Campfyre Stories

It’s only been one morning and already I miss my regular bus driver.

He’s a great guy, who sometimes puts on a crotchety attitude to get us all to work/school on time.

"Come on, come ON, let’s go, move it, move it, move it!"  He hurries people on and hurries people off because if he doesn’t, we’ll all be late, including him for when he changes from one route to another.

But he took the week off because the drivers are only allowed to take full weeks, not partial…  so we have a substitute…  and not the one I was hoping for.  This guy doesn’t seem to understand the discipline the passengers (on our route, specifically) require in order for him to run on time.

So he’d sit at a bus stop while the little old lady dug through the change in her purse trying to find a quarter…  and he’d wait around to…  I don’t know…  see if anyone else was coming?  And the end result of it was that we were TWENTY MINUTES LATE.  Which is unheard of for this route.

Even worse is that he is supposed to start a different route a full 5 minutes before my regular bus driver usually drops me off.  So he was actually 25 minutes late in moving to his other route.

Give me a hard-ass driver any day.  One who isn’t afraid to tell people to move faster when they’re slowing everything down.  One who will tell the people with the Nextel walkie-talkies to turn off that function on their bus.  One who will clearly explain that full-sized strollers (and similarly bulky items) need to be folded up and out of the way and if they’re not willing to NOT take up the aisle, they can get off and wait for another bus.

From experience, I can tell you, all those people who you’re catering to and think you’re making a good impression on?  Those are the ones who will take full advantage of you to the detriment of *everyone else*.  your regulars?  We’re the ones who crack up when you hurry people along or make them behave like civilized people.  We’re the ones who will applaud when you throw the beligerent drunk off the bus because he’s harassing us.  We’re the ones who appreciate that sort of thing…  and we’re the ones who will complain if we’re late every day.  We already do.

Maybe I should take this as a sign that this (short) week would be a good time to practice getting up that half-hour early to see how bad it will be when I switch jobs.  Even if that bus driver is running late, the worst case would be that he gets me to work *on time*.

It was colder this morning than it’s supposed to be tomorrow and since this week has been rather eventful (right up to the bus home getting pulled over by a cop who boarded the bus and *looked* at everyone last night), I decided to just take a day for myself and do the petitioning tomorrow.

I find that a slow cleaning, here and there, doing a couple of dishes, then sweeping a floor, then clearing a surface, etc., is sometimes more productive than setting goals and putting my mind to it. Especially when the game I’m re-playing has LONG-ASS cinematics I’ve already seen. I was productive and lazy at the same time.

Girl and I go through phases of communication where we sometimes don’t talk for weeks at a time, but other times we talk every night for an hour or more. It’s always amazing to me how we are able to give the other one what she needs and, at the same time get what we need out of it as well.

I’m starting to mentally write my list of Unfinished Business for 2007. I don’t like to start a new year with things looming over me. It’s shorter this year than usual, but some of the things are more emotionally trying than usual. I guess it’s a trade-off.

I think that I am sometimes too empathic for my own good. I take things on that the people I love are feeling. So this friend is hurting and my heart is breaking for him. This friend is angry and frustrated, so I am seething on her behalf. It’s a draining exercise and, not only do I not know how to turn it off, I don’t know if I even really want to, since it’s a rare thing in an often self-absorbed world.

I’m so caught up in the eventful present that I can’t really plan for the future. It’s not good or bad, it’s just a thing and this, too, shall pass, as everything does.

Downtime causes me to think, too much, perhaps, but sometimes it’s nice to take a minute to sort things out.

Three short weeks in a row, and that’s one of the nice things about the month of November. 

Last week, I took off Election Day in order to go to Spawn’s Parent-Teacher Conference day.  I also ran some errands with the boy and participated in the US Election process, small though it was.  This week, Monday was Veteran’s Day and so Spawn and I got our errands done.  Next week, of course, is Thanksgiving, and my job site closes both for the holiday itself and the Friday following, so that’ll be a nice, long weekend.

It’s also an eventful month, beyond the holidays and days off.  This weekend, for example, as much as I would like to just sit around the house and play video games, I have chores around the house and I’ve committed to collecting signatures to get my candidate on the NYS Primary ballot.

But events happen in more ways than simply things you do.  I’m getting a new position, with my same company, working at a place where I used to work before, in a culture I loved.  Getting back into the System Administration end of things is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but it seems to have taken a detour as I tried Project Management, and prior to that, Accounting (???).  I am well placed to have completed everything that I’m currently working on, probably well before I move to the new position and location, which I feel will be a strong accomplishment and will allow me to make the switch in the best possible circumstances and also leave me in the best possible light among my existing team.

I’ve been battling frustrations with things outside of my control and trying to overcome the overwhelming aspects of Other People’s Drama that have been poking at me.  I’ve been encountering reminders of my father in unexpected places and very touching ways.  Reminiscing is hard, but depending on who I do it with, it’s also, I think, therapeutic.

But on a more positive note, in addition to my own good news, I have it coming in from other sources as well.  Girl, who has had the worst luck ever in finding (and keeping) a pastry assistant (she is a pastry chef), has hired a Rocket Scientist.  I kid you not, the woman has a PhD in astrophysics from MIT.  And all she wants to do is bake.  My mother is on the verge of buying a local Music Together franchise - something that she’s been teaching and enjoying for several years now.  She and her partner were also featured in a wonderful article by a local newspaper.  Princess keeps reporting more and more yarn orders for her hand-dyed sock yarn company.  Miz and her boyfriend finally (after freaking out for several weeks) found their new home and are moving in this weekend…  The good news is currently pouring in for so many people and that tempers the frustrating things on the periphery.

All in all this is proving to be one of the most eventful Novembers I can remember, and possibly the most eventful month I’ve had all year.  NOT that I am complaining.  This is the sort of stuff that keeps life interesting.

I’ve been wracking my brain for over an hour and I can only think of one married man that I am friends with.  It’s interesting to me that I’m able to even have the one, but I know his wife and she doesn’t tend to have the same kind of competitive mindset as the majority of mainstream women.  It’s refreshing to have that one person/couple as friends without worry.

That competitiveness has always turned me off from women in general, and is the primary reason that I can count my female friends on one hand, but it’s always caused me to be perceived in highly inaccurate ways, usually by those who don’t understand why I prefer the platonic company of men.

When I was in high school, despite the fact that I had a long-distance boyfriend that I was loyal to - the entire time, who I later married, I was considered a "slut" because I ran around with boys…  most of whom had girlfriends.  There was never anything sexual about it, but catty girls apparently thought there was.

So here are three stories about how my having boobs means I can’t have married male friends…

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If you had to choose between happiness and wealth, what would you choose?

Assume, first off, that it’s not a matter of being happy and poor or wealthy and depressed.  Take as a given that in this case "wealth" means well more than being able to pay your bills without worrying about it, so even without wealth, you’ll still be ok.  You can pay for the necessities, but you maybe have to save for the things you want.

Assume, secondly, that happiness isn’t an overreaching quality, but more of a job satisfaction, less stress situation.  It’s that additional happiness that you get when you know you’ve accomplished something and you enjoyed doing it.

For me, the choice is simple.  I choose happiness.  He told me "You’re strange" because, to me, the finer things in life have little to no meaning without also having the satisfaction of having earned them and the ability to really enjoy it.

If it’s a choice, I choose happiness.  Money, to me, is just so much less important.

I was writing out some birthday cards to friends out of state this weekend and it got me thinking about how much I really miss writing letters to people.  When I was younger, I had many a pen pal and even held most of my long-distance relationship with my (now ex-) husband via letters, cards and packages.

These days, with friends all over the country, I still send more mail than most, usually in the form of small, strange packages to friends who may need a pick-me-up, but living in the age of email, blogs and social networking, few people respond to such outreaches.

I know I’ve spoken in the past about my love for postcards and how I ask everyone I know who goes on a trip to send me a postcard, but even that is so much less than a well-written (or even just well-meant) letter.  It’s easy to breeze off a few lines of update and say "this is what’s going on", but a real letter takes the time to convey more, I think.  It takes that extra effort and a little bit of care, but few people do it these days.

I stopped, several years ago, sending out holiday cards.  Mostly because my list became unmanageable. I think I make up for it in sending mail to people throughout the year, but a lot of people get missed because I don’t have their address or because they never actually return the favor.  Even Thank You cards have become something that few, if any, really think about anymore, except for the protocol of traditional weddings.

It truly is a lost art, and this couldn’t have been made more clear to me than when I asked Spawn to send a letter or card to his grandmother, who is currently living out of state, while working on a degree.  He didn’t even know how to send or format a personal letter and, despite my attempts to explain it to him, he simply became more reluctant to do it and less receptive to understand it.  He did wind up sending her a birthday card, and writing a thank you note for a birthday gift he received from an out of state family member, both of which were received with surprise and pleasure.

I get excited whenever I get an unexpected card, postcard, package or letter.  I’ve always been exceptionally fond of receiving postal mail, but it seems like it comes less often and farther between.

Why does it have to be an either/or situation, a replacement of something that is meaningful for something that is often careless and not thought out?  I don’t believe that the $.41 is that much of a barrier and, with mailboxes readily available, it’s really not all that difficult to mail a letter.

The immediacy that we demand of our communications, whether it’s free long-distance from our cell phones or an instantaneous email has really lowered the quality of the information that we share with others.  You can’t send stickers in an email, and rarely do we freely poeticize our words on the phone.

I may be old-fashioned in this, but to me, mail is something to be treasured.  I only wish more people would participate in something that is so meaningful that you really have to think about, and hold in your hand before it goes into the recycle bin.

Today would have been my father’s birthday.  We’ve all, I think, been thinking a lot about him lately, and the actual day of his birthday is kinda tough.  The week leading up to it, now that I think about it, hit me harder than the day itself.

Whenever I get into those states where I’m thinking a lot about my dad, he stops in to say hello in interesting ways, usually through people who knew him…  often people I didn’t actually know myself, or at least didn’t *really* know.

Earlier this week, I ran into a former co-worker of my dad’s who asked me if I could get him some pictures and also who he should talk to to get copies of dad’s music.  That was a beautiful thing, knowing that people were making efforts, probably unbeknownst to them, to keep dad and his music alive, not just for his family, but for even all the people who never knew him.

My mother intends to start a MySpace page for General Eclectic (the best incarnation of their band) and I think it’s going to wind up getting them the exposure they could have had, if the internet had come about 20 years earlier.  I think there are a lot of people who either knew dad or know one of us kids who will be amazed to find out that not only are we not exaggerating dad’s musical and songwriting abilities, but probably playing them down to some degree.

Girl told me that Dad will forever live in her memory for the worst jokes she ever laughed at.  That it was his delivery that, no matter how bad that joke was, still made her laugh…  and that’s pretty universally agreed on.  That no one could deliver a punchline like Paul.

There are a lot of things that no one could pull off quite like Paul and the people who knew him each have a different one thing that stands out for them.  I’ve come to believe that each of us has that one spark of uniqueness that never leaves this plane.  Whether you believe in reincarnation, heaven, or nothing at all…  I don’t think that anyone entirely moves on, because I know for me, and for everyone else I know who has lost someone close to them, that they are not just reminded but watched over, poked in the shoulder, if you will, by that loved one who is no longer here.

I think that it’s similar to Orson Scott Card’s use of the term of aiùa in the later Ender series and that’s the closest thing that I have to defining it.  Whatever it is, it never actually goes away.  The reminders, however, sometimes are hard.

Ever since my web guy switched hosting providers, I no longer have much of a stats tracking tool.  I’m not bothered by it, it just allows me to assume that only the handful of people who comment on my posts (either in the actual comment field or in person to me later) are the ones who read.  But every so often someone random will tell me that they’re reading my blog or make some kind of reference to something that I’ve said only online (like referring to my son as "Spawn" in a conversation).

It happened again, you see.  Someone I know from another online venue mentioned that he’s been enjoying my blog for a while and, again, it got me to thinking about how strange it is that I have no idea who’s out there…  and still I don’t add the tracking tools to determine who you are.  Commenting breaks the anonymity…  anything else would make me feel like I’m being invasive.

But here’s the thing…  I’ve had this new stupid little fear lately.  I’m waiting for the point in time where someone I know passingly (as in, unaware of my web presence) in real life comes up to me and says, "I have to ask you something…  are you FyreGoddess?"  At which point, I may combust from sheer embarrassment.

The conversations that I post are either done with permission (if the person reads my blog) or the other person’s identity is masked, but what if one of those people just happens across the blog, or worse (?) is a long-time reader who I just never met in person?  I’ve been having daymares of that conversation happening in random places.  Not that I think it would be a *bad* thing, necessarily, I’m just honestly not sure how I would handle that particular connection being made without my foreknowledge.

I have decided that the potential of the internet scares the hell out of me, on so many levels.  Then again, that fear is what drives me in a lot of ways.  I’m not nearly as outgoing as I am attempting to attack my fear of people.  I’m scared that, one day, robots will take over the world, therefore I work in technology so that I can at least make a valiant attempt to take them down.

Anyway, the point here is that I’m trying not to let it consume me.  It kind of already happened a little bit over the summer when boyhowdy commented on one of my Falcon Ridge posts that he was a reader.  But I think there’s something a little bit safer about having the whole thing happen online.  My concern is for it happening OFFLINE and with no real warning…  you know?

Yes, I know, it’s totally stupid to be worried about something that, in all likelihood, will never actually happen, but coupled with finding out more people have been stalking me…  erm…  reading my blog, it just makes that tiny little niggling in the back of my head a little more noticeable.

I have often lamented, though perhaps not on the blog, the strange pseudo-community of the bus.  While I ride the same route every day, and see the same faces every day, I don’t really know these people, not even to say hello.  Few people exchange names or even pleasantries and the only reason I can come up with is because we’re tired going into work before we’ve had coffee or we’re burnt out going home.

In all my years of riding buses, I can count on one hand the number of people that I’ve connected with on the bus, which is always odd to me because even though riding the same bus is not really enough in common to connect, with at least some of these people, there must be some other connection there to be forged.  Rarely, though, do I find the right opening to even find the common ground.  People squished together in a shared annoyance often seem to want to pretend they are not trapped (ish) in a big metal can with a bunch of other people.

So I wish a little, maybe, that there were a couple of people that I could connect with, that there would be someone to talk to to make the hour-long trip go by a little faster.  I can take some comfort from the fact that there are a couple of cute guys who ride the bus, and they are something to look at when it’s too dark to see out the window, anyway, and maybe someone to play the "looking at you, I’m not looking at you" game with.

But as I said when I started this little ramble, I see the same faces every day.  I know where they get off, I know where many get on - even if it’s as vague as "somewhere before I do".  So when I saw the sunglasses (unique ones, I’ve only ever seen the one pair in that style) left on the bus after the second-to-last stop on the route, I knew exactly to whom they belonged.

And he’s pretty cute.

So, of course, I picked them up to give to him.  I’m sorry, but if you don’t have a car, then getting down to the bus depot to check the lost and found is obnoxious.  I know I see this guy every morning and many afternoons, seems like it’s a whole lot easier on him for me to just give them to him.  Also, cute guy, good opening to conversation.

Only…  it didn’t work…  I guess.  Because there wasn’t any conversation. I mean, yeah, he thanked me and there was a bit of mindless chat for about a second, but that was really it and I was a little dejected and disappointed only because I didn’t get that person to converse with out of the deal.  But, what are you going to do, right?

But then, this morning when I got on the bus, there was only one seat free, next to this same sunglasses guy.  Since he sits on the outside seat, I had to ask if I could sit down which he said was the "least I can do after you returned my sunglasses".  This time we actually did start talking, about how we see the same people every day and it’s almost like we know them, but then we realize we really don’t, and how it’s nice to know the people you spend that amount of time with…  even if you don’t really know them.

"On that note…" I started in reply and we introduced ourselves at the same time. 

I think there’s some measure of craving that the more social of us have.  When we’re surrounded by people, we feel this push, this drive to connect with them, to learn about them, maybe for them to learn about us.  We want to make an impact, we want to make a difference, even if it’s a small one, in someone’s life.  Just to have the conversation this morning where someone else lists off all the same things that I’ve been feeling about recognizing the faces and knowing that we all have this one small thing in common…  it feels good, you know?  To know that other people have that same frustration in what has the potential to be an incredibly social situation.

People have always expressed surprise to me about how many people I meet on the bus and how many friends I have made (though, again, I can count them on one hand, and they tend to be rather short-lived).  For me, though, the consistent surprise comes not when I meet people, not when I make friends there, but when I don’t.

A little old lady rides every Thursday morning.  She’s very chatty and very friendly and rather invasive.  Until yesterday, I had managed to avoid being cornered.  At 7am, I still just want to be left alone.  I’m not awake yet and I don’t have the energy to deal with pretty much anything.

But she got me.  And started talking my ear off.  Upon finding out where I worked, she started telling me stories about when she worked there, starting during WWII.  She had been working at Woolworth’s when she found out how much [company] paid the other girls, so she and her friend went straight over and applied.  What was surprising, she explained, was that they kept her on after the men came home and most of the women were laid off.  A situation she attributes to her Regent’s diploma from a parochial school.  She worked there for 37 years before she retired.

She kept telling me "Anything they can do, you can do better," which I don’t think is accurate.  I mean, yes, there are things I can do better than some, there are things I can do better than most, but, for the most part, whatever my peers are doing, I can do as well.  I don’t want to inflate my perception of my abilities, certainly not based on gender.

"Uncle Sam needs you," she said repeatedly.  Which I suppose is just a generational thing.  That’s why she started working in the first place, because Uncle Sam needed her and the rest of the young women to step up and continue what Our Boys overseas could no longer do because of their deployment, but in the 21st century, it’s kind of an outmoded concept.  The first 3 or 4 times I shrugged it off, but as she continued to repeat the phrase, it started to get rather annoying.

But I think that the overall experience outweighed the annoyance of her overused catch phrases.  This woman had been made into a feminist by the War Effort and her introduction to the working world.  This 70+ y/o woman who had, between her work and her husbands, more than enough money to retire comfortably ("Pa is rich and Ma don’t care") was still working a few days a week in a salon, just to keep herself busy.  She was a real working woman.  She hadn’t had children, not because she couldn’t, just because…  "Well, I guess we just never got around to it."  But coming from a Catholic family, she has a wide array of (great/grand) neices and nephews and they are all close.

I don’t know that I’ve ever met a woman as feminist as she, considering her age and generation.  It occured to me that this is the type of woman that needs to be considered a fore-mother of the feminist movement.  She didn’t make a fuss, she didn’t have to be militant, she simply insisted on doing a good job in a male-dominated location/field.  She did her job better than the men in order to prove herself.

Though it bears the same name, the multi-national conglomerate that I work for is not the same company that she worked for all those years ago.  The culture is much more progressed and women have a decent (if not specifically *equal*) foothold, at least in the divisions where I’ve worked.  But the world has changed a lot since she retired, and I can’t expect her to understand how different the experience of a woman today is from a woman in the 40’s.

And, you know, I don’t think I’d ever get the chance to ask her, but I bet that this lady was one of the women chanting, holding up signs and burning her bra in the 60’s and 70’s, working to make it so that I could have the job I do without having to fight nearly as hard and she and her peers did.