Nine years. in A small but passable life.

For only the second time since May I was able to turn off the A/C and open the windows at midnight. It was 75 degrees at midnight and 75 degrees this morning at 8am. The forecast calls for night time lows in the sixties within a week from now. After nearly five months.

I postponed my “Sunday shave and shower” until Monday evening once again. For no reason at all apparently.

September 18, 2008. I clocked out and handed my timecard in. The plant had closed for good. Sold and shut down. I worked until the very last working day. Until the last bird went down the line. I dropped my gear and boots on the locker room floor and walked out for the last time. Two and a half years I spent in that shithole. I met some great gals there though. I had one of them living with me still.

That was the last time I punched a time clock. That was the last time I drew a paycheck.

Fourteen years of factory work. The only positive thing about it was the stability, the regularity of income. Well, I guess I’d count some female co-workers as a positive also.

I started the factory “experiment” in 1994. At $5 an hour when the minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. I was making twelve something an hour when I finished. The only way it worked was that my housing expenses were never more than a week’s wages. Oh yeah, and 874 plasma donations, twice a week over the span of ten years, to pay for gas, groceries, and cigarettes. I believe it totaled about $20,000.

Future tales will be told of that time during my forties when I worked seven and a half years straight without missing a single day of work. And then my fifties when a month into that decade I didn’t work again.

I’m still amazed at how easy it was. You know, the whole get up and go to work and do the same fucking thing every day deal. The only thing that kept me sane was that I never took it seriously. It was just a routine. Wake up, commute, clock in, do what is required, clock out, commute, shower, dinner, TV, sleep, and then repeat. Fourteen years. A rat in a cage.

So yeah, my sixties? A small cabin or tent in the woods less than a five mile walk to the nearest grocery store and library. Good enough.

March 2015. My month in the woods, that was all I didn’t have.

Anyway, enough scribbling for now. I’m sure there’ll be something mundane to write about later.