Kratom Cures Food Allergies?

Yeah, it's Wednesday and I am as broke as can be and almost out of a lot of things; like food.

I have discovered that I can eat cheddar cheese melted between two Saltine type crackers using only perhaps a quarter pound of cheese to make a meal.


Dairy products had always been on my forbidden foods list, but I have been able to get away with eating various constituents such as the 100% whey protein isolate formulas that I used when I worked out regularly, and I suppose that It is pretty much 100% milk fat isolate that I'm surviving off of lately, eating cheese melted between two saltines and (optionally dipped into some kind of tomato based liquid, preferably soup).


The main theme of the day will be kratom, as I am finally too broke to get even a shot of the green leaf, and so will interrupt a run of quite a few consecutive days of having gotten at least a (5 gm.) shot of it.


I was riding along a great loop where the kratom bar was the first stop, a mile and a half up the road, and then the Petco store for Harold's daily bread; along the trail back which would ultimately turn again after a pass by the Whole Foods and a stop at either the Family Dollar or the Dollar General.


Tyson And Shannon From British Colombia: First Encounter

This past Sunday was perhaps the 8th straight day that I had gone through that prole, and I thought that I went out and had a good money night, only to discover that the couple who sat and listened and talked to me for a couple hours were only putting one dollar bills in my jar, at various times such as after I had just played a song. I was too polite to crane my neck to look in the jar after them.


I figured that I would find at least a 20 dollar bill folded up and tucked into a corner of the jar, but, got home to discover that I had had a 10 dollar night. I like to think that the couple were enjoying themselves so much they forgot all about the fact that I live off my tip jar and that I had only gotten a few sporadic dollars besides what they threw in throughout the hour and a half that we hung out.


I was thinking that when I went back out last (Tuesday) night and only made 2 dollars on an almost empty street.  
The couple never came by. Of course, they will probably assume that Friday or Saturday would be good nights to try to catch me at the spot, should they want to. They said they were going to be here for 6 days, and are from British Colombia, Canada.


Lilly just called and invited me over to swim at her house; I had better grab my shorts and get going. It's Wednesday and I'm down to less than a dollar to my name; and I don't know how I messed it up.


I should have known that the only money to be made would be from the Decatur/Royal Street daytime mobs and would come one dollar at a time; not through hundred dollar endowments, but that is probably where I should have been the past week during the mornings into the the late afternoon hours; collecting at least a paycheck....


Official Starting Point Of Post


It is not quite Tuesday, the first of August, 2017.


The end-of-the-month-ness is palpable around here, a lot of skeezers have run out of money long before now, and have endured, as I have, a slow season like I ain't seen in the 6 years that I've been here.


I have continued to trudge out there, almost nightly, bringing back no more than 6 bucks some evenings.


I have made a "morning" ritual of my shot(s) of kratom at the Uxi Duxi kava bar up the street; usually getting there around 5 PM, to do a shot, in order to focus my mind and plot out the rest of the day.


I continue to wake up at just around 1:30 PM, when the sun is at true noon here, without the aid of an alarm clock.


Rose has called a few of the mornings since I last posted, at around that time, having figured this out, I guess.


I could have made quite a profit lending them money at 100% interest, had I had any.

The Ever Difficult To Draw Lilly

And Lilly has called a couple times, to invite me over to swim in the afternoons, when her daughters are at work, but her husband, whom she is separated from but who still lives in the same house, is in his room in the front on the side opposite where I play almost every night. I think that whichever one of her daughters is least sensitive to harmonica music occupies the room right behind me.


It is out of respect of this commitment that Lilly has made to assisting a street musician who she is determined to see succeed, which has extended as far as her vetting prospective tenants of the properties that she and/or her husband that she is separated from own, to insure that they are fine with guitar and harmonica music "that you can hardly hear" until all hours of the morning, which makes it a kind of no-brainer to drop whatever I'm doing and head on over there in my only pair of shorts and with an extra shirt for a towel (Lilly claimed that none of her towels had been washed because they basically take up the whole washer; but I would be surprised if she were not germaphobic).


I brought about dire consequences the one time that I dallied at the kratom bar and at the Petco store.

I like to take a long time reading Harold's "menu," comparing prices per ounce, and trying to find new flavors, like sole, venison and rabbit to try on him like a scientist, and finding them in "bits" or "shreds" and in gravy, and preferably with garden greens added.


One of the Petco employees, who seems pretty knowledgeable [and who has some kind of certificate of completion in some kind of Petsmart 101 course to prove it] told me that cats were 100% carnivores and would never, in the wild, eat any of the cranberries, pumpkin, green peas and carrots that are commonly seen, and even touted, as ingredients in many of the more expensive gourmet cat foods.


I guess cats join humans in their affinity for foods that offer them no nutritive value. Once Harold gets hooked on pumpkin flavored trout then, I'll have an even more costly habit to support.

It takes a few dozen cats to take down a buck in the wild, but, once they develop a taste for venison, no deer in the vicinity will be safe.


Kratom


I will say that, for some reason, the thing that I am most hellbent upon accomplishing, as soon as I swig down either one or two shots of "white sumatra" (for those trivia buffs among you) kratom.


I am likely, at that point of the day, with the sun going down and myself already in possession of Harold's evening meal, to head directly to the Lilly Pad to begin work.


That, of course, is an abandonment of the blogging that I used to do almost religiously before going out each night.


This wrote in whatever anxiety, jitters, stage-fright or every day feelings of doom and gloom that would be weighing upon me in those hours before going into the Quarter, and gave the posts a rushed aspect, spawned by thoughts of "I really should be out there now trying to make money, instead of sitting here blogging about how little I have been making."


The kratom shots that I do usually make me nauseous, the onset of which occurs after I have pedaled to the pet store and have spent what feels like a half hour looking for what might be the purrfect (sic) flavor to try on Harold.

There was one day when I vomited up a quantity of puke that looked like a prop from the movie The Exorcist along the bike trail. I had done a double shot and had not washed it down with hardly any water at all. It was weird because it came up rather gently into my mouth, and I could have re-swallowed it, but didn't, thinking that my stomach might have known what was best at the time.


I went ahead and completed my daily loop by swinging by the Dollar General (batteries, cheap cat food to supplement the stingily proportioned gourmet stuff, Monster Energy drink) and the Whole Foods (off limits after the food stamp money runs out) and the Family Dollar (single energy shots reduced to 50 cents while they last) and skipped the Ideal Market, too.

Then, I continued past the apartment building and rode up to the Uxi Duxi to replace the kratom that I had barfed up.


There has been just enough food materializing from unlikely sources to keep me from spending kratom money on sustenance.


A group came in and set up tables in the recreation room to serve food to the veterans who live here. There were lots of apples, some pears, lots of champagne grapes (delicious, and a temptation to ferment them into wine) as well as plates of prepared fare like sweet potato and sausage whatever, and decadently sweet chocolate cupcakes with "20 Years" iced onto the tops of them. I didn't ask.

Tourists have given me food in lieu of cash tips, and just today, when I went behind the Rite Aid dumpster because I thought I might puke, I found 6 half gallon cartons of "cashew milk," still cold enough to have condensation on them. I boxed them up in a Yungling Lager box that was convenient, and balanced them on my handlebars back to my refrigerator, which now holds about 3,000 calories worth of the stuff, with only 2 days before a trip to the St. Jude food bank becomes an option, and 5 days before my food card is charged with 194 bucks.


Skeezer Teaser

I closed the lid on the beer case box and sealed it, so it could potentially look like I had a case of cold beer on my handlebars. I did this for no other reason than to mess with the alcoholic skeezers at Sacred Heart Apartments. I wanted to see how they would react. It would appear to some of them that, with 24 cold beers on me, I absolutely without a doubt should give a few away; it would be rude to ride past my neighbors like that, and not offer. Selfish, and rude. And racist.


At least one resident's jaw opened, at the sight of the box concealing cashew milk, as if he was about to try to skeeze. I was kind of testing them, in a way. Would any one of them become indignant "You got all that beer and I can't get just one of them?!?" I was curious. Plus, my ace up the sleeve would be to open the box and say: "Dude, this is cashew milk," after he had made a scene and I would say "embarrassed himself," but sociopath skeezers are proof against such non productive emotions.


This month, I will attempt yet another way of managing that 194 bucks so it doesn't run out around 12 days before month's end.


The smart thing would be to divide the amount by the 30 days, and then try to come up with a way to feed myself off $6.47 per day.


A 2 pound block of cheddar cheese can be bought at Sams Club for under 5 dollars. A couple boxes of Saltines for another $5. I can see eating for at least 4 days off that 10 dollars. Of course, upgrading from Saltines, to more healthy crackers that cost almost 4 times as much (below, $10 a box) would consume about 80% of the 194 dollars for the month, just on crackers and cheese.

The fact that the money runs out two thirds of the way through tells me that I am actually consuming more like 10 bucks a day on food, if I just eat unchecked, with the difference coming out of any available busking money. After kratom and food for Harold and weed. Energy drinks and cigarettes are the first victims of budget cuts after slow nights. Coffee can somewhat replace the former, and tobacco can be picked up and re-rolled at several French Quarter locations.


Perhaps I will try to kick in 30% of my food costs in cash and take the rest off the card, so as to keep my balance afloat the entire month. The danger is in things like buying a "family size" box of cereal because it's only a couple bucks more and then eating the whole thing in one sitting, negating the savings (though, maybe I could use the extra calories).


The Project On Hold


The first time Lilly and I swam in her pool, I blogged about it.


The sight of us coming out of her gate together put to rest any designs that "Rascal" may have had on the Lilly Pad and put a damper on her claiming the daytime hours as being hers. "No, eight-thirty is late enough," said Lilly on the matter. I guess Lilly can see me playing a full 8 hours, starting at around 7:30 PM. I suppose that, were I to occupy the stoop every night for those hours, my income would theoretically triple. But; what is 3 X (less than 10 dollars?)


The second time, when I dallied at the pet store, etc. Lilly called around 6 PM, wanting to know where I was.


I was at the Uxi Duxi.


Lilly could hear the music that they play there in the background and might have sensed that something was awry. "Let's just do it another day. Go ahead and get your energy shot and your cat food, we'll just do it another day," said Lilly, over the din of djembes and castanets.

"Where are you calling from, Daniel?

I don't like the sound of it..."

I called off the trip to Lilly's pool.


That night, she approached and seemed very angry. "Tomorrow!," she asserted, pointing a finger at me. When I tried to stand to plant a kiss on her cheek, she drew back. "Tomorrow!," she repeated.


So, the third time, I knew what to do.


She had called again, to tell me that she would be lounging in her pool around 6:30 PM, after the sun had gone behind the buildings.


I had a hard time keeping on schedule. I kept finding things that needed to be done; and on my way out of the apartments, I ran into people whom I talked to. By the time 6 PM rolled around, I was faced with the decision of going straight to Lilly's and being on time; or going for my shot of kratom and hoping somehow that it would make me pedal faster and she wouldn't notice how late I was.


She called, while I was at the kratom bar again, asking me where I was.


The fact that I was way up by the cemeteries "You went the opposite way..." was enough to make her cancel our swim once again.


This time I knew what to do, though.


I finished my shot of kratom and then rode straight to the Lilly Pad, where I was able to place a call to her at about 7:25.


She didn't answer, as I couldn't expect that a lady who had been stood up for a shot of kratom to, but I was able to leave a message telling her that I was right outside her gate, ready to swim if she still wanted to.


That seemed to do the trick, as I was approached by her around 11 PM and she was in different spirits than she had been the previous time. She was dressed up and made up and smiling.


We scheduled another swim, which took place earlier today.


I did a couple shots of kratom, picked up some beef and carrots flavored food for Harold, and went straight to the Lilly Pad, with my guitar and pack on.


Rascal was strumming away on her ukulele. In front of her stood a guy who lives in the neighborhood and who had come up to me a few nights prior and introduced himself saying: "You must be the nighttime busker...I'm a friend of Rascal, the girl that plays the ukulele..."

I gave Rascal a brief smile as I drifted past and towards the gate that was being held ajar by Lilly, who held a finger to her lips to warn me to be quiet as we passed her husband that she is separated from's room.


I don't understand the exact dynamics of that situation. It crossed my mind that she might be using me to try to make the guy jealous, playing shark and fish in the pool with her; but it might just be that she doesn't want to elicit a comment from him like: "Stooping to skeezers now,...honey?"


So, that was this Monday, the 31st of July, 2017.


I went out and made only 6 bucks after swimming, or a double shot of kratom. It seems like there is something cosmic about how I am constantly being put in a situation of having to choose between spending my money on kratom, or anything else.


The project has even been put on hold, due to my not having bought a 3 dollar screwdriver which is going to allow me to unfasten the plywood over the door to the boarded up rectory building that I envision as being a perfect recording studio, where I can vent things musical that I might not even do at the Lilly Pad.


I can already sing out a lot more freely at the Lilly Pad than in my own apartment, where I just feel the presence of my neighbors and their grips on their broom handles too much.


I know it is a self imposed limitation, one that had my friend Barnaby saying: "As brazen as you are?!?" when I told him about it. But, again I go back and cite the fact that Luciano Pavarotti, for example, would warm up "in private."


Part of it has to do with having a brand to protect.


The same reason that Whitney Houston became upset when her husband, Bobby Brown started singing loudly and out of tune at some party where there might have been video cameras; because he has a brand to protect.


It would be easy for the rumor to surface that Bobby "really can't sing," as averred to by several party goers who might report that "When you hear him sing live, like at a birthday party, without all that studio equipment and production, he really can't even hold a tune..."


And that embarrassed Whitney, who had been starstruck by at an early age and who had ascended to wed the great Bobby Brown.


So yeah, instead of trying to psych myself into being thick skinned and finding the balls to sing "Feeling Groovy," knowing that as soon as I step out of my place I'm going to be faced with: "It makes a nigga out here without even a goddam cigarette glad to know that things are so groovy for you, white boy!" types of attitudes.


The abandoned rectory.


A 3 dollar "star-tipped" screwdriver.


Soon.


There is a CD that is going to put New Orleans on the map as a "music city" just waiting to be born.



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