I’m overhearing a conversation right now and really getting a lot of of my eavesdropping. There’s such a curiosity factor in listening in as you have an unadulterated view into someone else’s life.

A teenager is talking, I think to a non-custodial father, about how hard it is to make ends meet at seven dollars an hour. He lives at home and has a job at Subway. A the end of the summer if his band doesn’t make it he’ll go look for a factory job or “something” so he can make ten dollars an hour and that this seven dollar an hour stuff just isn’t going to work.
The other day my niece got a job at Burger King and is making $6.50 and hour. My last real job, a salaried position, averaged $8-10 an hour considering all the hours I had to put in and had amazing stress to boot. $6.50 for being a brain dead zombie doesn’t sound so bad.

I really wish I could link to one of my favorite Onion articles ever but it’s not on their website. But as is often the case with their writing just the headline is enough to get the gag, “Man tells girlfriend and rest of Starbucks, “things will be different this time. Really.” Eavesdropping is your best entertainment value. It’s free and is the best reality based programming out there.

I just finished lunch and feel almost sick from all the food I ate. The recent heat wave really took a toll on my food intake and I hadn’t been eating much. When I melt and feel sweaty and sticky the last thing I want is substance. Some watermelon perhaps as it’s light, hydrating and refreshing. The sugars quickly replenish energy and all is good.

As I hadn’t eaten much in a few days and the weather is really nice a mild today my hunger returned full force. While debating what to eat I decided I wanted something really heavy. Like a grandma’s stick to your ribs sort of food and as such went to a relatively cheap lunch buffet.

It was such a contrast to my last meal of a slice of bread and a some tomato wedges and the one before that wasn’t much different either–cheap eats that require no refrigeration. This was very literally a feast. Huge, amazing and colossal. And that’s how I approached the dining too as I tallied up four plates of food. The highlight for me was these amazingly tasty and tender beef ribs that were just enormous. And there was a pork dish with some ginger in it that I alternated with bites of fresh pineapple. It was so phenomenally good.

Now my body feels full. Not just my stomach but my whole system. It feels nourished and I’m sure that’ll continue for quite some time as there’ll be digestion happening for quite a while now. I don’t understand how people can over eat on a regular basis though. I’m feeling a bit lethargic and I was starting to get nauseated from the feeling of food in my mouth when I was nearing my last bites.

Keeping track of my weight has been really difficult since becoming a homeless van dweller. I don’t have a scale and without a regular means of weighing myself I don’t know what’s going on. Sure I can jump on these random scales I come across, but they all register differently. I simply can’t be gaining and loosing ten pounds of a daily basis!

Earlier today I got back on the “usual” scale of late and I lost about four pounds in this heat wave. While I want to lose weight I’m really trying hard not to lose from malnutrition and starvation. I’ll save that for the super models. As such I tapped into the food budget a little extra hard and feasted like a queen.

The Washington Post has a blog about vagabonding! Crazy! We’re making the big times here. I generally read foreign newspapers for news so only go to American ones when linked there and have never explored on them and now I’m wishing I had. They even have a recent entry on part-time van living.

Last night was much better for sleeping. It was just breaking eighty when I woke around 8am as last night a huge storm barreled through and brought temperatures down. Today is sunny and hot again and I’m currently escaping it and enjoying a little lunch.

To help fix the heat issue in the van I just ordered a powered roof vent for the van as I’d probably die if I didn’t. Seriously. It’s not even summer and I’m already seeing 90-something degree temperatures in there–at night! In the day I’ve seen temps go well over 110 and that’s with every conceivable sun and temperature reducing option going. Combine that heat with dead air in the van and I’d be a brain fried puppy before long.
So I broke down this morning and spent a good bit of money on the fan and last night I bought some stuff too hook it up. And speaking of breaking down, my alternator is making a bearing whine so it’ll need to be replaced before long. That’ll be another $85 I can’t afford right now but at least it’s a cheap alternator. At some point I need to find an income stream of some sort to afford all this being homeless stuff. At this point life is just a tad cheaper than living in a building and is something I need to remedy.

One thing I like about my van is the parts are always cheap and easy to get. It makes me wonder sometimes what’s in the head of the Volkswagen Westfalia fans. If all things were equal I’d own one too but they’re expensive to buy, expensive to maintain and parts can be hard to find. Whereas I have a common van with one of the most common engines ever made. Still, they’re about as cool as can be.

With cars I’d almost always bought Japanese, where I put a $225 alternator once into my Nissan. And I owned and old early 70s Dodge car once and that was cheap, but I never found the American cars I was given to be particularly cheap to fix. Parts were generally needed more frequently. The two Iron Duke based cars has non-stop strings of problems and my families 3800 based cars have their share too. But my van is like that old Dodge and I’m quite happy for it. Everything thus far for my van has been so reasonably priced.

With newspapers I generally read the British and sometimes the Canadian press. There’s a few other countries with good English language newspapers too. I find their perspective useful in assessing current events here as they have the outsider view. It’s like trying to get a straight story from two lovers fighting. Each one has a hyper-dramatically opposing views from the other and reality is probably somewhere equidistant from each, smack dab in the middle.

The last couple nights were pretty unbearable in the van. The weather took an early warm turn here and I am rather unprepared for the heat. I wasn’t expecting this degree of warmth for a at least a couple more weeks when, ideally, I’d be a bit further north in cooler climes.

The only windows I have that open are the ones in the front doors and I don’t want to open them too far. Doing so would just scream “come pilfer my goodies!” And especially as my whole world is in there plus me sleeping in back I don’t want to do that in urban areas. So they’re cracked, but not so much that someone could reach in and unlock the door.

I’ve already tinted the windows and I put Reflectix light shields on all but the open windows. Plus I insulated the van when I put the interior in. But none of that solves the air flow issues. It’s damn hot in there and the air is dead still. I need, need, need to get a vent in that roof pronto!

Last night, after two minimally restful night and steamy days I got really fed up and desperate. I hadn’t had a haircut in about nine months so it was good and long, down nearly to the end of my sternum. In my youth I had constant battles with my mother over hairstyles and it was always really traumatic for me. It wasn’t until a particularly huge blow out fight that at age seventeen I was allowed control over my own hair style. And now as an adult I’m funny about hair cuts. I don’t trust the cheap places as that’s what my cuts were back then but I haven’t been afford to readily afford a decent salon for some years now.

So the last nine months I’ve been putting off spending any money on my hair and it kept growing longer and longer. Plus, when I had to make rent every month I couldn’t afford all my medications and my endocrine system was getting wacked out and making my hair thin. I’d also been so broke the two years that I’d often have little money for food–or anything else for that matter. So between the frustration and sadness over being so broke and thus not eating plus only being able to afford poor quality food I’m sure I lost plenty of hair there too in quantity and quality. So everything about my hair was making me unhappy.

And then the heat hit.

Laying in the blast furnace van trying to sleep with long hair getting tangled up and stuck to my skin all over my face, arms, chest and back was driving me absolutely mad. As if sweating out quarts of liquid and breathing hot, stale air wasn’t bad enough, my hair was stuck everywhere and constantly getting pulled too.

So last night I was at the family homestead for an early Memorial Day BBQ and asked if there was a pair of scissors handy. When asked what I was going to do with them I calmly replied, “I’m going to go in the bathroom and give myself a hair cut.” The look I got back was probably no different than what I’d have seen if I said, “oh, I’d like the chain saw to go weed out the slower running neighbors.”

There was plenty of warnings and doomsday scenarios presented and there was even offers of setting me up with one of those dreaded eight buck hair cuts but I was fed up and desperate for relief. There was no AC and I had been damp with sweat for two solid days.

Off to the Bathroom

I got naked and stood at the mirror and my hair was wet from a quick jump in the shower. When I was debating about doing this I was already thinking through how it’d have to be cut. I’d obviously be limited in movement but I thought about how stylists have cut my hair and what I wanted it to look like. What I was shooting for was a cross between two hair style I had, one about five years ago and one nine years ago.

Because of not having enough money for my medications my hair had gotten really fine and thin plus it tangles easily. This made it really difficult to brush out and move around. Of course I had no comb to make this easier either. But I gathered up the first section and spent probably two minutes trying to get the scissors in the right place and chop through the mess of hair. When I was hacking away at that first cut I was laughing so hard. The scene was so preposterous!

How could this be me?! Cutting my own hair!? My childhood installed such a neurosis in me over my hair and here I was cutting willy nilly and barely even able to see what I was doing in the foggy mirror without my glasses and having great technical difficulty with the pseduo-yoga moves I was doing to get the cut done with the not especially sharp scissors. Then after another couple minutes I had the rest chopped in the second cut. And I started laughing again! In those two cuts I lost easily six to eight inches of length.

I took a look at the general effect and was actually quite pleased and laughed some more! It was looking good! I realized that I’d never do a decent job a the mirror for the fine tuning. My hair when damp is too hard to style these days and the reflection was throwing off my coordination. So I returned to the shower.

With water flowing through my hair moved around easily, the water was cold and refreshing and got me out of the heat and humidity for a while too and I trimmed bits here and there and finished the cut. I stood in the shower and did it all without looking, just going by feel and just visualizing what it looked like.

When I got out no one believed I actually did it, especially as it looked good. I didn’t even bother saying I hadn’t looked at while doing it and hadn’t seen it properly yet. My sister was shocked that I actually managed to do layers. I asked my niece what she thought of the job my new stylist did and she approved enthusiastically and then flipped when I said I was that stylist. My other niece looked at me like I was crazy but liked the results. And most importantly I was comfortable with my shoulder length hair. None of the guys said anything of course.

It was such a liberating experience to cut my own hair. To take that much control over it and also to accept that if I turned out badly that I could just get another, that there’d still be plenty of length to cut it back some more. And to really enrich the experience, the scissors that I used were the ones my father used to cut our hair as kids, back when I also had no control over style but didn’t mind too much.

Later in the evening I cut a couple missed spots but otherwise it was quite sound. I went to bed and baked in a 93 degree stale air van and woke early–about as soon as the sun hit the van and it started to warm. When I checked myself in the mirror this morning I was ever so pleased with myself. The haircut passed my true test–what it looks like after sleeping on it and it looked great. Not only was it cut well but it looked drastically better than the old broken end snarl hair.

I had half expected to have an emergency run to a stylist–any stylist–but instead I celebrated inside. I was looking cute, feeling good and didn’t spend a cent. And I might just have a new skill to perfect! Likely the skill building will start by playing with it a bit more in the next couple of days as I tweak out the cut a bit more. Though thus far I’m still happy.

Addendum

I actually had a really good relationship with my mother before and after my teen years. But while I was too young to be an adult and she was still treated me like a small child we butted heads regularly. From about 25 years old and on we were very close and had a great peer-like relationship.

This last weekend I joined some family members and had a garage sale and I’m glad I did. A couple years ago I started selling stuff to bridge gaps in the budget and probably nine months back now I started selling furniture and less necessary possessions to make either moving into a cheaper apartment or my van easier–and that ever needed cash was of course nice too.

Late Sunday remnants.

Basically all I had to sell over the weekend was junk. The stuff that’s not worth enough to list on craigslist and wasn’t wanted by friends. As such, my expectations were quite low on what I’d be getting from this. A hundred? Maybe a bit more? I was wondering if I’d even earn enough to reach the hypothetical break even point for the effort. Money was spent on a permit, signs and such.But those three days of sales plus two beforehand to prepare and Monday morning to clean up did pay off. I made about $300 dollars profit from the weekend! But it’s odd to think now that I have no material resources in which to sell for some quick cash. No more electronics or grown up toys, no more furniture, no nothing that could raise easy money without hurting myself in the long term. Like I’d be a fool to sell the tools I use to make money. Cash now, sure, but what about tomorrow, next week or next year?

“You got any old tools?”

My two favorite questions of the weekend were both from guys. Lots of inquiries about old tools and those that I had sold out quickly. The other was “do you have any collectable stuff, men’s collectables? Like beer signs and manly stuff like that?”

About half the money made this weekend came from selling my old laptop as it sold for $150. I bought it in 2000 and made almost $20,000 with it that year. That’s almost $10 of profit for each dollar spent. Since 9/11 the money making has not been nearly as good, but still, the purchase price was already long since paid off. A computer in my hands is a money making tool. I wasn’t expecting to sell this here but when she saw some random computer junk asked, “do you have any Mac stuff?” She just happened to want a cheap laptop and veering into that masculine tool seeking turf.

The happy new owner

A couple days ago I jumped into a debate on a discussion forum about homeless people having laptops and how some couldn’t believe they’d have them. I really didn’t participate much in the discussion other than to say that many homeless people have jobs but lack sufficient income for home and that their laptops might just be part of that income generation. Then as a turnaround, I asked if they’d expect a homeless carpenter or mechanic not to have some basic tools.It’s been a couple of days with no responses so I suspect I “won” the thread. Computers can be luxury entertainment devices or they can make money. Last year I made $800 doing a writing project with that $150 PowerBook I sold. My current Powerbook was waiting for the funds to repair it. And with that bottom of the rung laptop I made the repair money and a bunch more too.

Outside of rummaging up some fuel somewhere this is something that could theoretically be made most anywhere. A couple of old cans, a knife, a pin and whole lot of patience. Presto! A stove!

The can stove from PCThiker.com

I’ve been reading up a bit more on backpacking. Their sparse, light gearing makes me a bit envious as my van is getting cramped again so it’s time to condense and eliminate some more. The backpackers have a bigger problem with this, but they also do better at the job.

When I woke this morning the van was 84 degrees and plenty humid, well outside the comfort zone already and it’s barely summer yet. I was largely outside of the sun at that time yet I was still 14 degrees higher than the outside temperature. This is a problem I’ll have to solve soon as I’ll not be sleeping much in the sweat lodge regardless of how many hours I lay in there and I can’t imagine it’d be at all healthy for me. Both from the heat and what that warmth might breed in all the moisture and warmth.

Perhaps it’s a sign that I need to start moving North for the summer! Or maybe I just need to get some air movement in the van with a roof vent. I don’t have windows to open so I’m pretty limited there and I don’t wish to leave doors open as that looks a bit obvious that something is going on. Not to mention the lack of security that presents.

And as a full-fledged whine let me just take this opportunity to say that I hate climate extremes, and what I consider to be the breaking point is fairly conservative here. Anything over 80 degrees is getting too warm to me and humidity makes this increasingly unbearable while under 50 degrees is pushing the cold side. Though living in my van has taught me I can sleep comfortably when it’s 40 degrees, that’s not necessarily a temperature I’d want to live in continuously. The bulk of clothing necessarily to keep warm while not under a dozen blankets is a bit burdensome. And above 80 I start getting sweaty, requiring more showers to feel clean and there’s only so much clothing that I can legally remove to keep cool.

So waking up to 84 degrees, plus sleeping in the 70s, just isn’t going to work as summer has only begun. The bed is a shortened queen size so the width and length is fine, but the height is tight. There’s only a little space between the bed surface and the roof. And at 80-something degrees with high humidity and absolutely zero effective air movement I start feeling like a claustrophobic, sweaty little sardine in my big oven on wheels.

I was out having a social visit last night and made a comment that struck me as strange. I said, “well, I’m getting sleepy. I should be getting home.”

As I thought about it while speaking I was pre-living the experience in my head. More than just a picture I imagine myself in the situation, experiencing it and I felt the stifling humidity in the van, heard the drizzle on the roof, the feel fuzzy princess blanket and flannel of my bedding and was drawing in my journal–the paper one. I even felt the spiral binder of the journal, the roughness of the paper and the smooth barrel of the mechanical pencil and the way the slick lead glides over the page. The light was bouncing off the red wall of my van from the flashlight.

And this is now home. Parked in a safe spot that’s reasonably quiet and has occasional wifi. The van isn’t too stifling yet as the night is still reasonably cool. I need to fix the air flow in here as currently there is none–zero. But overall I’m quite happy with my house on wheels.

Last night I was at a grocery store buying some food and I didn’t have the right change to avoid getting pennies back but I was able to get close. The store I was at has those automatic change makers and two pennies dropped into the dish. I took my bags and started walking. The cashier said, “Miss, you forgot your change!” But I didn’t, I wanted the fellow behind me to use it if needed. So I knowingly replied, “no I didn’t,” then smiled and walked on my way.

The closure of this scene played out the same way yet again as I always botch the interaction. The cashier took the two cents, opened the cash drawer and dumped them in. Yet again I wasn’t literal enough with the clerk and my penny hating soul cried out for justice. It was a customer who was to benefit from those two cents, not the corporation.

With the extreme devaluation of the one cent coin it was behoove us to just round purchase up or down to the nickel. “Take a penny, Leave a penny” cups functionally do this already and are quite common. The single cent as a monetary concept should stay in place though, for calculating interest rates and such, but outside of the inner workings of the financial system I’d be quite happy to see them go the way of the half cent coin–last produced in 1857. Pennies in everyday life should just disappear.

I know I need to be much more literal and far less flippant in my explanation of why I’m leaving change behind. Other cashiers at other stores will generally leave them on the register or the counter for the next person “getting” what’s going on. But the seemingly bright people I’ve had tally my food purchases don’t seem to catch on. As such I need to train myself to say, “I’m leaving those so the next customer can avoid getting his or her own pennies–a mutual aid society of sorts. Thanks!” And through this societal passing along of pennies we’re in essence agreeing that the time of the penny has long since past by our own actions.

Once I got outside the store I had a realization. Since becoming homeless I’ve taken to picking up pennies again. I hadn’t done this since I was little, when pennies really meant something as back then I had a one dollar a week allowance and a penny was another piece of candy. These were the times when a penny could still buy things. And sure enough I saw that tarnished copper on the ground and even burdened with a couple bags I still bent down to pick up the cent. It certainly wasn’t for the value of the object as functionally it has almost nil. At best I could rationalize that collecting waste pennies is symbolic of my tighter nature with money these days–but not as actual currency as I’d just left two behind for others.

So evidently pennies have value. One part good luck, one part kindness.

(For those keeping score here’s my shopping haul: Two bottles of cranberry juice, a pound of grapes, three bananas, a pound of strawberries, a pound of tomatoes.)

I spent most of today building cabinets along the wall behind the driver’s seat. It’s a little over four feet of space and my new cabinets are 48 inches wide. So there’ll be a little room left for the seat to adjust. Yesterday I tried to work it all out on paper first but I kept getting hung up. This morning I gave up on planning it all out and just started. Too much time spent theorizing and not enough time spent doing.

It was quite the challenge as my stock of wood for this was all scraps that I acquired one way or another. So probably half the time was spend fiddling around with ideas, trying to make the most of the wood I had so that I wouldn’t have to buy more. I needed to make a balance between being terminally cheap and wanting something sturdy and useful. And not to heavy either! This is a van after all and I don’t want to overload the suspension or make the miles per gallon even worse.

These cabinets are almost symbolic of my life at the moment. Done on the cheap with scrap leftovers gotten for free. Done without a plan, completely improvised and still wondering how it’ll end. But I’m quite comfortable knowing that indeed it will resolve nicely and the cabinets will be attractive, sturdy and functional.

Of course I’ll need to figure out the doors at some point. Likely I’ll have to buy some hinges and such. But, I think I have a line on where to get some for free!

Michael Wolf did a photo series on a Hong Kong’s oldest public housing development. Each apartment is ten by ten feet giving each resident 100 square feet to live in.

Now that I’ve moved into my van which has about sixty or so square feet I feel an organizational solidarity with these folks.

When I was little I watched documentaries and read articles on Japan and some other Asian countries where the population density was so high that living spaces were severely cramped. Yes, I was the dorky kid who like learning more than playing. The resourcefulness and thoughtful design really intrigued me, how they adapted to having entire homes in the space of just my childhood bedroom–which until seeing these shows seemed so small and limiting to me. These being public housing units, and early ones at that, have the added charm to me of the owners self-conversion and tailoring to their specific needs and abilities. …just like my van. Raw space made into a tiny, little homes.