My Mind And Body

• Plasma Money Timely
• Mom Sends 60 Bucks
• New Bike Or Road Trip Pondered

Will Somebody Please Send Me One Of These

In The Key Of C? Thanks

Wow, as I sit here on the bus, I am reassuring myself that I turned out alright, my parents raised me well, and "smart is as smart" does. I don't have to work another day in my life. I'm "retired" at 54, if I want to look at it that way.

The red lever, nestled between hoses

I must have done something right.
I think I have this blog to thank, to a large degree.

After starting it in 2006, it has done a couple of things.
One of which was to make me accountable for my actions, since, "at the end of the day," I would have to blog about them.
It started out as a journal.

No matter how boring my life was on the surface, I was going to try to give it an interesting twist.

Even when I was a day laborer, going to the labor pool to make $6.75 per hour demolishing things with a sledgehammer, or digging holes to be stuffed with the root balls of trees, there would always be something humorous or interesting that came up during the day.

Money For The Slow Season

I called my mom with the intention of just saying hello, since I hadn't spoken to her in a while. She must have sensed that I could use money, because, though I hadn't asked, 60 bucks arrived in an envelope Monday.

Not Another Decadence Festival, No

I had "Thanks Be To Thee," by Handel in my head as I went to the mailbox.
"Thanks be to God," mom had put in the letter that enveloped the money.
Now, I am in a position to make good on the promise I made to myself to never endure another "Southern Decadence," festival in New Orleans.

The festival is the first week of September. I blogged extensively last year and the year before about the 10,000 or so gay men that arrive each year and don't tip at all. "Me tip?!? Are you serious?!? People tip me, just because I'm so fabulous; he should be happy just to be able to play for me!," type of thing.....

I have just sold my plasma for the second time, with 3 days in between. The rules are that you can donate every 2 days, but Sunday, after having donated Thursday, the thought of doing so made me feel queasy. I didn't feel like I had replenished all of my blood proteins.

It is recommended that one eat a protein laden meal before donating, but, since I feel best when on a mostly vegetarian diet, I didn't want to throw the baby out of with the bathwater, and feel lousy because of the animal protein, rather than weak and famished from having my blood proteins leached from me.

The staff at the Octaplasma place are 99% black. I'm treated like a second class citizen there, but it is tempered by the fact that the staff at least have some education and/or training and aren't totally ignorant.

There was one worker who appeared Latina, but who hadn't responded to my "hola!," and who spoke ghetto-like language when she did open her mouth.

This makes a woman seem obtuse and retarded to me. This is a throwback to when I was a kid and we were taught not to use words like "ain't" or double negatives like "I didn't get none," with the reason being that it would make us sound uncouth, uneducated and poor -everything we were trying to distance ourselves from.

Offsetting Events

I got to the Wal-Mart with 30 dollars on my plasma card to go with the 5 dollars cash in my pocket. Busking had only been producing around 10 bucks a night.
I was famished, having had my blood proteins drained. I walked through the food section, too hungry to decide what to buy, so I just grabbed some bananas and a mango. Then I went to get Harold a can of cat food. It was 48 cents. The same can is 72 cents at the Quartermaster.

The cat food rang up at 53 cents.

I handed the young, plump, dumb looking cashier a dollar bill. She looked like the type that talks loudly with a mouth full of food.

She grabbed it and then quickly hit a button on her register; the draw slid open.

"Here, I've got the 3 cents," I said, holding them out to her.

 She stood staring at the register, frozen for a moment.

It was 53 cents and I was giving her $1.03. Pretty simple math.

She started scooping change from her draw and handed me back 7 pennies (including the 3 that I had just handed her), a nickel, a dime and a quarter.

"I gave you 3 pennies, so that I could get 2 quarters as change; I have to take the bus," I said.

She stared dumbly at me with her mouth slightly open, as if I had spoken a language that she didn't understand. She never said a thing.

Her register was telling her to give me back 47 cents, and she was going to do so, like a trained monkey. She couldn't seem to comprehend why I had told her "I've got the 3 cents."

I was one of the only white people in the store.

"The reason I gave you the 3 cents is so I could get 2 quarters back," I repeated. "To make it easier for you," I added.

She continued to stand there, frozen and staring at me.

I was about to add: "It's simple arithmetic," but just gave up.

"Never mind, the bus takes pennies," I said, eliciting another dumb stare.

I felt like asking to see the manager; holding up the line behind me, just to shed light upon the fact that a store that would never hire myself, for whatever reason, was employing cashiers who couldn't do 5 grade math. The all black people behind me would be a captive audience as I complained to the manager. The manager would probably be able to do the math.
"I hate that kind of white boy," they would probably say about me and my rocket science mathematics as soon as I was out of earshot.

Gretna Wal-Mart; More Fun Than A Barrel Full Of Monkeys

The store is in a ghetto type location, surrounded by "projects," and of course the plasma donation/selling place.

There had been a chubby little black boy running around shirtless (classless, if you ask me) and another mother with a young boy who was acting up doing karate type moves, spinning and kicking and chopping at the air.
He seemed to want me to notice him.

I ignored him, and looked at the prices on the bags of basmati rice, instead.
He spun and kicked and chopped his way closer to me to the point where it would be very distracting to most people.

"Can't you control your kid?" I was ready to ask the mother. But the mother wasn't telling him anything like "Come over here and stop bothering that man," leading me to think that she was complicit in him "messing with me."

It was as if the 99% black people in the store were emboldened to give the white guy a hard time, due to the advantage of their numbers.

I had gotten in line behind one of the only other whites, a guy about my age.
When was heard a loud shriek coming from the general area of the toy section, I said to him: "Man, if I screamed like that in a store, my mother would have given me something to scream about."

The guy smiled a little and nodded, but didn't say anything. I could feel the derisive looks of all the blacks around me within earshot.

"He probably can't get a toy that he wants and so he's screaming," I went on.
"Of course, now you can't hit a kid because it's not politically correct." More derisive looks, as if the words "politically correct" were fraught with hidden meaning.

Their attitude was starting to accomplish its purpose as I was getting irritated.
"Things need to go back to the way they were back then," I finished with, truly intending to refer to President Trump's "make America Great again," vow, since it seemed like every word out of my mouth had been a veiled code for that.

I had an overall unpleasant experience shopping at that particular Wal-Mart. Every aisle I walked through, I had to either dodge carts being pushed by black people, or else walk right into them, because they weren't swerving. It didn't do me any good to quip "Ess-cuse me," sarcastically.

I can see why my folks tried to give me a good education so that I could be above all of that, and shop at a store in the good white section of town, where things might cost a little more, but it's worth the extra cost.

Time to go out on the road

On The Other Hand...

But, then, that evening a young black lady at Wal-Green's gave me whatever I bought at half price. "I gave you a discount, sweetie," she said. For no apparent reason.
She seemed like a college student.

With the 30 bucks from the plasma, plus the 10 I made, I knocked off Saturday night, thinking that I won't play again until I have a brand spankin' new harmonica and new strings.

That is where I stand now, on this Tuesday afternoon.

I'm at the kratom bar, and will walk a half mile to the pet food store after leaving here.

I am ready to break into the abandoned building to use it as a studio.

Sure, my apartment can be silenced now with the turn of a lever, but that doesn't do anything about my paranoia of being listened to and judged by the neighbors through whose walls my screaming vocals would be audible, musical warts and all.

Now that I haven't smoked pot for 5 days, that is improving.

Eddie Van Halen said in a late 70's interview that he didn't smoke weed because it made him "insecure and insane." I think I suffer from a bit of that, myself.

The irony is that my weed dealer, Lancaster, had been giving me super deals on the stuff, keeping me baked to the point where I was getting up and vegging in the morning, forgetting to take care of things as the days passed, and then overeating and passing out at night, while my apartment became messier and no work on my CD was getting accomplished.

Then, he was the one that turned around and made comments about the squalor that I lived in, and how it was a sign that my life just wasn't working. He told me that if I cleaned my place top to bottom, I would feel much better about myself; it would stave off depression and my attitude would improve.

All of this has come to pass after I quit smoking the weed that he was selling me for cheap. I guess cleaning "my place" from top to bottom begins with my mind and body...