Slowly Going Mad

I like to read – probably not as much as a lot of other people, but I do enjoy it. I am always surprised when a book affects me in a profound way - because it does not happen to me all that frequently. This is likely due to the fact that I use reading as an escape rather than a reality check.

I just finished reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. If ever I identified with a book and a story line, it was that one. It wasn’t so much the plot itself but the emotional down fall and the realization that you don’t really want to be who society and your parents have prepared you to be. The main character, Esther, finds herself slowly dissolving from society’s expectations of her and floundering to find her own definition of self.

All in all, I came away from The Bell Jar being glad that I read it because of it’s place in literature, but being depressed by it because the story reminded too much of my own struggles.

Spare A Quarter?

As I mentioned in my previous post I am now working downtown. It’s interesting how different “the city” is from out in what may lovingly be considered the suburbs. This has become blaringly apparent to me in the over six months I have been working in the heart of Portland’s downtown.

One major thing that I notice daily, and hope to avoid more often than not, are the panhandlers. Technically they aren’t doing anything wrong as long as they don’t interfere with the “progress” of the pedestrians (the same goes for those trying to get petitions signed and handing out pamphlets) but realistically what do they expect from us, the passerby? They probably know that they aren’t going to get hundreds of dollars especially since a majority of the passersby do so regularly. The panhandlers I pass regularly have found comfort in front of a Rite Aid store that is almost to the MAX stop, so I am forced to walk by them every day in my best attempt to get home.

There are those that my heart breaks for, those I am annoyed by, and those that I wish would just go away.

My heart breaks for: the man who sits in a wheel chair on the sidewalk, no matter the weather, every morning with a small sign that says “I need money for the basics: Rent & Food.” He looks to be a veteran and not capable of doing much else to provide for himself. I would much prefer to buy him a cup of coffee or a sandwich than just give him some spare change and hopes he will get by.

Those I am annoyed by: He is an older man with a long beard and leather jacket. He looks like an old biker type to me. I am pretty sure he is not homeless since I have never seen him with any type of belongings other than what he is wearing. His position floats so I can never be sure as to where or when I will run in to him, but I seem him at least once a week. His standard greeting is an overly enunciated: “Spare a quarter?”. Something just bothers me about his demeanor and tone of voice. I suppose he’s much more abrasive than I expect a panhandler to be.

Those I wish would go away: There’s a group that looks to be in their early twenties that always have a beautiful and well behaved pit bull with them. This group varies between talking amongst themselves with their collection hat set out on the street to asking the passerby for money and then yelling something to / at them after they walk by without responding to their request. I’m pretty sure that this group has chosen this way of life, which makes me feel even less like tossing them a quarter.

I have nothing against these people, or panhandlers in general, but I think I have become hardened to their presence because I am guaranteed to encounter at least one everyday. I don’t want to feel like they are just taking up sidewalk, I feel badly that I have lost my humanity toward them and a part of me wishes that I could help them out and give them what they really need and not just a quarter. The reality is though that I know I can’t give them what they need; perhaps even they don’t know. I can barely give myself everything I need right now. Call me cold hearted if you will, but I realized not to long ago that I would quickly make myself broke if I gave a quarter every time to each panhandler that asked.

Driving Me Crazy

Since starting my newest assignment a little over a month and a half ago in downtown Portland I have experienced a new joy: our light rail system, lovingly called MAX (Merto Area Transit).

At 7 in the morning I leave my house, still encased in the morning darkness of early fall, I have an easy drive with nice light traffic. The opposite is usually the case once I get on the train. The start of the week is normally fuller than the end, but by the time I get on there is little chance of me getting a seat let alone finding an open wall to lean against while I read. It pleases me from an ecological sense that so many people take advantage of this form of transportation rather than driving to downtown.

My choice to take the MAX every day instead of driving was both ecological as well as economical. I'll be honest, it's more so the latter if one takes the following into consideration. Gas is now at $2.95/gallon and the drive is 10 miles each way, parking downtown can be a little stressful to find first of all and can cost upwards of $10 a day, taking all of that into consideration driving myself downtown could get expensive really quickly and I would like to keep more of my paycheck. At $2.05 per ride (less if a monthly pass is purchased and you ride the MAX more than 37 times in a month), and for me a three mile drive to the station, the exchange is well worth it.

At the tone you know what to do...

After calling people almost all day everyday for the past few weeks and for the most part getting an answering machine message I have a few observations to make. One: The prerecorded message that comes with the machine is very annoying. Two: do not have your small children make the message, yes it's cute the first time but after that I really would prefer just about anything else. Three: Do NOT just record your favorite song for your message, I do not want to sit there and listen to Beyonce or George Straight for a minute just because it's YOUR favorite song.

Ship This!

I spent about half of my day today on the phone with various "representatives" of Fed Ex trying to track down five packages that have no shipping history after being picked up each over a week ago. Let me tell you, they must be having some serious problems with their package tracking systems because of these five packages three were express shipping, two were ground shipping and none could be found. Mind you these were not the only packages we were having picked up and being neither on the sending or receiving end we really are flying blindly as to what the website or our shippers are telling us. Of the three express packages, one was picked up and never scanned again, one was never actually picked up (yet was scanned as such on the website), and yet another was confused for a ground package and delayed. The two actual ground packages I have no actual hope of ever tracking down though the (mostly) kind people on the other end of the phone seemed to assure me other wise. I say mostly kind because there was one gentleman I encountered in my five or so phone calls today that did not in any way seem helpful or willing to divulge information that many of the other representatives had given me freely, like the case number. I had another one who was quite genial but disconnected our phone call after putting me on hold for ten minutes. All in all I am not dissatisfied with my phone conversations as I, for the most part, got the information and assistance I was seeking but all in all my faith in their abilities to keep track of a package are dwindling rapidly.

Workin' at the Car Wash

I think everything comes down to whether you are willing to put the time and effort in to it. As I mentioned in a post not too long ago, I have a Beetle. Well, as it happens my car got dirty in the two months I have called her mine. Something I have noticed with this car is that the color shows dirt a lot sooner than my other car did. Not nearly as badly as my husband's "atomic blue" Civic though. So, after a trip to Cost-co and the grocery store we decided the weather was nice enough and would stay nice long enough for it to be worthwhile to bathe our respective vehicles.

It's been a good while since I've sudsed up my own vehicle, although it is really not all that complicated my husband likes to make it that way. "You have to spray in an up and down motion to get the dirt to run off properly, and then wash in a circular motion. Most importantly when you're drying go top to bottom in one smooth line so that it won't streak," he instructs me. I didn't realize that this process was so complicated. It would be a lot easier if I just took it to the car wash down the road.

The most complicated part of washing my car myself is that we live in an apartment complex. I suspect that our strutting around to "Sympathy for the Devil" as we go through the appropriate movements involved in washing a vehicle in the complex's shared space where we all spend as little time as possible on a regular basis can cause a mixture of emotions. I can never tell if it amuses or annoys our neighbors when we get around to doing this, perhaps it's a fair blend of both.

The Ballad of the Unemployeed

I find myself once again in the realm of unemployment. I have always thought of myself as a diligent, hard working employee, some one that an employer would be proud to have on staff. But in the past year I have discovered myself to be ... lacking. Now, I don't quite know for sure if the jobs that I've had while in this area just don't suit me and my skill set but nothing has lasted. Is it really too much to ask for a little stability? I suppose it is probably my own fault for jumping headlong in to things that really aren't my forte and end up being unhappy and not putting my best effort in to things.

Today I went back to a temp agency that I had done some work for last year and got a brief assignment to watch the phones at University of Phoenix for five hours this evening, purely by chance. I answered the phone all of four times this evening and spent the rest of the evening going through anything remotely interesting to me in the Oregonian from Friday and today. My other success was drawing a beautiful picture on a post it note as well as getting hit on by two of the male students. Oh yeah, get a little padding for the bank account and get an ego boost to go ;-)

A Year in Review

Has it really been a year already? I'm not going to be cliche and say that it seems like just yesterday I was walking down the isle to become a Mrs., but holy cow it doesn't seem like that long ago. Perhaps that's a good thing.

Ben and I got married on what was very near to our three year "getting together" anniversary, so it seems that this past year might just be another tally wherever we happen to be keeping track. But this past year was so much more than that. We redefined ourselves as a married couple, no longer just two individuals who happen to be living together but something so much more than that. It seems that people expect so much more from you as a married couple, when in reality nothing really changed except that we got up in front of our friends and family and made it official. Or has it?

A week ago Ben and I had the pleasure of participating in a good friend's wedding. This was the first wedding that we had attended since exchanging our own vows. While I was listening to the happy couple say their "I dos" I couldn't help but think of our own moments where we had to be strong for each other and others where we made each other laugh uncontrollably. I can't put in to words how I feel about the man that I call my husband, all I can say is that I'm blessed to have this man in my life.