A/C Is Busted

Broke all to shit, I guess.  I talked to the super about it earlier today.  He says this particular apartment has always been this cold.  Let me tell you, a high-powered air conditioner sounds like a great idea with the heinous heat wave the entire country's been under.  But I have to wear my heaviest sweater.  Which isn't very heavy, most of my stuff is still at storage in my parent's garage.  It's really hard to sleep when you can't feel your fingertips or your nose.  And who's going to pay the bill for keeping the place like a fucking meat locker?  Yours-unemployed-truly, of course. So I can't afford to keep the windows open, and I really don't want to go outside. 

So I stopped by at the lady at 1-G (let's call her Mrs. K.), and as soon as she answered, one of her cats ran out of the door.  Turns out she has six.  Six cats!  She also knits, so she let me have a lovely stocking cap and a scarf and pair of mittens, all of which she made herself, as well as an extra quilt.  What a nice person!  She taught me how to play this game called cribbage, and we had a nice little chat.  The cats bothered me less than I thought they would.  The black one even came and sat in my lap.  The ginger one is pregnant and about to give birth; I just might take in one of the kittens. 

Of course I had to boil the hat and stuff when I got back.  No telling where those cats have been running around to, there could be fleas or ticks or worse.  But now I'm warm and happy and ready to settle back with a good book or two.  The quilt is stuffed in the freezer, cold works just as well for killing bugs as heat, and I can't exactly fit a quilt in one of my rusty old pans.

Anyway, The place where I'm staying is called New Beginnings.  It's all about providing low-income housing to folks to help them get back on their feet.  Besides Mrs. K, it's mostly filled with single-mothers or meth-heads (so I'm not the only person who's seen the inside of a cell, literally or metaphorically).

There's this one guy on my floor who has a crazy snake and stick tattoo right on his forehead.  Just seeing him makes me itch so bad.  Almost every time I see him, he's wearing his scrubs and a surgical mask.  And his scrubs are stained, but I don't know what the stains are from.  Every time I try to look, I go cross-eyed and get this insane headache.  Plus, he coughs a lot.  I kind of think he's wearing the mask to keep his sickness in, rather than trying to keep the rest of the world's sickness out.