Life and work is there something else?

I am missing something again. It is OK. A friend wrote on my face book page that it is time to come back to the home area I left and visit old friends. Well, maybe that works in his world which he was doing a lot of a couple of years ago, but I am working. Then when school is out, I will be scrambling around trying to make ends meet. I heard on the radio the other day that air fares are at an all time low. All time? I will check it out because my old mom is coming up on 90th birthday and I would like to see her again and my younger sister. Old friends, I did that last November. Most of my old friends have more disposable cash than I do. They go on vacations for weeks, go to concerts and other activities where they drop hundreds of dollars. I don't have that option, don't live that way and am working on paying off debt, not incurring more. My parents started us on savings accounts at an early age, told us much about saving and let us out in the world. I know that I and my older sister had no ideas what it took to save and we ended up burning through the money we had. When our father died, he had a little, I burned through that, my older sister invested and so did my younger sister. My mother has nothing. I have many old acquaintances who have inherited lots of money from parents and others who have invested wisely etc. I am now paying for my past indiscretions.


I am leaving, going to get moving, got shopping, got my van to work on got my storage to figure out where to put things to get out from under paying to keep items that have little value. I have to mow the lawn and do laundry.

My insane room mate is doing laundry and working at his part time job. He left this morning at 0630. I heard this noise that woke me up, thump, thump, thump and figured out that it was the washer. He started doing laundry at what ever time he wanted, maybe 0600. He was doing laundry when I got home last night from work at past 8 pm. He has not done his dishes and we are running out of room to store his dirty ones. I am not going to play his game and put them anywhere. He seems to have time for everything he needs to do, but when it comes to daily household chores, oh well. Oh well, the insane have their way. We will see how far he takes this.

It is getting more unsafe all the time our there on the road!

Yesterday I was driving from N. Fremont to I 5 south to connect with 84 E. We took N. Vancouver which becomes Wheeler and an easy entry to I 5 South. Near the intersection of Broadway and Wheeler there were signs telling of road work and the left lane closing. There were two cars ahead of my bus in the left lane and as the lane closed, I made room for them to merge. The lane was closing rapidly and they made their merge. Then in my mirror, there is a white SUV squeezing up next to me, there is little left of the lane and he is getting ready to hit the big orange triangle. I am moving ahead because braking would cause other complications with the rest of the traffic flow. Finally, that SUV brakes, but I can see in my mirror the drive looks angry.

We get onto the ramp, staying in the right and there is a pretty good flow of traffic when suddenly in my left mirror again the white SUV is cutting into traffic, in front of a car and then speeding up and cutting in front of me, hitting his brakes because he is going to fast and then speeding towards the East on I 84. The woman sitting in the front of my bus comments about that driver. We had a little exchange, because I honked my horn at his blatant abuse of the road way and the fact that I am driving my school bus, the yellow one. I have to wonder, what people are thinking when they do stupid driving behaviors like that? Do they think that maybe someones children are on the bus and they could be putting 50 little lives in pearl? Not likely, because the sane drivers tend to yield to the yellow or at least appear to use caution which is what the yellow of the bus is supposed to invoke in their brains. Yellow means caution, red means stop.

It is a continuing struggle for me to accept this bad driving of a few selfish people. I was reading in a national safety publication that aggressive driving can be ticketed, but why don't we hear more about people getting ticketed for this unsafe behavior. Why do we only hear about the results of road rage, the next step up from aggressive driving?

I am finding that I don't like to drive except in my big yellow bus because of the damage that could be inflicted on me in my small van by these same people, and I haven't even got on my motorcycle this year for similar concerns.

Time to go and do it all over again.

I've found the answer on how to deal with my room mates.

I've decided they are both insane. This will be my defense against their insanity. It has been my problem, thinking that they were similar to me and therefore I treated them with respect. I soon found out though that there was little I could do that was not rewarded with out and out insults by the dominant one and that is just not going to work anymore. A friend, a very good friend, told me to put in my ear buds and just walk around with my ipod turned up, ignoring them. That is essentially what I am now doing, but without the ipod. I have journaled many words trying to figure out my room mate and found that it was driving me insane, that's when I discovered that I need to treat them in my head like they are. the dominant one is really good at triggering a reaction from me, but now that I have figured out that is what he thrives on, ignore is going to be my tactic.

When I got home today, he was civil like nothing had happened. Only an insane person would not apoligize or not say something about what transpired the other morning, except myself who was the target of the attack. I am not saying anything in defense. I need to stay here for about a year. I need to pay debt and work on my van. I can accomplish all of that here saving money and working on my van this summer. Oh, and as for the food thing. What a joke! This guy doesn't talk to anyone in the house, 3 of us, but brings home all this food, mostly perishables and once again dominates the space that we all share. The dining room table, the dryer top, the refrigerator. Then he tells me to help myself and I say no thanks. He says oh that's right you are an organic food guy, are you worried that this could poison you? I didn't respond. When all the food that he brought home spoils, likely he will have to blame his room mates since we didn't help him eat it. All he had to do was say no thank you to the people who gave it to him, but instead he takes it, brings it home and imposes it on us. I'm done. I know who these people are and now I have a defense against them. They had me fooled for a while, but I'm back to knowing what their game is and I'm not playing. I will find the time sometime to post pictures.

I've been here two months now and .....

Of course, he has had it with me it seems. I have two roommates, the dominate one and the submissive one. The dominate one wants us to say respond to his interactions with us other two in a certain way. He wants us to say, OK, thanks for pointing that out, I will do better next time.

When I moved in the dominate one interviewed me on the phone. For me that was a mistake, I should have also been interviewing him and in person. The submissive one interviewed me in person and they both agreed I could move in. The submissive one is not necessarily a sub, but he sure can't stand up to the Dom. I am slow and each time confronted by the dom, usually repeat myself and that is the end, because he retreats to his room and closes the door, end of conversation.

Did I write about when I first moved in and suggested a monthly meeting to bring out our issues and he the Dom quickly put that to rest by saying he had that situation before with room mates and they just wanted to take control. End of conversation this topic. I started to get quite perturbed today at the thought of him. I had to remember a couple of things I've learned about people. One, they don't have power over me unless I let them have it. He says it is my fault he wakes up in the morning because I am making noises. We had an argument about that and the fact that I left some drops of urine on the toilet bowl. This was at 5 am. The other room mate got up to use the bathroom and walked into it somewhat confused. I don't perform well off the cuff and that's when I repeated myself. I cleaned up the toilet only to be told I shouldn't have, which is crap. He is incredibly controlling. However, not a master manipulator otherwise he would be able to sleep or stay asleep.

He blames me, said the other guy who moved out didn't wake him up when he got up, but left out the part that he was not attending school full time taking nursing at the time. Well, I think maybe that might have some affect on him.

He also is getting a bunch of free food and dominating the refrigerator, doesn't wash his dishes in a timely manner, digs out big chuncks of dandilions from the lawn and leaves bare spots, mows the lawn and doesn't sweep the walkway leaving clumps of cuttings. I do the sweeping out of disgust. He comes home from school earlier than I do from work and by the time I get home, he is in his room and the feeling I get is he is to important to be disturbed.

Well, if he starts another conversation or wants to point something out in the morning, I'm determined to tell him it will have to wait. I am getting ready for work and don't have time to get into one of these little hissy fits with him.

I am a lot calmer about it, used the tools that I learned about praying for my enemies. I don't want to spend my precious free time writing here about this guy. I did mention some of his behaviors to a friend of mine and he said Republican! I know there are some Republicans out there that might be offended, but he is not you nor you him. It was just a simple way to describe him that put some humor into my uncomfortable situation.