An Anniversary Not Worth Remembering, Part 2

On Wednesday, February 2nd 2011, the Rockford area was literally and figuratively blanketed with well over a foot of snow, basically shutting down the city. This added insult to injury for us as I was racing against time and eviction. We were still getting our belongings packed when this was happening. We had called this place home since October 2002. It was ending the next day.  I did find a couple of motels that did have immediate rooms for us. They were both about a block away from one another. It came down to a matter of cost. One place was worth $500/month; the other $625 plus deposit. I didn't wish to pay that much for a damn motel room, but that time wasn't a really good time to be picky now, was it? Since I was Mariah's payee, I was responsible for making sure we had a roof over our heads. One by one, I started taking down the items lodged on the walls, such as the Christmas lights, which made the place look like it's an actual wonderland. The numerous pictures over the years, my James Bond poster from Casino Royale, my Mardi Gras masks, graduation from college, and so on. Those walls looked so bare!! And what to do with our cats, who have kept us company since 2004? She had already pissed me off by leaving my favorite cat, a plus-sized orange feline named Sonny, out in the hallway so many times the appointed building manager had the local animal control unit take him away without my knowledge. That still gets me mad thinking about it! 

It was Moving Day. Time to say goodbye to having an actual kitchen, a decent bedroom to sleep in, and enough living room space to use both as my office for my home-based travel agency and to do those Zumba exercises. Oh, yeah, I still had to get through about a foot of unshoveled snow just to get to my minivan, parked along side of the apartment in the alley. That took me about a half hour to get that from being unstuck. So little by little, we got our clothes and personal items out of there and into my van. Then we saw the motel rooms. I got picky and chose the $500/month motel room. We dropped our stuff there and made two more trips. We also made a potential mistake in leaving our pets behind. Not a smart thing to do, I know. They need love as well as humans do. I took one final glance of the place, left the key behind, and let the stupid landlord clean up what we left behind!

Remember what I said about how those things basically screwed my year up? 48 hours after moving into this motel room, we get a knock on our door. It was the Loves Park Police! They were wondering what my van was doing in front of our room and not in the parking area. For one thing, the parking lot was jammed with cars, leaving us without a place to park at the time. Also, there was a large snowbank that covered a side of the pavement. What the hell were we supposed to do? I went outside to move it to a better location when they wanted to see my driver's license. As what cops do, they check it for any funny stuff on there. Here's were my hell increased! There's a warrant for my arrest for not showing up in court in Ogle County over a minor traffic ticket from last June! I told them I was out of work, so I couldn't pay it. They arrest me and take me downtown to the County Lockup, where the food is as bad as they say it is!  I wind up watching my Packers win Super Bowl XLV from behind bars. Happy to see them win? Yes! Seeing it wearing prison garb? HORRIBLE!!! Two days later I get send to see this judge in Ogle County over this ticket via video. They release me on bail or something. I was forced to find my own way back up to Loves Park!!! I was thankful I had some gas money available! 

Throughout 2011, being happy in a small motel room was hard to do. While I did find work, it was brief. Drew unemployment benefits that dried up in July 2012. Still running travel agency from motel, just not the same. So was traveling to and from the post office, since getting mail there was not the best thing to do. Sold my van, for the aforementioned reasons. Discovered it was NOT worth attending an online medical school since I had no interest in it. I bought a laptop so I wouldn't keep coming to the library to use the Internet there (something Mariah threw out by mistake later that year.  Made her buy me a different one).  Got arrested for the same warrant from Ogle County, this time spending Christmas in an Ogle County jailhouse with 12 other men. My worst fears realized! Odd though, they said nothing about my sparkly polished fingernails...at least to my face! And the food was actually tasteful, too. Not that I ever want to go back. 

While writing this blog about this dreadful moment in my life, I forgot to mention that the motel where Mariah and I resided kept raising the rent on us from $500 to $550, then $650, then $685 to eventually $700. Yeah I know, that's way too much for a motel room. This half-Latino, half-Italian dope of a landlord says that a reason for the constant price hikes was due to us washing our hair in the shower, allegedly clogging the outdated drain pipes underneath. That wasn't true. He told us to blame the economy, but we didn't buy that excuse. For someone that drives around town in a $60,000 Cadillac Escalade and has a $30,000-plus GMC Jimmy for his broken-English-speaking wife, he's more shady than a crooked politician. And a rumored drug dealer,too (but you didn't hear that from me, okay?). In October of 2012, after hearing he was once again raising our rent, Mariah asked our landlord for a reason. He gave her a simple three-word response: deal with it. So we finally made our move...and relocated to the original choice of a motel to live in the first place. Guess that punk will be missing the money we've been paying for his Direct TV!!!

As we reside in our new digs, I still am longing to get back to work, even at my age. My online travel business is basically the only thing I have going for me right now. I'm dreaming about once again having my own ride instead of relying on my new friends to help get me to church and do grocery shopping. Of course, one of my main goals in 2013 is to pay off whatever bills we have and move back into another apartment. Sure I may have a microwave in this motel room now, however, it's not the same like making a home-cooked meal or having folks over to watch the Super Bowl. I miss cooking, okay??!!!!