The Hearing Now

• 59 Dollar Friday
• 24 Dollar Saturday
• Sunday Off

Monday morning, bright and early, up and ready to jog to the Family Dollar for cat food, and for exercise.

From the Kratom Series of GIMP art

I "needed the rest," I suppose, as I had been too lazy to hop on my bike and go out to get cat food for Harold's 2 AM feeding.


Choosing not to go out and play last (Sunday) night caused a bit of guilt in me, especially when thinking that now is the time that I need to save up for my trip up north, which I should embark upon within the next 3 weeks.


At the bare minimum, I need to supply Rose and Ed with enough cat food and litter box stuff for a few weeks.

I haven't talked to them about me giving them my key so that they could allow Harold to continue his routine, letting him in before they go to bed, putting food and fresh water out for him, and then basically locking him in for the night, and letting him out in morning.


I am sure that they will jump on the opportunity. The key to my place will be a resource for them, and I wouldn't put it past them to rent it out for 20 bucks a night, here and there, on the sly (to include myself). But, I am sure that they would have "vetted" the people, and wouldn't allow anyone that they hardly know into the place. That would be the main "risk" in that arrangement. I'm not comfortable with leaving Harold outside the whole (4?) weeks, even if Rose was to be placing food out there for him regularly.

My attention has been drawn to the lottery, lately. Myself having been playing number 427 on the Pick 3 for almost the whole year, 50 cents a day. The number hasn't come up since December 2, 2009. It statistically should have come up 2.6 times since then. I realize though that, even beginning to play at such a time in the number's history doesn't make the odds any less crappy. But, it's hard to stop playing such a number. There is a feeling that it would be a forefeiture of all that I have paid into the system so far.


Every employee at The Unique Grocery knows that 427 is my number (I'm even thinking of composing a little ditty about the number that I can pull my guitar off my back and sing when I'm in there getting my ticket) and so, it wouldn't escape their notice if it came up one night, and they would undoubtedly greet me when I came in with great enthusiasm, but cautious enthusiasm, as they know that I will occasionally "gamble" by not playing the thing, so as to put the 50 cents in my pocket.


One of the (all Ethiopian) workers in there has given me the advice to skip playing every now and then, following my hunches, but then to parlay that money into the next ticket that I do play.


That makes a lot of sense to me, as a matter of fact. After having dodged a bullet by seeing a number other than mine come up on a night when I didn't play, I could double up on the next night's play.

Another attempt to visually describe Kratom...

But there have been nights when I just didn't feel the vibe of the number, but played anyways, thinking about the nights I had gone out busking when I wasn't feeling anything, that turned out to be "magical" ones. But when the number came up as far from 427 as can be; like 959; I realized that my gut had been right.


Funny how "Though shalt not gamble" never found its way onto Moses' tablets.


Other than that and it is Monday and my ears are still ringing and my hearing hovers around 50%.

You've just read: 643 words. POWERED BY ↁ DANIEL-SOFT TEXT SOLUTIONS ↁ