Hazard Pay
So I have to walk down to J's office every night until after the holiday.
Which admittedly is only two more nights.
And its not like its so far. And I take the bus most of the way. But STILL!
I mean it does take me twenty minutes which is lame.
But I have also realized that possibly it is not smart. I love the neighborhood that J works in. Its one of my favorites in the city. It has great shops and restaurants. The buildings are beautiful. It just is a really great place.
During the day.
But I forgot one important detail. During the winter, it is DARK at 5:30 at night. And most of those great shops and restaurants are closed at like 5. Which means that you have to walk by a lot of dark doors to get to his office. Dark doors being occupied by homeless people. Now most homeless people are incredibly nice, I have a habit of giving many up by my office money or food just about every day. But some are either not nice or under the influence of something or just not well in the head.
And this neighborhood is actually fairly notorious for violence at night. Not that 5:30 is really so late but you know.
So the first night I started to realize that maybe this wasn't the safest place for a women in high heels and a designer handbag. Especially when three times people jumped out of these dark doorways to ask me for money.
For the record I absolutely did not get so startled that I screamed and then the homeless person was startled and screamed back and then I noticed that she had her daughter with her and I felt terrible. And I absolutely did not give the little girl a candy bar from my purse and the woman five bucks. Or maybe I only did that once.
So the next night I tried to think of a better route. One that did not require me to walk past a long string of closed places or walk under an unlit overpass or corner.
There is no such route.
At least there are only two more days to go with this. I should get hazard pay.
