Hello again. I've been dying to get back to writing, but of course this snow storm did a great job of knocking out my electricity. Two days with no heat, no stove, and nothing electric. I had to escape to the library to get some heat and Internet. Anyway, my saga continues...
So my long ride on the Greyhound came to an end at the York bus station. I got off the bus, grabbed my bags and waited for my cousin to come and get me. I looked around and didn't see anything spectacular. There was a guy that I was sure was a bum sitting outside, unused train tracks behind the bus station, and a stadium right next to it. I stood there listening to the music on my phone wondering where the hell I was. LOL.
It took my cousin about ten minutes to come and get me, and I was very relieved when she pulled up. I got in the car and greeted her. We don't hug because she isn't the hugging type. She is a great person, she just isn't very affectionate. I have no idea what we said to each other because my mind was racing. I was here and on my way to her house, so there was definitely no turning back. Even if I wanted to turn back, there was no place to turn back to. My boyfriend's car broke down so I couldn't get back and forth to work anymore.
It was a great job too, well kind of great. Great compared to nothing at all. I worked in the warehouse at Novartis Pharmaceuticals doing the glamorous job of counting pills that were sent back by doctor's offices. I was hired for data entry, but since it took them so long to provide log in information for the computers, I spent 3 or 4 weeks counting pills everyday. Before that job I hadn't earned a paycheck in about eleven months so I didn't care what I had to do. They were paying me $14/hr and I would do what they asked me to do. I was also homeless (a status I was used to after about two years of being that way), but my cousin told me that me and my boyfriend could stay with him in Newark, NJ until we got on our feet. He had a 1 bedroom apartment with no electricity, but it was better than sleeping in the car. We could figure out a way to stay cool, eat and see at night. For a while it was working out, but we knew we had to get the car fixed soon. It just wasn't driving right. It took a very long time to pickup speed, we had to change the front right tire every week or so, and something was killing the battery.
When the car finally broke down we were going to visit my grandmother in Plainfield and it broke down right in front of her apartment. In some ways I considered us lucky. We could have broken down in the middle of the highway with nobody to call and nowhere to go. Well, I called my job (or maybe emailed) and explained that my car broke down and I had no way to get there until we got it fixed. I asked if they could give me a few days to get things straightened out. The plan was to get the car towed to my mechanic and pay him slowly to fix things one by one...until we realized that the alternator died. I have a friend that knows cars very well and he came to look at it and told us what the problem was. The bigger issue was the make of the car. Volvo. There are a lot of people that either do not like to, or do not know how to work on Volvos. Also, it was expensive. I forgot what specific day it was, but the car just happened to break down on Front street. Which is the street that the 4th of July parade goes down, which meant the car had to be moved ASAP. It was a couple of days before the 4th of July. We used either my mom's or my grandmother's AAA and got the car towed to the shop. My friend and her boyfriend came to pick us up. Being with them turned out to be great. We went to the beach for the 4th of July and had the best time. I didn't know at the time, but that was my last hurrah in NJ. I will post pics later of my final days in NJ.
So here I was, in York, Pa. Thinking about all the things I just wrote about and wondering how my life got so messy. Of course, I knew the answer to that question. We always know the answers to questions like that whether we want to admit it or not. Bad choices combined with constantly trusting the wrong people. Unfortunately, sometimes the wrong people shared the same blood as me. I tried my best to turn my mind to the future, to stick to my goals and get myself together. Nothing would stop me from accomplishing my goals, I knew that, but I couldn't completely focus just yet. There was a lot of unfinished business swirling around in my head. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry until I fell asleep just to wake up and cry more. But I was in front of my cousin and getting ready to go in the house and see her husband and her son. There was no way on earth I was letting any of them see me that way. So I put on my best smile and tried to begin my new life.
We got to my cousin's house and it definitely does not look like NJ. She lives on a block of row houses. Those are not very common in NJ. Her house is almost right in the middle of a small one way street. There is nothing really spectacular about the outside of any of the houses that are on the street, but when we go inside I see that the inside of her house is beautiful. When you walk in you look to your left and see the dining room. If you walk forward you can either take the stairs up to the second floor or slightly turn to your left and go into the living room. They had a nice 32" flat screen, a book case, a coffee table, and two black couches in the living room. Very nice. Through the living room and in the back of the house are the living room and the mudroom. I have no idea what a mudroom is but that is what my cousin called it. LOL. It looks like an extension to the kitchen that is used for storage. Also, there is a door to the backyard and another door to the basement. I did not see the basement right away. I did put my things in the office on the second floor. The second floor had the baby's bedroom, the master bedroom, a bathroom and the office. The office could have been a third bedroom if they wanted it to be, but my cousin has her own baking business so of course they turned it into an office. I was liking what I was seeing so far. A nice comfortable place I could really call home until I found a home of my own.
Unfortunately my time on the library computer is up. I cannot wait to either go to work or get some electricity. Well, I will be writing again soon. Stay tuned...
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