A slick ‘sh*t show’ synergy: A journal text

Thurs., 28 June 2018, 9:09 a.m., at Meg’s Daily Grind, southeast of Perryville and Riverside roads, Rockford.

I moved to one (the south of two) stool-height table just a couple minutes ago. There’s a table of three women behind me, formerly just to my east, who are talking kinda loud about 8$ beers at Nashville, and one says that where she works, the mail situation is a “shit show” when they’re expected to cover coworkers’ mail. And a fourth showed up now, and also some “bad people” — she repeated it a few times — have applied for something.

OK, so, let’s get into this, after reading online a few minutes in Facebook, messengering with L. about Rochelle history.

And there are smells. I smelled, near a blue spruce, a smell like 7-Up gone bad. And I smelled a bad-deodorant smell, and a dank basement (like ours at Ashton, the smell).

“Is the east side the nicer side?” asks one lady of the four women, one who used to live in Rockford but who got lost recently, maybe this morning. “Oh, yeah,” said the one who lived here. 

Candice King last night on her 6 p.m. show had a graphic — I took phone pic and am copying from it now — that June rainfall so far (for Rockford, I think) was 14.23 inches,  over the previous record of 13.98” in August 2007, and that there were six rainfalls over 1 inch in accumulation in June: June 9th, 1.97”; 10th: 1.52”; 15th: 2.59”; 18th: 1.98”; 21st: 2.36”; and 26th: 2.20.”

So there.  And I walked Sam — I tried to keep him on the pavement (a road is just an idea?) to avoid ticks. There was one roadkilled critter I couldn’t identify: woodchuck but small? Muskrat but large? My car’s now at Toyota dealer — M’s dental bill yesterday was $650. I put it on my credit card. We may get some of that back if insurance pays. And then we got home and made calls whether her spine surgeon needed official clearance from the oral surgeon — nope, none needed. I left a little after 1 p.m. and went to Rochelle City Hall, photographed pages 383 to nearly 800 in the 1860–1893 book of city council minutes — exhausting, my back felt stiff from all the bending over. I’m not sure that the Nikon cameras pics are better than cellphone’s — the focus is better, more assured, reliable, but the pictures seem grainyer. I left there, went to Rochelle post office to mail four packets of commented-upon writing to four creative writing students from last semester. I had to wait behind two dudes at the windows and  one lady ahead of me. One dude had a lot of questions to answer about a package he was trying to send — the $20 cost might be worth more than what he was sending, clerk commented. The disheveled-but-tie-wearing clerk-dude was checking a dozen or more packages dropped off by a dude (from a business, maybe). Soon after, I was facing south to take pic of downtown from north, across Lincoln Highway from post office, next to Masons’ Hall, and former student Z. rolled up in his car.

A robin outside has something in its beak, like a bit of dry grass, maybe — it was in the sidewalk and in the red-mulch-chips planter-space in sidewalk.

“One of my files is in a shit-mess because of her,” said one of the four, maybe same one who said earlier that one could tell exactly what’s going on in each of her cases from the case file.

Just got voicemail from Toyota at 9:40. They tried to call, it said. I’m not sure why I wasn’t getting the ringer — I got it earlier today. Weird. 

A small, trim woman driving a Honda Odyssey came in with two girls a few minutes ago and met with someone already here.

I somehow feel a little uncomfortable in this chair now, a little too warm, maybe — and my right wrist has a dull ache now, not a big deal, but there was tingling again this morning when I woke — a carpal tunnel problem? I do use my wrists a lot.

“The arbitrator’s changed and that makes a huge difference!” the “shit show” lady, I think, just said animatedly.

It’s predicted to be hot again this weekend. I went to Walmart to get bars (Nature Valley) and “Ice” drinks for M. (black raspberry flavor, no sugar) and yogurt. M. was supposed to eat cold soft foods yesterday (while mouth numb, so M didn’t burn her mouth) and warm soft foods today. Those were oral surgeon’s rules, but M.’s also supposed to eat soft foods after neck surgery.

“I like him as a person,” said one of the four ladies.

Last swallow of my latte. I also had bagel and cream cheese this morning. My back’s little bit tight today. I wonder if I shouldn’t go to City Hall today but take the day to just blog, instead. I haven’t yet blogged in June. I answered a question in a Rochelle Museum post on Facebook about whether Central School was located in the same place as the 1869 building — was the high school in that location, too?

Here comes a stooped (a little), older dude with long white hair, long white beard, three layered shirts, long sleeves pushed up, short sleeves, and a vest, and a ball cap, sunglasses, and an earpiece, as if for a Bluetooth connection to a phone.

“I’m trying to work smarter, and not harder,” Shit Show cliches.

“We had to live in foxholes. We didn’t have [something]. You civilians crack me up,” said old white hair loudly, almost as if he’s getting pissed at them almost as if he’s getting pissed at the two counter girls, who are at work, not talking back, as he keeps talking. He also wanted a straw. He had some kind of name tag on a lanyard.

People get old and live as they can, and sometimes people have to live with changes — my daily back stretches as an easy example. M. posted to Facebook that she’s going to surgery — she posted it on her business page because clients were Facebook Messengering her. I saw it also on her personal page with 80(!) comments, many well wishes.

“Here you go,” a third worker says as she delivers a pink drink to the white-haired, self-declared veteran.

There’s a romance to the image of the young military dude, young male rockstar — or at least, there sometime seems an ideal there. But I suspect that a lot of young men are awkward, like I was, and that we don’t make good images, don’t seem like Romantic ideals when young. I think I work better as an older, more experienced person. I was —  what’s the word — young in the sense of being ill-shaped, unformed, lacking experience — “callow,” maybe? (I say, after looking at synonyms for inexperienced.)

“Uptown Lanes”/“Back Alley Bar and Grill” says a gray t-shirt (front and back, respectively) worn by a woman in here who just left with her son — that’s the Byron bowling alley, I think.

As I stood there in Rochelle post office, three or four people queued up behind me, I thought about the place being 80 years or so old, and the counter being established back then probably (though with some changes in lighting, etc., no doubt, over the years) and there were windows I could see through the counter cut-out, windows that could still be single pane, and half-round windows above the rectangular part, and there an old door not far behind (a few feet north of) the east side of counter —

“This is a teaching moment. Take the value from it. Don’t get mad. This is a teaching moment. That’s what it is,” says the Shit Show lady (I think it was her voice).

a door to an inside room — not the high ceiling of most of the room behind the counter. And dude moved one big rolling bin next to other bins behind the west side of counter.  And I wondered if I could work at the post office instead of or after teaching — there seems something nice in the routine, though the customer service part might not be great.

The white-haired dude went to counter and said some stuff and again, “You civilians crack me up,” and leaves. He’d sat on a cushioned chair and was quiet while here. Out in parking lot, now he holds arms out to side and limps a little as he walks away from me. Dude talked at the worker who looks like a dark-haired student of mine. Other worker was a tough-looking small blonde. The one who brought him the pink drink was a taller, older (30s?) lady. This reminds me of

“I totally agree. I think that’s a big part of her problem,” says Shit Show,and when I look over, she’s making a big eye-roll, sour-mouth gesture.”

the “START WORK NOW” sign I saw at “Workplace” temp office on East State, east of Alpine. I think I’d feel shitty about my life if my job were less than a career. I mean, teaching’s not prestigious, but it’s respectable,  and the work is safe and clean — we’re not working with dangerous, cancer-giving chemicals or arm-chomping machines. Here, if they want to make money, they have to be busy, which means they — I, if that were my job — wouldn’t time to read or write or do anything but work. They work for the short-term to make things people need or want now: food, medicine, toilet paper,  etc.

“Mommy?” starts a whine-sounding question from one of two girls (probably both under age 6 or so) who came with the made-up, tiny woman.

I wonder why those four women are still here — it’s 10:29, and they’ve been here — the two who were here when I got here about 8:40, and the two others who got here before 9. I wonder why they don’t have work today.

You know, my job’s short-term need is supervising kids and helping them learn some skills. The longer-term things are both the writings I do and they do, and I’d hope that some of what I say and what I model sticks with and inspires the students.

I hear soft jazz and wonder if it’s been on the whole time.

But lots of jobs are about taking care of short-term needs. There’s that line in “Hello, Dolly” about selling something people need everyday and thereby getting rich. Fewer people get to do longer-term things like writing or making other artworks.

I sneezed a moment ago. A recently arrived lady working at a laptop blessed me. I could  make a document recording, say, when I’ve got allergies, which sneezes get blessed and by whom. Of course, such a document would seem to be of little value, little long-term value. Eh, you can try it. It’s no big deal. It could be mildly amusing. There’s something fun for me about looking at pocket pages and seeing bits of things I’ve recorded that we did or heard or said — a bit of bringing me back to me, well, kinda — but maybe it’s also fun to see writings about my life even if I made them. Littler of the two girls with mom,  as they were leaving, she put her hand up against the glass near what’s a metal outline of a woman’s face, and she’s a stand holding a quart-size bucket of what looks like coupons. The little girl, who reminds me a little of pics of my friend’s daughter H., put one hand up to the glass behind the wire woman’s head, and the girl’s other hand was holding a cup and straw and she had bangs and long dark hair and she seem to smile — at the wire woman, or at herself trying to touch the wire woman — kind of sweet but also a kind of sneaky moment. [I say the wire woman, not man, because the sculpture has outline of a bow tie in hair and wavy hair and rounded shoulders. The man sculpture around the corner of the vestibule has mustache and square shoulders and is a couple of inches taller and no hair.]

Lady to my right greets a dude who brought a case, about the size of a trumpet case but shallower and longer — and he said (and maybe she did too) “nice to meet you” and she lays a vertical-oriented card on the table so he can see it, and he hands her a sideways- (horizontal) oriented card. He gets out something — a “relatively new brochure” of  switches (I see, in open page, silhouettes of switches) “organized by toggles, push buttons” — “It’s the next best thing to having a switch in front of you,” he says — a sample switch, maybe?

And I don’t recall where I was but it doesn’t matter — I’m floating along, or bobbing along — on the waves of consciousness. Or my consciousness/awareness bobs along on waves of moments — moments as waves slapping against the buoy of my consciousness/awareness — eh, metaphors.

So there’s still background chat and, off a ways, mixer sounds — and that mixer ends —  and this cafe as a business-meeting place. This place and other cafes aren’t planned to be biz-meeting places.

A white-haired lady, a fuchsia-dressed mom lady, and two teen or near-teen girls just walked out. It’s 10:53 now. I could go soon and do the shopping. I told M. I’d be back noonish. You know, I could go back to City Hall, but maybe I should process and post some of the info I’ve already gotten. I’d have liked to have linked to my blog when I answered that question about Central School on Facebook this morning but I haven’t posted that map yet.

“ … digi-key, now there’s not much support there …,” dude says in a list of distributors. “… I’ll take what’s there…” I’ve been here a year in August, he says. He said, “my territory’s so large.” He’d earlier said Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio Valley —  including Kentucky, Missouri, Dakotas.

And, yeah, I think I was going to say something earlier about my writing about the “Shit Show” lady (they’re down to two? I didn’t see the other two leave).

“Being in the audio broadcast market, they’ve driven us to [high quality LED switches?] … They’ve driven us to these high quality standards. We’re a Japanese company, too — …  the synergy’s there,” says the lightly bearded young fellow. He gets out his case. “I’ll show you the technology … [if she wants to do something] I have no problem with that. … I work from home.” His panel says “illuminated switches.” I wonder what her business is.

I’m out of my tea now, too — two drinks down, some water to go.

Sales dude laughed — “Don’t get me started” — he’s listened to sports radio all morning. 6-70? she asks. “E.S.P.N, 1000,” he says. He likes Dave Kaplan. “…price point …,” he says, higher or lower price point, I’m not sure. A certain switch is “quite slick.”

I don’t know that I needed to talk about why the lady uses how many cliches — doesn’t matter. You know, I like that I don’t have to use cliches.

When I told M. yesterday on drive up that she needed new topics, she said I did, too. I spend an hour each day thinking up new stuff, I said. You repeat a lot, M. said.

“The world’s smallest toggle switches,” I hear. It’s hard to tell from my angle how small it is. He’s got kids ages 2 and 4 and lives in Winthrop Harbor, on Illinois side, right on Lake Michigan. His wife is “school teacher.” I think he said “school teacher,” as if there were some other kind of teacher.

I like this green pen against this green cover material.

“And I have a sheet on this, too. I can send it to you,” dude says to the woman who must have asked a particular question. I can’t hear her voice as well as his. He says he needs to distinguish his company — they want to be about “solutions,” I think he cliched. Biz cliches — business, maybe most of interpersonal professional talk is cliches.

“So the brains [are] … right here …,” dude points to something in an opening on back of his tilted demo panel. There’s a small, squarish screen in middle of his demo panel.

There are 3 ladies at the table of 4 — maybe I miscounted before — but they’ve been here almost 3 hours! As have I, I guess.

M. said her surgeon seems impressed some things M. has said — like Tuesday, when he said many people who get spine surgery need it again later but it’s because their spines have bad genes, not because of the surgery. “Correlation, not causation,” M. said, and the surgeon seemed impressed. He must be used to dumb patients, we said.

“This is one of our highest sellers, as far as revenue goes,” and he lists functions including “error number two-four-five, whatever they program whatever they program into it.” She: “So it’s not a switch at all?” He: “No functionality.” “It’s just a display,” one of them said, she, I think.

I did take him some news yesterday but news was focused on union Janis Supreme Court decision or on the Justice Kennedy retirement. I felt bad when hearing about both stories. I try to remind myself that there is no winning permanently in politics, that it’s silly to think that way, and I thought of that story from Charlie Wilson’s War, that we don’t know what’s good or bad but “we’ll see.”

He said something about 3 million switches,  how does he sell that? They gave him something and then “‘Here you go. This is it. This is it.’”

“You have all of Wisconsin?” he asks her. “Well, I share with Mary [something],”  who’s based near Milwaukee. “She has a lot of the drives companies, like Eaton, Magnidev (?) …” she sais. “Is Danfoss in Rockford?” he says. Yes, “but they have a location in  Milwaukee as well,” she says. “That would be why I target Milwaukee,” she says.

So, yeah, I did hear some news yesterday but hearing it exhausted me, so I turned off radio, didn’t read much online, but did read some in 9 p.m. hour.

He: “A lot of our [somethings] can be cross-sold to other customers.” He’ll send her what they have now, and what they make new. He’ll send email to marketing to say “this is important to our distribution partners.”

Last night, I watched PBS on pets, the second half of last Wednesday’s Nature show on pets, and some of Nova on 2017 hurricanes, but M said it was making her anxious, so I turned to Malcolm in the Middle and tidied up the blue bedroom, washed sheets — and I turned off TV about 9:30 but didn’t get to bed till 11. I mean I don’t know that I fully stay away from dudes but it was a little easier yesterday.

Dude seems to say Madison’s big for startups.

It isn’t always easy to turn off my attention off of news — it’s turning from something to, well, nothing.

That dark-haired worker leaves out the north side door. It’s 11:35.

To have nothing in particular for my attention to focus on right away after I turn off TV or radio or set down my phone. But that’s okay. I can focus on getting attention back to my own thoughts — and, yeah, I’m leaving.

Sales guy said he’s got an “office day” tomorrow. He’ll follow up on some things for her.

11:54 car time — My wrist pains — I could type and that’d be easier to read later — but it wouldn’t be mine, in my handwriting — and typing’s tough on wrists, too.

4-something p.m. Not sure I said this in the freewrite above — I may have looked overly precise in citing 1872 map and explaining school location in my Facebook comment,  but I also get tired of people saying the historical stuff without reference to sources. And maybe somebody finds there to be, as I do, fascination (or further interest, at least) in the particulars of there being an 1872 map (and what else does it show) and of there being different names of streets, etc.