Day 27 Life does exist outside

I just wanted to rest and be well for the last few years. I have been sick for awhile with upper respiratory and not pneumonia.

Well, the virus struck in a different country and sounds a lot like what I was experiencing. And now I have tested negative, does that mean I already had it or am just immune or not going to test positive

I have had the hepatitis shots for the last epidemic, and meningitis for the one before that and even rabbis injections for the explosion of bats we had where I was living. Each time it was a different city and a different epidemic.

Now I am back with my group of house seekers and a few others. I am bed number 136 and not the last of the women. There is a screen with more men on the other side, with a few more rooms down the hall wall. They say there are about a thousand of us being kept in self isolation, but altogether.

Hmm. Well, I have been able to manage the cot, the bathrooms and even the outdoor trailer showers, at least until the water ran cold. It is the laundry which has not worked. I spent three weeks waiting to do laundry only to find an uncooperative machine or two.

The trailers has 8 machines lined up on each side, laundry and dryer. There is almost no room to walk straight and sideways there are bodies to bump into. It is chaos as only four people are allowed but no one listens, they come anyways and just start doing their laundry leaving those of us on the list with little time for mistakes.

Twice I have tried the trailers and twice different machines. No way do they work normally. I had to manually switch the first one back and forth until it was spun and rewashed. The second one took an hour to do a twenty minute wash. As for the dryers, I spent the night under my comfortable, still wet after an hour in the dryer. Two hours is more than the allotted time.

Better luck at the groceries. One gets yelled at now for every infraction. don't touch anything, stand near anybody, ask for anything nor need the check out to work properly the first time. And don't use your own bags or hand sanitizer, that is if you can find one. As for cash, well, it is just going to be thrown away, isn't it?

And the buses, they had them divided, the handicap and seniors in the front and everyone else in the back. I carelessly, got in the front with my handicap device but had not paid ahead, just cash in my hand. I could not be asked off so I rode with the uncomfortable air.
Then I got to the pharmacy, the essential business I could not get on the phone. I was told my prescriptions had been put back since I had not shown up, but they could fill most of them for me.

Nice, except the two I needed the most were not in the bag when I got back to my cot.
And I also could not find a machine to stick my money into, they are all gone just because the city got tired of seeing them. I had to beg the next bus driver to let me on and let me get off at the trolley stop to pay for my ticket since they no longer had machines. He nodded agreement, and watched as I walked to the machine before taking off. It was not my stop, so I had to take a different route to get back to where I started in order to avoid the silliness of a confrontation.

Walking requires going around the entire building from the back of the site. All the front doors are locked and all of the access points are also blocked. The extra alley to get through the convention center and the hotels built next to it, is no longer available. The restaurants to the hotels are blocked and locked.

And when one gets to the end of both sets of buildings, one is on the wrong side of the rode for the trolley and a long walk to either of the two closest ones. They cut out the short stops, when they built the convention center on the marina, in order to prevent accidental crossings. There used to be buses along the route but then they put in highway on and off ramps to keep the traffic moving.

Negotiating the buildings, the marina joggers, and yes they do jog as it is the last place not closed to the population, and then the walk to the unfenced crosswalk, and then not bothering the trolley stop since my pass expired and there is no way of getting a new one with the county buildings closed.

Just walk through the community to the only places open, and attempt to get the business done without being yelled at nor sit down at any location as the word is to keep moving. That includes on the way ack where on has to reverse the order of things and avoid the joggers and exercise nuts who do access the stairs which were built to go up and over the convention building for those who appreciate heart stopping stairs and views.

I remember a different time when life was slower and people just wanted their loved ones to come home for Viet nam, or Iraq. I wish my father was still alive so he could phone the president and ask what was going on . I don't wish my mother to be alive to put me on a plane to go visit the queen and ask why she isn't being housed in a palace, she was during the war when her mother was an important radio announcer and her father a war hero.

I wish I could jump on a boat and hunker down with my cats instead of returning to a room with too many people and silly girls who believe I am their mother because they were told this even though the judge made it clear I was not their real mother but the woman who raised them. I don't know when it started but as a journalist, mothers began bringing their children's to me or my  mother and insist they were in so they could get on the show.

Then someone began to pay them, and now they just want money and not a life nor me, but have stalked me relentlessly in to what is an emergency homeless shelter even though they have places to live and now inside their hearts I am not their mother nor do I intend to do anything but have them arrested and convicted for harassments.