Grendel

Getting ready to go to work, which is to say I am sitting on the sofa after standing outside for not one but two cigarettes in the grey, dreary morning. I have twenty or so minutes before I need to shower and dress and catch the bus downtown where, even though I have told myself I don’t need one, I will smoke another cigarette in order to calm my nerves before walking  through those double doors to the darkened restaurant, where the owner will be sitting, waiting to pounce. No doubt he will have found something to piss him off, something about which to be suspicious, and the calm I have spent this morning cultivating will be replaced with anger and frustration that if I stick up for myself and tell this tiny Albanian immigrant what he really needs to be told, I will be fired. Even worse is the possibility of being kept on, and treated with even more suspicion and hostility.

Money is a bitch. And I think I’m working for her son.

Tuesday

I’ve recently decided to drop out of the capitalist market. Well, insomuch as I can. I awakened several years ago to the notion that the only way to resist government or markets or any other similarly constructed power scheme in which some humans are deemed worthier than others based on arbitrary status within the construct, the only way to really be free of them and not simply opposing them (thereby lending to their credibility as a power system) is non-participation.

Having said all of that, and also having become completely fed up with American Capitalism, I have decided to become a deadbeat.  I woke recently to the notion that I have spent thirty some years of my life waking on someone else’s schedule in pursuit of someone else’s dream.  Sometimes I pursued two or three at once in exchange for which my son and I (barely) had a place to stay and food to eat.  Who is to say I have another thirty some years to pursue my own dream? My own thoughts? My own life?

Freewrite

Had to step back and separate myself again. What I want. Who I am. What parts of myself am I willing to give a little on and what parts I can give nothing of.

 I could use an office chair. I so want to lean back right now but that would be bad for the chair I’m currently sitting in which used to be in my grandmother’s breakfast nook, now the height of fashion in those mini McMansions they sold everyone a few years back. We have given over so much of ourselves. So so very much. We are the science fiction novels and movies we grew up on. Want to talk to a friend? Video message them from your Android. Want a car that parks for you? Corrects your accidents-in-waiting? Guides you to your destination? How about a drink that substitutes as a meal? Or a pill? Or a pill that makes you happier, more sociable, or hornier?

A little off track as usual but I don't think I ever had one. Just free writing. Went walking in the woods again today. Not in the woods so much as on a guided, well-maintained nature trail through the woods around a small lake. I am free to do such things now. Free to do as I please. I have missed this. Have definitely missed me. Quit my job. It was way overdue. Don’t have anything lined up which is of course freaking others out, mostly because they don’t know how to live a different life than the one they are living now, where they’ve traded their souls for the modern-day comforts of  faster downloads and pleasantly sedated coworkers.

Digression. 

Compromises

So my Thanksgiving gets even worse. Even though I do not work on Thursdays, have not ever worked for the restaurant on Thursdays, and Thanksgiving is in fact on a Thursday (prior planning on my part? Perhaps), I will be working this Thursday. And even though I agreed to come in and was offered the choice of a morning or evening shift and chose the morning shift, I have been scheduled for the evening. 2-10.

Retail managers have no souls.

Upon discovering that I had been scheduled to work in the afternoon, effectively killing any plans I had left for the holiday, I told the manager on duty that I had agreed to work in the morning and that I wouldn’t have agreed to work at all if it meant the afternoon shift. I do, after all, have a child at home. We have no family in the area. We made plans to have dinner with friends in the evening. My working a 2-10 shift meant that my son would basically be spending the holiday alone (since he is, after all, a teenage boy, and it is unlikely he will even get out of bed before noon) or with friends who he still doesn’t know very well.

The manager said he would talk to the scheduling manager and take care of it.

He didn’t.

And yesterday when I arrived at work, I found that our GM was “no longer with the company” (don’t know what’s behind that) and that the scheduling manager is now our GM. And our new GM told me that he already had too many people on for the morning, so he couldn’t fit me in, but that he really needed me for the afternoon. He offered to take the hit and let me have the day off completely, but he already gave me last Sunday off in exchange for working the holiday and since I did not work Sunday (my money day), I now have no real choice about it. I have to work the shift because I am still too poor to miss out on the potential cash.

I feel like a horrible parent, like I am abandoning my son. But it is only a month until Christmas. And the kid’s birthday is just a few days after that. I was planning to travel to Iowa for the holidays, which my son is pretty excited about. We stayed in Virginia last year, and he wasn’t very happy about it, even though he understood why we couldn’t go. I wasn’t very happy either, but I haven’t been with my family for the holidays for some time, so I am used to it. Regardless, I want to go this year. I haven’t spent any time with my mother in a while and I have a new nephew who I have never met. And I really want to spend a couple weeks playing cards and drinking with my sisters. But mostly, I don't want the kid to miss out on the holidays with his family again.

So it’s a trade-off. A crappy Thanksgiving for a good Christmas break. I hope the kid understands this. And doesn’t hold it against me until he’s forty.

N-O. How do you pronounce that again?

One of the bittersweet joys of living so far away from family and being too poor to travel is that I get to spend my holidays alone. Just me and the kid doing whatever we want. No splitting time between my mother’s family and my father’s before rushing the kid over to his own father’s house. No family bickering. No going out of my way to accommodate everyone else’s timelines and putting up with their little eccentricities. Just peace. And quiet. And time for silent reverence.

Ahhh.

So I was getting pretty excited about Thanksgiving. The university gives us Friday off and we only work a half day on Wednesday, so I was looking forward to a four and a half day weekend. Of course, I can’t afford to take the time off from the restaurant, but still, only working one job is a vacation. And since my availability doesn’t include Thursdays (or Saturdays – I have to have one day to do housework and grocery shopping), I’ve been looking forward to the extra full day of rest for months now.

Since we weren’t planning to go to Iowa to see family, and our kitchen is much too small for me to be preparing a big feast, I thought I’d take the kid out to dinner, overtip the poor server who had to work the holiday, then go home and spend the rest of the day playing video games and watching holiday movies while further stuffing ourselves on a few well-chosen snacks.

Exciting? No. Just what I want and need? Completely.

But it was not to be. Several weeks ago, a friend of ours invited us over for a T-Day dinner. I thanked her and said that it sounded nice, but I did not say yes. I also didn’t say no. Then a couple weeks ago, she called to ask if my son could babysit and in the course of our conversation, brought up Thanksgiving dinner. It quickly became clear that by not declining the invitation, I had accepted.

I couldn’t back out at that point, so definite plans were made. This is the same friend who gave me a place to stay this summer while I was apartment hunting, and the same friend who took me to the beach for some much needed rest. And while I don’t feel an obligation to accept her invitation, I also don’t want them to feel that I don’t care enough about them to spend the holiday with them, especially when (as most people might see it) I have nothing better to do.

And they only live ten minutes away. I figured the kid and I could still sleep in a little, get in a movie or some festive zombie-killing on the X-Box, hang out, cook and dine with my friends, and still have a few hours of down time in the evening.

This also was not to be.

The other night at the restaurant, the assistant GM sidled up to me (yes, he really did sidle).

AGM: I’m only asking you this because I have to . . .
Me: You want me to work Thanksgiving.
AGM: (slumping down by leaning on the counter to make himself smaller than me) We could really use you.
Me: You know, I used to like you.
AGM: (batting his pretty blond eyelashes) You can handle the traffic. We need the experience on the floor.
Me: I’m liking you less and less right now.
AGM: You could work morning or evening. It would really help us out.
Me: I don’t like you at all.
AGM: (puts his head on his arm and looks up at me)
Me: (in my head) Fuuuuuuuck!
AGM: The shifts are eight to two or two to ten.
Me: Is the morning busy?
AGM: (stands up straight now that he has what he wants) We’re on a wait by eight-thirty.
Me: You suck. (calling after him as he walks away) I mean that. I really can't stand you!

I need the money. Fucking money.

And I figured it wouldn’t be so bad. I have a few extra hours on Wednesday between leaving the university early and my shift at the restaurant when the kid and I can hang out. I’ll go in to the restaurant and make (I hope) some great money on Thursday and still make it to dinner at my friend’s house, then I’ll have until Friday at five to do whatever I want. Plus my usual Saturday.

So I talked to my friend a little while ago to finalize some plans for me to pick up a bed she is giving me (see, how could I turn down her invitation?). And I told her that I would have to work until mid-afternoon on Thursday, but that the kid and I would be there for dinner. No big deal, she said. She even offered to pick the kid up early so I could come straight to her house from work if I wanted. Oh, and by the way, she had some bad news.

It seems her six year old daughter (adorable) came home from school last night and declared herself a vegetarian. Eating animals is cruel. And because eating animals is cruel, she forbade her parents from cooking up and serving an already dead turkey. And because my friends are very progressive and always support their daughters in whatever their endeavors, we will not be having turkey on Thanksgiving. We will be having no meat of any kind.

Again – Fuck!

So, to recap:

dhf’s original Turkey-Day plans:
-Go out for drinks with work friends after Wednesday night’s shift because I have the next day off.
-Sleep in because I have the day off.
-Watch parades on television with the kid.
-Go out to dinner.
-Come home and eat junk food and play video games with the kid.
-Maybe go to a movie (Beowulf in 3-D at the IMAX!)


dhf’s modified Turkey-Day plans:
-Maybe have one drink after Wednesday night’s shift, depending on how early we get out because I have to be at work by eight in the morning.
-Serve pre- and post-church guests in the a.m. and lucky non-cooking bastards in the early afternoon. Hope they compensate me well for working on a holiday so they don’t have to.
-Head to my friends’ house for a lovely holiday dinner.
-Go to a movie or go home and eat junk food and kill zombies with the kid.

dhf’s final next-Thursday plans:
-Go out for too many drinks regardless of time after Wednesday night’s shift because I have to be at work early in the morning and then have a meatless Thanksgiving dinner, so why does it matter if I’m hung over.
-Drag myself out of bed and head to work where I will run my ass off for ungrateful customers who will probably bring in their kids who have likely been gorging on sweets all morning and will be hopped up on sugar, running around our restaurant with cousins they haven’t seen all year and are sooo excited to be hanging out with. Know that I’ll probably get stiffed thirty percent of the time. Two, maybe three dollars on the rest of the tables.
-Go to my friends’ house and eat vegetables and potato dishes.
-Skip the movie because I’m too hung over from the previous night’s drinking.
-Kill a shit-load of zombies because I am full of much bitterness over not being able to say no to people and spent the day doing something other than what I wanted.

My bad form

When I woke this morning, forty-five minutes after my alarm should have and probably did go off, I had the briefest notion to just call in and tell The Man I wasn’t coming. I should have done it. I’ve been about an hour behind all day long. I missed a meeting. I realized I didn’t have access to not one, but two databases to which I’ll need immediate access. And I got a parking ticket because I forgot that I parked in the two hour parking zone – because of my tardiness – and not in the deck where I usually park. Don’t even get me started on the parking ticket.

But in those few moments of eye-fluttering, what-the-hell-time-is-it, rising to consciousness, when I considered not coming in at all, I convinced myself that work was a necessity. Why? For one, I have only been at the new job a couple of months and I don’t want get a reputation as a slacker. And second, if I don’t go to the daytime job, I can’t in good conscience go to the night time job either. It would just be bad form.

And I need the money.

I hate money.

Yet I need it so.

I am money’s bitch.

See, I’m between homes at the moment. I’m not homeless, just staying with friends until I find suitable habitation. And by suitable, I mean something I can afford located within a decent school district. The kid will be back in a few weeks and he will need to be in school. Apparently there’s a law.

You would think that finding such habitation in such a school district would not be that difficult. But no.

Virginians were the last to practice Massive Resistance. What is Massive Resistance, you ask? Basically, it was the good ol’ boy way of giving the finger to those liberal nut jobs in Washington who desegregated the school systems. The short version is that instead of integrating, local governments were allowed to shut down public schools and grant money so families could send their kids to all-white, private academies. The practice ended sometime in the mid 1960’s. Sort of. It still pretty much happens in Richmond. The only difference is, they’ve left the public schools open.

Here’s how: The city is spread over the county line between Chesterfield and Henrico Counties. Each of these counties have excellent schools, for the most part. The problem is, the “city” of Richmond (ie the poorest part) is not a part of either county. Richmond city has its own public school system. Richmond city’s school system is not on par with the counties. It gets better at the high school level, but many of the schools aren’t fully accredited (not enough of the students meet the minimum Standards of Learning as set forth by the state of Virginia – thank you, GW and No Child Left Behind), are generally under-funded, and are in physical disrepair (an understatement). And because the Richmond City School System is so bad, most of the (white) people who can afford it send their kids to private schools.

So what happens is that in very lovely, racially and socially mixed neighborhoods, only the poorest kids go to the public schools. And generally, because of institutional failures, and yes, racism, there are few if any white kids in Richmond City schools.

And, yes, I am part of this racist behavior. And I hate it.

The first year my son was in Richmond, for fourth grade, I lived in Oregon Hill, a basically all-white neighborhood near campus and I sent the kid to the neighborhood elementary. I knew when I enrolled him that he was it – the one white kid in fourth grade. But I didn’t care. He didn’t either.

But with kids, anyone who sticks out, anyone different is the object of bullying. I made him stick it out for the rest of the year, but that summer I sent him back to his father. Partially because even the best schools in the county don’t compare to those back in Iowa, and partially because I was having my own difficulties and thought it was best for the kid to be with his dad at the time. It wasn’t. But lesson learned.

When I decided to bring him back to Virginia last year, we moved out to the middle of nowhere with a friend, in an excellent school district. But that didn’t work out either. So now I am between domiciles, looking for a place I can afford, that isn’t in a school district where only half the kids are passing the state’s Standards of Learning.

This is why I had to jump out of bed and endure the day instead of rolling over and going back to sleep.