Psycho part 237 or long, long days, short little life

[SamIam]

Ever have one of those "ahah" moments when slitting your wrists or cruising down to the local bar to discover just how much booze one has to consume to die of alcohol poisoning or best of all, going up to the state capitol and going postal all seem like far more viable options than whatever you currently have been doing?

Me neither.

But I'm close.

Where to begin? I think I'll start with goat lady. Not that she really has much to do with anything, but I gotta respect her for outstandingly bizarre behavior. I met her because today my part of the world got hit by a spring snowstorm straight out of the annals of global warming. It snowed. Then it snowed more. Then it got very cold. They closed all the passes. Yet another snow plow driver got slicked off of Highway 550 over Red Mountain. Panicked tourists from the flat lands descended in droves upon the Bates Motel seeking refuge. Someone should warn them.

Goat Lady didn't need warning - she had found her element in room 10. She seemed normal enough when she checked in, complaining about the horrific travel conditions like everyone else. She also asked if her dog would be allowed. Sure, we're pet friendly I told her, not mentioning that were not friendly to much of anything else.

So she filled out her registration card and paid her room fee of $50.00 all in rolls of quarters. Whatever. At least she paid. She got the very last room. I flipped on the "No Vacancy" sign and went out to cover up the pansies that the owner's idiot wife had insisted on planting way too early. An hour or so passed. The calm before the storm. Or during the storm.

Then a semi hysterical woman from some place like Kansas, but it wasn't Kansas came into the office and interrupted me from my perusal of a view of Greenland which I'd been looking at courtesy of Google Earth. "There's a goat in a car out in the parking lot," she exclaimed. "You have to do something because its in there with all the windows rolled up and its going to use up all the air and suffocate!" I considered informing her that your average car does not come equipped with air tight vacuum seals, but realized I'd be wasting my time, so I just stared at her. "You have to do something! Its in the car in front of room 10."

Well, actually, I DIDN'T have to do much of anything, but a goat being transported in a '93 Chevy Sedan with no license plates seemed more interesting than satellite photos of Greenland in what appeared to be our exact same snowstorm, so I went out to take a look.

Sure enough, there was a really cute baby goat standing up in the driver's seat of the Chevy and nibbling on the seat cover. It seemed to be breathing well enough, but it sure was shivering. And that seat cover didn't look especially nutritional. That little goat was in for a long, very cold night. I hate human beings. I really do.

I banged on the door of room 10. Someone inside yelled, "Who is it?" "Management!" I snarled. The lady of the endless supply of rolls of quarters opened the door. She appeared to have been doing some serious research on the alcohol poisoning question with maybe a little meth thrown in to make it interesting.

I laid down the law. "You cannot keep that goat in a car parked on the motel lot. If you don't get proper shelter for that animal, I'll call the animal control officers who can take care of it, since you obviously can't." I was making this up as I went along, but it sounded good. She didn't have to know that animal control takes the weekend off.

Goat lady tried placating me. "Well, I could put a diaper on her and keep her in the bathroom," she suggested. I imagined the look on the housekeeper's face when she opened the door to room 10 in the morning. It was not a happy thought. "Pet friendly does not mean livestock friendly. You cannot keep a goat in your room and you cannot keep it in a Chevy Sedan in our parking lot in this weather."

Goat Lady came out of her room and wandered over to the car and stared at the goatlet as if seeing it for the first time. "Well, I guess I could drive it back home and put it in the barn." Splendid thought! Why didn't you do that from the start? Except that I had a sudden vision of her and the goat careening drunkenly off the side of some mountain and vanishing into the icy dark. They wouldn't be found until June when the snow drifts finally melted. I was defeated, but didn't let on to it. "Well, you need to resolve this problem one way or the other," I said, preparing to scurry back into the warmth of the motel office. I'd tried.

GL continued to peer into her car. "Say! Where's my dog? He's a big white dog. Have you seen him?" Sure, lady. He came in right after the big white rabbit.

She reached into her car and plucked out her goat, holding him tightly and began to cry. "My dog! Where's my dog?" Hopefully, sitting in someone's kitchen and working hard at getting a new home.

I gave up and went back to add up the day's receipts. Which were hopelessly snarled because, Normie, the motel owner had treated a check as cash, then realized his mistake a day later and put an equal sum of cash into the till after depositing the check at his bank. All without a word to anyone, never mind writing it down in the books. It took me an hour and a half of my own time to figure out what happened and make the books finally balance. I arrived home near midnight, still seething with resentment against the State Legislature.

Yes, this all comes down to yet another example of the short sightedness and general stupidity of any and all politicians. I'm still working for minimum wage. Norm doesn't reward loyalty or hard work or anything. He knows there's no work to be found around here and he can pay his employees as little as he wants and treat us however he feels like it, because it either him or the front seat of the Chevy Sedan, trying to stay warm by chewing on the seat cover.

The State legislature gets into the act by punishing people like me who are trying to get back into the workforce. In particular, the Legislature hates disabled people who have a housing voucher to help them out while they try to get their lives back together. Like me (yes, this is all about me, but you knew that already). I and everyone else in Colorado in my situation am allowed to work one year before they start to make the difficult the impossible. It doesn't matter if you somehow snag a great full time job with terrific pay and benefits or a crummy part time, minimum wage job at some place like the Bates. It's one year, no matter what.

Well, my year (actually I squeaked by for a year and a half) is up next week. Since I earn about $200/week at the moment, the value of my voucher will be cut by $50.00/week. In effect, I will be taking a pay cut and working for $5.00/hour instead of $7.00. But wait! It gets better. In 6 months from now I can look forward to another voucher cut amounting to $100.00/week resulting in a real pay of $2.50/hour. And 6 months after that I (and everyone else) will lose the voucher completely should we continue to work at our part time, minimum wage jobs. In effect, I'll will then be working for free and worse off than if I would have just sat around this place on my ass for two years.

When you get right down to it, cutting social programs is an idea whose time has come. Not only will it put people back on the streets where they belong that much more quickly and efficiently, it will separate the sheep from the goats. Or the big white dogs. Or something. And I can cry if I want to because its 3am and I can't wake up Jim or Carmen to bitch to them and whine for sympathy and the only people on the Cellar right now are a couple of Aussies who are much wittier and better writers than I.

So, I hope you're reading their posts, not mine. (sniff)