Pterodactyls & Geronticide Candidates

I haven't been very diligent in blogging and tweeting, I know. Sometimes I just get tired of sitting at the Friendly House, especially since it seems to have gotten much more popular with the local homeless and poor over the past few months. It can get rather noisy here when hard-of-hearing geronticide candidates get to bellowing at each other or hordes of wingless pterodactyls swoop in shrieking from Chapman Elementary. Not only that, but not much has been going on. Police harassment and fall's impending arrival have cut a swathe through the local sketchy street tweaker population, and I've just been lazy and hanging out with a couple of my peers drinking malt liquor. Well, for the most part; I've also been working on a blog for one of the aforementioned drinking buddies for him to use to help publicize his paintings. You should check it out.

I'll try to come up with something more informative or interesting next week.

Winter Preparation

It's that time of year again, time to start gearing up for what I often call the upcoming Dark Monsoon: the gloomy and blustery rainy months that turn the homeless experience here into a daily struggle to be dry at least while sleeping (almost impossible to accomplish during the day if walking around a lot) and avoid chronic bronchitis and walking pneumonia. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be outdoors all fall and winter, and perhaps even all the way into next fall even, so it would behoove me to use the next couple months of likely fair to middlin' weather (NOAA's Climate Prediction Center estimates a 33% to 40% chance of above-average dryness and heat through the end of November) to do a bit of pre-emptive weatherproofing.

What all does this entail? I remember reading once that the U.S. cavalry used to have a motto describing in ascending the order of priority of equipment: “First the horse, then the saddle, then the rider.” In the case of being homeless I suppose it would go something like this: “First the clothing, then the bedding, then the camp (etc.).” Even if you don't have a good tent or a good sleeping bag you can at least manage to get through the night curled up in layers of clothing on top of some cardboard and covered up by a tarp or whatever else is on hand in a windbreak or beneath an overhang; though chances are you won't be very comfortable and sleep will be at best fitful, you won't get soaked through or freeze. The main thing is keeping dry and sleeping dry; fortunately for us, low overnight temperatures and snow aren't as much a concern in this part of the country as in much of the rest of it. In my case I figure the following...

1. Clothing
• Long johns, specifically the expensive synthetic ones that can be washed by hand and hung out to dry.
• Rain gear, consisting of a poncho and rain pants.
• Heavier general-purpose clothing, such as a couple hoodies or flannels, a medium jacket, and jeans.
• Boots and a waterproof, wide-brimmed hat.
• Other items such as wool fingerless gloves, a scarf, and maybe wool leggings to sop up water dripping off my poncho.
2. Bedding
• A decent sleeping bag with a comfort rating of 10°F, or enough lighter-duty sleeping bags and blankets to keep me warm during the colder nights.
• A good medium-sized tarp for when the rain is driven by wind out of the north or northwest, with whatever poles or ropes or carabiners are needed to erect it. (A tent could attract unwanted police attention, even if just erected overnight, though a free-standing one-man may work.)
3. Camping (etc.)
• I'm either going to keep sleeping on my loading dock, take over another one nearby with better cover, or move back to the freeway confluence I used to sleep at. (Winter is no time of year to pitch a tent in the woods!)
• A tactical daypack with a good rain fly.
• Another can of bear mace, and a head lamp for when it gets pitch black by 5:00 PM.

Sounds involved and expensive, doesn't it? Not so much the latter, but a bit of the former because I'll be doing a lot of scrounging, finagling, and shopping for most of what I need. I can probably get a sleeping bag or other bedding for free, also the boots (I know where there's a massive give-away of them every third Friday of the month); and aside from the rain pants and poncho, clothing is pretty cheap in thrift stores if you check them regularly for colored-tag sales and items the Russians and Mexicans somehow managed to overlook in their locust shopping sprees. In fact, the only things I figure I'll end up canning money for to pay for out of pocket is my long johns, rain gear, hat, the hoodies or flannels, the jacket, boot socks, bear mace, head lamp, and backpack (or at least the rain fly for one). In the two months I figure I have to get ready, I think I can manage at least most of the more crucial items on this list. I hope.

So Much for Treatment

I only lasted three weeks in DePaul, having stormed out of the place in a huff Labor Day morning because some milieu counselor (what staff members there are called that aren't real counselors with degrees and certifications; basically the guys that tell you what to do, search the rooms and conduct UAs, and dispense mail, etc.) thought I was being a jerk because I complained about having to watch some schlocky mainstream Hollywood chick flick on a holiday instead of being allowed to read my book. I suppose it's a shame, since I was doing pretty well there and was due to graduate in the middle of this month and move into a unit in housing. It wasn't that I wanted to just keep on drinking; I just didn't want to have a bunch of twelve-stepping cultists and drones telling me who I am and what how I need to live my life, forcing their quasi-Christian protean “spirituality” down my atheist throat, while being surrounded by a bunch of punk kids full of gangsta bravado and buffoonery and rock 'n' roll ex-cons strutting around with giant limp dicks flopping out of their mouths ... only to end up stuck in some lousy housing building downtown full of these people and enclosed in a blockade line of bums, yuppies, and tourists. In other words, it was a mistake.

Fortunately for me, my loading dock hasn't been inhabited by any unwelcome interlopers, and I even found one of my old sleeping bags that I'd left behind before I went into DePaul in a nearby field and still in good shape and reasonably clean. It sucks that I lost my locker at the Friendly House and have to carry most of my stuff in a large backpack, but I still have access to a day locker there and I'm not carrying too heavy a load anyway. I'll have to do a little gearing up for the rainy winter, but that won't be too big of a deal because there's probably still a month left to summer and I expect fall to get off to a slow start. I really don't need much, anyway: some long underwear, a couple hoodies, boots, a poncho, a knit hat or headband, a couple fingerless wool gloves, a wool blanket for the colder nights, and a better rainfly for my backpack. Okay, that looks like a lot, but there's a lot of free stuff in this town for us homeless, and there's always sales and lucky finds. The big thing will be not to spend all my canning or day labor money on booze, of course; so far I'm doing okay staving off the temptation to drink by substituting strawberry Fanta™ or Arizona™ iced tea for malt liquor whenever the devil's thirst comes over me.

Which begs the question, “What now?” I've made appointments with both my Central City Concern case worker and supported employment specialist next week to discuss this with them, and I have to go to the DHS office to get my food stamp card returned to my custody (DePaul has inpatients sign over custody of them to defray meal costs, which you'd think would be factored into bills sent to the insurance companies!) and to sign up for free web-development and coding classes online (my supported employment specialist thinks I can land a job in a computer field by doing this). I'm on the wait list for four or five subsidized low-income housing units, but I have no idea when I'll actually get into any of them, nor if I'd even WANT TO live in any of them. And, well, I don't know how much of what kind of work I could do with my asthma and messed-up legs and hips. All I really know is I can push a shopping cart full of bottles and cans once a day, and that so far I have a half-ass decent place to sleep outside ... the future is no less uncertain for me than it was when I left my last place over seven months ago. Oh well.