Adjusting

I haven’t been writing here. I can blame February, or I can blame my own laziness. I’d like to say I’m channeling my energy into my photos, or writing stories. Sadly, no. Mostly, I just have no energy.

It’s been a weird couple of weeks. I’ve been working through some feelings about car jockeying. It’s still driving cars listening to rock and roll. But Tech Boss’s sincere speech about how they’ll always need jockeys may have been just so much hot air. The work he sends me amounts to between a quarter and a third of work Rock Boss gave me. I’m underutilized. I take cars to the garage. That’s it. No checking on glass chips. No ICBC trips (I miss my buddy Wing Wong and how he likes to explain damage). I haven’t seen the glass guys for months. When I went into the body shop for the first time in months to drop off some paper, Jake and Brian and Steve hailed me like I’d been lost at sea and presumed dead.

So. The reduced paycheck is a bitch. But when Rock Boss left, he left me wide open for Tech Boss to take away the biggest balm against stinging winter rain slashing across my face: The smiles of my friends as I worked through my day. I miss Rock Boss, but I also feel like Tech Boss just told me I couldn’t have any friends.

I realize I am a drama queen with this. Many of my friends are unemployed, or underemployed, and here I’m bitching about something so small. I apologize for that. I also wonder how bad I’d feel if I quit and did something else.

Maybe not that bad.

Olive My Face.

Hello. Yes. January was about three months long. Getting up at 6AM to drive cars in the dark and then spending 45 sodding minutes getting from the garage to teach for three hours, and then 45 mins to get back to driving the cars back to their homes and going back to teach was grueling. I’m happy with the garage, but the location licks donkey dongs. I almost quit car jockeying and might still, although, as I told my dad, it’s not a decision to make at 6:30AM when you’re shivering in the rainy predawn blackness at a bus stop. I’ll wait until I’ve had at least a month of getting up and putting on a tank top and going out in the sun.

Somewhere in the second week of Interminable January, I looked at my face at 6:45 PM when I came in from work and thought, “Christ, I look haggard.” Leeched of colour, my face was starting to develop wrinkles at an alarming rate. I could attribute the defeated look to exhaustion, but what’s with the face? All of a sudden I’m 50? I knew I had laugh lines, but what’s with the crepey stuff under the eyes?

I marched into Shoppers Drug Mart the next Saturday, intent on purchasing a miracle, and left empty-handed. I wasn’t going to choose between going to Paris and face cream. Fricking forty dollars for skin cream? Nope. I can’t pronounce half those ingredients, either. Plus, what the hell is alcohol stearate? But olive oil has been good on my dry scalp. Hmm.

I’ve been moisturizing my face with olive oil for about two weeks now, and I really do think it’s made a difference. I no longer look 50. Heck, I don’t even think I look 38 right now. The lines and wrinkles around my eyes are softer. My skin feels softer in general. All I do is pat a few drops of extra virgin olive oil around my eyes and then the rest of my face after I’ve washed it in the morning.

I’m interested to see how this goes. I may yet find a way to compete with E’s naturally great skin.

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