Okay, I’ll be short on writing tonight, as honestly I already feel wrung out, it’s been a good day. I won’t repeat so rather I’ll just include the other writing I’ve already done today, like this random piece. I went upstairs by midnight and still didn’t put down my phone until two am. Up at seven, rolling and trying to sleep more til eight, then showered and downstairs by nine; an orderly beginning.
Reading last nights post I decided to skip making a list of things to do today as I’d already done that moments after I said it. Next up I was hungry, looking at the fridge, I had a feeling the milk was low and I’d go over to start breakfast, get sidetracked and sit down. Rather, I got up and just walked out the door, crossed the street and bought a fresh gallon at the Family Dollar, and a few more boxes of mini wheats.
By time I did get to the kitchen I found I was right and that was fine as I pour my bowl- as hungry as I was, I almost ate standing up. Of course a bit of TV and scrolling on Facebook when a post in the B2 Neighborhood Watch group reminded me about the new park ribbon cutting today at noon. These are some of the things I love and always seem to miss. I looked at the clock, it was ten til twelve.
Another errand I had been preparing to check off the list, a drive up to the AT&T store to hopefully get new SIM card to boot up on the old phone. They tell me my number is safe on that pin, yet I’ll feel a lot better when I can just answer it again. Grabbed the phones and SIM card and headed up to the ribbon cutting.
So good to see so many people there happy and cheering for Jackson and our accomplishments here- maybe just a park, yet an essential community hub and… it even includes some adult exercise equipment! And to see neighbors I’d worked with at B2 and Freddy Dancy, my past colleague in Ward 2. City staff too of course, Kelli’s time to shine as she presented the new playground equipment, Jonathon sitting quietly on the side happy to take a break in his day to come ‘supervise’ the event. The mayor and the other councilmember too, showing up for the photos, although these votes and this push to improve this park came before they each began their terms.
Onward to the AT&T store and… well, for the first time I intentionally played the handicap card and it worked. After how many times have I gone back and forth from the Comcast store and back to AT&T, then left to call their numbers, wait days, play their games, and the old phone is still locked onto their service. Today, I walked in mentally broken with their service and expressed it physically.
I explained the issue to the first employee that engage and as trained, he immediately directed me to leave and solve my own problem- go call the eight hundred number, they unlock, we can’t. Nope, not today my dude. I bought this phone two years ago for cash and it doesn’t work, if you can’t make it work I want to exchange it for a new phone that works. “Sir, that is not..” Who is your manager?
A patient listener, I explained again, Sprint, AT&T, Xfinity, number ported to pin (as Xfinity couldn’t do anything else to sell me their service.. my number and new plan are on the sim.) “Sorry sir, you’re going to have to go do it yourself. We don’t unlock phones here, we can’t unlock phones here, we can’t just push a button and unlock your phone”.
Companies don’t just not delivery service after a sale, they don’t even claim to, the very idea of it is foreign. I started limping to the chairs while I keeping talking, really just repeated it all again as he didn’t seem to understand. I was not leaving without a solution. The limp getting severe, I twisted my knee in and tried to raise my heel, triggering a clonus tremble in my leg.
“Sorry,” I told him as I handed him my phones, the post it notes, the new SIM card, and even a sim removal tool.
“I’m going to have to sit now before I fall down” as I sat down in the chair at his point of service. He almost tried the repeat the “We can’t do this” line then he saw the look of resignation in my eye. His changed to match. “Okay, so what have you tried?”
Hated to play the card, glad to win the game. He looked into my accounts, pre-paid and business, and found that when someone at AT&T set my business account (in Oklahoma) they had also changed the email on my pre-paid account to match my business email address. This was causing my verifications to fail and quite literally, without his service and discover I was incapable of rectifying the issue.
I am a calm and patient person, with a limp and a conus tremor that I know how to trigger. That apparently is a winning combination, yet all things with moderation. In this case I knew I was unable to achieve the goal without his service, so I don’t mind using the limp I guess, at least not in this circumstance. With the unlock request pushed through (that ten minutes earlier both him and another employee insisted was simply not possible for them to do) I left and stopped back home briefly before head over to fuel four twenty for a reload.
I’ve been out for a few days and haven’t really noticed the spasms in my leg as much, I think the muscle growth is really starting to thicken them up in their, all the Boost is coagulating into fresh tissue, I am healing. So I actually thought twice, or even three times before deciding to pick up some more cannabis, yet I’m glad I did. I smoke so little that I really don’t notice the mental effects, I don’t really get “high” unless I take a couple days off.
Getting back I just wasn’t in a rush to smoke. I kept thinking about the ISBN number, somehow that will be the threshold when my name appears in the database as the author of a book. I want that. I looked at the standup desk, then over to the bong. Maybe I should call that a water pipe, you know, for my more conservative audiences? It was dirty and cleaning delicate glass is just not something you do when you have balance, gait, and grip strength issues. Better if it is dirty and kept in one piece. Yet, today was a new day.
There is no twine, so I cleaned the bong- and spent a good thirty minutes doing it too. Like foreplay to clean a bong while two days sober, I went overboard and really tried to get it clean inside and out (to anyone that has ever used a small bong, you probably know what I mean.) The inside surfaces caked with tar residue and carbon byproducts that cannot be simply rinsed away. Rubbing alcohol, table salt, and bit a Dawn dish soap and I was shaking it like a tambourine. Rinsed dried and ready to proceed I packed just a small bowl and got high.
I usually don’t and today I did. Yeah, relaxed and really feeling the buzz for the first time in a while, and God knows I like to get high and write. It took a little longer the write than usual, I found I drafted it, went back up and changed some things, unlike my adventure posts. The buzz was wearing off by time I published it and I could tell I was rushing to publish, before I didn’t. That was an old problem that I do not seem to have anymore. I say things, there has been no biting of the lip this year.
Well, okay, there are a few more stories and we’ll get to them in due time. Now though, let’s be serious- I skipped the ISBN assignment, smoked pot instead, and still needed to publish my book. Well, Google. Problem solved. As to not rewrite, I’ll just just post the screenshots, I have found my publisher. Now, I just need to come up with one hundred eighty dollars, and yes, I can cover it with the cans in the basement, yet I’d much rather sell the air conditioner I posted on Facebook Marketplace, or this Ham Radio.
Or maybe someone wants to sponsor a post and give me a couple bucks? Help me raise the funds to publish the book? This could bring about some good stories…. and then I can save the cans for TP, or maybe just not have to worry about TP anymore.
I’m really getting excited now. This is going to happen. I will be a published author. Hmm, fifteen hundred words was a short post?
Time to rest.
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