Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Friday, July 19
I spent part of the morning at the veteran service office (VSO) following up on what I was working on Wednesday, trying to help a veteran get appointments with a civilian doctor scheduled by another contractor than the one who is making them now…Recall the current contractor does not have a doctor in town and the second one does and the veteran is too frail to travel to the big city.
Pat, the VSO in a county a bit south of here, had left a message in response to my email that contained a useful contact at the VA hospital…Unfortunately, his voicemail wasn’t accepting new messages, so I texted him…And, apparently, while I was listening to Pat’s five-minute message, the patient advocate I’d called Wednesday returned my call. Damn, I wish I’d’ve taken his call because they are tuff to get on the phone. I called him back and, of course, he didn’t answer.
His voicemail greeting was long like all VA greetings are because they are obliged to mention the VA crisis line, designed for vets thinking of killing themselves, and how to access it…As we’ve noted here before, going thru this earlier in my tenure here led to my now-classic line no, I wasn’t thinking of suicide before I called this VA number, but I am now good gravy, get me to whom I am calling.
Wanting to talk to someone about this led to me being hungry all day…I was late getting out of the house this morning and I didn’t have time to pack a lunch…I could have left and gotten something to eat, of course, but if someone called I wanted to be here for it because I’m here to help veterans and not go out for lunch and phone tag could go on all on summer.
Paul called me back about 1410…I briefed him on what the deal was and he looked up the veteran’s file, asked me some questions, and banged out a message to someone in Denver…I asked for a contact name and number, but he advised I don’t bother with that just yet, that they could get rather snitty at outside calls …That is silly, of course, but I recall hearing that about them also, from someone else…Paul said if I hadn’t heard from them by “C-O-B Tuesday” to call him and we’ll figure something out…I’m not in the VSO Tuesdays, of course, so if there isn’t a message waiting for me when I come in on Wednesday morning, I’ll call Paul and report the latest.
Other than that, it was dead slow at the VSO, just like it’s been all week…I feel guilty taking money, there were no walk-ins today…Well, I don’t feel guilty, I’m paid to be in the office, available to veterans, their families and even the public, and this job runs in cycles, but still, I can’t be of service to veterans if they don’t come in.
My stomach is still a bit tender from my Calzone gorge-fest last Monday…I came home from work rather hungry because I didn’t bring a lunch and I had a couple of sandwiches, one chicken and one peanut butter and peach jam and my stomach started objecting shortly thereafter…I don’t know why…I mean, I’ve been feeding it two sandwiches at a time since I was in diapers…It’s accustomed to it…But it was rebelling anyway.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log:
2230 Saturday until 0530 Friday…Officially, 7.0 hours for the night but boy, I didn’t really start sleeping soundly until after midnight…Regular readers of this crap know we run into this from time to time on Thursdays and on no other day: despite the fact I am tired, I am not sleepy…I don’t understand this at all and I know you don’t either…I checked, and we haven’t had this since early June.
1930 Friday until 2130 Friday…I’ll be honest, I am not entirely certain when I drifted off, but I did get some rest and I am willing to call it two hours if you are.
36 hours for the week, a rather low total.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.
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