no bath

“Why would you do that Havana?” I asked, slumping beside the bathtub. She threw her long tail back and forth, made a noise like someone rolling her r’s. “Do you know how much mommy wanted to soak in Epsom salts tonight?” Her head cocked sideways. “Do you have any idea how tired I am?”

She actually looked kind of proud of the dried little turds she’d left in the tub. She continued to ‘rrr’ and flip her tail.

I looked down. Poor people don’t have the option to feel this queasy, I reminded myself. Nor do they – we, sorry – have the leeway necessary to declare ‘I shall never use this tub again, it has become soiled beyond comprehension.’

What do poor people have? Dollar store bleach.

dead cord

I thought I’d left the long hot nights of power outages behind me when I moved. I could not – did not – anticipate my computer power cord dying a sudden quiet death. I stared at it in horror for a few days, then finally rolled it into a ball and took it to the store.

I was not the poorest looking person in the store. There was a girl with dirty hair and ripped flip flops, a new mom with hair that was obviously not magenta on purpose, and an old man who opened his wallet to reveal it was empty, except for a debit card. Are all of you going to spend your food money too? I wondered, watching them.

The guy assigned to me, all smiles and hair gel, took a brief look at the cord, nodded to himself, and brought a new box. He opened the box and handed me the new cord. “Product recall,” he said. “You’re all set.” I thanked him and got the hell out of there, grocery money intact.

Regular content will resume shortly.

poverty

I don’t know why anyone would think that this was a good time to give me a found kitten – approximately four weeks old, wormy, possessed of maladies both visible and invisible – but now I have one.

Poverty breeds.