The way it is

My paycheck hits the bank. The bills are on the table. The problem: there's less paycheck than there are bills. Striving for balance lately, and for mental health, I tried working less. Between forty and fifty hours a week. I slept more and better during the last pay period. My mood improved. But I can't make it doing it that way.

Fifty-three dollars to fill my Hyundai's tank this evening. The one with the worsening seizure disorder. The car alarm occasionally sounds for no good reason. Its voice is clear, loud and shrill. This morning it happened right out in front of the police station. The one in which I'd just had a meeting with the chief. When it happens I turn the key through all of its positions, crank the steering wheel, shift up and down, open and close the door (from the inside and the outside), jump out, put the key in the door lock turn it both ways and take it out, and jump back in. I do these things furiously and feverishly, in no particular order, usually yelling a continuous stream of curses at the same time. When at last it stops, I don't know which if any of my actions resolved it. It's better to think of it as a seizure disorder. Just let it run its course. Don't freak out. 

I stopped for a poor dinner at a Country Pride Restaurant in a truckstop near the Massachusetts -Connecticut border. It was fairly busy. The people in the booths mostly looked miserable. There was a round table with six deaf people signing and lip reading. Theirs was the only animated table. 

I sat at the counter. There was only one waitress working. She wasn't happy. And one cook. He wasn't either. The food tasted exactly that way, but you can't really complain. 

The TV news let us know that the Supreme Court had taken a constitutional right away from the larger half of the American people. Had taken away a constitutional right. Whatever they were thinking, it didn't register on the truck driver's faces. No one talked about it. Every few minutes an automated announcement  sounded overhead. Driver number 197, shower number six is ready for you.

I stopped to eat at a truckstop because I wanted to feel like I was traveling. It felt as though the whole thing sat atop a mudslide just about to commence.