As I stumbled into our bedroom because I was so darned tired, my roommate-an 87-year-old minister of the Southern Baptist Convention, Grandma wanted to know if I was okay. I'm just beat, I tell her. I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before because it was payday and I was busy taking care of all the bills and didn't get in until around 10pm. I get up around 5am and anyone who knows me knows I need at least 8 hours a sleep a night to function properly. I told Grandma that it's good thing I wasn't pulled over by a cop; they would have sworn I was drunk by my stumbling. Nope, just very tired. I even fell asleep at Starbucks after I posted my blog and played around in Farmville. I was beat.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth, took my medicine, brushed my hair, put moisturizer on my skin and got into my bed. Grandma was already in her bed, reading another Reader's Digest "Abridged Stories" book. We both drifted off to sleep...
BANG! BANG BANG!
I jumped up. What was that? The only person who knocks on the door that way is the Program Manager of the program I am in. I hear voices then banging on my door. I sit up at the edge of my bed and say, "Come in". Sure enough, it's the PM. She says, "Good, you're up. You have been chosen to do a pee test." I asked why me, again. The last time she came around, at a more acceptable hour of 7 instead of 10:30pm, she chose me. Outside of Grandma, I am the only obvious clean one there. So why harrass me?
I asked her why I had to do it again. She said "because you are up." I tell her the only reason I am up is that she pounded on the door and woke me. I didn't have any urine in me and there were three other people (she had the youngest roommate also pee in a cup) that she could ask-all of whom do not have permanent jobs that are an hour away and they don't have to be up in less than 8 hours to get to. She said they were asleep. But when I went out to get more water from the garage, one of the Shunners was doing laundry. Guess she was walking in her sleep.
So here it is, 11pm on a Wednesday night. I barely made it home alive because I am so damned tired and all I want to do is sleep. But I am not allowed to. Apparently being homeless is a crime, because I have not committed any other ones in this century. And actually doing something about it - getting a fulltime, permanent job - is not enough proof that I am not a criminal. So give me your pee, dammit!
I drank a half gallon of water and still could not produce urine on demand. By midnight, the PM was pissed (pun intended) because I could not -and in her mind would not - produce urine on demand. She asked what time I got off work and I told her. She said she would be waiting at home for me the next day to get my urine.
Since I was so rudely awakened, it took forever to get back to sleep. An hour after I did, I had to get up and pee. And every hour after that until I crawled out of bed at 5am to get ready for work. I fell asleep saying my prayers. And fell asleep again while driving to work. Heaven forbid if I don't pee on demand-maybe they can get some from my corpse. I could just hear the PM, "Yes, it's sad that she died because she fell asleep at the wheel, but I really need you to stand aside while I take a urine sample."
I so had to pee Thursday afternoon, but remembered I had to pee on demand when I got home, so I held it. For three hours. I had errands I needed to run, but couldn't because I was told I needed to come home right after work so I could pee in a cup. I got home, but the PM was not there. I was doing the "I gotta pee" dance all over the house, asking everyone if they had seen her and they said no, that she was supposed to be there at 2pm and still hadn't shown up at 6:30pm. I hadn't peed since my break at 3pm and drank a lot of water on the way home to make sure she had a big enough sample.
I texted her this: "I have to pee. I didn't go @ work and have been holding it for 2 hrs because you said you would be waiting for me. I am going to pee in a clean Starbucks disposable cup. I am not going to put my health @ risk." And I did just that. I showed Grandma the cup, so she could see it was clean, I went into the bathroom, filled it up and still had more pee to put in the toilet, flushed, brought out the sample and put a Ziploc bag over it. Then I wrote on it what it was and what time and day it was taken. Then my phone rang.
It was the PM who told me she would be there by 8 and that I needed to hold it until then. I told her I had things to do and that I held up my end of the bargain. If she couldn't do what she said she would, that is not my problem. She said that if I wasn't there at 8 that night when she showed up that she would come in and wake me up in the middle of the night and make me pee again. I don't get it. I have done nothing wrong. I follow all the insane rules (you are not allowed to have tools of any kind-even to fix your glasses!) I am not a criminal. I don't have a drug or alcohol issue. In a few months I will be self sufficient if they would just leave me alone. But the PM could care less. She is the boss, I am the criminal in her mind. When she says jump, I am to say "how high?" and then jump that high. She keeps reiterating that she will wake me from a sound sleep and I will give her urine on demand if I am not there at 8pm. It is already 7 and I have errands to run. The phone reception at that house has never been good and we get cut off. Oh well. Too bad. For her, because I call up her boss-the second time in that day-and leave a message on her voicemail that I do not appreciate being treated as a criminal, that I agreed to give the PM urine on demand at a certain time and she wasn't there. I told the boss that the PM threatened to wake me in the middle of the night, like she did the night before (even though one of the shunners lied and said I was up and walking around before the PM pounded her way into the house. An hour before I might have been). I let her boss know that if she keeps this up, I will lose the job I fought so damn hard for because I cannot function on no sleep.
At 8 o'clock the PM calls wanting to know where I am. I am at the library and will be home a little after nine. I will pee then for her. I kept my side of the deal earlier and she didn't. That is not my problem. I call her when I leave the library at 9pm and she says she is in Vacaville so we should be at the house about the same time. I drink 3/4 of a gallon of water this time because she will gt her damn urine on demand and I will go to sleep. Except guess who is NOT there when I get home? She doesn't show up for another hour and a half! At 10:30pm, she bangs on the door with pee test cups in hand. I grab mine, go into the bathroom and...can't pee. My bladder is full, but I am pissed! (Pun intended once again) Who does this bitch, who was fired from the only police job she ever had and then sued the police department and lost, think she is? The madder I get, the harder it is to pee. So I try to calm down. I run the water. I think of water and finally, I can pee. I fill that cup up as far as I can, spilling some over the edge. And I still have some for the toilet. I clean off the cup (I should have accidentally spilled some on the bitch) and give it to her and turn to go to bed. But no, I am not allowed to go to bed until she does the testing,. What, to find out I only have the medicine in my pee that I have reported to them?
Needless to say, I did not get to sleep Thursday night before midnight either and was up every hour peeing. The other person they pee tested was kicked out Friday. She told them she had THC in her pee because she was at a friend's house and they were smoking pot. She was upfront with them and they kicked her out anyway. Well, it was that and more lies from the Shunners.
But that's another column. I have to pee now.
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