Be careful what you wish for (edit)

 

Five years ago, I was finishing the year, working at the Oregon Zoo part time.  I had started there in May, the second real job I had had since the TBI and the car wreck.  (TBI is Traumatic Brain Injury)

I was wishing for more work; the Zoo had entered it’s slack period – not many people go to the zoo in the rainy winter, although, at this time, the Zoo Lights are on display, millions (or thousands, anyway) of colorful lights in whimsical displays all over the zoo.  Past the Holiday season though, the job dried up and they cut me back to a day a week or less, and I was wishing/hoping/despairing of getting more work.

In January of 2005, I went up to the corner market for something or other, and the older Korean shop owner asked me if I wanted to work, if I wanted to drive for his son, who owns the Distributorship for the Oregonian newspaper in this area.  I had gotten my driver’s license back in 2000* – it had been suspended for three years following the car wreck, because I was drunk and had no car insurance when I crashed it – but a driving job was what I wanted, and I said "Yes!!!" to the shop owner and interviewed with his son, and became a Sunday papers driver for him.

*I got my DL back before the official end of the suspension, but got it yanked again because I didn’t keep the insurance – the car I had (but didn’t own) died and why pay for insurance if I got no car.  It was officially mine again in 2002 or 3.

The zoo work virtually vanished as the season began in 05 – the lesbian manager of the Gift Shop I worked in had hired some nubile young high schoolers and had given them most of my hours (I wrote about it extensively here, but those entries were lost in the Great Hacker Attack).  The dailies driver had dropped with a stroke on the route one night, and I knew the boss was looking for a new driver for the daily deliveries, so after (and I mean RIGHT after) I talked to the manager about why she was giving away my hours, after I had worked there 13 months (bitch), I called the boss and voluteered to do the dailies for him and quit the zoo job that day.

When and if I work, I do what the job is.  I don’t fuck off, I don’t take sick days if I don’t feel like working.  I do the job I am paid to do, the job that people rely upon me to do, no ifs, ands, or buts.  I am reliable, conscientious, and WORK.

The daily papers job had me working in the dark, on Vampire hours, and I got sorta spoiled by driving during the dark hours when not much traffic is out, and I liked the job, but it soon became clear that there was no where to grow in the position; in fact, our readership was in a canstant declining state, as fewer and fewer people bought the newspaper.  I found myself wishing for more work, work that had a future to it.

One morning, (I’ve told this before) I passed an Elementary School whose sign board had a "School Bus Drivers NEEDED" sign out front.  I was impressed – they didn’t "want" drivers, they NEEDED them.  I love to drive, and so, after some thought and a clear look at my life and where I wanted it to go, I decided that I would take the paid training and become a school bus driver.  I didn’t want to leave the boss in a lurch – good workers are difficult to find on these paper routes – and so I began the 2006-2007 school year doing both jobs; delivering the newspapers (over a thousand of them a day), and driving my bus, but after three months of 15 hour days of work, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t keep doing both jobs, not on the same days.  The money was nice (got this LCD monitor then) but I was killing myself, and as a school bus driver, I had dozens of lives in my hands, and it was wrong to try to juggle both jobs.  I talked to the boss and went back to doing the paper deliveries on the weekends only.

Meanwhile, at the barn, the Transportation Dept. it was clear to the powers that be that I was "a keeper", and more hours came my way driving the school buses.  The boss too saw I was a good worker, and that, and the fact that the white stepvan I was driving for him gets lousy gas mileage, inpelled him to buy a Plymouth Voyager minivan out of a tow yard auction.  He sold it to me for a penny over his cost, but it kept breaking and needing repairs, so it was quite awhile before it was really "mine".  I put 33.000 miles on that van, just driving it here in town, over the three years I had it, but it was the first vehicle I owed since I crashed my car on the Morrison Bridge, and I was happy with it, even if it was at the end of it’s life and needed constant attention and replacement of dead parts.  I sometimes think of it nostalgically still.

Last year at this time, it was on it’s last legs, but I didn’t know or realise it then.  In January of 08, the head gasket blew on it, and I was riding to the barn with another driver, who lives nearby.  The van’s demise was depressing, and to go back to walking or riding the bus or getting rides from my few friends was too.  In February of this year, the guy giving me rides to work said "let’s go look at the used car lots and see what we can find you", and at the third car lot we looked at, the dealership offered to sell me a new car, a Dodge Caliber.  The summer before, my ex-wife and I had rented one of those, and for the first time since the car wreck in 98, I drove a car long distance, for long hours, and felt I had finally recovered from the car wreck.  I drove that rental car over 3,000 miles in the week we had it, and I liked it a lot, so when the dealership offered to sell me one, I said yes and now own a Dodge Caliber of my own.  Mine is a lower grade mo

del than the one we rented – no power anything on mine, and a stickshift to boot, but I love MY car, and cherish the fact that I don’t have to worry about it breaking down on me.

Meanwhile, at the barn, I have demonstrated that I know how to work and am a reliable guy, and more and more work there has come my way, to the point that I am working more than 40 hours a week, driving my school bus here and there and putting in 12 hour days, eight or nine of them paid.  Nowadays, my wishes have come true; I still deliver the papers on the weekends and I drive a school bus during the week, and I have more work than I perhaps "want"… but I do my jobs and it pleases me to be Mr. Reliable, a "get ‘er done" kind of guy for the people I work for.

The curse goes like this "Be careful what you wish for; you might get it."  I have gotten my wish; I work every day.  Neither of these jobs is a high paying job, but they are jobs that NEED to be done, and it pleases me to be the guy who does them.  Five years ago in February, I began writing here, and learned how to post pictures, something I do well at, I think.  I have always liked taking pictures, and with Open Diary, I have a place to share the talent.  It pleases me immensely that I can write and post pictures here, and that I have, truely, a worldwide audience for my postings.

Back at the start of the school year, I suffered from pinched nerves in my neck, nerves that go to my right arm, and it was with joy and a certain amount of relief that I could use the health care benefits of the school bus driving job to fix that.  I returned to my bus driving job before the paid leave period ended, and just a week or so later, was offered an after school route, in addition to my previous am and pm route that brought me to Full Time Plus.  The "careful what you wish for" part is this:  I have far less time to spend here on OD.  For the past month or two, I have just posted my stuff, read my notes and replied to them, but have had little time to read other’s postings.  I have been a not so good correspondant to my favs, and while I have a lot, and am on many people’s favs lists too, I have felt that I am not giving my best as a member of this community, and I wish to apologise and beg the forgiveness of my readers.

 

On other frontiers of my life, I have come to give up on finding a new partner in life.  No, I am not gay – "partner" is a cliched way of expressing the fact that one has a same sex life partner.  I have nothing to offer anyone.  I work all the time at low paying jobs and don’t have any extra money to do the dating thing – I can barely feed myself and my car and my cat on what I make.  I don’t drink much any more (and who, pray tell, do you meet in bars anyway?  people who hang out in bars.  Not necessarily "my kind" of people).  It is hard here in the US to meet anyone outside of work, and the people I’ve met at work are generally hooked up with someone anyway.  I have nothing to offer anyone besides my character. my way with words, or my photographic talents.  I am not rich. I am "too nice".  I am not a user abuser.  I like women, but, well, I don’t think I’ll meet anyone who measures up to my admittedly high standards.  I don’t think I’m particularly good looking – certainly not movie star handsome.  Besides, I work "too much" to have the time and energy it seems to require to develop a relationship, and have been the "Plan B" guy to those I have met… and that’s not what I want to be.  The deck is stacked against me anyway, so I’ll give up on the idea and just do my jobs.  My ex wife, who used to come from Japan every summer to see me didn’t come this year, and doesn’t really repond to my emails any more.  I guess that’s over too.

You know the old saying? "wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled first".  I think I’ll wash my hands of the whole thing and just live what life I have left.  At 46, in the US of 2008, I am too old to fuck around.  It’s time I saw clearly that that time is long past.  I have a "Lifetime Membership" here, and so will be here for a while longer, and OD satisfies some desires and gives me the attention I apparently crave, but it’s not enough to just write and past pictures… But I have things yet unwritten about to flesh out and tell the story of, so even though I’m not making any coin off that, I guess it fills a need, kind of, that I have, and so I’ll write here until such time I can no longer do so.  Please forgive my lack of attention to the things you post.

Besides, I should be careful of what I wish for.

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