I will have to admit that I love snow. It's the most comforting feeling in the world to sit in your home drinking a hot drink, watching the snow fall. But when you don't have a home, and can't turn up the heat... well ... snow isn't exactly a welcome visitor. So when the weather man said, "slight chance of snow" my heart fell into my stomach.
The temperature dropped so fast yesterday afternoon that it was in the lower 20's before 6 pm and my feet were so cold I couldn't get them warm. The pneumonia that came some weeks ago started up in earnest and by mid afternoon I was having a hard time breathing. I struggled under my truck for an hour trying to plug my diesel truck into a power source, but couldn't reach the plug. I ended up putting blankets over the bonnet and in front of the radiator. Today I will try to find a way to get that plug within reach. It was 15 degree's when I woke up.
15 degree's should be against the law.
I just cannot believe the stress and hard work it's taken throughout 2010 to get into a home before this type of weather materialized. And how futile it has been. This is so surreal, simply surreal.
Time just goes so fast. I never realized how quickly it goes until I hired Robert Huckins to build a 2,000 sq foot horse barn and 1,700 sq foot home in December of 2007. This experience has brought home to me that you blink and a month has gone past.. every hold up, every delay becomes critical to the outcome, to survival.
I finally reached John but I have no idea if he is coming to Ruidoso or not. He's needing another $600 worth of material for the barn roof. I wish I knew how to replace the broken windows and get the two roof's on the buildings myself because I would probably try to get it done if I knew how. But I don't have a clue how to do it, nor do I know how to do the electrical or plumbing.
I get so frustrated.
Robert Huckins was scheduled to pay yet another $450 payment on or before the 10th of November, but there is no telling if he did or when I will receive it. He will then owe me $79,000 or thereabout. What a joke.
I told Judge Ritter that I was not going to die trying to retrieve my money, and a home, from Robert Huckins as Dorothy McKeever did. But I'm starting to question my own statement. Perhaps I severely over estimated my determination, my own efforts.
The next $450 payment is going towards the 70 2x6's Jesse needed for the roof of the trailer, but I still have not come up a flatbed trailer large enough to transport the used commercial metal from Don Spencer and bring it from Carrizozo.
I spent so much money on the building material John said he needed that I'm terrified of buying anything else until I know that there is someone available to use the material.
I wish I could push Christmas further away from me..
By noon the weather turned simply glorious, 52 degrees with a full sun and I eagerly started working outside so pleased to have the sunshine on my body. I decided to paint 2 tack boxes dark green, with enamel paint. By the time I had the first coat on both tack boxes the sun was started to fade and it dawned on me that 52 degrees may feel terribly warm to me, but it's still pitiful painting weather. Thank God they are only tack boxes.
Two years ago we had a local homeless man who always walked the roads with a dog or two. He was a veteran, and clearly had some problems.
One day he was stood opposite Farleys when I stopped at the fast food restaurant. I asked the employee serving me to add anything he wanted to our bill, then sat outside with him while he ate a catfish dinner. He offered me a tattered New Testament bible in return and I smiled and pulled my KJV off the dashboard of my truck.
"Oh, YOU are one of US" he laughed. I'm confident that he meant "Christian" never knowing that I was homeless too!
I know what homelessness is. I know what hopelessness feels like. I know what it's like to be so cold that you feel that your body will never warm again. I know what it's like to look at homes radiating warmth and security around me and pass people who, quite frankly, don't give a damned. I know what depression, hurt, alienation, ignorance, sadness feels like. I know what it's like to miss my mum, want my grand-children to visit me, need the stability of a home.
But I don't know what it's like to be hungry.
There are times when I try to combine all of my feelings, and add the horror of hunger on top. But I can't, because I have more food at my fingertips than I could ever need. Yet I try. I try because I care. I care because I have seen, with my own eyes and felt with my own heart how people speak to you and about you when you put "homeless" within your title. Dehumanizing you. I try because circumstances have made me look towards a growing populous of "invisible" human beings and I rather suspect that it's going to grow much larger before this recession is all over.
Do YOU know what it's like to not have a home? Do YOU know what it's like to not eat in days because there is no food? If you don't know how are you going to connect with those who don't have?
In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, Long ago. - Christina Rossetti. English poet (1830 - 1894)
