely died.

grrldan looked up the number for me on his computer. However, when I called, I was told that my ID wasn’t there either.

Giving up on my ID, we called the taxi company and asked about riga_mortia’s purse. They had it and grrldan said he would give us a ride to retrieve it as well as anywhere else we needed to go. I can’t thank him enough for all the help he was to us.

riga_mortia and I figured out that it would actually be cheaper to rent a car and drive it to Plattsburgh than to take the bus, even with the 15% charge for returning the tickets. So, we called up several rental places to get a car. However, no one would rent us a car, because I don’t have a credit card or my own auto insurance (either one would have worked) and riga_mortia is under 25 and only has a permit.

We worked out a plan with katia25 (riga_mortia’s stepmother). We would wire her the money to rent a car. She would rent it, drive from Plattsburgh to Boston then drive us back up to Plattsburgh.

First thing was first, the tickets and the taxis had wiped out our cash reserves. We needed to go to my bank. As I had lost my bankcard the week before, and now didn’t have my ID, I wrote grrldan a check for the money I needed and he ran into the bank to cash it. A few minutes later, he came out and told me the people in the bank wanted to talk to me inside.

They told me that my check was suspect, because it was written out of sequence (another symptom of my absentmindedness). However, they had my signature card on file at the bank, and I was able to get the money out myself.

Next stop was Stop and Shop to wire the funds for the car. Again, grrldan came to the rescue. As the only one with an ID at that point, he had to be the one to actually send the money on its way.

After Stop and Shop, we went to the Yellow Cab office. On the journey there, we encountered a traffic jam. After waiting about 15 minutes in the baking sun, traffic began to move again, and we got riga_mortia’s purse.

Before he had to be on his way for his own scheduled activities for the day, grrldan dropped us off at the DMV so that I could get a temporary license for the trip.

When katia25 arrived, we grabbed our stuff and piled into the car. Our troubles were over, or so we thought.

We quickly got lost in Vermont. We spent a long time on the empty highways in the land of moose and bumps. After wandering and wandering, we found a hotel and asked for directions. We apparently missed our turn by an hour and a half. Instead of having to back track, we were directed on an alternative route. All in all, the 3 hour trip ended up taking more than 6, and by the time it was over both riga_mortia and I were both feeling slightly ill.

We checked into our hotel, only to find that it was a complete pit. It was more of a no-tell motel than anything else. The one redeeming quality, is that it had a rustic Bonnie and Clyde feel to it. I felt that the feds would be breaking in the door any minute.

In the morning, we carted ourselves over to the Super 8. A little more pricey, but a lot less shitty. At this point we both realized that the slightly ill we felt the night before was not going to simply go away. The slightly ill had definite plans of being more than slightly.

In the very late afternoon, we finally got over to see riga_mortia’s family. They were all very accepting and nice. I got along with all of them very well. We all got quite floopy, and Chantea (riga_mortia’s sister) got quite a bit too floopy.

katia25 dropped us off near the beach, where riga_mortia and I splashed together on the beautiful shores of Lake Champlain. It was probably the most beautiful part of the entire trip, however being wet in the chilly night air probably didn’t help us with our developing colds.

By the time we woke up the next morning, both riga_mortia and I were really feeling sick. Not only that, having spent so much time in close quarters with all the stress of the trip, we starting to get on each other’s nerves. We never yelled, but we definitely weren’t getting along very well.

Pat (riga_mortia’s dad) and katia25 took us to Ponderosa in the afternoon. I was worried there wouldn’t be anything to eat, but to my surprise the buffet had a selection of vegetarian options.

The food did not sit well with riga_mortia, who was rapidly getting more ill than me. She ended up getting sick all over the bathroom of Ponderosa. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel so she could get some rest.

In the evening, we went back to katia25’s and Pat’s house and watched The Way of the Gun with Ryan Phillippe. I enjoyed the movie, and definitely recommend it.

Back at the hotel we decided that with both of us feeling ill and the trip generally not going very well, that we should head back home Friday as originally planned, instead of Saturday morning as we had been considering.

On the ferry across Lake Champlain on the way home, I decided to take a picture of the mountains above the water. Of course, I dropped the camera. It bounced off the deck, and I watched in slow motion as it splashed into the water below. At least it wasn’t the one I had taken the pictures on earlier in the trip.

Back in Boston, I hoped that we could finally relax, but new drama has come forward. Things just don’t seem to settle down nowadays. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going and going and going.