Soon as walk & sore-mouth granola over this morning I laid down again. Felt funky.

In & out of lt. sleep.

Had that sour adrenalin squirt in my gut when came back to think of what I had to do.

Got up & got in to mail unopened for months. Throw out of junk, high level 1st pass org into categories (notes & recuerdos) all the while having sort of hard time, overwhelmed, something.

Back in bed for a bit.

Up to throw 1-2 envelopes into trash (instead of letting build up into one final pile to carry to trash can in bathroom) because that was one thing I could get done well & definitively & feel good about.

Back to bed & some stewing & head freakin but then telling self I’m not going to let that happen to me or me to do that, seemed like road to hell, slippery slope to insanity, so I’d say ‘no’ y/or jump back up again & in./p>

So I started in finally on Med Bills

1401.33 - Grand Strand Regional Med Ctr (PIF w/ Amex 09 Jan 06)

582.50 - Carolina Health Specialists (PIF w/ Amex 09 Jan 06)

476.00 - City of Myrtle Beach EMS

197.00 - Carolina Radiology Associates (PIF w/ Citi card 10 Jan 06)

49.20 - Diagnostic Pathology Partnership (Amt. adj. to 0 prob due to lack of ins. 21 Nov 05 thank goodness for drop-in-the-bucket miracles)
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$2706.03 Total

In process call Amex to verify 12 months 0% intro APR still in effect. Just happened to notice agreement stipulated rate adj. if late & had $81.00 past due amt. Current APR 29.23% due to 2 late payments! Got $122.01 credit on purchase fin. chrg & reduction to 11.23% new APR (thank goodness for drop-in-the-bucket miracles).

So I’m telling my mom abt my bills. Abt how I still have 2 to go because those two don’t take Amex & altho I have a valid Visa account, I don’t have the actual card in my pssession nor the acct num written down & it’s no listed when I log into my acct. online. It’s funny, I say, because the reason I don’t have the card is because of cocain usage but not because the card went over limit or was stolen or lost or any of that stuff you might expect, but due to using the card to chop up & line out the coke, which, after so many times, caused the plastic lamination to peel off & the card to become unusable/unswipable. I must have destroyed & thrown it away tho I don’t remember when or where.

Then I showed her my debit card. “See? Like this,” I said and showed her how the plastic had begun to peel away on that one, too. “That’s probably bits of cocain down in that crevice there. Actually…” I went into my room and brought out my Amex Blue. “See this?” handing her the card w/ a melted center. “Similar thing/reason(s),” I said, & explained how we’d been using that one for chop’n'lining and how someone left it on the plate the coke was on when it was put into the microwave to heat up the powder & make it easier to afinar (as the Mexican custom stipulates).

I told my story and looked at her looking at me without recognition, far away, thinking, hurt, betrayed, confused. “I guess you don’t think it’s funny,” I said.

“It’s just so foreign to me,” she said. “I don’t know what to think.”

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Image: Me sitting in parking lot across from house I lived in when I was 2, smoking crack in a rental car.

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