crazy vacation chain of thought ...

my daughter and i stayed at a friend's house for three days (two nights) house/puppy sitting. we've done this before and its usually been for a week. but this time it was only three days, so we decided not to sleep in the king sized bed but sleep out in the livingroom on the sofa and various other chairs. actually, i decided this because i didn't want to have to strip the king-sized bed, wash the sheets and struggle to remake the king-sized bed. i did say that it was king-sized, didn't i? lol

we always like these little getaways from the every day. its like having our own home -- for a week. the interesting thing is that right now with all the stuff that is happening at our subsidized living quarters, this little "vacation" was a Papa God gift!

unfortunately, i got sick -- sore throat and fever. it was enough to make me uncomfortable and wishing for my own bed and sleep. so when i got home last night i figured i could sleep in today -- since we're on school vacation. that didn't happen because they r doing construction work (well, actually its destruction work) and the diggers were out there bright and early at 7am making a ruckus and shaking the earth. i'm not a sound sleeper -- so, i didn't get to sleep in.

with all the mess that is going (and about to go on) here, it makes me wish for a place of my own. a place i could call my home. i can't call this place my home. when i was talking to my brother about all the stuff that was/is about to happen here he suggested that i either move to texas or to PA to be nearer my dad. he called it "home". i wrote back and said, "you don't get it. i don't have a home -- anywhere". and that, in a tiny neat little nutshell, is the problem.

i'm stuck in my "entitlement" (as i have started to call it) because i don't make enough money to live anywhere other than the streets. i'm stuck bowing to whatever they want to do here (like ripping out old fiberglass insulation in tiny little kitchens without taking proper precautions and injecting cancer causing formaldehyde foam into its place). and i can't get them to not do it. i tried calling the city inspectors, the department of health and human services and the EPA (which obviously never listen to their messages because they never call me back). its like that song in the musical 1776 -- is anybody there? does anybody care? i'm pretty sure the answer is NO.

one of the city health inspectors said something along the lines of if u owned ur own place and wanted to have this done u'd have to put up with this. and, of course, my two-fold response is -- first of all i wouldn't be stupid enough to replace fiberglass with foam and second of all, if it was absolutely necessary (ie, mold), i would make dang sure that whoever i chose to do the work was certified to do it -- not just a friend of a friend of a friend -- if u know what i mean.

but i digress because really this whole point of this blog is that i have no home. i have no place to call mine. and there r lots of ppl who r in the same boat i am. my daughter recently had to fill out an application for a scholarship (which was run through the housing authority). the main question was "how has living in subsidized housing impacted your life". her feeling was that it hadn't -- either negatively or positively. because when we moved in here i explained to her that we were no better or worse than the ppl who lived here (even though some of them were dealing drugs and sleeping with each other's spouses -- no, i didn't actually say that), and that this was a roof over our heads -- that what made home was family. she asked me what she should write -- i only said, "do u want the scholarship?"

so now having said that home is where family is -- y don't i feel like i have a "home". one could make the case that its because i'm not with my brother and my dad and my kids 24/7 -- and maybe i'm nostalgic for the time in history when families didn't travel so far away for jobs and lives and sometimes even lived generations together in the same place. but its more than that. i do have a "life" here -- i have built a life here in this cold, sometimes unfriendly state, that my now ex dragged me back to over 24 years ago. i have made friends and have a church group, and there is support in many ways -- not talking financial here but more along the lines of emotional and spiritual.

so i ask the question again -- y don't i feel at "home" here -- y don't i feel like i have what it is i really believe is a home. i feel so displaced sometimes. like its not where i'm supposed to be. and will i know where i'm supposed to be when i get there or will i feel just as uneasy there as here. and yes, these thoughts have come up before -- but i think now more than ever i'm standing at the crossroads wondering which way am i supposed to go. and thinking too that i need to make the right choice this time and not screw it up like i have so many times in the past.

yes, one crazy strange little "vacation" started a whole chain of thought that can't even be truly formalized. is anybody there? does anybody care? does anybody see what i see?