Not even the woodwork could contain me!
Well:
I graduated and survived. I actually didn’t walk though, I chose not to at almost the last minute. I was finishing up my final optional Phenomenology paper last minute because I worked over 40 hours a week the last two weeks of the semester, and dammit I wanted to try for an A in the class (the paper was optional, you see, but if we didn’t do it we automatically could attain no higher than a B in the class; and I did get my A). But it was actually my father and brother being unable to attend (because one does not expect a four-year-old to sit still through a 2-3 hour long ceremony) that made me decide Fuck It. So we hung out in Kearney at my grandparents’ that day instead.
I’m still working at the car wash and since it’s warmed up I’ve been working about 9-11 hours a day under the sun, and not as covered up as earlier in the Spring when it was still getting chilly. The result is I am tan on my arms and shoulders and my legs catching up pretty quick. My shoulders just yesterday got over being pink and turned brown. It’s funny because last time I worked, Tuesday, a couple people were handing me several ones or even a five for a tip and telling me, “I’m worried about your sunburn.” To which I’d answer that I actually got sunburnt on Sunday and what they thought was blistering was the burn already peeling off, haha.
Also broke up what has to be the most stupidly-structured drug deal I've ever witnessed--and I'll be candid, I've been aware of a few--in my entire life. We've got four vacuums at work and they're free for our customers who've gone through the wash, and they can use them as long as they'd like. For this reason we have to police the area and make sure freeloaders aren't just using our vacs and filling up our trash cans then jetting off to the coin-operated wash down the street, and sometimes that makes people indignant. Like, people threatening to pull guns, indignant. But that aside, the other day I was drying off this car and noticed first one car, then another pull into the furthermost places on either side of the vacuums. I like to give people a chance to read the sign first because I hope that people are literate, so I let them be while I dry this car, through the tinted windows of which I can see the passenger messing around with a big Ziploc. This doesn't bother me because a lot of our customers do that. I finish drying them off, and they pull off into one of the vacuum places.
Thus far no one there has even gotten out to try and vacuum yet, and a fourth car joins them. Then the passenger door of the one car that actually washed opens, and suddenly representatives of the other three cars all spill out and surround him at his door, like they're drying to have a guy-on-guy vac-off but forgot the actual vacuums or something. I'm watching this wondering if they realize how obvious they look and thinking about going to tell my coworker in the tunnel, who's a bouncer at his other job, that there's a very obvious drug deal going on and he needs to clear them out.
But then this black sedan or whatever comes out of the tunnel, and it's a frequent customer, older guy who likes to detail his car after he gets it washed, so he's gonna want one of those vacuums that these douchebags all have blocked off. So I dry off his windshield and his hood so they won't streak, go up to the nearest dude at the vacs, and flat-out tell him, "Carry on with whatever it is you're doing, but at least pull off to the other side of the lot, cause this guy's gonna want to vacuum in a minute."
Dude looks shocked, either because A) I actually knew what was going on, or B) the little white chick actually told the big black drug dealers to move. Either way, four cars left that lot single file before I was even half-done drying off that sedan.
Not that I even mind that they were doing a drug deal, it's just more a matter of how fucking blatant it was and how discourteous they were being because they were a) blocking off the vacs so actual customers couldn't even get to them, b) only the dealers even washed their car, and c) those douchebags got the second-cheapest wash and didn't even give me a tip. If you're going to do something very obviously illegal and very obviously profit from it right in front of me, at least pay something forward to the establishment you're doing it on and the workers you're doing it in front of, really.
I foresee them not going far in that business.
Anyway, when I haven’t been working, which is still about 3-4 days a week, I’ve been trying not to go mad from boredom. I might inquire around about another parttime job, not just to augment what I am making but just for something to do. But I’ve been reading a lot. Me and a friend found, with the exception of three issues, issues 1-45 of Lone Wolf and Cub at a Vintage Stock about a week ago, 2/$1 sale, took it as a sign and went in on it halvesies. I’ve been reading a couple of issues at a time to break up the more “serious” stuff I’ve been reading, which since school let out has been an anthology of Russian and Soviet fairy tales, a collection of some of Leo Tolstoy’s short stories, and now a novel called S., the initial of the Bosnian woman protagonist who’s kept in a women’s room (i.e. rape room) during the war in 1992. It’s short but it’s fucked up; I just finished reading a part where she hears about Serbian soldiers dragging Bosnian men and boys out onto a football field and making the older ones rape the boys, or they’ll shoot them. The punchline is that they pair off fathers and sons, and I’m sure it gets worse but I just hit past the halfway point.
There’s literally next to no dirt in my yard, so I’ve been maintaining a potted garden on the deck. My tomatoes, sunflowers, borage and watercress (which scares me because it’s so little and delicate-looking) have been doing well and I still hope that I might coax the rosemary, sage, peppers and basil to take off. They had a rough start because the pots I planted them in did not drain properly, and we experienced torrential downpours the first few days after I planted them. I’ve already had to thin down what’s been doing well, and today I got more dirt and plants at the dollar store up the street so that I could keep more of the plants, because a few of the seedlings I held over in some trays this past week have still been doing strongly and I wanted to keep them. The ones that weren't doing so strongly, I buried in the pots to fertilize their brothers. Gardening Rule #2: Sometimes Cannibalism is a Necessity. (Rule #1 is Drainage.)
Other than that, I've been goin' out drinking and stuff with friend/coworkers/et cetera, and finally got back into the habit of some writing, some of which I'll hope to share sometime soon.
And that's that. Thinking I might go to some galleries tonight because that's the thing people do in this town on this day (the first Friday of the month). If not I'm still at least hitting up a friend's friends' show at a bar later on tonight. Work tomorrow at 8 in the a.m. Later.
I graduated and survived. I actually didn’t walk though, I chose not to at almost the last minute. I was finishing up my final optional Phenomenology paper last minute because I worked over 40 hours a week the last two weeks of the semester, and dammit I wanted to try for an A in the class (the paper was optional, you see, but if we didn’t do it we automatically could attain no higher than a B in the class; and I did get my A). But it was actually my father and brother being unable to attend (because one does not expect a four-year-old to sit still through a 2-3 hour long ceremony) that made me decide Fuck It. So we hung out in Kearney at my grandparents’ that day instead.
I’m still working at the car wash and since it’s warmed up I’ve been working about 9-11 hours a day under the sun, and not as covered up as earlier in the Spring when it was still getting chilly. The result is I am tan on my arms and shoulders and my legs catching up pretty quick. My shoulders just yesterday got over being pink and turned brown. It’s funny because last time I worked, Tuesday, a couple people were handing me several ones or even a five for a tip and telling me, “I’m worried about your sunburn.” To which I’d answer that I actually got sunburnt on Sunday and what they thought was blistering was the burn already peeling off, haha.
Also broke up what has to be the most stupidly-structured drug deal I've ever witnessed--and I'll be candid, I've been aware of a few--in my entire life. We've got four vacuums at work and they're free for our customers who've gone through the wash, and they can use them as long as they'd like. For this reason we have to police the area and make sure freeloaders aren't just using our vacs and filling up our trash cans then jetting off to the coin-operated wash down the street, and sometimes that makes people indignant. Like, people threatening to pull guns, indignant. But that aside, the other day I was drying off this car and noticed first one car, then another pull into the furthermost places on either side of the vacuums. I like to give people a chance to read the sign first because I hope that people are literate, so I let them be while I dry this car, through the tinted windows of which I can see the passenger messing around with a big Ziploc. This doesn't bother me because a lot of our customers do that. I finish drying them off, and they pull off into one of the vacuum places.
Thus far no one there has even gotten out to try and vacuum yet, and a fourth car joins them. Then the passenger door of the one car that actually washed opens, and suddenly representatives of the other three cars all spill out and surround him at his door, like they're drying to have a guy-on-guy vac-off but forgot the actual vacuums or something. I'm watching this wondering if they realize how obvious they look and thinking about going to tell my coworker in the tunnel, who's a bouncer at his other job, that there's a very obvious drug deal going on and he needs to clear them out.
But then this black sedan or whatever comes out of the tunnel, and it's a frequent customer, older guy who likes to detail his car after he gets it washed, so he's gonna want one of those vacuums that these douchebags all have blocked off. So I dry off his windshield and his hood so they won't streak, go up to the nearest dude at the vacs, and flat-out tell him, "Carry on with whatever it is you're doing, but at least pull off to the other side of the lot, cause this guy's gonna want to vacuum in a minute."
Dude looks shocked, either because A) I actually knew what was going on, or B) the little white chick actually told the big black drug dealers to move. Either way, four cars left that lot single file before I was even half-done drying off that sedan.
Not that I even mind that they were doing a drug deal, it's just more a matter of how fucking blatant it was and how discourteous they were being because they were a) blocking off the vacs so actual customers couldn't even get to them, b) only the dealers even washed their car, and c) those douchebags got the second-cheapest wash and didn't even give me a tip. If you're going to do something very obviously illegal and very obviously profit from it right in front of me, at least pay something forward to the establishment you're doing it on and the workers you're doing it in front of, really.
I foresee them not going far in that business.
Anyway, when I haven’t been working, which is still about 3-4 days a week, I’ve been trying not to go mad from boredom. I might inquire around about another parttime job, not just to augment what I am making but just for something to do. But I’ve been reading a lot. Me and a friend found, with the exception of three issues, issues 1-45 of Lone Wolf and Cub at a Vintage Stock about a week ago, 2/$1 sale, took it as a sign and went in on it halvesies. I’ve been reading a couple of issues at a time to break up the more “serious” stuff I’ve been reading, which since school let out has been an anthology of Russian and Soviet fairy tales, a collection of some of Leo Tolstoy’s short stories, and now a novel called S., the initial of the Bosnian woman protagonist who’s kept in a women’s room (i.e. rape room) during the war in 1992. It’s short but it’s fucked up; I just finished reading a part where she hears about Serbian soldiers dragging Bosnian men and boys out onto a football field and making the older ones rape the boys, or they’ll shoot them. The punchline is that they pair off fathers and sons, and I’m sure it gets worse but I just hit past the halfway point.
There’s literally next to no dirt in my yard, so I’ve been maintaining a potted garden on the deck. My tomatoes, sunflowers, borage and watercress (which scares me because it’s so little and delicate-looking) have been doing well and I still hope that I might coax the rosemary, sage, peppers and basil to take off. They had a rough start because the pots I planted them in did not drain properly, and we experienced torrential downpours the first few days after I planted them. I’ve already had to thin down what’s been doing well, and today I got more dirt and plants at the dollar store up the street so that I could keep more of the plants, because a few of the seedlings I held over in some trays this past week have still been doing strongly and I wanted to keep them. The ones that weren't doing so strongly, I buried in the pots to fertilize their brothers. Gardening Rule #2: Sometimes Cannibalism is a Necessity. (Rule #1 is Drainage.)
Other than that, I've been goin' out drinking and stuff with friend/coworkers/et cetera, and finally got back into the habit of some writing, some of which I'll hope to share sometime soon.
And that's that. Thinking I might go to some galleries tonight because that's the thing people do in this town on this day (the first Friday of the month). If not I'm still at least hitting up a friend's friends' show at a bar later on tonight. Work tomorrow at 8 in the a.m. Later.