I Need Strings

When I broke a string last night, after having made about 5 bucks, I knew that I could continue to play minus that string and probably make another 5, or the cost of a set of strings at the French Market, but I knocked off because I didn't want someone to walk up and request a song that uses the missing string heavily.

After I tell such a person that I am missing a string and had been just improvising music around it, they are likely to say something like: "We won't notice; we're not musicians. Just play it the best you can..."

The biggest problem has been getting baked on weed upon sitting down, and then enduring the 80 degree heat and humidity for an hour and a half or so; and then confusing the need for a 15 minute break with having run out of energy, ideas and motivation for the rest of the night. And possibly letting "The Inner Louise" commandeer my will.

Louise

Nightmare roommate of classic proportion.
I had run into Louise one afternoon in the quarter at a time when I was reading the Bhagavad Gita, had just acquired Harold the cat, and was only an acquaintance of hers, having stopped to talk to her for no more than a few minutes here and there in my meanderings through the Quarter. She is a tarot card reader, and I had always gotten an alright vibe from her.
She told me that she was in a living situation crisis, with her landlady having left a gas tap on, in what Louise described as an attempt to blow the apartment up. There were clues in the way the gas had been left on, which had required something being jammed in order that it would continue leaking.
I told Louise that she could always crash at my place for a little while.
"Oh, that's right, you have an apartment, I forgot" said Louise.
I didn't hear from her at all for a couple weeks and started to assume that she had worked her problem out.
Then one day, I noticed that I had messages on my phone, which I hadn't noticed until about 4 of them had piled up.
The first one was a notification from Louise that she was down the street with all of her stuff and could I please come and help her move it to my apartment. I guessed that she had taken me up on the offer that I had, at that point, almost forgotten I extended.
I was no longer reading the Bhagavad Gita, nor fasting, as I had been doing when I had encountered her a couple weeks prior.
I had found the Bhagavad Gita, which was in paperback form and had a cover the exact color of Harold's fir, sitting in an otherwise empty shopping cart that had been abandoned on the sidewalk near the apartment. I had gotten Harold the night before, and thought that there was a cosmic enough connection between him and the book, and the fact that I had been fasting and meditating for a few days at that time. It had been in this spirit that I had felt it the natural thing to do in inviting Louise to crash at me place.
By the time I got her messages I had started drinking again and was upset with Harold the cat having torn up my bass speaker, leaving the foam rubber around the core in shambles, and had done the same to my earbuds.
The second message that I was just then seeing, after the first, was written in an angry tone; something to the effect of "If you didn't want me to stay at your place, you could have just been a man and told me straight up. What are you going to do, leave me out here to get raped and have all my stuff stolen?"
Then, there was "You're such a piece of shit; at least answer my messages!!"
Well, I forgave her, given that she thought that I was actively ignoring her, and I called her, expecting us to have a good laugh over the anger that she had been provoked to.
She rather told me right off where she was located, having been given pretty detailed directions to the apartment by myself, yet having been dropped off by someone a good quarter of a mile down the road. With all her stuff. About 2 trips, carrying as much as possible each time. Myself, that is; she was just pulling a cart behind her.

Well, Louise had promised me that she was going to give me some money at the end of the 10 days, which is the limit of how long I can have a guest in any given month.
Then, Louise decided to start taking nights off from work, sitting on the couch, eating ice cream, watching movies on my laptop (which she could have erased the disc of, while I was out busking, if she was that kind of person, since I had entered my password in order to let her watch movies) and cooking other meals for herself in my kitchen and taking long hot showers, etc.
On about the 9th day of her stay, she flipped out after I had let the water boil out of a soup bone that I had on the stove.
"If you want to kill yourself that's one thing, but you have a guest in the house AND a cat, and you could have burned down the place!" yelled Louise. This was certainly cause for her to not give me a cent for having let her stay the 10 days. She cooked one more meal in my kitchen, and took one more long shower before leaving. The smoke detector hadn't even gone off, as the water had just boiled out and the fat from the soup bone was hissing.
Any mention of that fact or other protests of mine were answered with her assertion that my apartment wasn't mine, but had been foolishly given to me by the government, just because I was a veteran, and that she herself would be a veteran (because she would have loved nothing more than to have shot and killed men from the middle east who treat women inhumanely) but that she had been disqualified for the military for some reason. Of course she was disqualified.
Whatever it was that disqualified her doesn't likewise qualify her for any kind of assistance, in a world that doesn't care that she has to sleep outside at times.
She said that she was just as deserving of the apartment as myself and that she was going to cook and eat her big meal and take a long shower and "What do you care; you're not paying for it!"

More of the good looking heavyset woman...

Then, she berated me for having gotten a Christmas card from my mother, in which mom had included 20 dollars.
"Oh, and your mother sends you money for Christmas! My mother doesn't send me shit for Christmas! But you get a nice card and money! And you have to gall to ask me for rent for letting me stay here?!? You are f***ked up in the head!!" etc. etc.
Then, she added "You were probably going to rape me!" yelled from the sidewalk in front of the building where I live with 120 other people, as she pulled her cart full of stuff away.

"My mother is a lot like me; a good looking heavyset woman" -Louise Helton

The Inner Louise

That would be the "I just want to sit on the couch and eat Häagen Dazs and watch a movie" spirit. It looms large on a Monday night like this one. I have no money, but I have new strings. Still, I don't want to go out there and begin to beat on those new strings for what might amount to 4 dollars.
Pretty soon I will be able to deal with the Express Professionals people about working 8 hour shifts doing whatever. I don't want to busk unless I am really in the mood to put my all into it...

Perhaps I need to switch from pot to crystal methamphetamine, like some buskers I know who make $300 in one day (playing 24 straight hours on it).

Monday Night

I just got back from a ride to the French Quarter, where I found John at the French Market, who gave me a dollar off on a set of 5 dollar strings, allowing me to pick up a can of cat food on the way here.

There is another cat, perhaps a relative of Harolds, that is living under one of the buildings here, gaining access through a small square hole which is missing its grate. Someone had left out a big dish of dry cat food for it, I assume. There is nothing to stop Harold, my cat from eating out of the dish of food and so, now I am faced with the prospect of having a finicky cat, meowing to come in with me out of habit and maybe boredom, and quite possibly wasting my money by turning its nose up at whatever food I bought for him.
Whoever is feeding the cat and not sealing up the hole under the building is just asking for a situation when the animal rescue group has to come out here and deal with 37 cats, all related to Harold, living under the building and causing whatever problems a cat might; multiplied by 37.

All this will do is make it harder for me to manage Harold, perhaps being forced to change his habits and keep him inside a lot more; which will mean buying more litter.