Dragon Mood? -- tired, bewildered and muddling along
I can't believe it's been a WEEK since I last posted. Whew, where has the time gone?
I worked Tuesday through Thursday. I was supposed to work a ten-hour day on Friday, but Thursday evening, it was cancelled. I was ticked off to say the least. The reasons given seemed rather lame to me. Things continued to happen at work that gave me cause for worry that they might be laying us off ... as we completed our fourth week on the job.
S and I had a pretty busy weekend. I'll get to that in a minute.
Yesterday, I went into work at the usual time, fired up my computer and prepared to begin working. Steve, one of the other guys on the night shift came to me and said, "They're having a meeting in the conference room." I thought to myself, "Here we go." When I got back to the door into the conference room, Hany (pronounced Hah-nee), our night lead was there. He frowned lightly at me, waved his hands and shook his head. I took my cue, turned around and went back to my desk.
Sure enough, four people were laid off -- three from the night shift, one from the day shift. My coworkers, Steve and Mike, were laid off, as well as a Lansing guy who had only been there a week. Mike was the fellow teaching us how to swear in Romanian. They were told this may only be temporary, but I don't think I'll see those guys again.
Seeing people laid off cast quite a pall over our little, now even littler group. I started to get a headache just from the sheer tension of it all. Hany came and talked to me, trying to reassure me. He encouraged me to keep working, focus on accuracy and getting the drawings as "perfect" as possible. Talking to me about 'perfectionist' goals is like taking the proverbial coals to Newcastle ... but thankfully, Hany has a light and optimistic "touch" in his manner of speaking. I just buckled down and tried to get through as many of these machining operation drawings as possible.
Later, that evening, I called S as well as my sister, Ruth. I shared the job update with them. (big sigh)
As for this weekend, Ruth and I managed to eke out about an hour-and-a-half to meet up with each other. We sat over coffee (well, I had coffee) and jabber and catch up on each other's news. It was balm for my soul to have a chance to visit with Ruth. I believe she felt the same way. We have said countless times to one another what a blessing it is to have one another for talking, sharing and simply unburdening ourselves when life's events feel too heavy.
After I got back home, I changed into grubby clothes and S and I proceeded to unload a landscape trailer full of pine boughs that were originally headed for the dump, now euphemistically called a "transfer station?" When did that happen? Because of concerns about spreading the emerald ash borer, the dump/transfer station won't take tree debris anymore. So, now we've got a big pile of pine boughs and debris to deal with. ArrrghhH!
We finally got on the road, S in the truck pulling the landscape trailer and me in my little car, caravaning behind her. I felt more than a little annoyed with her because she doesn't take care of problems ahead of time, and then, the problems are inflated (by her) sometimes to crisis level and she turns to me to 'share' the inconvenience/annoyance/worry of them with her. More old family dynamics!
Thankfully, the trip was uneventful. I managed to listen to virtually the entire MSU/Eastern Michigan football game, first on a local Lansing station and then, further north, WJR, in its first season broadcasting MSU football. That was fun!
We pulled into Grayling and S peeled off to head with her brother-in-law, Jim, to load up the trailer at the storage unit where Sally has more of her too-many-belongings stored. I hit the local Rite-Aid and bought beer and a huge bottle of Piesporter. When I got to Sally and Grandma's house, I immediately unscrewed that bottle, poured us all a glass and started drinking. Nothing like alcohol to lubricate the machinations of family communication, eh!
Sally actually fixed us all a nice, sumptuous dinner that evening. Never mind that we didn't eat until after 10 o'clock. (And so much for observing Oprah's rule about never eating after seven!) I was starved and the food tasted good. We finally got to bed around 2:30 in the morning.
The next morning we were up by 9:00. I made us some single cups of coffee with our little coffee filter cup and some ground Alterra coffee I had brought. Jim and Michelle showed up and S and Jim began working on the running lights on the trailer. Again, her not attending to this problem earlier was an annoyance, but I'll let go of that (for now). They dinked around with those darn running lights for over two hours and were never able to get them to work. By now, it was after noon, so we all jumped in our various vehicles and headed the 30 miles north to Gaylord to work on another storage unit, an old pole barn that Sally's now deceased husband, Bob, had built over 15 years ago and filled with the flotsam and jetsam of his building trade, loads and loads of old lumber, some of it worth keeping, much of it not worth any thing.
To make a too-long story shorter, we made two trips to Gaylord, filling the landscape trailer four feet high with lumber and wood of every description, driving it back to Sally's house to pile and stack next to another pole barn she build two years ago. The goal is to cover it with a tarp and either use it or sell it. Hah! We'll see if that ever happens. We all joked (out of Sally's earshot) that when she's dead and gone, that pile of lumber will still be sitting there, old and rotting ... and we'll have a giant bonfire in her memory. I can see it now.
The other thing we 'rescused' from the Gaylord pole barn was an old aluminum fishing boat that belongs to S, along with a boat trailer. The boat looks in great shape (because it's aluminum -- what's to go wrong?) but the trailer was in pretty rough shape. The tires were both flat and totally decrepit. The winching mechanism needs some work. The last Michigan license on the boat was dated '92. That's how long that boat has been sitting there. Hmm.
We didn't leave Grayling until 9:30 Sunday evening. That's after only six hours of sleep, physical labor outside in the fresh air all day and I'll tell you -- I was pooped. S caravaned with me (this time) south on I-75, as I was heading for the pied-a-terre here in Detroit and she peeled off at Flint back towards the pine forest. After 190 miles and three hours, I pulled in the driveway. Mission accomplished!
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