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Subject: Tale of Two Kitties - and Me

Posted by: bionic4ever
Date: Oct 02 10

Well, this won't be filled with profound insights and I'm not as good at humor as I'd like to be, but I miss my old blog - and the opportunity to chat with YOU! So....here I am. More to follow; just saying hi for now.
522 replies. On page 27 of 27 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
bionic4ever star
It's time for NaNoWriMo, 2014!
YES, I am throwing my hat into the ring for the SIXTH time! I am not sure if my body is physically up to keeping that pace for 30 days, but I'm excited to try! And - for the first time EVER - I am NOT writing a 'bionic' story! I have written over 170 bionic stories and I'm sure there will be more to come. This year for NaNoWriMo, though, I will really be challenging myself... in more ways than one!For several years, I've been considering writing an autobiography 'some day'. Perhaps I can help someone else who is struggling with homelessness... anorexia... partner abuse... failing health and disability! And if I'm ever going to do it, I need to do it NOW. I might still be fine at this next year... or I could conceivably be in Assisted Living and unable to take up the challenge.

So I'm going to give it my best shot. Unlike my bionic stories, this is potentially marketable - and I've already been researching the best ways to do that. But for now, as a sample. here is the prologue of the story that is still untitled - MY story!

Reply #521. Nov 01 14, 2:53 PM

bionic4ever star
UNTITLED

Prologue

July 6, 2008

Time had run out; in just a few short hours, I would be homeless. I zipped the knapsack closed and looked up just in time to see a mouse skittering across a water pipe in the part of the suspended ceiling where the panel had rotted and fallen from the frame. The ceiling tiles that still remained bulged in their centers, warped with water damage and discolored by graduating rings that ranged from putrid mustard to nauseating olive, then brown, then black. They were the colors (and the odors) of Death itself.

Every time there was a heavy rain, I had needed more buckets than the time before as the leaks from the unsealed deck above my apartment worsened and spread. During the last storm that I weathered there, I had 14 buckets under the leaks (some of which were really downpours now), between the living room, bathroom and my bedroom. Worse than that, after every storm there was always at least one (and often more) tiles too warped by water damage to remain in their frames - or that were simply driven down by the force of the water. Once the rain had stopped, I would have to stand on a chair and lift the tiles - approximately 18 inches by 3 feet, still soggy and often mildewed - up over my head to try and make their warped corners fit into the frame just one more time. There were three open (18 X 36) frames in my bedroom, where the tiles had been too damaged to stay up any longer, and two more in the living room. Those all left a lovely view up into the suspended ceiling, where mice sometimes ran across the pipes and - more than once or twice - actually dropped down into my apartment to be dispatched by my cats.

The bathroom was even worse! There were five missing tiles by the end... and if you stood in the middle of my bathroom and looked up, you could see the sky!!! My landlord knew about this; I showed both him and his wife. They chose not to fix it. The last Winter that I spent in that apartment, it snowed in the bathroom, where it was open to the sky! This was apparently okay with them! There was no worry about carpet damage in there anymore; there was no longer any carpet. That Fall, when it felt more like sludge underfoot than like carpet, I knew it had become dangerous. Even the landlord agreed that it had to go - and he ordered ME to get it out of there! With no other choice, my daughter and I donned latex kitchen gloves (which were NOT enough protection), cut the sludge-y carpet into manageable pieces and dragged them to the dumpster. Those carpet pieces left a trail of ooze all the way there! Underneath the carpet, there was a toxic black slime that took me 2 days - and several gallons of bleach to clean up. Yes, I was my own haz-mat crew , but without any of the protection they'd have required for the job.

The bedroom carpet was almost as bad, but half of the bedroom floor space was taken up by a queen-sized waterbed frame which was too heavy for my daughter and myself to move... so the sludge in there (that used to be a carpet) had to remain. It was so bad in there that a green fuzz was creeping up my dresser. It had reached the middle drawers by the end, and the bottom drawers had warped/swollen shut! A couple of months before I had to leave, a good portion of the living room rug had also turned to sludge and the odor of gross mildew and toxic mold assaulted the senses of anyone who visited and gave me a continuous bout with nausea and headaches!

The landlord's response, when I told him about this? “You can cut it out yourself if you want to!'

So, once again with no other options, I found someone to help me. The spouse of a friend who graciously agreed to help, wore a portable respirator. I had NO protection! Yes, there was toxic black slime there, too! The building had originally been a warehouse, so the floor in my bathroom and half of the living room was now very old, industrial concrete. Still, even with deadly mold and mice dropping from the ceiling, it was a roof over my head; when I walked out of there on a few more hours, it would be with nothing.

- - - - -

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Reply #522. Nov 01 14, 2:54 PM

522 replies. On page 27 of 27 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
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