Screwed

I'd like to preface this by saying that I hold no anger or ill feeling towards Shane for any of this. And that's not just because I don't want to offend my boss. My boss doesn't read this blog, I could say all the offensive stuff I wanted and nothing would come of it.

In my laundry job I feel okay asking almost any question, even if it's something that I should probably know, because I still think of myself as being new to the job. Last night, my first night back, was a monumental night for these. First I'd forgotten how to put a wake up call into the system, then the washer started throwing an odd error. Luckily Shane, the manager, was around. He refreshed me on the arcane workings of the phone system, and knew the number to call to make the maintenance man appear when the washer went out. Everything got done, nothing big, but I did have to get help in places where I was faulted.

It turns out that nobody is above this kind of error. I'm actually the first person Shane has ever hired. This means I'm the one going through the grinder while he learns the ins and outs of the bureaucracy, and I'm okay with that. It also means my paycheck is delayed one cycle.

Those of you who've been playing along at home may take note of the fact that this is the second time it's gotten pushed back a cycle. The first time was my fault, and we're hammering out all the paperwork so I really should get all of my back pay two weeks from now, which is kind of the nature of the problem. I have what will almost certainly be over one thousand dollars coming to me. In two weeks.

This leads us to the thousand dollar question, something I have to ask because I'm far too poor to ask million dollar questions. How do I survive these two weeks. If I get a Volt contract this week I won't get paid for it until two weeks from today anyway. I've run through the list of things I have at my disposal and I'm going to have to do a few unsavory things.

Correction, a few more unsavory things. During this project I've done a lot of things with money that I wouldn't have otherwise done.

I was given a bit of money by each parent before leaving, each charged me with a different task. My father has an ongoing interest in getting psychiatric counseling for me. He funded me and gave me the task of arranging a counseling session. My mother gave me a much more challenging task. She pressed the bills into my hand and said "Spend it Wisely."

I thought a fair amount about what I would do with the latter of these two pools of lucre, but I made all of those thoughts under the assumption that my bellevue check would be in, so now I'm working on the much more immediate wisdom of "getting by" rather then the long term wisdom of wise investment.

I'll almost certainly end up playing the slackers of game of spending now and resupplying later with the counseling money as well. If I were feeling nefarious I'd just say that it took me two weeks to actually arrange the appointment and never mention the financial shufflings, but I'm trying not to lie so much anymore.

I really do hate to talk about money so much, but that's really the key hardship I have in life right now. The key difference in my life since starting Project Exodus is that all of my problems have gone from being abstract intellectual things to immediate financial ones.