Working ow-ers

I made it through the week, but right now my body is one big, exhausted ouch.  I’ve woken up with my hands stiff and swollen and feeling like baseball mitts from pulling and squeezing upholstery clips shut. 

Sure, part of this soreness is from being away for five months, but some of it has to do with the fact that in my absence the company has eliminated more job stations and distributed those tasks to the remaining ones.  So at most stations I’m expected to do one and a half the amount of work I used to do in the same amount of time.

And three of those days I had class plus work (with overtime), and on each of those days I got a total of three hours sleep.  That meant sleep two hours, wake up, go to school, come home, catch a nap for a quick hour and then go back to work.

Fortunately the plant will be shut down for the next two weeks; but for evening shift, my shift, the break will be three weeks.  That gives me time to work ahead on my reading assignments and finish an ethics paper.

On Friday someone mentioned to me that he believed we’ll be employed through the rest of the year, but I’d be surprised if I’m around by the end of August what with truck and SUV sales free falling.  I didn’t tell him that because I know when he was laid off he had no desire for retraining and went through want ad hell before he was recalled.  But most people I’ve spoken with expect to be laid off in the near future and are already looking into available training programs.

It’s the inevitability of losing my job again that makes this so odd, like a bizzarre waiting game of musical chairs.  But in this case the seats are moving, not the players.  Most workers expect there to be fewer chairs and just want the music to stop so we can finally move on for good.

oh, crap. i’ve been called back to work.

I was out all day Friday.  I didn’t even notice my answering machine light blinking until an hour after I got home.  It was my former employer saying I’d been recalled from layoff.  They’d left the message at twelve-thirty and wanted me to report for the four o’clock evening shift. If not then, there’d be a Saturday shift; but I had to call back and let them know if I planned to return or not.  It was already four hours too late to work Friday (whew!), but I called back and left a message with human resources that I’d be there on Saturday.

Ever hesitate or dread making a phone call, especially since it’s one you assumed you wouldn’t need to make in the first place? Sort of like having to call the IRS and let them know that you got their message about wanting to schedule your audit.

It doesn’t matter that I’m going to school fulltime. According to state law, I must accept job offers from my old company if I’m unemployed.  Otherwise, I forfeit my benefits.

So I showed up Saturday evening and almost everyone did a double take.  Even the department supervisor wasn’t expecting me.  People asked me how long I’d be around. One day? One week? Longer? Funny, I’d hoped they’d be the ones to clue me in on that. I felt kind of bad because they were so happy to see me and I secretly didn’t want to be there.

It seems over the last three months, they’ve slowly been recalling a few people at a time to replace workers who’ve either been fired or quit or found other employment during the thirteen week auto parts strike that shut down the main plant.

My guess is that I’m working this next week before summer shutdown begins.  They’ve scheduled additional overtime for this coming week and might need extra help to guarantee there’s enough people to finish production just in case someone calls in or wants to start their vacation early. That could explain why I was recalled three and half hours before Friday’s shift was to begin.

But I could be there for the next couple months, although that’s a stretch. July and August are typically the heaviest production months for building up the dealerships’ new year inventory. But high gas prices have hobbled the SUV and truck markets. I don’t see the main plant or the company running a two shift production schedule longer than that.

Everyone I asked said they haven’t heard anything about what the main plant or the company’s plans are. They wouldn’t even speculate, which is strange. There’s two things I expect to be produced from an assembly line workplace during tough economic times, and one of them are rumors.

If I work only one week, along with scheduled overtime, I can easily pay off my home insurance for the year. That paycheck will be almost double what I’d normally make on unemployment. If I work July and August I’ll be able to pay off what I charged for the tree trimming and then some much sooner than I expected. But right now not even money seems enough to get me over this disappointment.

Can I be a fulltime student and a fulltime worker and get at least a minimum amount of shuteye time? Three hours sleep.  Go to school.  Three hours sleep.  Go to work.  Yeah, if I’m lucky. I’ll have to work ahead like crazy during the two week shut down to get my ethics paper finished. I almost feel I’m being punished for how I dillydallied a couple weeks ago, watching too much MSNBC and playing computer mahjonng before I’d open my textbooks.

Four dreams: funeral, green woman, maybe future girlfriend and a foot race.

Been having some interesting dreams the last couple of weeks.

My first dream started out with me taking an economics test that I’m not prepared for.  There’s one question I can’t figure out.  It makes no sense, but it still bothers me that I can’t solve it.

I’m also frustrated because I have to finish the test so I can get to a funeral on time.  I’m supposed to be one of the pallbearers and I still have to put on my suit.  It isn’t said but I’ve a feeling it’s my father’s funeral, but he passed away several years ago.

Then I’m walking around outside the church trying to find my suit and I’m in my underwear.  I pass women wearing my tighty whities, but I don’t care.  I’m more frustrated about how unprepared I am.  How could I not have my suit?

Then I’m in the hallway of a school which reminds me of the school I attended in seventh grade (the year after my father died, btw), and it becomes a gauntlet of sorts.  These ghosts and demon-like creatures straight out of an anime cartoon are flying around me in the air like bats.  I’m carrying a staff, but I’m able to make it through the hallway because I focus my concentration on getting to class.

The class is crowded and it seems the teacher has stepped out for the moment.  Someone doesn’t want me to finish taking the test–the same test I was taking at the beginning of the dream.  Different classroom, same test.  But I can’t find the test.  Somehow I know it’s in an adjoining room, but how do I find it?  I leave and come back.  For awhile I try performing a stand up routine.  Then there’s a school nurse and she’s willing to let me take the test as an oral exam.  But then I find the test, but I’m starting to comprehend that this situation is all a dream, and I wake up.

What I remember about the second dream is that there was a woman at a Bob Dylan concert and this other woman, perhaps a rival, dumped green dye on her so she turned entirely and completely dark green, like a pea pod.  And what I remember about the other woman was that there was something very yellow, like a squash yellow, about her clothes.

Anyway, Bob Dylan is walking through the crowd and the woman is embarassed and tries hiding (which I think was the other woman’s intent), but Dylan pursues her, reaches out and hugs the woman and tells her everything’s alright.

Third dream was almost like a montage in a movie.  I’m embracing this lovely black woman, meeting her in various places around town like the Greene.  I specifically remember each time I’m holding her in the dream I can actually feel the small of her back.  We’re also riding around in a limo and at one point we’re both watching the news on the small television set; and it’s one of those offbeat news stories, almost like a viral video about someone trying to capture a mallard duck.  Strange.  There’s hugging and kissing in the dream, but I wouldn’t describe it as a sexy or erotic dream per se as much as it was a fun and pleasant one.

In the fourth dream I’m driving into the town of Enon, taking the same route I do when I go to the water garden store.  I’m about to drive under the interstate bridge, but there’s mud and rock debris on the road, so I take out a shovel from my trunk and clear away enough for my car to get through.  I see a sherriff’s patrol car parked about thirty feet in front of me.  I wonder if I’m going to get questioned about what I’m doing.

Then this wave of hot black mud gushes over the embankment, and there is an old couple scrubbing their faces with it because supposedly the fresh minerals and its course texture is supposed to help revitalize the skin.

And then I’m with this woman who looks like a coorespondent on a news channel I watch.  And in this dream I’ve just met her but we’re fast becoming good friends.  She seems very artistic and down to earth.  There’s one point where we’re walking around this small town’s high school running track and suddenly she challenges me to a race.  And then the venue changes and we’re running through hotel hallways, trying to avoid crashing into room service carts and tripping one another up.  It’s a challenge, but I win.

It’s a weird dream because we’re hanging out for the longest time in the hotel, sometimes just sitting on the floor.  And I see her reading my old journals, but I’m not bothered because I note she’s more interested in how they’re written and not about finding secrets.  There’s times when she says “I have to change.  Turn your back,” which I do and don’t try goofing off and making her believe I’m going to sneak a peek.  There’s a friendship between us.

At one point in the dream she shows me all this metal work she’s done, most of it handmade jewelery and tells me she’d be willing to teach me so I could support myself if I wanted to write.

Then I have to go and get to school, but I can’t find my car.  Then it seems I’ve been working as a baker for the longest time and I’m trying to leave and get to school, but I haven’t made the best use of my time.  There’s a bowl, and all the ingredients for chocolate icing are in it, but it hasn’t been mixed.  And the other baker coming in for his shift is very understanding and says he’ll finish up and I should get to school.  But I feel I should finish making the chocolate icing.  I question why I left it sitting like that.

And then I wake up and I find out I’ve overslept by over two hours.  I stare at the clock on the stove and can’t believe it’s nine-thirty.  I run around my bathroom and kitchen like crazy.  I’m so late for school.  But then I realize I’m not really awake.  I only think I’m awake.  Once I realized this is still a dream, I wake up.

Roses *Ka-POW!*

My garden has exploded with the color of rose blooms.

I found a stem on the Jude the Obscure with aphids. However, there was a hungry ladybug there too.  I took over twenty pictures with my camera attached to a tripod, but still couldn’t get one clear picture of it traveling up the stem and gobbling up aphids like a hungry little Volkswagen.