My girlfriend and I woke up around 7:00 a.m. in the tent. We laid awake and we talked for a little while. Then we started getting up and getting ready for the day.
I had my girlfriend follow me the night before to my campsite and I had her park her car at the dunkin’ donuts parking lot a little ways down the street. I had asked one of the dunkin’ donuts employees if I could park my car in the back and it wouldn’t get towed since there were no signs. The employee told me that they bring a truck in everyday to offload food for dunkin’ donuts. The young kid at the register in dunkin’ donuts told me that if I parked the car in the parking spaces in front that nobody would bother it and it wouldn’t get towed.
At around 8:00 a.m. I drove my girlfriend back to her car at Dunks, her car was still there which I was very happy about. We gave our kisses and we said our goodbyes. And I headed off to work.
When I arrived at work a little before 9:00 a.m. Mauricio was at the shelter. We’ve been looking for him last week cuz he had left the psych ward at the community behavioral Health Center. Mauricio told us that he went outside for a cigarette at the CSS unit, and he just decided to leave and had been sleeping outside for the past couple days. I was able to call over to the stabilization unit at the community behavioral Health Center, what they call a dual diagnosis unit or modern day psych ward. They were willing to take Mauricio back. So myself and another shelter worker drove Mauricio back over there.
So I don’t forget, cuz I’m writing this much later. The community behavioral Health Center stabilization unit was able to find Mauricio a group home where he can live and people can help him with his schizophrenia. This was a win for everybody, since it was very hard to provide care for Mauricio while he lived in the shelter.
After I helped coordinate care for Mauricio , we had a big barbecue at the shelter for all the shelter guests. There was all kinds of food, drinks non-alcoholic!, and everybody had a good time.
After work I drove to my campsite. I began going through my days and going over some of my writings. I projected into the future so that I could have an overview of the 366 days that I have lived homeless. And when I say homeless I mean living outside, staying in my girlfriend’s bed, living out of a backpack, staying with friends, I’ve never slept in my truck or car, but I have gone without a home this whole year.
While I was counting the days I realized that I had made a mistake in my calculations. I ended up spending the whole night going back over every single day so that I can make sure that every day was numbered appropriately all the way up to 366 days. I went through the blog, I went through the YouTube, and I went through my Homeless 366 word document and I had to change numbers and many days so that they all added up and I had everything numbered correctly. I wasn’t able to finish this until about 2:00 a.m. in the morning