July 2011
A lot of cleaning up around the house this long holiday weekend. If I can get a set of business furniture sold, I think I'll finally begin to see some signs of emptiness around here. I bought it from the company I used to work for back in Charlottesville, and moved it up to Maine. Hey, it's a $4,000 set of furniture, like you would find in the Company President's office. I paid $300 for it in a "silent" auction. Why the "quotation" marks, you ask? Well, the jackass who ran the auction had to gall to send out a company email afterwards stating, "Darren Stone is our auction winner at $307!" Pissed me off royally. Anyway, I have it on Craigslist, and we'll see if I can get rid of it. A lot of work in the truck too. I found a cool, perforated aluminum sheet at Lowe's, which hangs perfectly in the side window. I can see out just fine, but looking in is quite difficult. It's secured inside with Velcro, and doesn't affect the window mechanism at all. I'm afraid I'll still have to add screen to keep gnats and mosquitos out.  The front overhead shelf is in place now. I figured out how to hang the chains for the heavy bag, but haven't put the bag inside yet. I'm still rambling around in there working on stuff, of course - not to mention I LIVE IN THERE - and I don't feel the need to be tripping over an 80-pound bag while I'm doing construction. Music equipment rack on the right, bunkbeds on the left. This baby can support anything I can think to hang.  Next on the agenda is the re-building of the screen doors. Now that I've lived with the makeshift version for a month, I'm satisfied with the design, and I can correct some measurements, cut a few curves and notches, and go crazy with the Velcro. * * * It's a hot July 4th weekend, and this time last year I thought a girl was interested in me. Actually, we went through this same ordeal a couple years ago. I was crazy for her then too - probably always will be - but as they say, you can wish in one hand and crap in the other, and see which one fills up first. I am resigned to never crapping in my hands again. If she wants me, she can show up on my doorstep. House or truck. And that goes for any of the rest of you. (not that I'm much of a commodity at almost-fifty-one and living in a stepvan in my driveway) I have a feeling girls don't take to drifters the way they used to in all those old cowboy movies. I have a feeling I've already had my last kiss. And now maybe you are starting to see the whole picture, and why more people don't do this. See, I'm not a player. I have no game. It is widely known I've never been on a date. God forbid I should ever have be required to slow dance; you might think you were watching a cowboy carry a heavy sack of flour across the river. And I will never have what it takes to roll into some naugahyde diner, chat up a desperate waitress, and tip her in the morning. I've imagined it. I've seen it done on television, and I've heard Tom Waits sing about it. But it ain't me. Nevertheless, life goes on without me, and people are out there getting theirs. I finally busted Jose sneaking the girl du jour out of the house this morning. Not to be anybody's mother, but our agreement was that this was a private residence, a private rental, a private arrangement between him and me, and I was not willing to host his girlfriends, or anybody I didn't know. Would you want a bunch of strange whores coming in and out of your house at all hours? Well, he didn't know I saw them, and he told me a pack of nervous lies all morning leading up to it. I've known for some time that he does this, but I have learned to appreciate his money more than his honesty. This guy is a piece of work. As I've said before, every utterance from his mouth is some kind of lie. Whatever. Let it play. He'll be gone soon enough, I suppose. And I guess I'm going to keep pretending I don't know about his girls in the wee hours of the morning. I hate his Player mentality, but I sure like his money. Not only is it financially prudent, but it's all part of my renewed search for peace and letting the rest of the world deal with the angst. And I'm betting if you're a chronic liar, you've got a mess of angst working against you too. So why do I need to pollute my peace with the rickety bridge you're building? I'm not the one who has to cross it. Maybe this will be the last time I write about Jose. In the Grand Scheme, he doesn't have a place in my vision. And it's probably time to quietly dismiss those people who have no place with me. Billboards on the side of the road advertising something I ain't interested in. The heat always cripples me in Summer. I'm in Maine. You would think that would be as far from the heat as a person could go, but even our handful of 90-degree days has come too early this year. I am shutting down quickly. And the hotter it gets, the less I want to see another human being. The rest of America is sitting in the 100's. Except my property in Hartsel, Colorado. The high will be 70 tomorrow. I could be in a tent on the side of a hill right now, writing songs on my battery-powered piano. 70. Geesh. How fast can I get there? * * * I went a little crazy and paid off one entire credit card balance - about 10% of my total credit card debt. And even though I have a remaining 14-month pay-down plan for all of it, it felt pretty good. Sold a couple air purifiers, an exterior door, a bass drum pedal and a cd box set for a total of $125. A hundred here, a hundred there. I don't mind taking it wherever I can get it, as long as the house is emptying. But darn it, I am still being nagged to take the bunkbeds out. Something is itching me, and I'm going to have to scratch it. Now that I've mastered the art of overhead shelving, I really just want to keep my life simple and on the floor. I was creating a "map" of the cubbyholes this weekend, and with that bunkbed monstrosity in there, accessing all the compartments was as difficult as I imagined it to be. And I'm almost at the part where I need to bolt it all down for stabilization. So this is it. This coming weekend has got to be it. It weighs a lot, and if I can remove a hundred or more pounds permanently, that's an immediate benefit. Futon mattresses on the floor with huge pillows and beanbags - that's pretty "hippy." I'll have room for a torchiere lamp and maybe even manage a small rocker/glider. I've been living in the truck a month and a half now, and the question I ask myself about this is, "what would I miss if the bunkbeds were gone?" The answer is a resounding, "Nothing." And that is why you start your plan three years in advance. * * * I finished reading "Lost Continent: Travels In Small-Town America" by Bill Bryson. Hmmm...where to begin. Everywhere this guy went he was negative. Every town he pulled into didn't live up to something he was looking for. Every stretch of road was too long. Every hotel, unsatisfactory. His whole experience had me asking from the third chapter, "Why not just shut up and go home?" Why are these author-travelers in such a rush? I'll tell you. Because they're on vacation, and they've got a deadline. Okay, the book had some merit, and was mostly entertaining, and sometimes his sniveling was pretty funny. I guess if I was writing a book and had a travel schedule, I'd be pretty cranky too, staring at a road all day in search of that next clever thing to write about. Remember how I said before that once you take TIME out of the equation, the world is your oyster? I think Mr. Bryson would have done a lot better just driving to Montana, sticking around for eight months, and then write about it. Jumping from one motel to another with precious few accounts of anything beautiful in between...ehh...what was the point? William Least Heat Moon ("Blue Highways," which I thoroughly enjoyed) wrote a book in 2008 about his 2004 adventure, "Roads to Quoz" (rhymes with "Oz"), and that is my next undertaking. This guy has it together. He travels for the journey, and because there is some weirdness or curiosity that compels him. He likes to collect stories and then set them free amongst us. I really like his approach (and pardon my paraphrasing): "...quoz: a noun, both singular and plural, referring to anything strange, incongruous, or peculiar; at its heart is the unknown, the mysterious...For me, everything - whether object, person, or event - ...is quoz, and every road, every alley, the hall to your parlor, the course of a creek, the track of a comet, all are a route to quoz for any traveler." I like this guy. He knows how to put his hands on the wheel and let the journey take him. * * * Yee-haw, pardner. I'm a Texan now. A resident of beautiful Big Spring, Texas.  This is about 8/10 of an acre, all wooded, and very much in the middle of the city of Big Spring. This ain't barren West Texas flatland where the Mexicans come across in the middle of the night and slay the ranchers and steal their Impalas. I have an address: 700 Presidio Street, at the corner of 7th and Presidio. As you can see in the photo below, the property sits just as the hill begins - and this is obviously enough of a hill that homes have not been built on it. I like that idea! No neighbors! You can see the Scenic Mountain Medical Center on the other side of the hill. I guess if I get hurt I can just hike on over.  Here is the close-up. The dirt road continuing off 7th is apparently going up the hill as it circles behind my property, so I may have to access from the ground floor. Maybe I can find a small, flat cleared area in there to park the truck, and disappear from humanity. How cool to be hidden, and yet only minutes away from a thriving community. This means, of course, that utilities are already at the lot, should I ever feel the need to put in a respectable dwelling. In the meantime, plenty of ideas already brewing on building hidden or hillside camping spots.  Here is a photo the seller posted as a shot of the property. It looks pretty scraggly - quite "Texassy," and I assume what I am seeing in the background are actual trees. Maybe there is a Texas treehouse in my future? Anyway, I can't detect any kind of hill or incline in this photo, so it will be a mission of discovery to see what's really going on here.  Pulling out again, I'm just excited to show my neighborhood - a series of lakes across the top, the airport at the bottom, a local park (ABC Park) two streets up, the Medical Center around the hill, and Big Spring State Park across from the Medical Center. All of this is within my immediate walking area.  8/10 of an acre. Annual property taxes under $20. Price: $430. Yee haw. * * * "You can't take it with you." I'm not sure when these words were first spoken. Was it really the Apostle Paul in a letter to Timothy? "For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it." - 1 Timothy 6:7 NIV Maybe it was something Paul's mother said to her son on the first day of school, when he tried to sneak out the door with his fancy slingshot and marbles. For my money, I'm guessing the whole idea orginated when Paul tried to load up his step van and get into some serious wandering. Because it is only when you are faced with the limited square footage of a step van that you really get the gist of this old saying. So today began the painful reckoning of my documents and records vs. the shredder. Thank goodness somebody had the wherewithall to establish the legal criteria for hoarding paperwork, which boils down mostly to seven years. (with a few necessary exceptions like long-term & investment purchases) Apparently, the IRS only has six years to monkey around with your tax return, so if you're holding a piece of paper older than that, let it go, my friend. I have never shredded a personal record or document and I became a grown-up thirty years ago. I have faithfully kept all my receipts and check registers and credit card and bank statements. So this was a big step for me. These are historical documents of my existence! The first handful of folders I came across was no big deal. Dental records, prescription purchases, automobile insurance. Yawn. It was easy enough to shuffle through each page, reviewing for anything of tangible value. I found nothing. Then I fell into a peaceful place, stood up with my little stack of history and shredded like Helen Keller at the sawmill. The next wave though, included the credit card statements from 2001, and the cross-country move from Los Angeles to Virginia. I read entries from U-Haul in Glendale where I rented the truck and car trailer, a hardware store in Needles where I bought extra straps, and the Family Inn in Nashville where I probably had a nervous breakdown from three days of driving. Earlier proof of Donna's visit to Los Angeles, and the Mexican Restaurant across the street. And nine months of setting up a life in Waynesboro, Virginia. Entries from Virginia gas stations and Virginia liquor stores. Movies and knick-knacks. And all those entries from the flower shop next to my job, where I bought flowers for her every Friday. I was holding proof of how I once loved somebody. But that was more than seven years ago. And there are legal criteria. * * * Continuing in the spirit of all things Romantic and the Ones That Got Away, I should reveal that Sarah didn't turn thirty-six in a coastal Maine downpour today. In case any of you were wondering about last year's poem. I assume she spent it kissing her little boy, shopping with her mom, and enduring her wrong choices. Her wedding ring grows tighter every year, and I don't mean "better." I mean tighter. Like a noose. Personally, I am ashamed for my own two failed marriages - the first as a young college boy, the second as a hopeful mid-lifer. And anyone who can make it last...well, they either have my total respect, or my complete sympathy. Because I believe when it's over, it's over. And if the distance continues for weeks, months and years, you're not doing anybody any favors by "sticking it out." I'm not anti-marriage, you understand. I'd love to be married. I'm just anti-beating-a-dead-horse. You get one life, and the right thing to do is stop making bad decisions. If I gave you a hundred dollar bill to take all the gumballs you wanted out of a penny machine, how many years would you spend trying to ram that bill into the machine before you realized it would never work? Sometimes I watch this charade and my sympathy turns to frustration, but who am I to judge? People do what they have to do. And I am inside a truck. And I have to find my own gumballs. * * * The jump seats went on sale at Mill Supply, so I snagged one for a little under $200, delivered. I don't know if I need to worry about hanging on to the original vinyl driver's seat now or not. It might only fetch about forty bucks, so I'll just set it aside for now to make sure I don't need it. Nevertheless, I can now accept reservations for fellow travelers riding shotgun. All aboard. The bunkbed/futon combo came out this weekend. This was a huge day in Roll-O-Rooterdom. It was too much. It was in the way and dominated the interior. It was like living in an extremely cramped normal person's bedroom. So I disassembled it, and as I did, I posted it on Craigslist. "Now there's a guy who's confident in his decision-making," I hear you say. I sold it within two hours for $80. Now I have a simple futon mattress on the floor, and the freedom is exhilarating. Now I feel right. Heck, it's even better for my back. It's really what I've wanted all along, but I had the bunkbeds, and I wanted to make it work. I also didn't want people to feel sorry for me, thinking I didn't have a "real" bed. Once again proving my point - go for exactly what you want. Instead of saying, "That's not normal" or "That doesn't exist," say instead, "What is my dream and how can I build it?" Second-best is...well...second-best. I love my bed on the floor. I am getting some of the best sleep of my life (when sleep comes, that is). And I am going to do my best to have a few comfort items from my old life - one being a torchiere lamp I bought in Virginia. It's on a dimmer, and I don't think I want to go anywhere without it. Here is the view from the my bed at night, looking towards the front of the truck. This has always been the best mood lamp I have ever seen.  And here is the view with a flash. Music rack on the left, heavy-bag chains, the new jump seat leaning against the right wall, the black curtain hiding me from the driver's area and front door. Yeah, I know it's junky, but all that crap on the top shelf is just stuff I moved out of the way as I disassembled the bunk bed. At some point I will determine what goes on upper shelves, and what goes in the floor storage. The ceiling is always going to be ugly until it is entirely covered with beads and baubles and ornaments and hanging things.  And the jump seat installed. Folded and with passenger. 
 The passenger, if you're wondering, is my latest percussion instrument. She has secured her value in my world as a hollow plastic hand drum, lays conveniently over my lap, and I believe will make a great attention-getter for me doing some street playing. Her best tone is produced from the flat chest area just above the ta-tas. As for the American flag hung in front of the black curtain - well, that's just common sense. If I'm going to be driving around the States, I'm going to run into all sorts. And if any good ol' boys get a little too nosey or chance to peak inside the truck, I'm thinking they'll be a little more tolerant of a ramblin' stranger who's at least displaying the Stars And Stripes. Heck, they might even give me a salute. * * * I made another slick balance-transfer move, shuffling another wad of debt over to a 0% rate with only a 1% transfer fee. Now that is a rare offer. I'll make only eleven more equal payments on that one, and will have saved a few bucks in the process. The spreadsheets are looking good, now that I'm within the 11 to 13-month range on total obliteration of my debts. The light at the end of the tunnel is an unbelievable sight. For those of you who have never carried a large amount of debt, I congratulate you. You may not know what I am feeling, but you are welcome to celebrate in August 2012 when I pay off the last credit card. I'll have worked twenty-five years for that moment, and that bottle of Fireball is going to taste extry, extry good. Meanwhile, the business furniture sold for $300. Talk about emptying a room out in one fell swoop. Nice. As I am in constant review of my finances (and you should be, as well), I am submitting a revision to the plan to increase my daily expenses from $20 to $22. For the most part, the $20/day goal is easily in reach, so there's no reason not to set the bar a little higher with seventeen months of earning still ahead of me. I have been doing more research into individual healthcare plans, and it would behoove me to include a separate monthly allowance for prescriptions in order to tame the cost of the monthly insurance premium. Healthcare is the single biggest worry and expense of a nomad/bum/hippie/gypsy/full-timer. Lord only knows what type of coverage I will be able to get when the day comes that I must ween myself from the company plan. But if I play my cards right, I still think I can get into a monthly policy for under $250, especially if I have a decent allowance for prescriptions.
I have been spending less than $180/month on food all my life, so $6/day is not that scary. It looks low on paper, but that's the truth. Keep in mind I still have a long-term gasoline bucket (currently at $6,229.29). And all this will be supplemented with an ocassional dollar from the occasional odd job, whether in Mystic Seaport or Siskiyou County. Don't be afraid to make changes to your budget or any of your financial goals! It has to breath. Times change. Ideas present themselves. You learn things. A budget is a river. It cannot have the same measurements from beginning to end; it simply needs to be wide enough and deep enough to carry you. As of now, my river is $22/day. * * * My Zero is $262,165.18. My Dream Sale Price for all my possessions is $302,293.93. August 2011 And There Goes The Economy So, Buy More Stocks! |