Summertime, and the livin' is easy

Woah.
I just flew in from the coast, and man, are my arms tired.
Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck…

But seriously folks,
after working 8 of the last 10 night shifts, I am ready for a break.
It has been in the low 90’s here the past few days, so being in my “office”
(an airless box, sulking about midsection in a steaming heap
we’ll call The Inferno Building) has been absolute misery.
Summer has arrived in the Pacific Northwest, and the people are free
after eight long months beneath heavy cloud cover.
The spray-on tanners and the light bed users are out in force,
flaunting their head start in the sea of marshmallows and dough balls
now flooding the streets and everybody seems a little crazed by the sun.
From the front window of The Inferno, two floors up, I can see much of
what happens down on Main Street.
Little brown twigs in neon floss ignore the crosswalks, darting between cars
in schools of five or six, while pillowy mothers bunch together at the light,
spilling out of their tank tops as they wait for permission to walk.
Warmer weather has brought some complications to the women here at The In.
Sobriety is a winter sport; summer means fun – and fun means partying.
Our little ‘Safe and Sober Living Environment’ shares a small city block
with five bars, three rooming houses and a tattoo parlor, and all of them are
jumping by the time I get to work.
Live music pours from the pub down the street, mixing with the nightly
screaming from the tweakers who live next door. The tattoo guys have begun
to use the alley out back as their private living room, where they charcobroil
huge slabs of meat and share endless joints while their reggae music blares.
Across the street at the motorcycle bar smokers stand out front, their drinks in hand,
calling out to anyone who happens to pass by.
In the eye of this storm, struggling to stay clean, the women I work with are edgy.
There are spats over laundry, cigarettes and missing food.
The bathroom stinks of mildew and the kitchen fan won’t work.
Superheated air makes the babies sweat and fuss, and the phone –
always a bone of contention - has brought a plague of minor infractions
for ignoring the ten-minute rule.
I love what I am doing - don’t get me wrong - but sometimes I feel consumed
by the atmosphere I’m in.


I was just sitting at my desk, typing this out and gloating over the fact that I am
actually OFF for an entire day - when my phone rang. The other caseworker at
The Inferno has had a medical emergency and I am going back in less than 4 hours.

Shit.


Stay tuned....


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