the good:

there seems to be a lot of local not sure i want to say charities, but help. non-profit help. for instance, there is a local catholic church which you can go to and they will provide you with a $20 gas voucher, food, a $10 grocery store voucher for such things as milk, eggs, cheese, and a thrift store voucher for clothing, and if need be they will help you with your bills. no preaching, no pressure, just doing their christian thing (and honestly, i kind of appreciate that, cause most places would want to "witness" to you) there are other places, one i was told about that if you get there at 5:00 am (heh, like that will every happen), they'll give you a bunch of groceries, including meat.

we of course also have the dcf (i know it as dhs where i come from) but it's department of child and family services here. if on disability they they will pick up not only your monthly medicare premium (mine runs around $100 a month) but will cover what medicare doesn't. they gave me an allowance of $850 a month medical including prescriptions. in nc, of course because my husband had a job, i had to buy gap insurance to take care of such things with co-pays and even then, with my prescriptions, there was a cap.

here i even qualified for $16 a month in food stamps.

the bad:

don't get me wrong, i don't mind tourists. they help pay my son's wage, and i don't mind when i ride the bus helping them find sites of interests or good restaurants.

but ugh, their driving drives me crazy! you can always tell a tourist, first by their out of state license plate, natch, but second by their 10 mph less than the limit driving speed. you who know me know i always get a little ticked by drivers in general. but man, the stretch of A1A through Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach isn't that long a stretch. If you've been here for a few days which i kind of assume by weds you have been, as vacations usually run from weekend to weekend, *sigh* just drive the speed limit. please? it's not that big of an area and you should have the lay of the land by now.

the ugly:

i had someone tell me that cape canaveral had more AA meetings per capita either in the state or in the country (i can't remember which) one has to only live in my neighborhood to know this. my friend tracy came over today to ask me for cigarettes. she's out of money. see she works her butt off in a kitchen while her old man doesn't work. he's supposed to find work but hasn't yet (yeaaaaah...let's say he really hasn't tried) it came down between a choice of cigarettes or beer. she scraped up enough money for a beer. she flat out tells me she's an alcoholic, and of course we all know, she goes to work drunk and they give her beer at work for free. she tells me she has to drink a beer to keep her from going into dts. her old man is equally just as much an alcoholic. i see him coming back from the store all the time with his own beer. i've seen him drunk at 9 or 10 in the morning. and he's asked me to loan him money to buy beer.

and every day i see the same man stumble his way to the beach store and had the misfortune to be behind him in line one day as he argued with Neil about the transaction. same man, every day, stumbling his way up to the store.

then there is our rather large homeless population. they all ride bikes with their little make shift baskets on the front or back with all their worldly possessions in them. they ride bikes (or so i'm told) because they've lost their licenses due to dui's. of course, apparently, they don't have a home either.

and even pam, who has been trying to rescue that poor boy for years from his horrid, crack addicted mother who made him perform unspeakable acts to pay for her addiction, has her own issues with alcohol (and don't think that boy goes along with it, he hates it---but he takes care of her) just tonight she comes to me and asks me to drive her and him to a restaurant so they can have some fun. she'd been drinking all day and didn't want to drive. i had to give her cudos for that. so i drove them and picked them up. really, what are neighbors for?

so although that may make things sound a little bleak around here, i've met some nice folks with good hearts. listen, we all have issues, don't we? i've been helped and i've helped them.

and hey, after the crappy experiences with the multiple users i met in my hometown and charlotte, i'll take these folks with their one flaw and good hearts, who don't take advantage of their fellow human beings.