Monday Morning's Rambling On

Back in Good Graces:

Last night (ok, let's be honest - this morning), as I was dozing off, a thought came to me to try my iShuffle again in the morning and see if I could get it restored. There's no real reason why I should. I tried it on two separate computers and it didn't work either time. Neither the computer nor iTunes would even recognize the damn thing. But, for some reason, there was that thought.

This morning I plugged it into the computer, waiting for the inevitable "failed to install" notice. Instead I got a popup telling me that my iShuffle needed to be restored, and would I like to do that now? Yes!! Thank you, I would like to restore it. It took some figuring out to get it reloaded, but huzzah! I am musically loaded again.

Related:

Saturday afternoon, after spending the day near the river, bbqing and shooting the shit, we convened on Neighbor's lawn to close the day out. Wil joined us and conversations rolled, twisted, merged and parted for the better part of four hours. Then people started peeling off and heading home until it was Neighbor, SweetPea, Wil and myself and we settled in to have a Serious Discussion with Wil about his present circumstance and where he's at with it and what his options are.

Wil's been in town since June working with a crew doing some major reconfiguration on some machines. The money is very good, and he was looking forward to socking some away and to travelling to the different work locations. The crew he got saddled with, however, are not the kind of guys you want to get caught in a dark alley with. He said at one point that he can't imagine how these guys can be such assholes. I explained to him that if you take one really big asshole, and a few moderate assholes, and bake them in a Petri dish, pretty soon you've got a Petri dish full of really big assholes. Regardless of how it happened, it's been wearing him down in a serious way pretty much from "go".

Last week it was so bad he was hardly eating, his stomach was in knots all the time, he hated having to go to work, having to be at work. Which is so not fun when you're pulling 12+ hour days on average. This led to Thursday  night's rescue. We had planned to curl up with dinner and some movies and have a nice, quiet evening. But I logged in to check my email, and there he was and he needed to get out and he needed to go somewhere he could feel safe and vent. So Neighbor and I snapped him up and took him to Willie's, where Chief joined us. We stayed for a couple of hours, eating and smoking and chatting, although I think maybe less venting took place than Wil was strictly hoping for.

So Saturday night we revisited the situation. Things had not gotten any better. We rehashed the money situation, the stress level situation, the post-position options. On Thursday, Wil had been determined to stick it out through October 1st. My worry was that, after Sacramento, they were headed somewhere that he didn't really know anybody. There would be no last minute rescues, no mid-week bull sessions. He would be on his own, mostly without a safety net, in an ugly situation.

When he left Saturday night, it was with the intention of working Sunday, and calling the main office Monday to quit.

And then Sunday morning rolled around. His alarm went off. He sat up with that knot in his stomach. And then he laid back down and went back to sleep. Called the main office that afternoon and quit. The main office dude asked him to come in and spend half an hour chatting with himself and the company president. He also said there was an in-town job opening up in about a month. We'll be taking him to the airport tonight so he can go home.

So it looks like things are working themselves out better than we had hoped.

On Sunday, SweetPea said to me that all those things that I said to Wil apply to me, as well.

I know she's right. I know it would be better, all around, if I no longer had to come here. The difference, though, is that Wil has neither children nor a mortgage. It's much easier for him to scramble to make what he needs than it would be for me. Plus he has a broader skill set that includes more things that would get one paid on a "per job" basis.

And I realize I'm mostly rambling, and a lot of this may not make a lot of sense. And that's ok.

I guess the short of it is this: I'm glad Wil got out before it was too late; I wish that didn't mean he was leaving the state; I'm going to miss him, and I'm not the only one who will; I wish it was me walking away from my stress farm; maybe this is a reminder to get back to the unemployment plan and try to get that off the ground.

Not!:

This is not the part where I bore you with more fat kvetching.

The Wall:

On Saturday, Ghost Hunter (Neighbor's new girl friend) offered me a wall in the Salon where she works. She's filling the walls with art, and is a big believer in supporting local artists. I have no idea how this even came up or came out, but all of a sudden I was being offered a wall to fill.

I'm pretty sure that's the point at which my head imploded.

I've told SweetPea that we need to see the thing, and that she would need to come with me for that. I think I have some ideas percolating already, though. It's just a matter, now, of seeing the wall and figuring out the best way to go about making it work.

In the interim, I'm still working on collecting all the stray shards of brain, and if I think about this too much I get panicky. Because OMFG WTF?