Playing With The House's Money...

...or something like that.

Basically, the Monday after Memorial Day, I'd had it.

My cab had been broken into.

Business was starting to tail off tremendously.

I had come down with a nasty bug, and driving wasn't helping.

I took Saturday and Sunday off to get under the covers, shiver and shed a few tears.

However, by the time I made the decision to quit on Saturday, I felt uplifted... and it came from an old source.

Friends, I haven't been right since my mother passed away nearly 6 years ago, and it only got worse when my old man followed 18 months later. I won't go into the details here, but it's sufficient to say that St. Lavinia popped in on me on Sunday. She spoke, as she often has in this afterlife she's attained, in simple and direct language. "Talk" Or more importantly, communicate.

So, there I was on Monday, getting ready to cancel my contract with Yellow and the assistant licensee manager asks me, "Do you want to hang on to your car?"

My answer, "I'm down to my last 40 bucks, and I don't know what I can do right now. I was sick over the weekend and shit's gotten just plain strange."

"Yeah," he answered, "it does for a lot of guys, not just the new ones, during the summer."

So, he takes me off of Code 5 (terminal lockout) and says, "80 bucks a day, you'll be caught up in no time."

My answer, "just like that?"

"Yep," was his reply. "We know you need to pay rent, gas and groceries."

There is no greater gift anyone can receive than the gift of time... as long as that gift isn't squandered. Basically, the week that followed consisted of me learning how to conserve my resources and re-think when and where I worked. Make no mistake about it, the market sucks right now, and there are times when I wait up to an hour to take someone for a ride, but because of where I'm choosing to work, those rides are still profitable.

A couple of other things popped up to help ameliorate the recent bullshit, too. 1.) I managed to get my check from my most recent acting job. It helped me take a day and a half off in the middle of this week as some of the consecutive days were kicking my butt. 2.) Part of my outstanding balance was the body shop deciding to charge me for replacing the window damaged by the jackass(es) who broke into my cab. I called bullshit on that and cited my 5 dollar a week supplemental insurance I was paying. I will be seeing $174.50 coming back to me tomorrow because of those keen powers of observation. That's another two days I won't have to pony up the 80 bucks.

Oddly enough, I've had to learn that my usual sources of "karma" weren't exactly going to fuel the fire. MSP trips for the elderly and disabled are so few and far between that it's silly on my part to say I'm going to crusade for every trip that isn't being picked up. In fact, that's the biggest thing I had to change about how I work. I would drive incredible distances for people I would think were "stranded," and occasionally hit a jackpot. More often than not, though, it was simply a trip that barely paid the cost of gasoline and slightly more. However, what I lost in those trips wasn't just the money and the gas... it was the time. Time I could have spent not clobbering myself in traffic... and time I could have spent taking a trip closer to where I was.

So, this is where I stand tonight. My lease is paid, I'm getting ready to hammer home the balance of the light bill and take care of a couple of other nagging bills. They're all small... for now. Fact of the matter is, that if I had learned back then what I know now about conserving my resources (don't get me started on my ill fated forays into the Bay Area), I'd be way ahead of the game.

As it is, I get a little better every day.

80 bucks at a time.