an excercise in futility

Today I walked to my mental health place to meet my new caseworker and do annual paperwork. My new caseworker is a man, and on the phone he sounded smarmy. "How long has it been since you've seen your caseworker?" he asked.

"I don't know--a year?" I said.

"We'll have to do something about that," he said, which is not bad, but the way he said it.

Anyway, he wasn't there. I had a two o'clock appointment, signed in at 1:55, and waited half an hour before feeling pissed enough to re-approach the desk person. "I'm here to see Anthony?" I said to the desk person.

"He's not here," she said.

"I have a two o'clock appointment with him," I insisted.

"I know that," she said. "He must be out sick."

"Okay," I said and headed out the door.

"Will you call next week and reschedule?" she asked.

I said yeah and kept going. So it was all a waste of time, but I got my walk in.

The walk--it's all on a busy street called Watt, and there's no sidewalk for part of the time. Today there was three traffic cones by the side of the road for no apparent reason. On the way there, I was walking toward two teenage boys, and as we passed one another, I think one of them called me a cow. This didn't bother me too much--after all, I like cows a great deal.

On the way home, I saw a woman outside of a dentist's office playing a ukulele. And I saw a remarkable-looking man in a motorized wheelchair. I felt something like, "The world is a wonderful place, and I'm glad I'm not dead."