So... what's up with me.

I'm thinking about a one-day-a-week job as a bartender, if they'll hire me. The atmosphere would be a lot more relaxed than it is at my full-time job. The manager already likes me; he was Navy, I was Army.

We're still not making enough money to really survive, even, and today the washer went out. Dad had to go out and buy a used one for like two hundred dollars we didn't have, and pay day is this Friday and the water bill is late and I'll have to get an advance on my check which I already have once.

My ex husband overdrew the bank account the child support is coming out of so many times that they closed it down.

The people at work still don't work. One of them is the best friend of the manager's son, so he sits around and jokes that everything is our job (not that it's a joke) and the managers laugh because it's easier to keep him and not create family and work drama.

One of them went home four hours early today, and the others ignored me when I told them they needed to take their lunches, so last minute they both went, leaving me totally alone to try and write an e-mail to customer service while answering the phones almost non-stop and having to ignore the phones when the sales people came up with applications and customers came up with issues.

I'd complain, but when you do that, things get worse. The squeaky wheel does not get the grease -- it gets replaced by a new wheel that won't complain that all of the weight is resting on it.

Nine dollars an hour? Not worth this.

Still, I stay because I have to.

Because the family starves if I don't.

What else.

I'm not writing, I'm not painting, I'm barely sleeping and I don't eat. Caught sight of myself in the mirror the other day and I look like a scarecrow dressed up in someone's over-sized clothes.

I'm down to a hundred and six pounds and still dropping.

Haven't been able to quit smoking because when I try I get sick and I can't go to work sick.

My own damn fault, I know. Shouldn't have started. It was the depression in the Army, mostly, but hey, excuses.

That guy I was talking to about his drug problems wants to hang out with me. Why do I attract people with such terrible issues when I keep mine confined to the Internet? Do they think I'm sane and stable enough to compensate for their insanity and instability? I'm not.

I don't need it. Don't want it.

Besides, I don't care about relationships. I've got my walls up and my loneliness buried under ten tons of denial. I like it that way.

I've got myself convinced I really don't need human contact, and the numbness is comforting.

Hmm.

There's not much else, really.

I'd say things are bound to get better but after almost twenty-six years that sounds pretty dumb.