When drivers change for the worse

Well, Salina Kansas seemed like a nice stop.  We were mostly on time until the old bus could not properly lift the gentle man in the wheel chair.  He was almost though the door when it became clear that the devise would not work properly and if we could manage to get him on we might not be so lucky in getting him off...which would really be horrible as the ride so far had been so stinky.  I am not sure how that man was getting to his destination but it was not gonna happen on our buss.

The wheel chair incident set us back 40 minutes and I guess the jolly good driver did not clearly inform the next stop of the situation.  Hays, KS we stopped in a dark parking lot I could not tell if there was a quick stop or a laundromat for the parking lot but it was certainly rural and needed a buss out.  A nice Asian man was to be the substitute driver as the intended driver had not yet shown up and most of the folks on the buss had connections to make in Denver, CO. We later learned that the new driver had never driven to CO before and had only been working with the buss line for two weeks...Oh and did not have a route slip for all the stops and was using his phone navigation to guide to our destination. I was appreciative of his courage but some how the majority of the rest of the buss were very huffy about the situation.

I found out as we drove into the night that my new seat companion was a Grandma that makes the buss trip twice a month from Denver to spend time with some  grand babies that live in Wichita.  She was a lovely woman I'm guessing in her 50's but could have easily been older.  She worn three coats in April in Kansas.  The outer layer coat was a lovely faux leopard fur coat with matching fez style hat. It was nice to be sitting by a lady of her own fashion.  A very sweet woman who has a low tolerance for the back of the buss hootin' and hollerin'. I was devoted to my book and successful at blocking out the loudness and disrespect.

I had over heard two other ladies that were on voyages to visit grand children. I had not expected the Grey Hound to actually be a considered form of transport for older woman travelling alone.  The Grey hound seems to be the mostly traveled by independent passengers waiting for the seat mates and hoping for the best.  I have mostly been lucky so far on the seat mates only one person I wished could have smelled a little nicer.  Soon I will also wish that I smelt a little nicer though as I will be on the buss for over two days with no shower and steadily fermenting in a steal box...yum

Smells like cinnamon apple candies in here.

This stop is much nicer than my original boarding location in St. Louis, MO.  I am basing my assessment on smell alone and have not looked up from my tiny screen that I am currently reaching out to you on.  This building is a triangle as the last location was a mere hallway of glowing primary colors.  The windows of the Grey Hound station in MO where oddly childish as a way of teaching its riders the fundamentals of color theory through distorted light. I sat there waiting for my boarding opportunity with wafting smells of old pet piss soaked carpet.  There was of coarse no carpet in site.

I began hearing tales of a greater buss,  a new kind with wifi and electrical plugs for our phones.  The bus I was on was all that I had expected so I felt no lust for the unknown.  Though I am hopeful that I may encounter the mystical blue Grey hound buss during a leg of my voyage.  I guess folks that were traveling from Indianapolis had a taste of luxury and were very unhappy to board the crap bus of the 90's.  I personally was shocked to find out that Grey Hound the poor person transport would bother updating until things were actually broken....The world can surprise.

It does smell almost lovely in here as the bathroom situation from the metal tube I have been placed in for the last 4 hours was fresh with human fecal matter that escaped each time the bathroom door opened, which was all too frequent.  I find it a wise curtesy to wait to use the bathroom during the stop for which there are plenty.  I think it took 45 minutes before the bathroom was was deflowered up on my first boarding. I am now in Salina KS and the bathroom is going to be cleaned before we get back on.  

Hearding back on the bus was not so bad with the same driver a jolly large african american man with a really great way of dealing with the screamers at the back of the buss.  I think for a driver to make it work they really have to be quite cool and laid back and perhaps turn a deaf ear to the complete and utter nonsense that can happen when people can not charge their electronics.  I am very thankful for the technology that everyone has....It gives us all a little privacy in a cramped world.

My Time Cost Less

I want to meet this country in all of its' glory.....  I am hopping on the Grey Hound  April 3, 2014 and heading to LA.  I am guessing most people taking the Grey Hound across country are not doing it for the sake of the ride but my trip is intended for that purpose.

I am a lucky lady and have friends that I can stay with to shower and visit with over my 11 day voyage to LA---Portland---Seattle---St. Louis.  I hope this trip is the beginning of inspiration on several fronts.  I am hoping through tolerance that I gain an appreciation for the under thought of poor traveling through the night to jobs or to find their place of home with family.  I am also desperately seeking acceptance among the people that I feel I belong.

I have had three different people offer to help me buy a plane ticket out to LA for my friend's wedding which makes me 100% luckier than the majority of the people that will be on that bus for the 40 hours it takes to get to Los Angelas.  But honestly, I can not afford the $400+ it cost to fly on a plane to California and as a low income earner I have more time than money. My time cost less than other people's time.  (I do not make much per hour)

Thus the Journey.....

Sometimes Fashion Dies

Well it is all over from here.  My staple of employment for the last 6 years is gone.  I guess there is nothing left to know about retail anyways. Perhaps I never belonged there in the first place.  I am not sure how to look into the past and know for certain if things were good or if the past is just sugar coated by bad memory. 

I started working in retail fashion part-time in 2007 and I really enjoyed the idea of creative control over my environment and I considered myself fashionable but poor.  A thrift store junkie from a time when interesting vintage clothing could still be found for 50 cents.  I had gone to fashion design school and have some basic knowledge about garment construction.  I should fit right in...right?  Well as it turns out I am not mean or super judgmental which might be written into the handbook for fitting in.  I was still generally accepted.  I even made some friends though excluded from invites to hang out after work and really was not considered one of the cool kids.  I think I was tolerated. Just a hangers-on that was dependable and user friendly. I have no drama.  No real need for conflict and I honestly find it easier to show up to work rather than come up with some lie to justify my absence.

I think the truth in the past can be labeled accurately by the function it has served.  I always had a place to work if I was in between jobs. The pay was low but helped me feed myself.  I did learn how merchandising and buying for market are important for a retail business.  I met fun people over the years; some that think of me as the creative person I am and others that don't. 

Nothing to Gain, Nothing to Build

When you go to a job interview of a job you already have had with nothing to gain you don't feel:nervous, joy, excitement, challenge.  What you do feel is a slight despair in settling for the easiest option, an acceptance of not challenging yourself.  I am lazy now.  The food stamp office broke me for today.  There is too much sadness there.  Too many woman finding the only pride that have ever felt by justifying their young babies in this terrible world.  Woman actually verbally fighting over who is a better mother with out creating a support network to help one another out.  The scene was tragic and I am an impostor. 

I will never have children and I will never see this world as a good place to continue the parasitic nature of the human existence.  Gobble, gobble, gobble the poor with the bad food and the bad work environment don't let them sit down for a second.  Lets breath the bad air and never expand mass transit--there could be less smog that way. 

I am negative today and now I must go a fake the excitement of selling to people.  Justify your over payed jobs by spending the money on crap you don't need or want.  But you like the adventure of being humored and sold anything to block out the despair of having nothing to build. 

Success?

Not sure what my last post was in regards to, but today I talk about the present.  In one week I leave back for Saint Louis after a stint in WI.  I have been working with theater now for the last two years and overall it has been great.  I get respect that has never existed in jobs I have held in the past. I am finally viewed as the creative person.  I feel good about it but everything is fleeting...

I have managed to be employed for 51/2 months of the year with almost nothing in between jobs.  I still ride the poverty line and find pride in working hard while making little to no money for the larger part of the year.  While being very satisfied with my current endeavors I am curious about the future.  Will I ever have health insurance?  Do I really have to clock 45 hour per week in order to have a living wage? 

Also, I am 31 years old and unsure about societal expectations but I feel like I might be successful?  My old room mate Brian and I would have this discussion about success as he was always concerned that it was regarding finance.  He used it as a way to dis-like women that held old American ideas close to heart.  (You know the hope of a kept woman).  Marring for riches and vacation and stability and to have a man that your children can call dad.  I am not opposed to a parent being valued as a caregiver for those are skills I do not have.

So we now have a still poor, unwed, childless female fighting the forces of the world with a slight hope that maybe I will never be ill.  SUCCESS I feel it.  I know that it is not clearly visible to the outside eye but maybe it has never needed to be visible.  Success is a feeling in a moment of hard to find contentment a fleeting cherished moment.  

Why O' Why

Well I cleaned up some poop today.  yes--human

I live cheap at the cost of human poop.

I was throwing away hours of work into the dumpster as the sewage smell really got me in the nose.  I think it was the saturated old note books from college that left the dumpster so eager to give back.  I am quite glad to be rid of the stuff really. 

I can see my landlord's argument after all it may have partially been my own fecal matter that contributed to the issue in the first place.  I have had a terrible diet of juice and booze for the past week.  I also ate some rice and eggs occasionally.

I may not have filled a space for potential poop if there had been past indicators of the poop parade.  

Out of the Red and into the Gray

Jack in the Box had worn me out and I was starting to need a little respect as a human being.  I found it hard not to feel like a slave in the drive through window.  I felt sad about my co-workers and their lack of idealism.  I really wanted a version of America that I don't think will ever exist.  I just want it to be okay to work at a job and get respect regardless of your occupation.--no judging-no classism.  I love having a strong work ethic and staying busy.  Unfortunately, as a creator it is difficult to get paid for all the work we do.  Beauty is under priced.

Well, back to the old me full of grand ideas and wanting to conquer the world.  I thought the only real way to get respect as a teenager is through a retail job.  Note:  I had been to a mall like 3 times in my life before high school.  I was sure that the mall was where I could make more money per hour and maybe be treated a little nicer from the clientele.  The biggest highlight would be to not smell like old french fries every night.

I can not remember how JCPenny ended up hiring me but I was very excited.  They had a dress code and I had to dress nice which was difficult seeing how I had only hand-me-downs and thrift store finds.  Also, there were less hours available and the pay was only the a dime higher than my last career. Even if I wanted to buy new clothing it was not really financially feasible.   I was also taking a risk with the job because I was hired on for extra holiday help.

I envisioned a retail world where I would get to help people in fitting-rooms and learn to fold fancy and gain some organization skills for clothing placement.  This was not my job.  I was a catalogue slave for the people that hate shopping in populated mall department stores but really need their mall junk.  There was a separate entrance in the back of the store so that the folks picking up packages could have a some what private experience.

In my short experience I found catalogue people to be mean and some what unforgiving to a young under trained me.  I was on my feet in "nice" shoes for 8 hours at a time and had to climb these crazy rafters to find packages that seemed to be in no order at all.  My co-workers where all in their mid to late 60's and should not have been climbing ladders and scaffolding.  I became their runner in my terrible shoes and felt old beside them. If I could have gotten gray hair at seventeen I would have gained an entire patch of grayness in those few months.      

I Loved That Yellow Couch

I think I may have gotten the couch from my brother Brian.  It was a little larger than a settee but not quite a big as the contemporary couch.  It was yellow brocade that had a shiny thread running through it.  The high light was certainly the fabric.  I was so excited about it.  My couch for my first real apartment.  I was moving out of my boyfriend's family house and had found a large apartment with two bedrooms and a huge kitchen for $325 a month.  I think it was 2001 and I had finally turned 18 so I could actually rent a place.

I wasn't renting by myself there is no way I could afford rent by myself and my boyfriend at the time was college bound and not wanting to move in with me.  I found the next best person.  My old co-worker Brian from the Jack In The Box.  I still did not know at this time that he was obsessed with me seeing how I had a boyfriend the entire time of our friendship.

Crazy town began gradually.  I started finding entire bottles of Southern Comfort emptied around the apartment, but mostly in the living room were my beloved couch lived. They were on the window sills and fallen over under the glass top coffee table.  Several bottles.... Then the pee began.  I would get home after working and going to school and visiting my friends to find pee all over the bathroom seat and dark brown urine in the toilet along with cigarette butts and ashes in the shower.  The pee looked like syrup.  The man must have never drank water in his life. 

I knew this was an act of resentment for having been gone to long or maybe from a lack of attention.  We had lived together for about a month before the first episode began so I knew this was not regular behavior.  I was too young at the time to confront the issue head on and honestly I may not have the courage now to face such a crazy--who knows what the hell he was thinking.  Behaving like a neglected pet that pisses on your pillow while you are gone.  Some true animal instincts were on the horizon.

My poor couch.  He had a bedroom and a bed and entertainment in the room and a door for privacy.  The bedrooms were large and separated by the before mentioned huge kitchen.  We had lots of privacy in our own little boxes.  Despite the room division and adequate space Brian chose to sleep on my couch.  He would be asleep on this small couch with his pants undone and hermaphrodite porn in the TV's VCR.  I found out the porn thing by  turning on the TV one day and it was set to play automatically. That was the last time I touched that television set or that couch.  Shit was getting nasty.

I never talked to him about the incidents and tried my hardest to avoid him and find other places to stay as I was beginning to fear interactions with my old friend.  I had a lock on the inside of my bedroom door which I found very useful.

By the time it was move out time my beautiful yellow couch had been worn down into a greasy mess.  The fibers were pulled apart on the arms and the center sank low from having been slept on for months.  Oh and it smelled of a thousand cigarettes and had spills of old booze and who knows what else from the porno thing.

I found out later that Brian thought I was leading him on and toying with his mind---I of course had no idea...The mind is crazy sometimes.   

Alongside a Burger /A Crew

In good company with Carl as a shift leader were 4 others.  The Crew:

A tall thin poet man nicknamed Papa(because he liked young girls).  Papa whom I called Brian worked the 2pm till 10pm shift and he mostly existed in the late night hours at coffee shops.  Brian was a good friend and we hung out quite a bit before he became obsessed with me.  I was young...

There was Becky that had a skinny abusive greasy husband and a couple of adult children that milked her for everything.  She lost her house one summer and was bathing in the back prep sink for a while.  Nice lady she even helped me with some English papers for school.  She turned out to be a great proof reader.

Susie should have been a militant lesbian but messed up one time and ended p with a little girl.  I went over to house one time to help her daughter write a book report and ended up getting pulled over by a real asshole police officer.  I had worked 16hrs then went to help a 3rd grader with a book report...what a turd.

Karma was a very large woman with a little girls voice and a strange husband that told her all the time that he thought he was gay.  She crushed the frame of a bike one day and I gave her rides to work for a while.  We got a bomb threat one night and Karma freaked out hard and we all got to go home early.  She really liked the bacon potato wedges.

The General manager was a real class act she always knew the right things to say at the right times--she was also very funny.  She had some children a long time ago. I think Barb was in her 50's and had hired 4 of the Kraft family Keith, Shiela, Brian and myself.  She knew we were work slaves.
It came out later that she was a lesbian because one of the the gay male dancers that worked at Jack-n-the-box spotted her at the gay bar.  She passed a way about 10 years ago from enfazema she smoked a ton of Misty's.