I really love the week-ends.  The only problem I have with week-ends is that they are never long enough.  There really should be more week-end than there is week.  That’s a movement I could get behind.

This was a good week-end for sure.  Much too hot for my liking the first half, but otherwise pretty good.  Not a whole lot happened, really.  It was hotter than blazes on Friday and my little apartment with no air conditioning was still eleventy-billion degrees at 1:30 Saturday morning when I finally went to bed.

I imagine Mischa has mixed feelings about days like Friday.  His fur coat certainly didn’t help any in the keeping cool department and you know it’s hot when he doesn’t even want to sit with me in the recliner, preferring instead to sprawl himself out on the floor to sleep.  On the other hand, on days like this it gets to be much too hot in my bedroom to sleep with the door closed.  For that matter it’s much to hot to sleep with any thing covering me and without the fan blowing directly on my body as I attempt to sleep. Since the door remains open, Mischa is allowed to come into the bedroom with me, which is normally not allowed.  It must be quite the toss up for him, be cool all day or get to sleep in the room with daddy?  Decisions, decisions…

Anyway, with it being the eleventy-billion degrees that I mentioned it was difficult to sleep.  But sleep I did… eventually.  My alarm clock went off at 9:30 because it was laundry Saturday and I didn’t want to be too late getting to Michelle’s house to do my laundry.  I was hoping the whole way that it would be cooler at her house than it was at mine.  I always feel bad going off and leaving the cat in the closed up house when it’s so hot, but really there’s no alternative.  I open all the windows that I can open and still consider my house secure, close all the shutters so the sun isn’t shining right in and turn on all the fans (there are five) maximum blow and oscillating to try and help matters, but on these days it often reaches 90 degrees (or more) in my apartment while I’m gone.  Poor kitty and poor me when I come home to it!

Another problem with this situation is with the extreme heat comes a loss of kitty appetite.  He hasn’t eaten much in the last few days and his already too light weight has gone down by three quarters of a pound (10% of his body weight – I wish I could lose 10% of my body weight in three days, but then it wouldn’t be any healthier for me than it is for him) and if he doesn’t start eating again, he’s building up to another trip to the vet.  Don’t know what they can do, though.

Anyway, I gathered all my dirty laundry, and cooler bag (Michelle gives me ice from her ice maker when I come over), opened the windows, closed the shutters and started the fans.  I headed out to the car and loaded up.  I arrived at Michelle’s house about 12:45 and hauled everything inside where it was just as hot as at my house, dang!  Nothing like running a clothes dryer all day in an already hot house, right?  I started my first load of laundry and we headed out to lunch at Red Lobster, Michelle’s a sucker for Red Lobster and they had a shrimp promotion – plus she was paying.  It was 102 degrees in Vallejo where the restaurant was.  After lunch we went to Target and Safeway and got back to her place around 4:30.  Three more loads of laundry waiting and it was obvious I was going to be there later than I anticipated.

I put the first load in the dryer and started the second load in the washer and we sat down at the dining table under the ceiling fan and played a couple games of Yatzee!

While we were playing I noticed that her balcony door was closed and I asked her if she really found it to be cooler with the house closed up and the blinds closed and the fans on.  She said she did.  So we sat in the heat with the house closed up and played the game.  It was fun, but man was it hot.  Finally about 6:30 she asked me to go out on the balcony and start the grill so she could start dinner…

Folks, it had cooled off by, like, 20 degrees!  It was actually very pleasant outside while still a steam room in her apartment! We ate dinner and watched Race to Witch Mountain while I finished my laundry.  I didn’t get home until nearly 11:30.  Fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as hot in the house as I feared it  would be and it cooled off pretty quickly when I opened doors and windows.  At 1:30 it was still pretty warm in the bedroom, so I went to bed with the door open, uncovered and with the fan blowing again, but around 3:30 in the morning I woke up somewhat chilly so I evicted the cat, closed the door and pulled up the covers.  I slept until around 10:00 Sunday morning.

When I awoke on Sunday, I set about taking care of some household chores while simultaneously trying to keep track of the time while trying to not  think about the fact that I was having my first “date” with Little that day or the nerves and anxiety that came with the anticipation of that.  I put away the laundry from the day before, swept the floors and cleaned up the kitchen.  Then I cooked and ate some hot dogs while I watched a little television and then it was time to shower, dress and head out.

I arrived at Little’s apartment a couple minutes before 2:00 prepared to take him for a fun-filled (I hoped) afternoon of Miniature Golf.  I was invited in and Little’s mother informed me that when the Big Brother of her other son came over, they hung out at the apartment for a couple hours so that the Little Brother and the Big Brother could get used to each other and would I mind doing that and we could go out the next time.  It made perfect sense to me; I just didn’t want to presume to invite myself to hang out at there house for a couple hours.

I asked Little to show me around, show me his room and his toys.  We sat on the floor in his bedroom for almost two hours and played with toy cars, ninja figures a batman figure and a…  He said it was a power ranger?  (I’m a little out of touch when it comes to such things.)  Then we did a jigsaw puzzle.  “It’s not mine; it’s my cousin’s.  It’s for girls,” he told me.  Then he pulled out some coloring pencils and paper and we drew pictures for each other.  He drew a turtle, a shark, a dolphin and a fish and colored the paper blue for the water and he wrote my name at the top.  I drew a bus for him (he starts the second grade today.)  He said it was cool and could I draw a car.  So I drew a red sports car, complete with racing stripe and smoking tire marks where it had peeled out.  Then he asked me to draw a motor cycle.  I’ve never drawn a motorcycle before but it turned out OK.   The rider was supposed to be a man in jeans and a leather jacket with a helmet but by the time I was finished it was clearly a dog… In jeans, a leather jacket and a helmet.

Then he asked me if I could draw a robot and when I was finished with that he asked me if I could draw it fighting with Godzilla…  Quite the imagination on this kid!  I am, by no means a great artist, but I did OK.

We checked in with his mother before I left and she said she could tell he was more comfortable now, so I guess you’d call the “date” a success!  I asked him  if he’d given any thought to what he wanted to do next week and he said he wanted to go to “the lake”.  I asked him if he meant Lake Merritt and he said, “Yes I want to go to Lake Merik.”

So, next Sunday, it’s Lake Merik!

I can clearly see a correlation between my mood and how I perceive my current financial status.  I can also see a correlation between how I perceive  my ability to buy stuff and how I perceive my financial status.

I recent days, I’ve been feeling pretty good about my status.  Things are  getting better.  I mean they must be.  I was able to make a couple on-line purchases, recently all but the last of which have been received.  Stuff good!!!  Want bad!!!

This morning as I was backing out of my garage to head to work, feeling somewhat guilty about how late I was… AGAIN!!!, I had the thought pass  through my mind that “Hey!  Today is payday and I made it through with money still in the bank!  I must be getting better at this money thing!” and suddenly I felt better.

Three pertinent thoughts did not cross my mind.  1)  I happened to win $156.00 in the lottery on August 4^th and that money was my “walking  around money” for the last two and a half weeks.  Good for me for not blowing through it, but still that’s money that didn’t have to come out of my pay check.  2) I only had about $80.00 still in the bank, which means if I hadn’t won the lottery money, I wouldn’t have had any money left by today.  3)  Those mail order purchases?  Those were made with a credit card.  One I’m TRYING TO PAY OFF.

I have three credit cards that I’m trying to pay off and not have hanging over me.  I got them all paid down at one point.  Not paid off, but paid down.  All three of them are maxed out again.  Damn it!

One of my many habits as a bad employee is that I make use of my internet connection and local printer in my office to pay my bills each payday, during office hours, of course.  It makes me feel good to know that I’m staying on top of my expenses and making them a priority and making sure everything is current.  I was doing pretty well for a while, though I did get a bit off track  when I went on my vacation.  So I sat down with my homemade spreadsheet to look at what my bills were and I very quickly realized that I don’t have enough to cover everything that is due right now.  By the time I pay my rent,  my car insurance is deducted from my account, I pay my therapist and I paid the bills I deemed essential, I’m left with very little money at all for things  like groceries, gas, etc.

My outing with Little has been postponed, due to a family matter that requires his family to go out of town this week-end.  I’ll touch base with his Mother early next week to set up a “date” and then the following week Sunday, we should be getting together again.  We’re encouraged to keep these outings cheap because it’s out of our pockets, and since we’re just getting to  know each other, I don’t want to set a precedent for expensive outings so I’m sure it’ll be something simple.  I’ll probably take him for ice cream and a chat the first time, maybe a walk by the estuary in Alameda.

Anyway, I started out feeling pretty good about my situation and by the time I finished paying, or should I say not paying, my bills, I was depressed.  Which brings me back to my point.  There is a clear connection, for me,  between positive outlook and financial stability.  I place entirely too much  importance on money but I really don’t know how to change that.  People need stuff! I need stuff! Often, I find myself in a situation where I have an  opportunity to purchase an item that I have been wanting and I “have the  money”.  Spending the money on the item may not be the best use of the  money but I can’t seem to see that in the moment.  I only see that I have the opportunity and the means to take advantage.  My rationale in that moment  is, “When am I going to get this opportunity again?  And I have been wanting one of these.”  So I do it.

I’ve known for a while that there’s a problem there.  I have a “negative relationship” with money.  I do.  There must be a way to separate myself from this.  There must be a way to better manage the finances from an intellectual  level without having it be a reflection on my life and my worth and have an  impact on my happiness.  There must.  I just wish I could figure out what it is.

Two years ago, I decided that I wanted to become a Big Brother with the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of American organization.  At the time there was some question about it because one of the requirements is that you can not have had a DUI within five years (or more than one, ever).  I won’t go into details at this juncture but at the time I had one DUI on my record that had happened a little over three and a half years prior.  However the BBBS website also said that they had a real need for Big Brothers, so I thought maybe that would out-weigh the restriction and I submitted my application anyway.  Several months passed before I got a response to my application but unfortunately they weren’t able to accept me until the DUI was five years old.

I was disappointed but I also learned that the wheels move slowly with the organization so when I decided that I did, indeed want to pursue being a Big Brother, I decided to reapply in August, even though the fifth anniversary of my DUI wouldn’t happen until January.  The wheels did, indeed, move slowly and it wasn’t until November that I even got an interview.  The interview went well, the time passed and before long the fifth anniversary of my DUI had come and gone and there was nothing to hold me back… Well, almost nothing.

Jenny, the Match Specialist, told me the day of the interview that it would probably take awhile to match me with a Little Brother because, even here in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are a lot of people who are unwilling to have their children matched with a homosexual, so I was prepared for it to take a long time.

Finally, around mid-May, Jenny contacted me about a potential match with a young boy whose father had been out of the picture for a long time and was just starting to come back around.  Dad saw his son for a few hours every other week-end and Mom wanted a more steady male influence in the boy’s life.  Jenny hadn’t discussed my sexuality with Mom and wanted to make sure that I was interested before she addressed that subject but felt like Mom wouldn’t mind.  It turned out that Mom didn’t mind, but Dad, who had abandoned his family and is hardly around now, apparently did.  Imagine how happy I was to have it inferred that it is so much worse to be gay than it is to be a dead-beat dad.   It’s just as well, really.  I wasn’t completely sure about being matched with this boy and it was probably providence that we weren’t.  But I was disappointed and began feeling like maybe me being a Big Brother was a mistake and this was a sign that I should not do it.

I left it in God’s hands.  I would wait to hear from Jenny.  If being a Big Brother was right for me, she would call me again with another match and if it wasn’t right for me, I probably wouldn’t hear from her again anyway.  All these months later, I was pretty sure that it was never going to happen.

Jenny called me on July 20^th to tell me that she had a potential match.  I was still on my trip and it took a few days for me to get back, get the message and call her back, and when I did we played phone tag for a few days.  Finally, Jenny and I spoke and she told me about the little boy she had in mind for me.  It sounded like it might be a good match, as much as you can tell from a three minute conversation with a third party, so I agreed to meet him.

One thing that is heavily stressed in this program is protecting the anonymity of the child so I will be very frugal with the information I share.  For the purposes of this blog, I shall refer to him only as Little, Little Brother.  Little’s family has gone through a rough patch and his father is no longer in the picture.  I suppose it’s somewhat harsh of me to say, but I’m relieved to know this.  I can’t help feeling like Mom brought Little into this program voluntarily to introduce a stable male influence in his life and therefore will be glad of my involvement.  Dad on the other hand, no matter how absentee he might be, might still be inclined to have opinions and judgments about me and as much as I wish it weren’t true, I’d feel self-conscious about that, at lest at first.

I had my “guided introduction” to Little and his family yesterday afternoon.  Little has a brother a year older than he who is also being matched with a Big so we had a group introduction where I met both boys, their younger sister, Mom and the other Big.  I’m concerned about the outcome of the other match.  The Big Brother seems unavailable in my opinion, but that’s not my responsibility, Little is.

Little is a cute kid.  Seven years old, he was shy at first but came out of his shell after a few minutes.  I can understand that.  I was pretty nervous myself.  But we talked about the things he likes to do and when would be a good time to hang out.  It looks like Sunday afternoons are the best time and we have our first outing this Sunday at 2:00.  When Hadley, the Match Support Specialist we’ll be working with moving forward, asked Little what he liked to do he said, “play.”  Thanks kid!  That narrows it right down.

We did determine that he likes to play Soccer (which I do not know how to play) and he enjoys going to the park (where I’m likely to spontaneously combust.)  Lesson number one: The importance of sun screen.

Since this will be our first outing, I want him to feel comfortable.  I will take him to a park where he can “teach me” how to play soccer.  I imagine this is going to amount to him kicking the ball at me, me missing it and him laughing at me.  I guess I can live with that.  Hopefully, he’ll open up a bit more about the kinds of things he’s into and we can find some other things to do on our future outings that we will both enjoy… not that I don’t think I’ll enjoy this… maybe.