Work Work Work Work!!!

And then get a check for $232.36.

I have no idea how people survive who work for minimum wage. This does not cover a car payment!! Let alone rent and food and gas and car insurance, utilities and clothes. No wonder people knock over banks all the time, apply for assistance and food stamps.

And I am working harder than I ever did for the beverage company!!

Go Figure.


My boss is too delicious not to TALK about. It has been my experience that working for a woman is equivalent to being locked in a room and listening to Motorhead until my ears bleed. I know this is a huge sweeping generality, but I would much rather work for a man.

Yet, this woman hired me, gushed over me (I loved it!!) and wondered why my application even sat for a day without someone contacting me immediately!

"I might be able to get along with this chick!" I thought to myself, "She really has it together!"

I bet if you asked her to name two things she knows about me personally, she might say I'm married and moved here from Louisville and that would be it.

On the other hand ask me what I know about her and I could write a book. The best eye popping tid bit I over heard her conversing about to the group of labor we confiscated from the dish room, was that she had been rear-ended in automobile accident six times.

That is SIX times people. As in S-I-X.

She is delicious! She is a fraternal twin and her brother has an IQ of 170. He took the SAT's while in 4th grade and was operating on a college level. While I began to ask questions, like did he enter college at age nine? Did he take advanced classes? Did he skip any grades? (which I already knew he did not because they are attending a 20 year High School reunion later this summer so the math tells me he did not).

A few days later I learn that she too is a genius, a functioning dyslectic, spent nine years running a book store, then 10 years in the apparel industry! "Good Lord" I exclaimed, "When did you start, when you were 12?"

No, she was 17.

She was not considered "smart" because no one knew she had dyslexia. Finally they tested her with an IQ test, not the kind a normal person takes for an assessment, but one that has six parts! She scored 150-170 on every part except distraction. She is very distracted.

I have noticed that. Not that she is a scatter brain, ("People think I'm ditsy and I like that. Allows me to get my way.") But she does many things at once and tends to walk away quite a bit. But, when she's focused - it's a little weird, because she walks away a lot again, but returns with a vengeance.

I could go on and on about her. I like her because she is so entertaining!

Yesterday we were doing a shift change and this little college kid comes in to take over the floor and Big Blond Amazon (because she is like 5-10 and wears these CLARK boot type shoes that make her tower over everyone!!)(and she has the most beautiful long natural blond hair you have ever seen!)asks me to "chat her in" but as I am meeting this person for the first time, I am obviously not traveling down the correct path for the BBA she decides to take over.

"We are having an excellent day! Excellent! $1,000 over last year! I have changed our stretch goal from $2400 to $3000. Now!! How are you going to accomplish this?"

This little girl scratched her chin and said, "I don't understand..." (she is a college student and I think is just being obstinate and resisting)...."I'll do what I usually do."

"No, that is not good enough! Things are going to change around here. You may have been use to non-customer service with A. but that is in the past."

"A. never implied that we ignore customers!....."

I walked away and let them tango for a full 15 minutes!!

A little later on the college kid told me she hated retail and wanted to wait tables but they needed her in retail.

I'd hate retail too if I had BBA breathing down my neck!

Anyway, it's interesting and ........

The pay sucks.

Be Prepared! Be Very Prepared!

Believing I had a job interview scheduled for Thursday I was surprised when I checked my e-mail late yesterday afternoon and there was a request to change it to - gasp!!@@##@**- today! I had a lot of scrambling to do because being the procrastinator that I am, I thought I had plenty of time to be prepared! The Girl Scout Motto, isn't it? Be prepared? I think I have made a mistake, along with long history of my mistakes, and it is actually the boy scout motto - but it fits. Always be prepared. Good words to live by. And die by.

I was not prepared to go to a job interview early in the morning. I thought I could find a hair stylist today or tomorrow. Yet, I found myself in front of the bathroom mirror trimming up my hair. Thank God the chopped unsymmetrical look is not all that uncommon.

The jacket I was planning on wearing looked good, but when I slipped it on I realized it was so very, very, very 1990-ish. All the way to the puffy padded shoulders. I whipped out the trusty scissors again and snipped out the pads and the jacket entered the 21st century, even if it now looked a little big one me. Looking big is better than padded.

In some weird bizarro world way, I really like the retail job I am working in the meantime. It allows me to be extremely nice to people, which is my true nature anyway. And the folding and refolding of shirts and tee's is very zen-like and relaxing. There is always something to do. Check the bathrooms, fold some tee's, face the candles, sort the stuffed animals, clean the finger prints off the windows. I'm a natural.

But, the pay stinks.

Maybe this other job will fall into place.

After all, I was prepared.

Let the Pictures Do the Talking

My New Hometown


You are greeted by a HUGE PINK ELEPHANT at the crossroads that lead to Tiny Town.


Across the State Line...where is Rock City?



I was a day late getting here and the grass that had threatened to overtake the run down and abandoned church had been cut...ruining the effect I was hoping to capture. Maybe in a few weeks....

Sepia Scenes

Brought to you by Sepia Scenes.

Ah New Haven. Not the New Haven you think, but the New Haven I called home for two years while living in North East Indiana. It actually was an area of Ft. Wayne, a Rail Road town that given time will grow on you. It is not uncommon for Joe to say "I wish we had never left" and I nod in agreement.

Retrospect is everything, isn't it? I would still be employed by the Beverage Co (and would have received my 10 year award!!dang!) and he would not have gone through the terrible year in Lou. working for a supervisor that nearly killed him...oh well,it is all in the past now. We have moved on.

I have found a job with a major restaurant chain in their Retail area. The orientation began yesterday. Four of us were being inducted into the Corporation and having the Employee Handbook read to us in between watching videos from the 1980's and eating our one free meal.

I am the oldest of the group of four. Out of the group of four, two are college students, three are women, one is a musician, and three are from Indiana.

Coincidence?

I think not. Hoosiers are taking over the world.

I continue to look another job that does not require me to work week-ends but I am relieved all the same.

I scream! You scream!

We all scream! For ice cream!

Picture this....trying to loose 20 pounds by pounding an elliptical machine but cruising through the Dairy Queen Drive Thru and asking, "Do you have the Candy Cotton Blizzards yet?"

And being told, "No, not yet."

Please please please! I love those things. What is it they use for that candy cotton flavor? Sort of like hot rocks...sort of not. What ever, I love it.

Long ago summer was officially announced by the sounds of the Mr Softy Truck approaching your street, driving very slow, allowing all the kids within hearing distance - and us kids had the ears of German Shepherds back then - enough time to run home and beg, cry, thrown ourselves on the ground and pound the floor for that one thin dime that would purchase a sprinkle cone.

They were gigantic cones with a little twist on top.

When my daughter was young the Mr Softy truck was replaced by a Popsicle man who flew through the neighborhood so fast you had to think he was meeting his drug connection at his apartment in a half hour.

No sooner would Bridget come running into our humble abode and shake me down for fifty cents for some sort of Bomb Pop, and back out on the street returning in minutes with tears in her eyes that she had missed him.

Poor baby. Hopefully he would swing back by and all the little kids who missed him would be waiting with their money clutched tightly in their sweaty hands.

It's officially summer.

The last Popsicle I bought was for a the little kid of a friend. Nothing says summer quite like the stained face smile of a child sucking the red white and blue off of a Bomb Pop.

On, Mr. Softy, will you please come back?

Sepia Scenes

Once again it's time for Sepia Scenes. How does a week pass so quickly?

Long ago, too many years to even estimate now, I "bought" my first digital camera with "company bucks" accumulated through a promotion and then used in a gift book. I was reluctant to join in the digital craze that was taking over the country as I loved my SLR Nikon and sometimes would take incredible pictures.

One of my friends tried to explain to me how much fun a digital was, what you could do with it, the programs available to refine the pictures, how digital was easier to store than film...and on and on and on.

Once I had that little premium camera in my hand, I never have once touched my old Nikon, except to move with all the other crap I have accumulated in my life time that I can not live without....

Anyway, this picture was from those first days of fooling around with the new technology. The freedom it gave you to take pictures of anything you damn well pleased...this was one of the results, now in Sepia. (because my friend was right all the time!)

Catholic School Girl Confessions Continued - Part III

Riding the Bus Home

After assembly in our homerooms and the official calling into the office for your smacks on the ass if you had misbehaved intolerably, the announcements for the next day and blah blah blah, the bell would ring and you were sprung free for the day.

We erupted through the two back doors of the building like projectile navy blue vomit the scene much like most high schools, I imagine. You either climbed on the bus, jumped into a car and burnt rubber out of there, or found your mother and/or someones mother and carpooled home.

I, for the first two years, climbed on one of the three city buses - since we were a private school we did not have Big Yellow Buses at our disposal, I believe they contracted with the city - got my ticket punched and found a seat among the yelling, screaming, writhing, gyrating teenage soup of blue and white. Usually I sat with Laura or Josie and endured the ride downtown. It was always an ordeal, no matter what.

I have blocked it from my memory.

Once downtown the bus deposited us at the corner of Broadway and Main. There was a 5&10 situated there and we would either slip in there for a coke, or go across the street to the bakery to purchase a cookie to split between us.

Downtown is where most kids transferred to other city buses to carry them home to their final destination.

But not me.

Oh No.

I trudged on down to the other end of Main Street and turned north, maybe I would turn north after going into the record store and checking out all the new LP's that arrived that week, then I would turn north and head up to the Greyhound Bus station.

Yes, my mother would not travel the 15 or so miles each afternoon to collect me from a school she was forcing me to attend. Oh no, she made me ride the Grey Hound Bus home each and every afternoon until I was a Junior.

My freshman year I was accompanied by K. K. was several years older than me and he too endured the ride on the Greyhound to Mayberry just for the privilege to attend Catholic High School. He was my partner in crime for that one year.

I never laughed so hard as I did with him on those rides home. I laughed until my sides ached and my jaws hurt. I am certain we disturbed every adult who rode on the that bus with us. At 3:50 it would leave the station and head towards Mayberry with a stop here and there along the way.

No one was spared our scrutiny and our obnoxious observations. We were brutal in our assessments of the people we rubbed shoulders with briefly and, unfortunately for a few, daily. We threw stuff at each other, we rehashed our day at school in high voices, we talked about our peers at school and what devious deeds they had been up to that day and then laughed like hyenas.

We cringed in horror at the grease spots on the windows that some poor soul, just trying to catch a few winks, would lay his head on the glass and dream. We would push each others head at the stains and shriek in disgust.

My friend K. can recite the entire itinerary as given over the loud speaker in the station. He remembers a lot more than I do. He rode the bus a total of three years, I only two. He remembers certain riders that climbed on daily with us.

Why they did not get us permanently kicked off I will never know. Maybe people were more tolerant back in those days.

K. would get off miles from town, at a country intersection where his mother waited in their family station wagon. He would ring the bell, stumble down the aisle because I more than likely tripped him and exit, leaving me alone, the bus oddly silent. Blessedly peaceful.

I would step off at the bus station in Mayberry and walk home from there.

I would see the Bus Station from time to time in Lexington and feel something tighten in my chest. Maybe it was the glimpse of the ghost of a young silly girl, in her navy blue sweater and pleated skirt rolled up at the waist, in her saddle oxfords and white bobby socks, running up the steps just barely in time to catch the bus, tears of hysterical laughter running down her cheeks as she chased after her friend K, who had her Latin book held above his head and threatening to toss it.