Front Desk Animal Stories

“Oh really?”

Hi everyone!  It’s me, your friendly neighborhood Bear.  And once again, I”m just gonna ask for some help because I don’t know what else to do.

I’m about $200 shy of having my rent and bills paid.  I need your help.  I’m working full time and looking for a second job, but what I have isn’t enough.  I just can’t make it with what I have.  I need some extra support, until I  can make it through.  Like I said in my last plea for help, I don’t really have any seriously marketable skills.  I can sing and I can bartend, and I’m a decent receptionist, but that’s about it, and right now all I’ve got it the one job that I barely make ends meet with as it is.  I am looking for a second job, but with my schedule always changing at the one job, finding a second that can accommodate me is difficult, especially around this time of year.  And even if I find a job today, I wouldn’t get paid for another two weeks at the very least, and then I’d be two weeks past rent and the loan payment, and a week past my phone and PG&E.  There is a 5 day grace period on rent, so technically I have until the 5th to pay, but without some help, I won’t have it regardless of when I have to pay it.

So here’s what I can do for you if you can help me, using my set of skills, which, granted, are not awesome:

I can create you a personalized drink!  I’ll look through your blog, ask a few questions, and come up with a drink that’s all yours!

I can come up with a craft beer flight for you!  Same deal, I’ll look through your stuff, ask some questions, and suggest 3-5 beers that you may enjoy.

I can sing you a song!  I know a fairly wide array, and if I don’t know one you’d like sung for you, I can try to learn it!

I also am pretty good at editing!  If you have a resume or a fic or anything you’d like read and edited, I can do that for you!

I don’t have a KoFi because…I just…I don’t have one.  I don’t want to start a GoFundMe because I feel like those are more long term?  I have a PayPal, and I have VenMo, and those links are below.  I just need some help, y’ens.  Any help.  I’m scared and depressed and anxious and losing weight that I don’t have to lose, especially because in order to pay bills so I still have a roof over my head and a phone to contact people, I’ve had to skimp on buying food.  Which, I know, isn’t ideal, but it’s what’s necessary right now.  Besides, when you’re stressing about how you’re going to make sure you have a place to live next week, you’re not particularly hungry.  So yay me?  I guess?

Anyway.  Here’s my PayPal: https://paypal.me/TerryDownward

And here’s my VenMo: https://venmo.com/code?user_id=1579463301136384798

Very accidentally, the main and indeed only bedtime story my toddlers want to hear at night is one about Gaiman’s Sandman.

Please believe me, I didn’t plan this deliberately. I don’t think I could have.

There’s a kind of delirium state parents enter when they reach exhaustion and will say anything to make their kids lie down quietly. You say anything, hoping it’ll have a calming effect. I’d be unsurprised to hear footage of myself reciting Chinese restaurant combo meals.

At some point, I must have started rambling about the Sandman. It’s on my mind enough; I teach it to middle schoolers. 

My kids had me in the endless loop of, “Daddy, I want a kiss. And a hug. And a high five. And a fist bump. Put my blanket on!” So I mentioned the Endless.

I rambled out something about Morpheus and kept going. It was made in an impaired state of consciousness and never intended to be repeated.

Until the next night.

Eager eyes. Blankets clutched.

“Daddy. Tell me the Sandman.”

A bedtime story is a ritual, and children will inform you when you are doing it wrong. Through a state of narrative natural selection, our family has settled on an orthodox telling of Gaiman’s Sandman for Toddlers.

To whit:

“If you close your eyes and lie still-”

This is the Very Important Part for the parent side of the equation.

“…then the Sandman, Morpheus, the Prince of Stories, the Lord Shaper, the King of Dreams will come…”

One must take care not to get the order wrong. 

“…He’ll come with his bone helmet, and black robe, and glowing red necklace, and bag of magic sand…”

Yesterday, my two-and-a-half-year-old son politely informed me that I had forgotten the necklace, but no recriminations would be made if I immediately made a correction.

“… and he’ll put his magic sand on your eyelids…”

The children have reasoned out for themselves that “magic” sand doesn’t hurt your eyes the way normal sand does. They’re familiar with the anarchy of the daycare playground.

“…and he’ll send you to the Dreaming and give you amazing dreams.”

There is wiggle room in the descriptive word. Awesome dreams. Incredible dreams. Fantastic dreams.

Never “good dreams.”

I don’t believe Morpheus would approve of that promise.

If one cares, one can mention meeting Matthew the raven, Merv Pumpkinhead the scarecrow, or Lucien the librarian of all the Books That Never Were.

This is generally just garnish.

The ritual is complete. The children are appeased.

Sometimes, I will have to do it twice.

Even if they’ve both in the same room, six feet apart.

Separate performances will be demanded.

My greatest hope in this is that one day they’ll be rebellious gothy teenagers, deep in the epoch wherein Dad Is Not Cool.

They’ll approach me with the family copy of Preludes and Nocturnes in hand and eyes overflowing with questions.