Credit maxed out, debit down to double digits.

Postmates impossible due to snow.

Last week tried to go out mid-blizzard and got stuck in—literally slowed to a stop, had to dismount, and wade out of—the middle of a snowed-in intersection.

To deliver a calzone—a single calzone!—to a grad student who—this muhfucker saw me balaclava’d up, slipping and sliding in a snowsuit—didn’t even tip.

Four dollars even for an hour-long mish that left me damn near hypothermic.

So yeah.

When I got that 1 a.m. call, to be in DC by 6, I was down.

Wasn’t tryna move back in with the ma.

That hit way too many mid-twenties-artist-guy-sensitive-bro-broken-by-a-breakup tropes.

Plus—all I heard was the $500 day rate.

All I needed to hear.

First thing was getting the box on the road.

Outta the makeshift back driveway I’d solo-jimmied last fall.

My backyard’s back gate formerly a fence separated from the residential one-way back there by a two-dumpsters’-worth pile of trash, branches, random debris.

Plastic bags of human shit.

Syringes.

But I had, late last fall, when no longer wanting to deal with having to park the thing come first snow, noticed tire treads back there.

Had figured I could get the van up, into the yard, and stash it off-road, if I could clear the way.

So hazmatted up and went to town on the trash mountain, clearing what I could. Then sawing the fence off at its contact points. Before reattaching it, with hinges, so it swung out like a driveway gate.

Everything smooth sailing till, while tryna flatten out the inclined ‘driveway’—uneven dirt and rocks and glass shards—I hit this huge concrete slab that looked like it had just been dumped there.

Like someone had started building a legit driveway, then abandoned it.

No cap—a pair of Champion tear-away sweatpants molded into the center of the block.

Like they were like Yo, let’s build this driveway. Here, dump this concrete. Oh wait. We got that b-ball game to get to. Fuck this, warm-ups starting, we out!

*tears away tearaways, throws em in the wet concrete, dips*

Tried pickaxing down the concrete mogul, kept pickaxing it, chipping off shards, till I couldn’t anymore. Till pickaxing it further would require a jackhammer.

I didn’t have a jackhammer.

Probably coulda just left it.

Aborted the mish.

Maybe shoulda.

But nah. At this point.

After all those bricks and rocks and slabs I’d dug up, arranged.

I was a road-building peasant-slave from Roman times; I couldn’t stop now.

So rammed the van up there, wedging plywood/rocks beneath the tires for traction and scraping tf out of my van’s underbelly.

But got it in!

Only—I hadn’t even considered moving it all winter. And now I needed to. To drive it to DC. At 1 a.m.

2 a.m now.