10th Day of healthier eating

BREAKFAST
2 eggs scrambled in such a wee amount of butter that you could not even see it, but it kept the eggs from sticking to the pan

LUNCH
salad
5 ounce can of mushy tuna in oil
2 tablespoons vinaigrette

DINNER
slab of beefsteak
cherries

I might be getting accustomed to eating eggs.  They did not go through me for 4 hours.  All time best.  I have to be able to eat them.

I found a can of some kind of tuna to put on my salad.  It was actually yummy, and I wish that I had thought about using the oil from the can of tuna as the salad dressing.  I am thinking that some black pepper would have been enough seasoning. 

Shortly after eating lunch, breakfast made its exit. 

After work I went to shop at one of the pricier markets.  I was just too tired to wrangle food out of either of the discount markets.  So, spent way too much money for a week's worth of food.  Just a shame.  I came home, cooked the meat and was too tired to cook any vegetables (like it would be so hard to pour a bag of frozen stuff into a pan with some water and let it boil, but it really was too much).  I could have opened a bag of salad, but was too tired to do that either.  So, cherries was my side dish.  They are still beautiful and delicious and at $1.40 a pound, not to be resisted.

Work today was full of mystery.  O.K., not mystery, but I get tired of saying that it was interesting.  My first client is a very nice person, but is not the teeniest bit interested in doing any of the work, and comes in all scattered and I had to make ten...count 'em...10...phone calls to straighten out the mess.  I have shared that since there is reporting of how successful and how much work is being done to work on skills, that the next time we have an appointment, I will not be doing the typing.  I am going to sit there and advise and support.  Hope there is another appointment.

A woman wandered into the library, having been at a vocational ministry that is at the church I attend.  One of the librarians called me over and since the next appointment was forty minutes away, I invited her to work with me right away.  Oh, she had stopped in because one of the other people at the ministry office told her about me.

We started working and she spent a lot of time weeping.  No, I did not make her cry!  What happens is that by the time a person finds there way to our library they are fairly discouraged, not only because of the stress of job searching and not having enough money and all that, but they have not often been treated respectfully by the agencies and centers that proceeded the library visit.

The next appointment did not show up, so we kept working and she left with complete documents, several copies and she will be returning to begin working independently at the job lab. 

It was really nice.

After lunch, our business manager came to ask me for help finding resources for one of the library employees.   The person in need of help is someone that has been seeking me out and visiting my bat cave to talk, and I have been worried about him for some time, as have other employees.  I called my best therapy resource and arranged for him to receive free services, then let our director and the biz manager know what I had done.  I have to say that seeing how everyone there comes together to help each other.  They are what a good work place is supposed to be.  No drama, no competition, just care and support of one another to do the work there.

And, even though I know that I am an outsider, volunteer and all, when they asked me for resources that they knew I could provide, well, I felt like part of the team.  In more than five years, even though I have found my way and forged friendships and a good working relationship with the librarians, this feeling of belonging has never happened to me.  I quite like it.  Should it never happen again, that would be fine, well, not fine, but I have today to hold dear.  I really do quite like it.

I see my internist tomorrow and will be having all kinds of expensive tests for which I do not have the money, but I have been putting this off for nearly a year and it has to be done.  I seem to have a lot of has to be done stuff in my life lately.

On a lighter note, I received my bank statement yesterday, fetched it from the mail box this morning and looked at it during lunchtime.  My rent check for July and August had not been cashed.  I sent it to my landlord a month ago.  Yes, I like paying my bills ahead as much as possible.  I called her and asked if she received it and she told me that she had.  I asked if she had processed it and she said that she had.  I explained about the bank statement and she then said that I had not sent it, but I could hear her going through some papers.  We talked about gardening and tomatoes and how everything seems to be too much work as we get older, and she found my check.  It was still in the envelope, she opened it and said, "Well, there it is.  July and August."  She is so cute, and she found the unopened envelope of one of the other tenants. 

So, my checkbook is balanced, I have just enough money to cover another six weeks of expenses and regular bills, have two made out to drop at the post office tomorrow and hope the grocery money holds out.  I am going to stop lending money to people.  It is that they ask to borrow, but it is not lending to me because it is my expectation that if you are in such financial distress that you need to borrow money from a friend that it is going to be impossible to repay.  Borrowing fills a little hole that can never be properly filled and to pay the money back means that it simply re-creates that same hole.  I think of lending as gifts.  If I cannot afford to let it eventually be a gift situation, that means that I cannot give the money in the first place.  If I consider it a gift on my part, then I never have to be concerned about being getting it back.

Icky doctor visit, laundry and a stop at the bank.  Gosh, I have such a fascinating life.