Saturday, April 29, 2017

More adventures of a school bus operator.

4/29/17

5/4/20 I came back and started looking at my drafts. I always get distracted. I started here this morning. was into my daily journal, did a walk and came back here and now it is 1730 and I am thinking about dinner, but I am not Rollin yet. As it stands now in 2020, I am officially in the retirement state of mind. I have yet to give notice at my job and will be doing that around the 7th of June. That is when the school year would have been over. I plan on hitting the road end of June for Sisters Oregon to visit my good friend Sue Purcell. I have visited with her a few times most recently last summer. She will be my first stop before an extensive tour through Oregon and down to California where my two sisters and I are planning a get together in Santa Cruz County.

I have a lot of friends in CA and some 0f them want to visit with me and I them. That is going to be the rest of my life, hanging out with friends who have made a strong impressions on me and I on them. They know who they are since most of us have had contact with each other in the last 20 years. This is just the continuing story, another chapter in the life and time of this one guy.

I try and put dates on my writing because I need the refrence for later. Without a date, it just rolls into oblivion for me.

I was just pouring my 3rd cup of coffee and thought, wow, I plan on rolling along the highways of America in a couple of years for the Twighlight of my life. Twighlight and morning light. I like the mornings the best and on Sat., like today, they are awesome. I imagine spending the twilight evening hours drinking some hot tea, watching the glow of the setting sun. My memory recollects some of those times in the quiet evenings of my past.


Today, I don't have to wake up at o'dark anything and it is usually light when I get up. I am at work week days by about 6:10 am and because of that time I get up and wake up, coffee, come out of that haze of sleep and do the things I find help me wake up. Shower and dress. When I leave the abode I am awake, driving to work I am awake and awake when I arrive. Some of my fellow drivers often look like they fell out of their car and that woke them up as they drag into the dispatch office. To me that is scary, but part of their routine and some of those don't start work as early as I do. They drink the free to them coffee, with the imitation creamer that comes out of a cardboard can with a metal bottom and a plastic lid. They drink a lot of coffee there with creamer and sugar. Every place in the transportation industry I have worked provides coffee, some of it free, some of it not so free.

Workers today like to complain about many things when they have jobs that they made a conscious design to accept. Whether they chose it or it chose them. I once knew a guy who was telling me that the school bus operators job choses us, not the other way around. I believe that to be true. Back to the complainers and "free"coffee and creamer. If workers would get the big picture about their situations they could start getting organized and take charge of their lives .When. it gets down to that though, they are afraid of the companies they work for and act as though they could be easily replaced.

It would not be in my best interest not to note the passing of Gato the cat who lived where I live, yesterday. He was such a wild and beautiful cat, Tuxedo cat as they seem to be known. Of course he was part feral and not an indoor cat. I have fond memories of him. He helped me get over my loss of my other pets as pets often do for us. Our companions of unconditional love!

I do have to get moving along though because I will be going over to NoPo and getting my truck to work on it, purchase some more 2x4's etc. Spring is here and the weather is dry and I can now work on it more steadily since school will be letting out on 15th of June, just a month and a half away. I am signing up for summer work though and have taken on a job tomorrow at 12:45 pm taking a band from Ceasar Chavez School in NoPo to Snitzer Theater for a show.

A lot of my decisions are now based on feeling, the way I feel. I feel coming to the end of my working career I must still keep my hand in it, to earn that extra, not money to subsidize my lack of working steady. I have been having trouble with some kids that I drive and the VP doesn't seem to understand how difficult and dangerous the behavior of these kids is when driving a 40 foot bus.

Hopefully these kids will mature and understand how dangerous it is their behavior and find other areas to amuse themselves because it is not ok. I have had to really focus on not giving them fuel to have me fired which is thier stated objective, not understanding what kind of impact that would have on me or anyone else. I have started citing the Administrative Directive from the school board as one of the violations. AD 4.30.060-P on anti- harrassment. I want the record to show that the administrators at the schools know what we know, that they are in violation of not thoroughly investigating or nipping at the beginning of the abuse we suffer. It is not ok. I have asked the kids before what they thought of if their parents went to a job and a co-worker was harassing them? They side step because they don't want to face that they are committing abusive behavior towards a person who just wants to do his job safely, get paid and go home and do the things that make us happy.


Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Nothing says home from work like..........

I forget to take off my boots, but when I do wow! My feet are free again from the confines of my boots. I can freely wiggle my toes, twist my foot around at the ankle, back and forth. Feel the air as it penetrates my socks, yes still wearing my socks.

Home, boots off, Freedom!

As it turns out, this thought ocured to me again in 2018 a year or so past when I started writing this tought as an essay if some sort.

Kicking my boots or shoes off initiates my feeling home at last after a trying day safely transporting the children.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

The Cyclical Wondering Life

March 10, 2016

Old Men spitting. Yes, we are on our way to being droolers. When we spit some of us just can't,  that simple. Getting old is like when you are younger but in reverse, a lot skills we had to learn, we are unlearning or having to learn again too. You know you are an old guy when you think back to when you first learned how to spit as an awakening to adolescence. You remember spending time with your friends letting the thick drool and letting it slowly escape from your mouth with gravity and trying to stretch it out all the way to the toilet bowl  and then sucking it back into your mouth before it touches anything there

So, you know you are getting old and pull out the nearly week old  bread from the storage and there is some mold on it. You remember the story of how penicillin was discovered, scrape off some of the light mold and slice the bread for toast thinking it will not harm me, I have survived much worse and it could have a beneficial result.

You know you are becoming an old guy when you go to spit and you then find it later on your collar or your sleeve. It could be embarrassing in social situations. You know you are getting old when your already undersized junk is shrinking even further and trying to get hold of it becomes a real challenge and you got to pee like mad, yet can't seem to extract it from your pants. Depends! Maybe it is time for Depends. I don't want to go back to diapers yet!


March 6, 2016

It should be no surprise to me  that persons I admire who came before me are passing back to dust, just as I must when my abused body gives up. The ultimate and final surrender when we exhale our last breath. Death comes to us all, I have worked through many regrets, yet a few still linger reminding me that I could have done better. I don't need to be to curious because my time will come and I will then not know forever more, reduced to dust as from which I came.(posted to Facebook this day. We will see, we will see who comments and what they say)

Today, Feb. 28, 2016

I have drunk two cups of coffee and it is great for getting me going but better even for me to procrastinate. It is a balancing act and I did some clean up after breakfast, Sunday I am going to do my OHP paperwork, I think it is about due and need it done. Then to the Hollywood Theater to see a movie that is hosted by Chris Rock and meet another school bus driver there, a guy who tries to find as many free events to attend. Younger than me of course.

I am de-revolutionizing,  moving towards a nomadic life style.  I just thought of what I am doing and why. it is all starting to make sense to me, all the going back to my past to reclaim or assimilate it into my current life, revisiting friends, reclaiming friends or just perpetuating friendships has come full circle for me now including me in the chain of events. Where I used to be looking at it from outside, I am now looking at my life from within.

I am working towards a nomadic life stye. I may have experienced one in my past lives. I just heard on the radio the Mississippi River and it's flooding. then I thought about tornado alley in the midwest and the cold winters in the Northern territories. Then I am thinking about great civilizations and how they have fallen under setting down roots. I think about the season, our planet and it's orbit, I think about the natural cycle of life and determined I can find my happiness on a wandering path. It all ties together and I am working on moving towards it with my idea of mobile home where I can visit people and places and choose the weather I want to experience.

I am coming to a better understanding of my place in the world. One of the links in my personal evolution has been revealed to me. I am an important link in my own destiny! The cyclic nature of our world, our environment. I need to be more nomadic and that is what I am working towards.



 My reading comprehension is good in the moment, but recollecting what I read is something wholly different. I got that typo you made because of the context and the sentence structure. My little brain works well in most cases. I went to the web because I needed a little back ground on Expressive Arts Practice. I had little inkling of a name for this practice. Makes sense. Many of us know healing the human is about a total experience and communicating through music, art and humor are important aspects of regaining mental and physical health or just communicating if regaining is not possible. We can elevate those who are down, including ourselves through experiences.

It is a bigger world out there and  we are so small.  As far as age goes, besides the physical, I have learned to nurture my inner child, adolescent and older guy. I have been learning to honor most of myself. This means I have continued to learn and be teachable, to not loose sight of the big and small picture. I do get easily distracted, but am working on a goal of a nomadic life style and am pretty focused on that, yet I am taking a more circular route to get there.



Dec. 12, 2014

Posted to my facebook page this short writing:

I have always thought of myself as someone who missed or travelled from one time to another. I am not sure whether it is truth or fiction, yet it is my life and what I have made of it. As I am getting older, I am again traveling through my own memories back in time to when I only skirted along the surface off my more youthful times and now I am inspecting those times with more attention than I seemed to have possessed then!

For me, this is a new understanding of incorporating my past with my present, finding the depth that I so carelessly misplaced in my immature thinking. However, it is that very thinking that made who I am today, the kind, warm mature person who is living the dream that I have always wanted. I always wanted to know who I am and I have a  better understanding of who I am today. Barriers have always been placed in my path, yet I have adapted, adjusted and navigated around them. I have had help from that positive energy that continues to go unnamed except as magic, the connection that we all share. Sifting through and finding the good purposes is often a challenge that distracts us from that goodness. I have had my share of distractions. My life has not been boring, even when I am wiling away time idly. My focus has been building over years and as long as a decade of independence without owning property, seeking that nomadic lifestyle. I even sought that lifestyle as early as 18 years old but didn't know that was what I was searching for. The clues were unclear to me. My intensity has always distracted me from what it is I truly believe in.

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Time might be moving to fast, slow down!

Last post was over a year and a quarter ago. Not a good sign. Just got home from work, still drving a school bus. It is just not a good job, toxic would get a good description. The kids on my middle school route want me gone. I have a new strategy with them, keep my bill hat on and only glance at them once in awhile, because when they can't see my face in the mirror that is mounted above my head, they can't tell if they are annoying me and have mostly quiet. Of course, we have a new seating arrangement and it is a process to complete.

Of course it took a lot of time to get two students removed from my bus, but finally they really hung themselves by leading chants about S E X ! What's that spell most of the back of the bus screaming out SEX! Then they did the R A P E one and that was over the top. When I wrote the referral, the Vice Principal. Chuckled about the SEX part, but when he got to the RAPE part he was completely shocked! This is what I had been telling him and his advice had been pick your battles, build relationships and they are just being normal middle schoolers.

Those two are gone, now it is I Fucked your mother. I got the VP's attention again and he said he would talk to the parents and fhe kids. One of the kids apparently snitched off the other kid. I couldn't get them to do it. The one kid said he had a new system for riding the bus. I take that to mean an agreement to not use profane language. However today, I threatened him with a referral before we even left the school! I later retracted that because I am picking my battles! This is the worst job I have ever had, but the money is the best I can get.

I am planning on retiring after my truck is finished next year. That is what I am working towards. I still haven't decided if I will keep my car. I should find some VW bus guy who wants the engine and traby perhaps. Or just seen the whole thing and get they block head Harley clone or whatever V-Twin winds my watch.

One last thing.  A short. Bus driver today hit and knocked down a pedestrian on a street today. I don't know the details nor do I know if I will ever find out, but the pedestrian was not getting up and the driver couldn't even call it in, another driver did it. I could tell the driver was devastated. If I hurt someone while driving, I would be lost for awhile. It is heart wrenching to have known someone who died by the wheels of a truck. To think I could driver after that, would just suck! I will find out more details as I investigate. One thing for sure the driver will lose his job. That's just the way it is.