harold_maude's journal

The last couple of days there have been several trucks here in the neighborhood where I live.
There is spring lawn care being done, and what I initally thought was tree trimming that happens when the branches of trees get longer than the owner of the property likes.

That's only part of what's been going on the last couple of days.
They have been removing trees. It makes me angry. I love trees. Trees are amazing, they are one of the silent partners that makes the air breathable on this planet.
This non-sense of removing trees for any other reason than it's crushed some body part or your house via some type of natural event, a tornado, a hurricane, that kind of thing is hard to understand.

Trees are important. Especially in the midwest. There arn't mountians close enough to create some kind of break from the sun and summer heat.
Trees in the midwest come from somewhere else. This part of the world in it's pristine state is grass land.
Lots and lots of grass land.

All thoes tress that got transplanted, make this city more human friendly. I can't immagine this place and summer or winter for that matter without tress.
When I see one being hauled away in chunks it hurts and it makes me angry.

Tress are wonderful. Every tree I have ever seen is a work of art. I love the old gnarled tress. They are amazing to wander around and just look at it.
It's just one flavor of eye candy that nature offers.

I'm sad too, when I see trees being removed. Humankind has been so unkind to the planet over the years, cutting a tree down just seems almost obsene.
It hurts. I can't really explain why it hurts, but it does.

I would love to see some high priced lawyers defend the trees.
A worthy client to be sure.
It's a strange thing to me, but you would think that when people cut down tress they realize that they are removing a natural air purifier.
That's part of what the trees do for us, they purify the air.
Sometimes it makes me wonder how smart some people actually are.

In a way, I'm glad I felt this strong. It lets me know that my emotions are still working.
Always a good thing.

Change is something that happens. Just like the stuff that you don't plan on happening.

It seems and feels like I spend so much time getting stuff done that works best on days off, and the rest of the days working that when I am home I'm almost numb.
I wonder if that will change as well.

The few hours of quiet I get, when I am here, are precious few.
I don't listen to anything when I'm here by myself.
I have been reading news headlines the last few days and thinking about that. Nothing is sticking with me as in affecting my mood in anyway. I just find it's easier to pick and choose the stories that interest me. Selective reading I guess.

I want to take a book with me tomorrow to read while I do laundry.
I want to go really early when there is no one there.

My days off have become catch up days. Since I'm finally get used to this job I have a bit more energy, not much, but enough for the moment.
Today was long and weary. Several times I wanted to just look at the assistant manager and tell him I was done and I was going home now. But I didn't. I choked down the day.
I wasn't angry. I wasn't fed up. I wasn't feeling much of anything. All I knew was that I wanted to go home.
Very primal. Very simple. Direct and to the point.
But that would have gotten me fired.

Fridays and Saturdays at the place where I work are the busiest days. The work load for the person who makes dough on thoes two days is alot. Thoes two days often feel like one has eaten way too much and the discomfort from doing that.

It ended up taking me about a half hour longer to complete the work. I wasn't happy with having to stay there almost 9 hours.
I did take two 5 minuet breaks.
What took so much time was the second kind of dough, out of it besides pizza crusts, there are bread sticks and desert skins, and monkey bread. It's all thoes parts and peices that take so long.
There is the prep work that goes with making thoes things that drives me nuts some days.
Today was one of thoes days.

I am glad that it's over with. I'm home now.

I think summer arrived this week a couple of months early.
I think spring went by so fast that it just looked like mud for a few days and then it left.

But it's still only mid april, so anything could still happen weather wise.

I'm slowly getting used to my job. I'm finding the biggest challange I have with it is that it hurts my hands still, and because of that I'm having to learn to work around what my hands feel like.
It's slowed my art to a crawl. For a couple of weeks it was impossible to hold a brush for more then just a few minuets.
Now it's about 45 minuets. I'm having to learn to use as little grip as possible so that I can paint longer.
I am determined to paint.

I refuse to let pain keep me from doing what I love. That's what this has come down to.
I refuse to stop doing art.

So I am getting used to this, and I'm taking some stuff for my joints called move free. I will know in a short amount of time if it helps.

Well, it's half way through the week. Not sure how I feel about it because I've got three more days this week of doing the dough thing.
My body doesn't like doing it and has let me know in no uncertian terms that it doesn't like it. It hurts to do this job which lets me know that it's very possible that the family gift of arthritis is trying to pull me into the fun world of daily pain and adjustment.

In light of the pain which at times has me close to tears, I've been doing some searching for something that will help.
And I think I found something that might be what I'm looking for, it's a mixture of either 3 or 4 different ingrients with really long names that are for joint problems.
If this stuff works then I'll be able to go back to painting, something which has been kind of out of the picture since I started this job. It just hurts way too much to hold a brush or pencil for very long.

It's hard not to be angry about having to take a job that is taking way more than it's giving back. Yes, I know I'm lucky to have this job, but come on, no job should take so much that when your not doing it life becomes a challange just to do mundany and ordinary tasks.

I have to wait until monday to get this stuff as that's payday.
I wish my ship would come in already and I could finally get a break that isn't loaded with all kinds of extra stuff for me to deal with.

I'm not a happy camper since I started this job, and I like food service. Most of the jobs are hard but fun. This one just plain sucks big time.

Ok, I'm done ranting now. No point in bitching about what I can't fix for the moment.

Last night I decited to go to bed early. I could barely keep my eyes open. So, I go to bed at about 8:30. A couple hours earlier than I would normally go to bed.
About an hour later I'm having dreams of the phone ringing and it wakes me up.
A missed call from my mom. So I call her back, I'm kind of groggy but it's ok. It's my mom.

She got really sick last fall and spent about 3 months in the hosptial, but recovered fine. For the first few weeks it was not clear wether or not she would recover, but she did.

Our phone conversations now last less than 5 minuets, just a bit of hello, and small talk and she's pretty much done saying what she needs to. I figure talking on the phone wears her out a bit now. No worries. So I go back to bed.

It's roughly about 9:40 at this point. I fall back asleep and the dreams start, a strange mix of bullets, tanks and pizza dough all kind of mixing together like some bad recipie.

Somewhere about an hour ago, at least that's what my guess is, I started waking up, my body in a state of discomfort is what the problem was.
My left shoulder at the joint has decited that it's not happy this morning and is in pain.

I don't know if this is going to change. I don't know if people who make pizza crusts and move that much dough around for hours on end ever get used to it.

So finally I look at the clock. 2:20 a.m. My stomache is not happy. So I get up, followed by the cat who is telling me she wants food.
I have a class I'm required to be at this afternoon on making dough.
I've doing this for over a month now, and aparently the decision has come down the pike that I got trained wrong.
So me and 5 other people, one who did this crap for 6 months several years ago are required to take this class.

For some reason this feels like we are all in trouble, and they are going to fix the problem.
The problem is that instead of being reasonable and having two people work the dough, it would ease the wear on one person, get the crap done faster and that would relive some of the stress associated with this crappy job.

Sometimes upper management seems to miss it completely.

Gonna try to go back to bed now. I'm still really tired.

I've come back to writing in this place. The bat cave. My bat cave. Does that mean that I see myself as some kind of super hero?
No. It just means that I have a place that is my sanctuary, hidden away. Just like bat caves tend to be.
You can find them, but you have to know what to look for to find them.

Anyway, I'm in deep thought mode today. That's a pretty common activity to my life. It's something that is also private, but there are things that go through my mind that I don't want to forget, so I write. I read somewhere that it's good for your emotional health to write. Just like tears are good for the health of your eyes. Being a natual eye wash.
If you think about it long enough you can see a purpose to almost everything.

I was thinking about the relationships I've had over the years.
All different kinds of relationships. Some of them have been wonderful and gave me many wonderful gifts that still affect my life to this day.
Gifts of axioms and views and perspectives as well as some tangable gifts, cards and letters, photos, that kind of thing.
Thoes are all gifts, things that are important to me.

They are not fancy, or expensive in the way that gifts are often seen, but to me they are more special than any expensive store bought gift any day of the week.

Some of the relationships I've had with people have been painful, hurtful, and I have ended up loosing much. Parts of my life that I will never get back. But I don't regret having thoes relatonships. I learned stuff from them.
I got a chance to see some larger pictures because of thoes relationships.
I've had relationships that failed because the other person could not see or accept me for everything I am, and everything I'm not and still choose to be in the relationship with me.
I did something in thoes places that many people would never do, I took all the responsiblity for what went wrong.

It may seem a stupid and pointless thing to do considering that no relationship of any kind goes bad just because of one person in the relationship. For any relationship to exist, there has to be two parties involved.
When things go wrong, both have had a hand in that process.

While it's true that one may be more responsible for doing more stuff that will kill a relationship than the other person, but both have a part in the process.

I took all the responsibility for a couple of reasons. First I realized that fighting because of anger or frustration is a natural response and quite normal, but most of the time durring a fight no one is really listening to the other, and the one thing that can change everything isn't happening, and that's communication.
Simple talking about what's wrong, and simply listening instead of thinking about what your going to say and the grievences you have as well, can go a long way to making room for change.

I have heard that fighting is a healthy thing to do. It's part of being human, it's how you find out the truth of who your fighting with, as in you can't really know a person until you fight with them kind of thing.

Fighting for what you need, want ect. is part of the human condition, and there is nothing wrong with it.
When fighting is based on wounded emotions it takes turns and twists that only seem to make things worse.
That's the kind of fighting that I tend to refuse to participate in. That's the place where communication is most needed, and could help fix alot of things that can distroy a relationship.

The next reason I have taken all the responsiblity is because someone had to. It was the only way to keep things calm. I would rather walk away peacefully from a relationship than have it explode all over the place.

The last reason is because I want to show them somthing different than they have ever seen before. If I can do that sucessfully then they can never say they very seen kindness or mercy or tollerance up close and personal.
One less excuse, one step closer for taking responsiblity for your own life.
One step closer to self discovery.

I really do think that's part of why we are all here. What the point is to all of this that's going on in the world.
That's one of thoes big pictures I was talking about.

I've come to a conclusion about something. Life is the journey of the discover of the self. In the light of that discovery, our place and our purpose become clear.

I know that alot of this may seem very esoteric, but let me bring it to a place that is a little more ordinary.
Thoes big questions of who are we, and why are we here get answered in a very personal way.

What object has more value than your life? I can't think of a single object such as house, job, money, toys, stuff, things, vacations, games, movies, books, cars, etc. that have any where as close a value as your life.

Knowing who you are means that you can find your way a bit easier, and life for you then becomes easier, because you understand something more about why you do the things you do and make the choices you do.
When we finally figure out who we are, the rest is easier than it was before.

When we know who we are, and why we're here, prefrences seem to change and it's easier to see less of a need or even a want for certian things.
That's part of what happens to a person when they leave home.

It's part of the way things are ment to be. We arrive into this life, grow up and leave home to find our own way.
I realize as I say this that this doesn't happen for everyone.
But non the less it covers enough of the human race to be a vaild point.

...I realize that I really do love to talk. I'm better at oration than I am at conversation.
I'm even better at listening. That's another reason I write so much. I don't care if anyone reads this or not. It's just been really nice to write it down and get it out of my head.
That will make more room for more ponderings.
As well as more of these rambling journal entries that I am so fond of.