A Bad Taste In My Mouth

Let's see...what has happened in the last couple weeks of my life?  These past couple of weeks has been really strange and epic all in one.

I contracted pink eye like 3 weeks ago.  My best guess is it happened at Nativity House when I had to clean poop off of one of the bathroom walls.  Not kidding.  It happens fairly frequently.  Anyways, I figured out an equation of what I believe happened.   Poo particles + my wall scrubbing = pink eye for me.  Awesome.  I went to this semi-shady clinic, but I figured it was just pink eye, so how bad could things get screwed up right? Wrong.  I took my drops for the correct amount of time yet things got worse.  Turns out, after an appointment with a real eye doctor, I was allergic to the original medicine.

Thankfully, I got new drops, but things can never be that easy with me.  I learned that 1-4% of people have strange reactions to these specific drops.  Yep, you guessed it, I'm one of those people.  After each drop (4x a day) came this awful taste in my mouth that lasted like 45 minutes each time.  The closest thing I can compare it to is that taste you get post-vomit and pre-toothbrush.  My housemate Mike told me I looked like a cat hacking up a hair ball when this effect set in because I was constantly on the verge of gagging.  I'm almost fully recovered now.  If my eyes don't fall out when I put in my contacts tomorrow for the first time this month, I am cured.  If not, I'm S.O.L...I s'pose.

This last week of work culminated into a 17 year old girl and her "23" year old boyfriend screaming expletives at me when I told them to leave.  *No one under 18 without a parent or guardian because of liability with other guests.*  Topping that series of events can only be described in two words...Preacher Man.

There are 2 guests that have come from who knows where and have taken the Tacoma homeless system by storm these past few weeks.  Let me give you a little description of these characters.

"Preacher" man is a large African American man who likes to sing hymns, read from the Bible (or his own version of the Bible), smoke crack, occasionally get violet, curse people, and just chaos overall.  He sounds wonderful right?!  Anyways, his wife is fairly sweet and I actually feel really bad for her.  Preacher really dominates her as well as spiritually abuses her.  I'm pretty sure that June is intellectually disabled in some capacity.  For example, she is not allowed to talk to other people that smile at her because "even the Devil smiles at you."  However, she stays with husband and refuses to get help to be away from him, so there's only so much we can do.

When I say that they have taken Tacoma by storm, it's true.  In less than 2 weeks they have been banned from 95% of all of the homeless resources that the city offers...churches included.   Nativity House was their last resort, until Sunday happened.

Preacher was up to his usual causing commotion as soon as he stepped through our door.  *Let me also note that all of the guests can't stand these two because of the havoc they wreak at every establishment.* Basically, we knew that Dante (Preacher) was going to get himself kicked out for the day, it's pretty much inevitable...the calm before the storm.  Well, to make a long story short(er) Dante got in my face, harassed me, and then started to subtly threaten.  Not cool.  My boss Dominique told him to leave because he was causing a commotion.  His response..."A commotion...I'll give you a commotion!"

Let me paraphrase what came out of his mouth followed by his wife's.  "Nativity House is cursed and calamity will fall upon this building." "I curse every single person in this building."  "You will all feel the wrath of God and face eternal damnation."  "Mt. Rainier is going to blow up (it's a volcano and if it blows, Tacoma is gone) and cover you all in it's fiery lava." Etc. Etc. The list goes on.  Case and point...according to this crack-smoking man, I'm cursed.  Shoot.  Oh well, I'm still gonna pray for them daily.

Needless to say, we banned them too.  In fact, I was really sad that I had no video camera handy or video capability on my phone...the whole scenario was hilarious.  Lots of booing homeless people with this man yelling curses at everyone.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and the start of my longest work week thus far.  For those of you that don't know...I work EVERY holiday all day.  Anyways, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone near and far!