The Ongoing Crisis (sbh)

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

I was up early (for me on my present cycle), somewhere in the noon zone, with the long-dreaded SSI appointment scheduled for four, and I was showered and dressed in time for it. I waited on the porch for Rachel to show until it was dangerously late, and then I gave her a call to confirm that everything was on track. When she called me back it was transparently obvious that she had forgotten the appointment entirely in the press of trying to get the house financing taken care of, so Bryan was drafted from the bathroom painting job at his house to run me over.

I was in a state of total panic in the nearly empty waiting room, trying to de-stress without success, twitching, and covering my eyes to reduce sensory input. A guy in a uniform who was the only other occupant of the room kept a watchful but incurious eye on me; I suppose they get a lot of stranger people than me there. Finally (though probably right on time) my name was called, and I was ushered into a small room for my annual interview.

Her computer was down; as she fired it up she observed that they were still using DOS there. Once she’d called up my record we reviewed the data on me.

“Do you still live at 0000 N. Anywhere Plaza?” she asked, though it was my real address, of course.

“Yes,” I replied.

“And is your phone number still 555-5555?”

“Yes.” The screen was turned so I could see it too, and I skipped ahead to the next question. “And I’m still male.”

She gave me a sharp look, and then moved on in her turn. “And are you still black?” she asked.

Damned if they didn’t have me down as black—and they also had my date of birth slightly off. Somehow I’d missed both of those before. I don’t think there were any more corrections, so we got that taken care of, and then did some calculations. The machine for some reason seemed to have frozen, and we couldn’t get the figure, but my case-worker said that since my circumstances hadn’t changed, most probably my food card amount wouldn’t have changed either. I signed some papers and then wandered out to the bus stop to try to get home. It turned out not to be that difficult; the building is actually on Killingsworth, so either the 6 or the 72 would have taken me back in a homeward direction, though I’m not sure that the 6 actually connects with the Yellow Line. I took the 72, arrived safe and sound at the MAX station, caught the train immediately home, and planned to head out again to take advantage of extra time on my train ticket.

I didn’t actually do that as the news on the refinancing front was bad, but anyway, that was Wednesday.

Saturday, 25 September 2010

Late on Saturday—it might even have been Sunday morning—sounds of violence from the laundry area attracted my attention. I got up and went over to see what was going on; Brandon was shaking the dryer like a terrier shaking a rat, knocking clean clothes about and pushing loud cries. It seemed that the dryer wasn’t working, and Brandon had just run a load of clothing needed for the next day. The drier was indeed not working. Various tests showed it to be so dead as to make me wonder if the circuit had somehow blown. It hadn’t, but I thought it probable that we were up against some elementary electrical problem—a defective switch or a blown fuse. Something like that. Brandon said he’d buy new clothes the next day, but I pointed out we could simply dry them at Bryan’s house. It was around midnight at that point, a bit late to come calling maybe, but I figured we could take care of it the next day. Brandon headed off and I got a couple of hours sleep—I’ve been sleeping very badly for the past month—and woke up….

Sunday, 26 September 2010

…and woke up early Sunday morning. When it got late enough I figured Bryan and Chey would be up I gave him a call; I got Chey and learned that Brandon had already acquainted them with the problem and Bryan would be over to fix it some time later on. As afternoon approached I started to fall asleep, and wanting to take advantage of my body’s natural desires I sacked out—only to be waked up practically instantly by Bryan’s coming. We took the damn dryer apart, removing a lot of unnecessary stuff in the process, and Bryan checked the thing out. Aunt Marilyn called in the middle of this, and I talked with her about genealogy and other things. When I got off Bryan had determined that a thermal fuse had almost certainly blown, and had found the part in town for thirty dollars. He presented his reasoning on the subject, which appeared absolutely sound to me—that is, that it was the fuse that was the problem—but I’m a lousy backup, since Bryan, Greg, or Bryce (were he still with us) are all more up on circuits than I am, and I can remember Bryce in particular poking holes in my logic in similar circumstances. We decided (I thought) to go ahead and bypass the fuse with a jumper the next day to test our conclusion, and then if that confirmed it I would spring for the new fuse (and maybe try to pass the hat for it afterward). I did want to run it past Rachel in case she had some alternate idea, but unless she countermanded it I figured we were set to go.

Somewhere late in the night (probably just before dawn) I sacked out and, just as I was drifting off, Nick announced that he had to run his clothing now and hoped that the dryer would be working the next day. I don’t know if I actually drifted off but in any case I got up to visit with Greg when he came through Monday morning.

Monday, 27 September 2010

I had a talk with Greg in the morning, in which I ran the dryer situation past him; he agreed that it could be the thermal fuse and suggested testing it by running a jumper, as I thought we’d decided on. I then slept a few hours; but soon got up, worried about Nick’s clothing which was washed but not dried. I took it up the street to Bryan’s and left it to be dried, checked out the new paint in the bathroom, watched a speech on Chey’s computer, and talked with Bryan. Bryan was doing finances and not in a good mood, and it turned out he felt that no decision had actually been reached on what to do about the dryer. I said that as far as I was concerned we were going to bypass the dead fuse with a jumper, test the machine (preferably with Nick’s dryer load since it was ready to go) and—if the test confirmed our diagnosis—buy a new thermal fuse. Bryan got online and found out that we could get the part for about three (not thirty) dollars if we ordered it, so we went back to my house and performed the test. The dryer worked fine—and as we were heading back to Bryan’s car we saw a guy on the porch putting up a notice that Fannie Mae now owns my house. I alerted Rachel—and spent the rest of the day mechanically running my clothing through the washer and dryer, keeping a close eye on the dryer. Rachel came by, very upset; she slept a bit and threw up. She left late. I did various things into the night. I barely got any sleep—and neither did Rachel, as I found out the next day.

Tuesday, 28 September 2010

I had a depressing talk with Nick in the morning, slept fitfully, thinking about moving and how to go about it. Rachel showed up looking a lot better; she got on the phone, made an appointment with a lawyer (for Thursday), and arranged for Sage to be there with her. Sage has been helping out with the phone calls and he kept a record of what was said in each of them, so she asked him to print out a copy of his records to bring to the meeting. Nick and Paul have been brought up to speed on events, and Taymen also has been informed at least to some extent. And that, my friends, is more or less where things stand at the moment.