2005-01-05 - 11:02 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Something", The Beatles (this song plays FAR TOO MUCH)

Remember a few posts back when I said I didn't care about anybody? This is true most of the time, but apparently not always.

Poindexter has had a black "bumbershoot" umbrella, as he calls it (it opens and closes automatically) for years. Sometime over the summer, one of the spokes broke near the end, so there was a sad little short flap hanging down on one segment. Since the break was six inches from the end, the umbrella was still usable, so he was using it all that time since while I kept forgetting to get him a new one. It ended up that while I was shopping with my mom, we picked out a new umbrella and she gave it to him for Christmas. He's very happy with it.

Since my two umbrella choices are leopard print (gift from my SIL) and the infamous duck umbrella, and neither of them is auto open/close, I started using Poindexter's old umbrella as a sort of default, for when I wasn't feeling leopard-y or duck-y. Especially in the mornings when I take Poindexter to work. I hate mornings. Being able to press a button and have my umbrella go up by itself makes mornings a little easier.

Today is a miserable rainy day, so I used the old umbrella this morning. When we pulled over to the curb to drop off Poindexter at work, there was a man sitting on the steam grate. There's a guy who sleeps there most of the time, and we see him almost every morning, but this was somebody new. He was older than the usual guy, maybe in his sixties. He was eating something out of a plastic container and there was something childlike about him. And he was soaking wet. And I just thought, oh, JEEZ.

After a brief discussion with Poindexter -- I was a little nervous about not being able to understand the guy if he spoke to me -- I got out of the truck and walked back to him. "Excuse me," I said, "Could you use an umbrella? It's a little broken but it still works," and I pressed the button to open the umbrella. "My husband got a new one for Christmas." He nodded slowly at me and took the umbrella. His eyes looked very tired and blank and he looked even more childlike than I had previously thought. I said "Merry Christmas" and walked back to the truck. Far as I know, he never said a word, so apparently I needn't have worried.

When I got back in the car, Poindexter said, "You're so sweet, my little crusader." I told him to shut up. He laughed.

I always donate our old stuff that we don't need or want anymore. I've donated enough stuff to completely outfit a girl my size for any occasion, as well as furnishing her apartment with furniture and a few knickknacks. A lot of the furniture was hand-me-downs, and I took good care of it, so it was still usable. Heck, I would've continued using most of it if we hadn't moved into a studio. Other stuff we got rid of because I wanted something different. And it has always bugged me the way a lot of the bigger charities sell that stuff -- and maybe some of it doesn't even sell; where does that go? -- and use money to fund an insane amount of overhead and administrative costs. What I'd rather do is be able to give it directly to someone who could use it, just like my grandparents did when they gave it to me. So I got to do that, on a very small and personal scale, with the umbrella.

The truth is that I want to help people who need it, but I have very strong aversions to "helping" fund a conglomerate charity and "helping" people who are refusing to help themselves. I do not want to help people who just can't seem to bring themselves to show up to work on time and behave responsibly. I don't want to help people who won't choose to stop using their drug of choice even when their world is crumbling around them. I know too many recovered alcoholics who hit a pretty shitty rock bottom to believe that addicts are truly helpless to their addiction. I want my donation to be a helping hand, a step up, something that helps them help themselves, not somethat enables them to keep doing whatever destructive thing they are doing.

Someday I will figure out where my money should be going, and then I will make a donation that includes a lot of back payments.

On a much more frivolous note, my Victoria's Secret purchases arrived today. Predictably, only three of the eight items I ordered actually fit. I'm sure the jeans and sweater will turn up in a future post, since I'm keeping them. I'm waffling (again with the waffling) on this one:

Here's a full view:

And a close-up:

I think I may have mentioned that I wanted to get a few more fun coats, rather than the standard brown and black, because I spend so much time outside walking around. This one looked fun, and I had a VS gift certificate and some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, and a frivolous coat seems like just the thing to spend that money on.

I tend to prefer a tweed where the "grains" are smaller, which is why I'm waffling. And although my birthday money paid for almost half the coat, because of my "must be in love" rule and my strong desire for coats to last more than one season, I'm fussing. The green is a bit brighter than I was expecting, and I'm not sure if it's classic enough. The fit, at least, is perfect, and it actually has a fitted waist, which is really nice.

It amuses me that the waist is up higher than my actual waist is. I can't wear a lot of empire-waisted dresses (which I love) because whoever designs them thinks my boobies should be much higher up on my chest than they actually are. EXCUSE ME, MY BOOBIES DO NOT START IMMEDIATELY UNDERNEATH MY CHIN.

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