Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Haven't made much use of the time I've had to update this blog. I have had an impressive stretch of time, and a heavy load of depression to go with it. Am back at the old Company, albeit in a different--physically less demanding, but far more challenging for a person with ADD--position, and am now going to work a five-night, eleven-hour week. As it will emerge, this should be a very good thing. The writer doesn't have a lot of time in which to do so, but will nonetheless try to tell the reader why.
Yesterday, Sunday, afternoon, the chest-cold-besieged writer got ambushed by the landlord and her beloved other tenant, David. I wasn't exactly expecting this. At about three in the afternoon, they were upstairs banging about with uncommon vigor. I'd worked the night before, was hacking sick, and the noise was unwelcome. So I took a chance to get up and pee, which was when the ambush occurred. I was wearing a thrift-shop muumuu at the time.
There were those dreadful words, "We have to talk." Usually, those may be interpreted to mean, "You have to talk, and I have to sit there and listen at you and feel a creeping horror related to your misinterpretation of some behavioral quirk of mine." In fact, this happened, indirectly. Prissy David accused me of going not only into his room, which I have yet to do, but through one of his drawers, leaving the thing gawping open.
If I had not been taken so aback, I might have stated that I'd been curious about why he'd left his light on and drawer cracked for two days in a row, but then decided that his activities were truly none of my business, especially after he'd taken to writing 'David' on every damn thing in the frigerator. I might have put forth that my snoop drive is as healthy as anybody else's, and if I was indeed snooping, these points: a), why stop at one drawer only, and b), why leave the ucker open? I mean, du-OH-oh! Come ON, you incestuous nits!
I was also accused of something about poopy toilet paper, which, in addition to being other than true, harks back to early childhood, penurious parents, and a dyspeptic septic tank was easily overfed. All of that was foretranslatable into not flushing toilet paper, but rather taking it out in the trash. At present we have a little animal that digs in trash. She took my trash into David's bathroom. David seemed to think I'd not only used his bathroom, but left crappy paper in it, on the floor. That bit of Olympian conclusion-leaping, backed entirely by the landlady, was violentlyinsulting. These last seven, eight years, have been more than hellish; they've been on the cusp of right-F-there. I don't actually need indignities like that one there to further disassemble my spine. I've long doubted the saying about what not killing a body making it stronger; I am more than ever convinced that non-stop beat-downs make one increasingly bitter, more and more willing to get all of this over with, waiting for that one blow to the conscience that says, "God won't care; in fact, it's in His will. You just go on now."
These days I'm a little feral. I admit it. I am probably responsible, in fact, for whatever happened to David's drawer, as in the three weeks in between amazon gigs, I did some day labor and hung out with some homeless guys, both chronic alcoholics in dire need of food (which I had), shelter (cold, wet weather), and a long, hot bath. The one dude was drunk, got lost in the purple labyrynth of hallway, may have wandered into David's room and let his natural inclinations take over for a minute. The other stayed one night sober and was quite reserved, but showed up this Wednesday morning considerably in his cups at 11 a.m., just walked through an open door that I did not leave unlocked. Someone else did that, and David was home by this point, so I doubt that the drunken fellow had anything to do with squat that day, save freaking me out pretty badly. Af the landlord's behest, he left, went staggering down the street in a bad rain. I have yet to see him again. I guess I was using him as my own warped sort of social-sciences diarama, one that moved.
After that, it was back to the'zon. I can prove this with a printout of my time-punches. I was where I said I was, and when I was not, I was sleeping. I have four minutes and a whole 'nother part of this story to tell, the part about food theft and their plan to rehab my food issues by making me cook. I really think not, but as stated earlier, I was not in a position to explain my issues, nor to make a case for why immersion therapy sounded like a really bad idea: I have not binged/purged for over a year. I'm not 12-stepping that, but rather, reacting to the revulsion it inspires in me. Not doing it makes me feel better about what is left of myself. If not that pure, then that simple.
Will explain somemore later.
ch, green
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Since I was up until four or so this morning, I kept putting off getting out of my warm bed with its horse blanket cover (really: I'd mentioned to the landlord that I was cold at night, and she goes to WalMart and buys this pretty blanket in desert corals and purples, except that it has the texture of a horse blanket, albeit one that would disintegrate before one had a chance to wash it), even though the room screamed of daylight and rattled with traffic outside. The cat kept running in and out, in and out, making a ferocious noise for such a small animal. I got up, dressed, was going to go first to the greasy spoon--so greasy one must, or should, mop one's food, and again--before catching a bus downtown, but caught sight of myself and my weed-whacked hair. I combed the mess into a sort of submissions owner, gathered money and keys, and left.
The restaurant was closed. It allows some old guy who was dropped on his head by King Kong to pretend that he works there. He was outside, preparing to drive the billboard away. I stopped him, asked him why the place advertises that it closes at three and is always locked by two thirty. Didn't stick around for an explanation; heard a bus coming, but that bus wasn't gonna wait on me.
Began to cuss, softly, but that didn't last. May the canon strike me dead, or at least silly--the day was simply too pleasant, more than half-full with something that smelled like old promise that hadn't begun to go bad. I needed to get this week's rent. Needed as well to exercise a bit; since I'd quit the job that required that I walk some ten-fifteen miles a shift, I'd almost immediately gained five pounds that to me looked like ten. So I conceded the battle that had probably already been won the moment I left the house. (The roommate D. had been out back, on the deck, growing his remarkable cigarette butt garden. We'd talked about the funny little cat. He'd worked all that time I'd been watching televison, and then gotten up, to smoke, of all things! Such a slur on all that beauty.)
So I walked, toward town. Took a street I was familiar with, but from another angle. It was a street like mine, if somewhat better kept up, historical-district houses sandblasted into small, arty businesses, homes of the wealthy, and the occasional sprawling shared dwelling, these less-kempt, their dying lawns overgrown and mossy with dead leaves, their occupants on porches drinking tall boys at three in the afternoon. *That* is where I've been going with this: first I heard, and then noticed, two men, one about twenty and the other closer to my age, almost sunning themselves like lizards, loudly conversing. The young one brandished a naked tallboy--couldn't make out the brand--that could've gotten him a one-way trip to jail, if a cop who cared had been riding by. Open-container: had the can been partially clad in brown paper, or a doggie sweater, or anything, even, there would have been no problem. This is a strange little town.
It was at this point that I almost collided with a tail of electric wire, dangling from the kind newscasters warn ppl to stay away from when heavy winds or wayward cars bring them down. Seems that I had been too preoccupied with the idea of drinking beer at three p.m. that I failed to notice the thing hanging in front of my face like some sort of mutant flagellum. This was not good, not good that the thing was hanging there, impotent as it may have been, and not at all good that I was so wrapped up in my whiplash of bad thoughts that I could have walked right into it, my last active set of synapses crowing something about the day's first beer, the many pleasures of watching the working world, from day laborers all the way on up to the gals in--gaack--gauchos and knee-high stiletto boots, guys in cell phones and priceless, if only because I never bothered to price them, suits--marching around town round about the noon hour, the civil servants in their power clothing and those who can buy almost-almost-anything, riding around in the back of cars that cost more than many ppl in this town could realistically think of earning in a year.
I think I got sidetracked. Also, I think I am really nervous, about not drinking, for one--if I want a place to stay, I cannot afford to do so. Literally. Also, if I want a job to tide me through, it is quite possible that if I drink, I just might not deserve to get one. Didn't drink last night--was a battle right down to the cold and absurd hour of midnight--but took a trazadone at one a.m., didn't sleep 'til four, and hence, couldn't, or wouldn't, get up until almost twelve hours later. Mired again in a suckpit of fear. That's what got the mastodons, no? I'm pretty much convinced that that, not clinical alcoholism, is gonna sink me.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Ah, hell. I'm not trying to be rude. I was going somewhere with that. And it was kind of funny, but I'm on a public puter, and the blade is descending. I was running round the barn with the bit between my teety, going on about how hard it is to to something--say, look for work STAT--whenyour teeth have been repeatedly bashed to bloody gum--and also abaout my number one demon, who has been giving me some heavy-duty mangling lately. The bitch can wrestle. Like the debbil with St. John.
C ya
Good cold day. Just like a beer ought to be. Yesterday, Sunday in the States, was a weird one. Didn't get out of my muumuu, let alone the house, and watched 'Miami Ink' for five hours straight. (Hey Jackal, thanks about my little guy. We were able to have a grave dug--no dead wagon. That was a blessing right there.) After going through the classifieds and finding not much there, I had a low-grade anxiety attack, and then another, the second about the fact that I'm having anxiety attacks again, especially in relation to something I *ought* to be able to break down into itty bitty pieces and process, and map out, and march through to some sort of benign if not entirely painless resolution.
I'm talking about job-hunting on the temporary circuit. The easiest kind of job-hunting, or should be.
What gives me heebie-jeebies first is the matter of the telephone. I do not have one, nor do I want one. (Every time I've moved in the past seven years, it's been as though I've crawled, fallen, something, deeper under cover, and I do not presently feel as though I wish to be found, lonely though as I may be. Odd. I have this old Trac-fone that I don't really know how to work, and b/c I have mismanaged this current allottment of money, I can't actually afford to buy a card at the Wal-Mart on the outskirts of Lex and put more time on the thing. The landlady has offerred to let me use hers. She has Vonage. You know, the annoying commercials and endless minutes, I guess. I guess she has a landline too, b/c she is a retired psychologist who still practises now and then, for mad money, or something.
Oh, make no mistake: she *wants* me to use the phone, because she *wants* me to get another job, b/c she *wants* me to pay the rent. I asked, she answered--she will o
Friday, October 20, 2006
Check this out, Howard: as long as I've been on this earth, funding wars and other abhorrent activities while allowing my mind, and occasionally, feet, to be eaten alive--working, I mean--I have never once properly resigned. I did so this time, and the damn thing, the hard copy, gets lost, its information otherwise mishandled and the fact that I choose to quit rather than be fired is not known to anyone in, ahem, authority until the end of last week!
So. The staffing agency that helped me get myself into this fiasco employs this rotating cast of youngish white males somewhat nebulously known as "job coaches", who patrol the client's factory armed with sheafs of data on the temp hires, ready to ambush same with inspiring data on how poorly said temp is doing at any given time.
I believe they got this tactic from Viet Nam. What's next? Bamboo beneath the fingertips? Mush! Mush! Tacks in the shoes? When the feet are screaming for some relief from humping marathon stints over concrete that starts to get a little *hot* after a few three or four miles, the thinking seems to be that adding a tack or two, perhaps dipped in c. dificil for drama, somehow encourages the poor probie to transcend the experience of pain.
Anyway, I'm already getting nostalgic for a gig I haven't even left yet. Can't cite which Sedaris I have stolen this emotion from (and if I had the bucks I'd dive into that Augesten Burroughs guy--he sounds like a gay male me, only infinitely more together). I talk to ppl I had previously stared straight through (only because I didn't know what to say to them). I cuss less. I smile at the pictures of dogs and horses on the covers of some of the things I pick up to scan. I found my allergy pills, and have taken them, as well as a non-toxic dose of ibu, and I don't feel so bad, no. I don't feel so bloody bad. I might even qualify for the court tonight: hit that golden '85' that has eluded me for eight weeks now, except if I did that, I'd have to not miss a day for the next two months, including six-day weeks as the holidays encroach. (Tense? Yes, why yes. I am tense.) My attendance hasn't qualified me to sit in the smokers' cage, nor to take the arm of my father as I walk to the center of the football field, where I am presented with a bouquet, a tiara, a rifle to twirl two years later, a nursing degree, a husband, a child, a brain that works half-right one third of the time, a credit card, a mastectomy with reconstruction, an SUV, a jumping Pomeranian, and a horse that lives in someone else's barn that I can never visit because I am so very very busy.
Big mush? Nope? Not me. Just trying to figger out how to get another little job and pay rent for the next two weeks. This shit is toxic. Trust me.
Tonight is my last night at this job. Couldn't do it. So much for recognising limitations.
My little horse was put down a week ago tomorrow. This was coming. He was a darling creature.
I have to do the temporary-job-hunting thing again, this time in bad weather, under the uncomfortably comfortable pressure-cooker circumstances I know so well.
The beast-- or beasts, at least two of them, are restless; one, active; I have a story about it, but that will have to wait. I must punch in. Out. Something.
hoss
Friday, October 06, 2006
For the first time in a long time, I gave a two-weeks' notice yesterday.
Halfway through the shift, this guy from the temporary agency tells me that I have too many "points"--you don't get sick here, you have "occasions"--and that I will be immediately terminated for attendance reasons unless the investigation he indicates that he will launch--ROCKETS!!!--vindicates me somehow.
Irony?
I suppose that I have been "vindicated", then. if only because I plan to leave. I can't do this job the way they want me--or anybody--to. May have to do with the ADD, the eyes, both, neither. My right knee has strep throat, could use a draft horse-sized shot of extended-release lidocaine or something else good. "Mor-phine," it snivels in stuttering rhythm with my gait. Then I think of poor little Charger, who may have bought it today, if the dead wagon could come. That is pain.
(Nice transition. The author reaches around to thump herself on the back, and misses, hits her neck. Her neck is sore.)
The manner in which I set of my trazadone this a.m. didn't really help. Still tired, muzzy, easily irked--and if that stupid fuck of an assistant manager comes after me for leaving a little early today, I just might get myself fired on the spot. Dreamed today that I was in a couple of fights. I iniated one of them. That is not like me. That is not good.
Peace out.Code pink. Vote green.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Back, again. Hitched a ride out Leestown way instead of waiting fifteen minutes in the rain for a bus; driver was--get this--a *nice* old guy, and as he drove, he told me about a friend of his who had a Factory X experience similar to mine: a lot of pain, not much rest let alone sleep, got worked to death and let go. This is overtraining, man, done upside fuggin down! Exclamation fucking point! Better to burn out than it is to rust, eh? Today, my lower joints are creaking. Picked up a fifteen-pound dumbbell and it felt like nothing, but that isn't really anything to brag about when you--I--used to curl thirty-five times eight, with perfect form.
!@#$ Merciless Misery Road, where the only cool thing is that a person who does what I do--if anybody in authority is snooping, your trade secrets are safe with me--cannot help but lose weight. I have done that, even though I still look "big". "Thick." That's one descriptor that's always made me nauseous: why would any woman want to describe herself in that way? Sure, if you're five-five and weigh 300 pounds, you are undoubtedly *thick*. However, if you are five-nine and go about 165 on a 'heavy day', and some young dumbass who thinks he--it's always a person with a penis--is paying you a compliment calls wou *thick*, you want to start wrecki ng shit, starting with his teeth. If he has teeth.
Landlady was hollering and banging about today, had a contractor in to do something with the heat. He had to take a lot of shit apart. I'd gotten in while it was still dark out, had done what I could with a fitted sheet over the big sunny window--heh, heh: yes, this is actually true, and the sheet was predictably way too small--and had bought a tall boy to go with the cab I had to take because nobody would give me a ride, those dirty bastids; and when I got in, I took my Benadryl etc. with the tallboy, tied a black bandanna across my eyes, and all I really got for all this bother was serious post-nasal congestion. The kitty kept bugging me. She kneads my right boob--there are cancer *dogs* out there, animals that can detect cancer in other mammals by way of a neat mechanism I won't bore anyone with right here. Haven't heard of any cancer *cats*. But I live beneath the mantle of Murphy's Law--if it is possible in any way for something to go awry--something large, not large, important, bullshit--it most certainly will.
Time's passing. There are feet to be beat to keening pulp, and minds to be abused into absurd levels of dysfunction. Think--BWAHAHAhaha: me, think?--I'm there yet? Hah? I don't HEEEEEEEEAr you.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Some ppl call this town "Mexington". A lot of Hispanics live here, most from, well, Mexico, and on this job, they tend to stick together and speak Spanish. Before the shift started, or perhaps during the first short break, I *thought*--cannot *prove*, but *thought* I heard one of them say, in Ingles, "I don't know, but nobody likes her." Can't say what was the question; they were chattering in Espanol, and I was somewhat confused by the sudden switch to the adopted tongue, then back again.
Or maybe I didn't hear anything at all. I was sitting alone, as per usual, at the end of a cafeteria-style table trying to guzzle instant coffee and doctor my feet at the same time. I have not been shy about my foot problems, taking the stinking dogs out for band-aids, unguents, massage, whenever the urge strikes me, and it does strike me often. This could be perceived as ill-bred or something, not that this joint is extremely civilised. When it comes to liking work, I've always preferrd working nights, and during my previous two stints at this place, I found the ppl friendly. I don't know...I need an ellipse like so many of the employees here *need* cigarettes (the management calls the smoking area the "smoking cage": draw your own conclusions if you're out there), so I'll take another....
In any event, they are not so friendly now. One or both of two things seems to be happening:the ppl are younger--every year this happens--and harder, and/or I'm more noticeably warped, angry, have the foot thing going on. If only they knew what I went through the past two years; two years since May '06. I don't know how to "move on"--fuck, have I *ever*?--and apparently need a leg up, for my most recent memories are fucking chewing me up, the blood is fresh enough, my neck is sagging and will not stop, and there is no way I'll be able to fix *that* by the time my reunion that is a grievous misnomer rolls around.
*They* say that bad memories linger for a reason. Like you tongue a broken tooth, or suck at the scars inside your cheeks, something about them compels you to return to the sore spot and see if anything you do can affect it.
And *they* say that winning a large sum on the government is rarely a good thing for the troubled, both the wolverine with the leg in the trap, and the lamb. I guess lambs can have problems. Shitfire. I'd like to change my karma, fix the surface damage, attend to my debts and my health and then start giving the rest of the shit away, but with some forethought. Don't want to have anybody thinking I'm trying to buy my way into Heaven.
One of the Assholes sayings I liked was this one: "It is none of your business what others think about you." But it is really hard to believe that. Going back there would simply invite more, if different, rejection: you--I--get this wildly stupid notion that others somewhat like you in one way or another will automatically welcome you and "love you until you can love yourself". Last time I checked, *that* meant sleeping on the street in winoland, where the homeless are sometimes set afire while unconscious. I don't get that--some asshats out there, high on the notion that they are somehow better than those who must sleep on the street, proceed to prove that point by burning them alive. Or beating the fuck out of them. Damn, what a way to come to. (I've come to some nasty ways myself, but nothing at all like that. How bloody deranged.)
But I digress. I've been horribly isolated, and no, I *DON'T* like it. I can't exactly say what one variable has elicited this seemingly shift-wide alienation, but at the moment it sucks. I want to get back to things that give me pleasure while leaving my memory intact: writing, reading, listening, practising piano & guitar, anything remotely concerned with horses, and most things having to do with dogs. That's my comfort level right now. The only thing I halfway anticipate any more is sleep. Can't wait to immerse the old, old brain in *that*.
ohhh. my feet.
I do not recall signing anything regarding the disclosure of those good old 'trade secrets' when I inked the temporary contract for This Place.
This post has nothing to do with anybody's trade secrets, although if things ever get to that point, I am in possession of information that would make its genteel customers around the world blanch, and then, scream with indignation. I hope they would. Anyway, I'm mad as hell and my feet hurt like a motherfucker. An assistant manager, a recent hire and card-carrying Good Old Boy (G.O.B.) and mangy, beer-gutted colostomy bag, clearly dislikes me, distrusts me, something, although whatever that something is, it is not enough to stop him from calling me "honey". Which makes me want to head-butt his ass. (Not literally. I hope you are getting that. Head-butt his *head* is what I mean here.)
"Honey, don't lean on that cart. It's dangerous." Like he knows anything about health. He looks rather unhealthy. Yellow eyes in a red face with a cement-colored beard.
Heads up, muthafucka--ppl do that to help resolve the stupefying FOOT PAIN incurred from fast walking over concrete, metal and splintering plywood for hours on end. YOU--meaning GOB--don't have to DO THAT. All you have to DO is sneak around and pretend you're in fucking CHARGE.
And, I wonder(ed) this: dangerous for whom? For me? Or for the CART?
I know he is not expressing his romantic intentions or anything like that, but rather his disdain for this strange older woman with the world's worst social skills. HIS boss, on the other hand, is a fresh young slab of athletic meat. If I looked better and did that kind of thing anymore. But I do not. So it's all moot, and that there is fine with me.
The manager might counsel him, and identify me in the process, if I ratted in person. And then things would be bad to worse for me. I don't rat well, just like I have never grasped the theory nor the practise of kissing up. The social thing, you know. I'd drop a dime, fifty cents, whatever it takes, to see someone other than this smug old fuck removed from his dubious authority and sent packing.
Whenever I come here I have nasty thoughts. I don't like that, there is plenty of evil in this world, in this sorry-ass *factory* for piss's sake, but I'm walking around, feet screaming like lobsters in the boil, rehashing every single unescapable yet idiotic thing I ever did to get to this very point. I pray for civil discharge of that anger--it is as hungry as I can be after the last shift of the week, or a lights-out binge.
Time's losng mass, usefulness. It's soon back to the grind. My hooves are bleeding, bleeding.
hoss
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rant of career screw-up, social retardate and bad references walking, all grown old
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