Saturday

I am feeling very sad today.  I am on the verge of tears.  I was fine last weekend.  Isn't it strange that I am more upset on New Year than Christmas?  I guess I keep thinking I should be at a party tonight like I normally have done in the past.  Isolation is one of the hardest parts of being homeless.  I have caught myself talking to myself on a few occasions, I guess just out of loneliness.

I have decided to go to the movies tonight.  It is the cheapest alternative that I have.  I will wander from theater to theater I guess until it is time for me to go to sleep.  I will have heat and a bathroom which is what I really need.  I have not gone to a movie in quite some time.  It isn't something that I feel is a useful way to use my very limited funds.  But I will make an exception for the weekend.  I may have to do that tomorrow too, but I will see about that.  I can't really go sit in a restaurant tonight since it is a busy night and they won't want some homeless person taking a up table when my bill would be quite small.

There isn't anything that really interests me playing.  I guess I will see New Year's Eve and some movie I never heard of called Young Adult.

I have found a place that will be open early in the morning tomorrow so I will sleep near there to have a bathroom in the morning.  The weather is really nice, unseasonably warm for January.  That comes to a very abrupt end on Monday, but for the next two nights I will sleep just fine. I just looked at the weather report again, Tuesday is going to be awful.  It won't get above freezing all day.  That is a problem because like today, the car is being warmed up by the sun right now.  It gets quite warm in there during the day, so it holds some of the heat.  I guess I could be wrong about that, but I have found that to be true, or maybe it is all in my head.  Either way, tonight will be easy to sleep in.

I just don't have the money for a hotel on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, so off to the shelter I must go.  As I have said many times, the shelters are awful.  They are full of people who are substance abusers and mentally ill, so I don't feel safe there.  Not so much in a physical sense, but I can't afford to have my things stolen.  I don't have that much, so I have to hold unto what I have.  I can handle the temperatures down to the upper 20's.  I can keep myself warm enough to fall asleep and stay asleep for about four hours or so.  But once it gets colder than that I just can't keep myself warm enough to stay asleep for very long.  I had thought about getting a down blanket, but I can't afford that.  I stopped in some outdoor clothing store and asked about hiking in low temperatures and they showed my clothing that they said would keep you insulated to about zero degrees.  The stuff was really, really, and I mean really expensive.  Not something that I can spend my limited funds on especially when you consider what would I use them for when this over?  Which, if I stay on target, will be shortly.  Not days, maybe not even weeks, but it should be less than two months as long as nothing else happens that causes me to spend money I hadn't planned for.  My original goal was for this to be only six months, but my more realistic goal of one year should be reachable.

Happy New Year to you and your families.