Class Awkward

When the sun comes out, so does everyone in the neighborhood, to work on yards. I feel it. I feel I don't fit even more, that is. I feel awkward and out of place in a neighborhood of middle class homeowners. I'm the only renter.

I don't have the clothes or the gear or the equipment they all have. I don't know most of them. They're probably nice people. I wear a long over shirt in the yard because my pants don't fit. Right now, I just have the one pair of shoes I wear everyday. I bet they notice. I notice the shoes people wear. I have shoes in my closet people have given me, that don't fit at all. For some reason, I hang on to them, maybe because people gave them to me.

I have a bad size of foot for someone without means. 10 1/2 narrow, although many shoes that size don't fit either. I have one foot about a half size shorter than the other foot, too.

In the summer, however, I can wear flip flops or cheap sandals from Kmart, so I can give my pair of shoes a rest. And that is good.

My clothes are really ragtag as is the equipment I use to keep up my yard. I feel I need to keep it up so as not to give the middle class reasons to resent me, here, in Albany suburbia. I don't know if it's in my mind or real. I hear one man telling another today that so and so spent $10,000 on their yard. I'm out there digging out weeds with a screwdriver.

I like to see the middle class in the dark, me hidden. That's how I'm most comfortable. When it's dark out and people go walk or are in stores, it seems like everyone's more equal. I don't know why.

I'm trying to get comfortable in their midst here, but I feel the judgemental eyes of Rush Limbaugh listeners when I see them sometimes. The old man isn't that way and neither is the lady on the other side of me. I think it's probably in my head. I need to forget the class differences.

I actually prefer the night for a lot of reasons. I'm not very self-confident. I've been alone all my life and faced a lifetime of abuse and judgement. Makes a person expect to be judged and condemned. Hard to understand it might be different now.

I like this house I live in very much, but I don't like Albany much. It's hard to know what to do. If I lose the volunteer job, because there's no more funding, I will make it my mission to find a way back to Corvallis or to somewhere where there are other people interested in the things I"m interested in.


It wouldn't be any good to live out what's left of my life here, alone, jobless and not feeling real comfortable. It would be hard to leave this house, which is the first place I've ever lived where everything works. I'm too lonely is the major thing, here in Albany.

Let's hope Poppa finds some funding. We applied for the Albany grant, but I don't think that will work out, due to that riff with the city and city unions over the money the city usually uses to help a few nonprofits. I'll just have to wait and see. I found another grant when someone out in West Fir told me their nonprofit got one from this outfit. We'll see on that.

Even if we do get money from Albany, even last year's grant from Albany only funded a quarter of the cats I took in. Well, there's always miracles. They happen some times. Maybe somebody that still has a lot of disposable income will write out a big check to Poppa. Or, maybe I'll win the lottery and use the money to fund Poppa like forever.

Things change, I know. Got to roll with the punches, if I can, and if one thing doesn't work out, got to look for something else.

Here's a good thing. Resting my shoulder and spine seems to be helping. I've had great improvement in the last ten days, by not doing anything too physical. I hope this continues. I am going to take it easy at least another two weeks, so hopefully that torn muscle, or whatever it was I hurt late last fall, will heal a lot better this time around and won't just start detaching again.

The uncomfortable part of that was, when I first injured it, I could feel a horrible tearing sensation. It wasn't painful at first and you would think it would be horribly painful immediately. But I could feel this awful sensation of something ripping. Wasn't pretty.

In regards to shoes again, does anyone else notice people's shoes? I do. It's one of the first things I notice about people. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their shoes and where they are wearing them. Are they dirty? Are the laces tied? Are they frayed? Do the shoes fit? What material are they made of? What brand are they? What color socks are worn with them?

You can tell a lot by noticing a person's hands also. Are they smooth and uncalloused? Are the nails trimmed, cuticle neat? Are the hands dirty, or calloused, or twisted/knobbed even slightly at the knuckle from over use? Are the nails stained, cracked, dried out, chipped, chewed?

Well anyhow, start looking, just as an experiment, at people's shoes and hands and think about what they tell you.

There are other things I look at, like when considering if I should adopt a precious kitty from here to a stranger. Some friends who live fairly close to the woman who wanted to adopt four cats from me, Sam's Clan, went by her house today. She wasn't home, I guess. There were lots of bags full of garbage on the porch and also lots of bags full of empty cans, too. What did this tell me? It tells me Sam's Clan will continue to wait here for homes.