I have been promising myself I would start a journal about this strange and chaotic non-funded cultural anthropological research project I am currently on (without an academic advisor I might add) I have roughly entitled Coming of Age in the Hood, and today looks like a good a day as any to start. I had a totally mind blurring wake and bake this morning to mark the survival of a horrendous week.

A few days ago I heard myself saying to a man pandering on the streets that I certainly could not spare any change since I was homeless. It was at that time I vowed to not use the term homeless again. It sounds so hopeless and sad. Although the word nomad is not as bad, it conjures up visions all hair all the time, hippies following Pink Floyd and their Wall of Sound. I also figured since I have a bit of time on my hands right now, I might as well put to use my three degrees since I have not been able to find a job handing out ketchup packets in the past weeks because of my arm injury. Besides everything else going on in my life I am also on day two of the patch. This is not to infer I have stopped smoking; the patches are an extra kick of nicotine.

My days and weeks have been filled with endless applications for employment, resumes, applications for housing, and appointments to view filthy shit hole apartments in sketchy hoods and I even worked in time for a date. I do plan to make a special mention of this in Dating with Dumbskull which is why I did not even mention it until now.

I had been previously residing in a very nice upper middle class Jew/Catholic hood. My neighbor’s were a prominent surgeon and down the street is a bakery owned and operated by the mom of a former secretary of state. Thank the gods all of the insanity that occurred with the B & C, the whore, the whore’s crazy stalker husband, the drunk asshole downstairs and the police happened after normal working hours when all neighboring business establishments were not open. For the past weeks after moving from shelter to crisis center to shelter, I have been taking refuge under the roof of a college classmate friend in a real honest to goodness white potatoes hood. My new neighbors are now the crazy talks to herself lady I used to see on the bus and the smells-like ass guy I would attempt to avoid. Besides these two oddities, I have found many of the new neighbors in my temporary situation to be friendlier than many of the people back in the stick-up-their-assvile hood. I am sure some alum soaked rectum will get his/her faces all puckered out of shape about this and if so, then just fuck off. I can offer two examples in the following. I was walking back to my apartment on afternoon carrying a few bags from the market and having a hell of a time with it in my brand new cast. I got up to the steps of my building and met a couple of people on their way out. They could obviously see that I was struggling with bags and a cast, but instead of holding the door open, they not only closed it, they locked it behind them. Same scenario new hood, kid next door comes over and helps with the bags and then helps me break into the house since I forgot my key.

I do not recommend arrest, jail, homelessness, unemployment, withdrawal from school, and more stress than Saddam’s court appointed attorney as a means of loosing a lot of weight really fast…. However; thirty-five pounds in two months has disappeared and I am happy to report I am now a thin one hundred and thirty-eight pounds. I didn’t have to use meth either, not that I would use it, I’m just saying for anyone out there who would think the pounds fell off because I had adopted a great new habit. I am going to guess the pounds fell off as a result of the major stress and the joy of taking care of three sweet cherubs from sun up until sun down with only a short reprieve from their ear splitting bickering while they are being publicly schooled.

The gavel came down Monday morning; I am no longer shackled to the B & C. To be honest everything has all happened so fast over the past few months I have not really had much time to assimilate the fact I am finally divorced. This is most certainly something I have wanted for a very long time, I just wish it had been under much better circumstances and I had been better prepared. How does one prepare for the delusions and hallucinations of a schizophrenic drug addict turning their sedate and lethargic world upside down? From this day forward I plan to I rub a waxy placebo over my forehead daily and face the world head on.

I also had to go to court on Friday for a Protection from Abuse order Fuck-for-Brains served me with while in mediation for our divorce. I had previously heard through the grapevine he was not going to show up for this hearing, however, since his moods change frequently depending how much mood stabling drugs he washed down with his nightly six pack, I had to be prepared to respond to his absurd claims. I typed up three pages in response to his two pages of bullshit. I might have mentioned before the B & C is check special. The B & C is deemed to be check special as a result of memory loss, secondary to a laundry list of other issues and the medication he has to take for these issues. So imagine my surprise when I was handed a protection order and began reading the two page novella going back 5 years. It is not likely the B & C can recall with any detail what occurred last week much less what happened nearly 5 years ago. He claimed I was causing him physical, mental, and emotional harm and requested the court stop the abuse because he was living in fear of his life from me. The B & C was a karate instructor for the first three years we were married.

This time 25 years ago I was birthing my girl sprog. I emailed her a Happy Birthday. She emailed back with the reply I wish I had never been born