I don't have many monthly bills to pay. To be exact, I have three.

Even the three I have are too many.

Rent takes precedence over everything else, of course, and I managed to pay it. I needn't have worried about keeping the apartment. My landlord was perfectly happy to accept my explanation of having had a longer weekend than I had expected, which, given that it meant an extra fifty dollars for him, should have come as no surprise to me.

In fact, as things turned out, my immediate downstairs neighbors had vacated their apartment while I was gone, so I moved into it; I wish I hadn't, even though it was a necessity. My new living arrangements are too large and too expensive. The landlord also made me put down a deposit when I signed the lease. What am I going to do with a two-bedroom apartment? I grit my teeth and put a notice up on the bulletin board in the university student center, and a card on the notice wall of the supermarket, because those options were free, and free is all I can afford, but so far there have been no takers, and really, besides my not liking to share my space with other people, I can't imagine anybody wanting to live with me, either. Especially not here. There are worse places to live, but there are also much better places.

The alternative to moving downstairs would have been eviction from an illegal apartment, though. It was only a matter of time.

My landlord was even kind enough to waive the first month's rent on the new apartment. I therefore must only come up with the deposit, plus the late fee of fifty dollars. Paying a late fee on a waived month of rent strikes me as being more like a discounted first month's rent, or possibly like massive unfairness, but whatever he chooses to call it, I have to pay it. The main problem is that I still can't really afford the move or an increase in my monthly rent, especially since I moved in the same month that I ordered occult supplies from a catalog to make ritual garb for an initiation.

Magister would no doubt have reimbursed me for that had I made mention of just how badly the expense hurt me. So, I haven't mentioned it.

It's my other two bills I'm having a hard time with, since the apartment itself has now been paid for until December. If I pay my gas bill, I get to keep my heat and hot water, and I can use the stove in the kitchen; on the other hand, if I pay the electric bill, I get to keep my lights, and the refrigerator stays on. Now that it's finally turning cold outside, a functioning refrigerator isn't strictly necessary, especially since I don't have very much food that needs refrigeration, but lights are another matter.

I decide that the lights are more important than central heating or a functioning stove, now that it's getting dark early, and the sun rises later in the day. I need to be able to find my clothes and see myself in them when I dress for work. I do have a flashlight, but the batteries are dead, and I can't afford to replace them.

More importantly, I need to keep my alarm clock functioning. It's the only clock I have, and it runs on electricity. I need it to make sure I wake up and catch the bus on time if I want to keep my job. I could buy a wind-up clock or a battery-operated travel alarm, but that, like new batteries for my flashlight, or candles and matches for that matter, would require spare funds that I don't have, because I need what little spare change I have for bus fare.

My new job working for the local newspaper is close enough that I can walk to it, the same way I can walk to the university from my apartment, but there is no way I'm walking home from work after dark, not in this neighborhood. I'm working a split shift, nine in the morning until one, several hours off, then five to nine at night, which means it will be dark when I get off work. I can spend my spare afternoon hours in the library. It's only a few blocks away from the call center. But I can't sleep there overnight. The university's nearby student center isn't open around the clock, either. I'm the right age to be a student and probably still look vaguely collegiate, and if necessary, could crash on a couch on campus and pass convincingly for an exhausted student taking a nap, but I can't do that when the student center is closed for the evening. I have to go home at night. That means taking the bus, which means I need to hang onto what spare change I have. Each trip costs eighty-five cents.

I have a coat and warm clothing to layer, and I have an electric blanket to hide under, so I don't think I'll freeze if the heat gets turned off for a while. In a few weeks, if I need heat and can't afford to pay my gas bill with a late fee and a new deposit, I can always buy a space heater. The space heater will cost less than the gas bill would. I only need to keep my bedroom warm, anyway; I don't really use the rest of the apartment. I'll still have to do without hot water, but I can sponge bathe when I'm at home, and take my actual soaking baths at Magister's place. At least I don't have to pay for my own running water.

I realize I'll also have to do my laundry at his place for a while. I've been hand-washing my dirty laundry in the bathtub and letting it drip dry to avoid spending quarters I don't have on the washer and dryer downstairs, but I can't imagine doing this in cold water in the middle of the winter, and I certainly won't have quarters to spare on machine-washing my laundry in the near future if I've already had to choose between the convenience of machine-washing my laundry and the convenience of having enough money to cover my bills during these next few weeks. I hope he doesn't mind.

Third day on the job, and I've managed to get my name on the Top Ten Sellers board. It's on the Welcome, New Employees! board as well, so if job security here is based on name recognition, that's a very good thing. Of course, job security isn't really based on name recognition. It's based on sales. I'll need to keep mine up.

This shouldn't pose too much of a problem. Newspaper subscriptions are a very easy thing to sell, and the call center that takes up the entire fifth floor of the downtown building the newspaper uses just switched from manually dialed phones to a computerized auto dialer network, which makes it much easier to reach enough people that consistently hitting quota is possible. I tried one job on the northeast side of town selling magazines, like I had been doing at the last call center I worked at, and I only lasted a day there due to the old-fashioned telephones. They said I sounded great, and that I would probably be one of the best sales representatives in the room if only I could work the phones more quickly, but I couldn't, so that position didn't work out. Apparently, I need a computerized system to do my dialing for me if high sales volume is a job requirement.

Working for the local newspaper company has its advantages. I get free newspapers. I also get to sell a product that everyone seems to want, at least, compared to the magazine bundles I used to sell (If you subscribe to these four hunting and sporting magazines for five years, sir, a portion of your purchase will be donated to a cancer charity! And just think of all the money you save compared to buying these off the rack every month!) Yes, rejections are still a part of the job, but they don't seem to be as rude, or as frequent, at least not from what I've noticed so far. Maybe I just need to give the job more time. And at least I won't have to wait too long to be paid. Like most telemarketing positions, this one has a weekly paycheck. It will take until after my ninety-day probationary period for me to see the commissions from my sales, for some reason I didn't quite understand when going through my orientation, but at least I won't have to wait too long for my hourly wages, which are a whole dollar above minimum.

The pay is a bit low and slow for this line of work, which might explain why the turnover is high here. There's a large call center north of here that pays twice the hourly wage that the newspaper pays, plus a high commission, and it's on a major bus line, but it's owned by fundamentalist Christians and the job involves fundraising and push polling for right-wing politicians and causes. Scratch that.

I do wish the piped-in office music here in the call center wasn't as automatic as the number dialing. For the most part, it's inoffensive pop music, selected for us in the hopes of inspiring us with peppy, upbeat tunes, and I like it well enough, but there is little variety. After a while, all the male vocalists start to sound like Lionel Richie or Michael Bolton, and all the female vocalists like Amy Grant or Paula Abdul. Certain songs come up more often than others, too. I have decided that there is a special room in Hell reserved for overly motivational sales managers, and in that room, "I Wanna Be Rich" plays on a nonstop loop. Then the ranks of damned managers will see just how motivated they really are when they are forced to hear that song, while they wait for the people they are calling to pick up the phone.

I don't see what being rich has to do with being filled with love, peace, and happiness, anyway. Being rich just pays the bills. I might have had love when I was rich, but peace and happiness? No, I didn't have those. Good grief, what stupid lyrics.