April, the final month, the last of the stability days, and the true test of our anxieties as the return to the walk approached. The month, plain and simple, was an absolute nightmare.
It began slowly. Yes, corporate had taken over, yes, I’d stayed on with the charge of taking on oodles of overtime, but I was starting to try and see the light of it. Overtime was extra money, and that was a huge part of our stresses. Corporate management, I could deal if I tried to make nice with them, which admittedly I hadn’t been. Thus was my start.
Even before the first weekend was over, though, it seemed not only Angie and I were struggling, but everyone of my friends as well with combinations of personal, financial, and mental troubles. It seemed tempers were continually on the verge of busting wide open in anyone’s face and life, on a whole, was looking grim. Slowly, my friends at the shop secretively, or openly, laid out their plans to move away from ground zero; the newly re-corporated shop.
Angie and I needed a get away again, so in the second week we fled to the mountains again seeking a quick fortune so we could run away immediately. We discovered the secret to our luck was in the quantity of wet naps we carried with us that were handed out around the casino. Sure enough, as Angie went to get hot dogs and I sat at our traditional video poker slots the first button I hit granted me four deuces, the second highest hand you can get, and I won $250. From there we won a few more bouts of hundreds and in the money we figured we were. We left $7 up from when we came. This plainly stated to us our luck had broken even over these many months and we were not to push it again.
From here the world spiraled into a hurtling crash from which we feared disaster. Several events culminated to this. One being I got completely fed up with the rules and regulations of my new corporate coffee world having it out with my manager and shifted my quit date to be a few days from said having out situation. This turned out to be meaningless since the corporation resold the franchise back to the former partners of the guy who screwed the place up to begin with and anyone with a quit notice in was immediately disposed of. I, at least, received a courtesy call from a friend, others were less fortunate and were told when they came expecting to work. Thus ended my stint at the coffee shop.
So it was half way through the month and now I had no job. Angie was still gathering her money together and sorting out business which caused tensions to flare between us at times. Our nerves were both pressed to the limits and the slightest thing would set an angered silence between us, but never for more than a day. I went to my former manager’s new coffee shop, the Perk and Pub, down in Wash Park and helped out there a bit while they opened as well as got some errands run to pass the time.
On my birthday we received more bad news on our situational arrangements that set a silence off between us again for the whole day so it was spent lolling about at home working on the website. Later I went to buy myself a birthday dinner at midnight and received a call from Angie and we kissed and made up. The rest of the week was pretty much like that though, and worsened as time shortened.
Finally the last week rolled around. Birthday cards with money started filing in, bills and debts were getting taken care of, and a definite plan of escape was forming to make May 1st a reality for an exit date. Angie and I were easing up and doing much better with each other and soon it was all we focused on. Chocolate ice cream came in very handy when the moods would begin to set in.
At long last it was the 30th and most everything had either been taken car of or there was a plan on how to take care of it. We each went to our respective homes and packed and cleaned. By midnight I was sitting on my couch with a fully packed Rommelton anxious to go and the whole meager collection of my belongings that were staying sitting in the corner waiting for Angie to come pick me up in her roommates car. Leisurely I waited reading the fourth part of the Harry Potter series which had been sustaining my sanity over the past month. And I waited…
Next post…the Walk resumes! Tune in as the summer of 2004 brings about the day by day blows as the Walk2000 takes its final steps toward the Pacific.