Monday, October 12, 2009

And So This Is October

I thought you guys might want a little update, since it's been a while since I've posted anything. I'm still alive and kicking. Money is still hard to come by. Bills keep piling up. But the light at the end of the tunnel, faint though it may be, is still glimmering.

I recently started working as a caregiver. As you may recall, I only have one client, one day a week. According to my employer, there's little demand for male caregivers... or at the very least, there's few clients out there who are comfortable with having a guy in scrubs wash their junk, wipe their butts and change their diapers. And yet, anything goes when it comes to women caregivers.

But my client is a nice guy. 88 years old and still kicking. Sure, he may suffer from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and probably a number of other chronic diseases named after turn-of-the-century doctors with long names. But his spirit endures. When you get old, you're allowed (perhaps required) to have a few eccentricities. Some clients will only drink from their favorite pink mug. Others will get confused and use their coat closet as a toilet. My client's quirks are fairly benign. He likes to feed me cookies and chai tea, and have me bathe him three times a day. And if I've learned anything from the multiple daily bathings, it's this: When men grow old, their genitals become HUGE... and useless. That's good news for me, because lord knows I don't want to get poked in the eye while I'm down there scrubbing and rinsing. Still, the irony is not lost on me. It strikes me as one of God's sick little jokes on men that our dreams of putting Ron Jeremy to shame come true only after we're completely impotent.

Meal time is fairly entertaining. When you have Parkinson's disease, a spoon in your hand is only an eating utensil half the time. The rest of the time, it's a mini-catapult. The trick is to figure out when it will be used to get food successfully into your mouth, and when it will be used to slingshot scrambled eggs halfway across the dining hall. I'd feed my client by hand, but that'd be harder on him, I think. By letting him feed himself, I'm giving him some independence - some control over his own life. In return, I get to watch him fling morsels of chicken parmesan into somebody's water glass across the table.

In other news, My CNA class is going well. There's this one guy in the class who really grates on my nerves, though. He's annoyingly incompetent, needs his hand held through every step of every procedure we're learning, and constantly harasses me to be his lab partner. He's a nice enough guy, just annoyingly incompetent. I'm hoping he'll rise to the occasion when we start practicing on real patients in the clinical portion of class. But honestly, I think he's got a 50/50 chance of doing that, or bombing out. Part of me feels bad for him, but whatever. He doesn't need to be my problem. I have enough of those already. If he can't make the cut, then he can't make the cut.

Other than that, things have been fairly quiet. That's what happens when you're broke and barely employed. It takes money to do things, and I don't have any. But I was able to scrounge up about ten bucks to build myself a didgeridoo. Amazing what you can do with a hunk of beeswax and a length of pvc pipe. At first, that's all it looked like: a hunk of beeswax fixed atop a length of plastic pipe. But after a few hours of blasting it with a heat gun I had no idea my father owned, I managed to bend and twist the pipe into something less likely to resemble part of a home irrigation system.

So that's the news for now. Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

More Work-Related Stuff

I had my caregiver training yesterday. It would've been more interesting if I had actually learned something. We were each handed a three-ring binder packed with nearly a hundred pages of photocopied material. Our trainer spent most of the time reading it out loud so quickly that all her words blurred together. First, I struggled to listen to her, tried to figure out where she was on the page so I could keep up. Then I realized I couldn't understand a word she was saying. Eventually, I just had to tune her out and read at my own pace.
I think she missed her calling as an auctioneer.
Or a square dance caller.

After training, I spoke with the staffing department to get assigned to a client. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how little demand there is for male in-home caregivers. In fact, they only had one client. One day a week. I kinda wish I'd known about that before applying for this job. Nobody can live on eight hours a week at minimum wage.

Today I went shopping for hospital scrubs. They're required for both my caregiver job and for my CNA training. I was surprised at how expensive they were. $40 for a pair of glorified pajamas?!? Who woulda thunk it! I was also surprised at how deep the v-neck on the top is. Considering that I have a very hairy chest, and it starts right at the base of my throat, I look like came straight out of some 70's porn film. I can almost hear the wah-wah pedal now.
Paging Dr. Love... Bow Chicka Bow Bow!

On the plus side, I got called for a job interview at the WOW Hall this afternoon. I would be really excited to work at the WOW. My only concern is that my class schedule might conflict with working hours. But I won't know until Friday.

Wish me luck.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

September 2009 Update

After nearly a year of not being able to get work in my professional field, I've chosen to change careers. I enrolled in a CNA class, and I think I've landed a job as an in-home caregiver. The work won't be pretty, the pay will suck, and the hours won't be steady. But it's a job, and it pays. And right now, that's all I can hope for. After all, I've done worse work for less pay.

The goal is to eventually get into the EMT program and work my way up to Paramedic. Back when I was in college, I always told myself my two career choices would either be Big-Time TV News Guy, or Paramedic. The TV News Guy thing didn't work out for me, so it's time to go to Option B.

Orientation for the caregiver job is Monday morning, and the CNA class starts at the end of this month. The trick will be making sure I work enough hours to make ends meet, but not so many that I can't do well in class. It's a balancing act made all the more challenging by the fact that I'll only be making minimum wage.

The strange thing is, even though I've already made the decision to change careers, I still check the job postings obsessively. Some habits you just can't break, I guess. Obviously, there's still a part of me that wants to put my degree to use; that doesn't want to accept defeat. But there's a time to be stubborn, and a time to be pragmatic. Now is the time to do what has to be done.

Last night, a raccoon snuck into the basement of our house through the cat door and made its way up the stairs. That's where Murray saw it. His head bolted up and he shot like a rocket down the hall. By the time I got to where he was and realized what had happened, he had the thing cornered in the basement. Murray paused for a second and stared the raccoon down. I assume he was sizing up his target.

Then Murray did something I never thought he was capable of. He charged at the raccoon and tore into it with full fury. All I could hear was the scuffle of claws and jaws, and some kind of primal roar. This was not the playful growl Murray makes when he wants to play keep-away, nor was it the guardian bark he gives to the occasional stranger. This was something altogether different. It was the battle cry of the warrior as he charges the front line. It was the gladiator's roar as he swings his sword at his enemy. This was war. Murray was going to kill.

The fight probably only lasted a second or two. But to me, it seemed to go on forever. I instinctively yelled at Murray to get back. He did so without hesitation, flattening back his ears as if he thought he was going to be punished. The truth was, I would've be more than happy to let him tear the raccoon to pieces. But I was worried he'd get cut up in the process. As I've said before, a cornered enemy is a dangerous enemy.

I rushed up the stairs into my bedroom, frantically looking for a weapon. My pool cue was the first thing I grabbed. But by the time I made it down to the basement, the raccoon had already escaped out the cat door. I checked Murray over for wounds. Somehow, he'd managed to walk away from the fight without a scratch. So I turned him loose into the backyard to chase the raccoon off if it was still around.

When my heartbeat finally slowed down to normal, I gave Murray a treat and pet his head. "Good boy," I told him. "I didn't think you had it in you."

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Current Thoughts, September 2009

Here's a quick joke for you: Why did all the hippies move to Eugene? Because there's no jobs.

Seriously though, the job market sucks here. I've spent the last year looking for work, and other than a three-month stint as a landscaper, I've come up empty-handed. It's tainting my otherwise rosy perspective on this town. But that's to be expected in a city that has both a major university and a big hospital. Tens of thousands of people flock to this town and compete for the same ten jobs. Employers love this because it means they have their pick of overqualified candidates who are willing to work for beans just to pay their bills. And if you don't like it, by god there's a thousand people out there who want your job.

It also means that requirements for jobs have become border-line outrageous. I can't apply at McDonald's because they want two years of fast food experience or an associate's degree in food service.

The world needs ditch diggers, but only if they'll complete a 5-page essay on how their work history and life experiences directly apply to the ditch digging job description.

It's ridiculous.

But I'm plugging away, hoping someday, someone will sift through a 9-foot-high stack of resumes and see mine... and not throw it away. And maybe, just maybe, they'll call me for and interview. And who knows? Maybe they'll hire me. Some days it feels like more of a pipe dream than a possibility. It all just depends on what side of the bed I woke up on, I guess.

In the mean time, I'm considering the EMT program, though it's a long way away, or maybe going to grad school to get a teaching degree. All I know is, it's time to give up on the fantasy of putting my bachelor's degree in journalism to good use.

Friday, August 21, 2009

A Story In Need of a Title

Dear readers, I can't come up with a good title for this story. Can you help me out? Come up with a good title and post it in the comments section.

The last five firefighters of the Virginia State Department of Forestry sat in a circle around their makeshift campfire, soaking in the heat of the dancing flames on their chests and the cool night air on their backs. They drank ice cold beer from cans and passed around a bottle of Canadian Club, laughing about the adventures of the day. Just hours ago, whole crew had quelled a ravenous wildfire that had swallowed up 60 acres of national forest and belched out a blanket of woodsmoke that covered half of Putnam County. Most of the crew had already left for home, but these five young men stayed back, relishing their reward: a night out under the stars, a campfire, a bottle of whiskey and a case of beer among friends.

The bottle came around to Charlie Dixon. He was short and muscular, with olive skin and long, straight black hair. A more racist person who observed his appearance and stoic demeanor would have mistakenly thought he was Native American, something that happened quite often out here in the Appalachians. Actually he was Irish and Italian. Dixon raised the whiskey bottle high in the air as he stood up and addressed his four friends. "Gentlemen," he said, "I propose a toast."

The others sat back in their seats and raised their beers high in the air. They all respected Dixon, and not just because he was their ranking officer. He was eloquent and college-educated, a natural leader. That, and he could hold his liquor better than anyone else around the fire.

"Here's to us," Dixon said, "the leanest and meanest firefighters in Virginia!"

The crew erupted with cheers, and tossed back their beers.

The whiskey bottle made its way around to Carter Hayes and he took a long draught. He gritted his teeth and blew a booze-soaked vapor of pain and pleasure. "God, that's good shit," he grunted, and gripped the neck of the bottle tightly.

One of the other campers noticed the bottle had stopped circulating and turned his attention to Hayes. "Hey man, don't stop the whiskey train," he said in jest.

Hayes clutched the bottle to his chest and glared at the man. "You can't handle this shit," he said. "Whiskey ain't for girls."

Dixon had seen this kind of behavior from him many times. Carter Hayes was extremely determined and eager to prove himself. And while that made him a damn good firefighter, it also made him irritatingly stubborn. He was the kind of man who stuck to his guns no matter how wrong he was - who would easily put a pistol to his head and blow his own brains out if he thought it would prove him right, especially after he'd gotten a few drinks down his throat.

And the whiskey had already made four loops around the campfire.

"Hey Carter," Dixon said to Hayes, "I brought that whiskey for all of us to share. Pass it around."

Hayes glared at Dixon for a moment, but Dixon just stood there like a stone. Finally, Hayes relented. "I'll call your mommy when you drink this and pass out," he said as he passed the bottle to the next person.

Everyone around the campfire rolled their eyes. Hayes was definitely drunk now. Drunk and obnoxious. It wouldn't be long now before he'd start bragging about--

"I'm tough, man," Hayes said. Everyone else groaned. Hayes was right on cue.

"Seriously!" Hayes demanded. "I could drink every last one of you under the table." He laughed out loud. "And then I'd have a beer to celebrate!"

Dixon shook his head and smiled to himself. Normally when Hayes got out of line, Dixon would just pull rank and put him in his place. But Dixon felt the whiskey slosh around in his head, and he decided to have a little fun with Hayes. Why not, he thought to himself. He's got it coming.

"Hey Carter," Dixon called out across the campfire, "do you get poison ivy?"

"Hell no!" Hayes yelled, squinting his eyes and flashing a toothy grin. "That shit doesn't affect me."

"Really?" Dixon asked, egging him on.

"Damn straight," Hayes replied. "I've been in that stuff plenty of times. Hell, last year I was backpacking through the Appalachians. There was a whole field of poison ivy and no other way through. Deep, too. Up to my chest. I almost had to swim through it." He killed off his beer and staggered over to the cooler to grab another one. "A whole acre of it I had to wade through," he said, cracking open a fresh beer and taking a swig. "I didn't shower for three days on that trip."

"You didn't get a rash?" someone by the fire asked.

Hayes shook his head. "Not one blister. Not even one itch. I tell ya, that stuff doesn't affect me one bit."

A sly grin crawled across Dixon's face and his eyes narrowed. "I don't believe you," he said.

Hayes' nostrils flared. "I'm serious! I don't get a rash from poison ivy!"

Everyone else around the fire kept their mouth shut. This wasn't their battle. Under normal circumstances, they would have walked away from the whole scene and let Dixon and Hayes duke it out amongst themselves. But tonight, with the fire dancing and the stars above them, and especially with the alcohol flowing through their veins, this was entertainment. So they kept their mouths shut, and they watched.

Dixon's voice was a sharp contrast to Hayes. It was calm and authoritative. He never raised his voice once during the whole argument. Hayes on the other hand bellowed louder and louder, his face contorted to a strange, half-frown-half-smile grimace.

Dixon kept his voice low and laid out his trump card. "I'll believe it when I see it," he said.

Hayes, whose face had turned red from a combination of drunkenness and frustration, countered, stormed off into the darkness and disappeared. One of the other firefighters started to follow after him, but was stopped by Dixon. "Let him go," he said. "He knows what he's doing." As Hayes' footfalls became fainter and fainter, the rest of the crew began to wonder. So did Dixon. This had all been a carefully-played game of verbal chess, trying to get Hayes to shut up or smear poison ivy on himself. Either way, he figured, it'd make for an interesting night.

Thirty minutes passed. Total silence. The only sound was the sloshing of the whiskey in the bottle that kept making its rounds, the crackling of the fire, and the crickets in the forest. Not a peep was heard from Hayes off in the distance, or any of the firefighters in the circle.

After nearly an hour of silence, they heard a rustling in the distance. And a laugh. Hayes emerged from the woods and back into view of the firelight carrying a sprig of green leaves and wearing a big grin. "I found some," he announced triumphantly.

"Let me see," Dixon said. He walked over to Hayes, who drunkenly shot the fistful of plant material dangerously close to Dixon's face. "Whoa! Careful, pal," Dixon said, just barely dodging Hayes' hand. Dixon inspected the green sprig from a safe distance, taking great pains to make sure he didn't touch the leaves. The plant had been gruffly yanked out of the ground with so much force that several of the leaves had been torn or pulled off. But Dixon could still make out the trademark clusters of three shiny, pointed leaves that spelled out the infamous plant's name. Once satisfied, Dixon turned to the crew and nodded. "Looks like poison ivy to me." He returned to his chair and sat down.

Hayes beamed. He held the poison ivy high in the air like a trophy for all to see, and he paused, as if he was saying to himself, "now what do I do?"

The excitement around the fire was palpable. Here was a drunk, obstinate man holding poison ivy, claiming the stuff won't give him a rash. Would he actually do it? If he did, would he get a rash? The other four men sat silently, mulling these thoughts over in their heads. Hayes was ballsy, they all knew. Seven years of charging into wildfires head-on had proven that fact. But they all knew he was full of shit sometimes, too. Seven years of drunken bragging about things he may or may not have done had proven that fact. And whenever Hayes came up with an outrageous claim, there was a 50/50 chance he'd either prove himself right or make a total ass of himself. Instinctively, everyone looked at Charlie Dixon.

Dixon was deep in thought. He wanted to take advantage of any opportunity to get Carter Hayes to make an ass of himself. But he didn't want him to get hurt. All the same, he thought to himself, Hayes did say he was immune to poison ivy. Dixon untied his ponytail and let his long black mane drop down past his shoulders. He looked around at the faces of the men around the camp fire, then back up at Hayes. he pointed at the nasty green leaves in Hayes' hand and said, "You should write your name on your arm with it."

The rest of the crew looked perplexed.

"So if you get a rash, we'll know who the jackass is," Dixon finished. The crew laughed.

"I'm not gonna get a rash," Hayes said. "I told you, the stuff doesn't affect me." He pulled one leaf off of the poison ivy sprig and took a deep breath. He pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and exposed his left forearm. Hayes pressed the leaf into the skin on the inside of his forearm and dragged it across, slowly spelling out letters. Groans of shock and disbelief echoed out from around the fire with each letter he smeared onto his skin.

C... A... R... T... E... R...

When it was done, Carter Hayes pumped his fists in the air and howled up into the clear night sky. The rest of the crew cheered. The whiskey made its rounds. The men drank and laughed. The fire danced in the reflections of their eyes.

. . .

The five men tossed and turned in their tents, struggling to keep cool. Out in the trees, the hum of cicadas droned in the night air. A nearby screech owl trilled. An occasional breeze would pass through and ruffle the leaves of the long-standing maple trees, but the heat persisted well into the night, only to break just as the sun peeked over the hills and blasted its bastard amber rays of early morning light into every tent in camp.

Slowly, the men crawled from their tents and trickled back to the place where their campfire had roared the night before. All of them except Carter Hayes.

Charlie Dixon flicked on a propane burner and set a percolator full of coffee grounds and creek water over the blue flames. "Coffee will be ready in about five minutes," he announced.

The crew slumped in their chairs, holding their heads in their hands and wondering if they'd be able to stomach the coffee at all. The shaky stomachs they got from their hangovers were bad enough. But Dixon's camping coffee was notoriously bad, and it usually came out like gritty, black, caffeine-loaded soup. As intelligent as their crew leader was, he just couldn't make a decent cup of coffee.

The percolator started to bubble. Dixon pulled it off the burner and set it on a nearby stump to do its work. "Anyone seen Carter?" he asked.

The men perked up. They'd forgotten all about last night's big poison ivy show. They looked around at eachother, turned to Dixon and shook their heads. Probably still sleeping like a log in his tent, they thought. The men sat in silence, the bubbling and popping of the percolator making the only sound in the camp. Eventually the bubbling stopped.

Dixon looked up from the percolator. "Coffee's ready," he announced.

As if right on cue, a hungover figure emerged from the woods and trudged into camp, shirtless and cradling his left arm like a baby. It was Carter Hayes. The rest of the men craned their necks, straining to get a peek at his arm.

Dixon spun around and grinned at Hayes. "Hey, Carter," he said. "How's the arm?"

Hayes grunted and plopped down in a chair.

"C'mon, Carter, Let's have a look," Dixon said.

Hayes picked up his head and glared at Dixon. Then he stood up, faced the crew, and stretched out his arm for everyone to see.

Six oozy, blistered red letters stood out from the pasty Irish skin on Haye's forearm and spelled out his first name. C...A...R...T...E...R. But it wasn't until everyone caught a glimpse of Hayes' chest that they really started to laugh. Apparently, He had slept last night with his arm across his chest, because the same six letters, blistered and fiery red, were spelled backwards across his torso. The camp erupted with laughter. Everyone that is, except Carter Hayes.

Later on, as the crew packed their gear for the long drive back to the station, Dixon walked up to Hayes. "Hey, man. Good show last night," he said.

"Shut up," Hayes grumbled.

"Hey, it's all in good fun," Dixon said. He walked over to the truck and pulled out a first aid kit. He pulled out some cotton bandages, an alcohol swab and some neosporin. "Don't worry about it," he told Hayes. "Nobody here thinks less of you for it." Dixon cleaned and dressed Hayes' arm and chest. "Besides," he said, applying the bandages, "It doesn't look that bad."

"You don't think so?" Hayes asked.

Dixon looked at Hayes and smiled. "Nah," he said. "Nothing a few shots of whiskey won't cure."

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Yearbook Portraits

What would I look like if I went to high school in...

1962



1976



1986



1992


And the best one of all:

1988
Just check out that sweet mullet. It's almost hypnotic.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Midnight Musings

Here it is, past midnight on Monday night, or I suppose Tuesday morning, and I'm caught with another nasty bout of insomnia. This is the second night in a row. It seems like I've had a lot on my mind lately that's been keeping me from sleeping. Most of it has to do with money problems.

For the last four weeks, my boss has been too preoccupied with redoing his roof to get me any steady work. Last week I only worked three days, this week I only work two. My slimmer paychecks really only compound my problem with the ever-growing pile of bills to pay. Credit card, phone, and student loan payments all have to be paid out of an ever-shrinking pool of income. To complicate matters more, one of my roommates moved out, meaning I have to come up with even more rent money this month.

All of this has been keeping me up nights, trying to figure out a way to come up with the cash to keep myself afloat without selling one of my kidneys on Ebay, or swallowing my pride and asking my parents to loan me some cash. At 27 years old, neither option looks good. I'm too young to go without a kidney, and too old to be relying on my parents as much as I do. Catch 22, as they say.

This weekend at SausageFest, I couldn't help but notice a number of my friends falling into a similar situation. Joe's girlfriend was recently laid off, and he found out that he'll soon be out of a job himself. Those two just bought a house together not too long ago, which makes me worry for the two of them. As if my own problems weren't tough enough.

Despite looking at photographs from a trip a friend of mine recently made to Hawaii and visiting the houses some of my more successful and fortunate friends have bought, I'm still filled with dread that this great recession will come to define me and so many others my age. A whole generation of 20-somethings, fresh out of college, weighed down with a considerable student loan debt, and finding that there's just no career-wage jobs out there for them.

I'm tempted by the thought of going to graduate school, but how much more debt am I willing to accumulate just to avoid the real world for a few more years?

So many questions. So many worries. It's all too heavy for a Tuesday morning.

It's now 1:00am. It'll be light soon. Maybe I'll just stay awake until then.