The Pilver

There’s a required credit that one must now take to receive a college diploma. It was not there the last time I went to school. Now every student must take a minority studies class. The minority that I chose to study was “Women of Minnesota” Yes, that is a class. So, I am studying a minority that I couldn’t possibly understand because the category is so obscure and who ever meets Minnesotan women around these parts anyways.

OK, sass aside. I hate the class and everything it required me to do. No, I don’t but I just have zero desire to even come close to attempting a grade higher than a C. Which means I just may get a D. Unless of course my instructor has an inclination to google her students and click on their blogs, in which case I am sooo gonna try my hardest and get an A.

The class touches on the past couple hundred years of the state’s history and the women who had influence in the forming and later on in the administration of this here frigid prairie land. It’s not chock full of feminism, although there’s a bit of that discussed. Now I am for equal rights and opportunities for women just as much as anyone else. I still do, especially as a mother, see the desire some have as a women to stay in the home. But this quote I found in my book just amazed me.

“Was there not a St Paul newspaper that asked in 1891 serious ‘psychological question regarding the the underdeveloped therefore uncomplicated state of the average women’s brain as compared with a mans?’ Would not the strain of college studies undermine womens physical and mental health, render them unfit for motherhood and in short upset the normal order of things?”

Wow, I mean, this wasn’t written yesterday, but it wasn’t that long ago in the realm of how many many “agos” there are.

So, I DID learn something from this class.

And apparently at 12:30am here in Minnesota WKRP in Cincinnati is on, so I am going to end this here and watch TV.

Recently at my job a fellow server mentioned that the fall weather was making her want to go to the apple orchards. There are a couple orchards in this area that are buzzing in the fall with activities like hay rides and orchard tours. You can pick a fresh apple off a tree and buy cider in the gift shop. I remember going to these places when I was a kid. It was always a good time. But I realized while listening to her speak of her upcoming visit that after living in Washington, I now look at the orchards in a very different way.

The area of Washington that my family moved to when I was fifteen survived almost solely on apples. I could hardly believe my eyes as we drove to the town for the first time. The final three hours of the drive we were in apple country. On each side of the highway and all up the Okanogan Valley there are millions of fruit trees, most being every variety of apples you have heard of and then some. There are also cherry trees, peach trees, pear trees, etc.

Within the first few days of living in the town I begged someone to take me to an orchard so I could see one up close. And I was looked at as though I had just asked permission to shove raw spaghetti in my nasal cavities. I had not yet understood that this was not a novelty for them.

In the fall the scent of fruit is in the air all the time. I highly doubt apple scented shampoo is popular for those people. My parents owned the town grocery store at the time. We always had apples stocked in the produce section, but they usually went bad before they sold.

The orchards to the people there are seen as work. Money. Livelihood. They are not seen as forms of entertainment. It’s difficult to run into someone in these towns who has not owned or worked in an orchard or one of the apple sheds. Apple sheds are the places the trucks take the apples to be sorted boxed and shipped. For a short time I worked in one of these sheds, and I have to say, it was the hardest money I have ever earned.

During the busy time of the year the sheds like to run as many hours as possible. So there are two crews that work. Each crew works 3 ½ days a week. A full day is considered thirteen hours. I went to work at seven in the morning and took my place at a stand along the conveyor belt. I was a packer. Ahead of me in line were the sorters. Their job was to look through the apples, turning them to see all sides, and toss the fruit with bruises and the ones that looked inedible into a bin. If you don’t want to know where your apple juice comes from, don’t use your imagination. After the gross fruit is put aside the rest works it’s way down where it is separated by size. The size of apples ranges from around 140 to 50. The number being the amount of fruit that can fit into a box. So, a 70 size apple is huge compared to a 120.

I would take an apple off the belt with my right hand and move my right hand to my left. With my left hand I would grab the apple out of my right hand and finally place the fruit into a box neatly and orderly. Got that? That was just an annoying way of saying I PUT APPLES INTO BOXES FOR THIRTEEN HOURS AT A TIME.

I worked in the shed about a month. I hated every moment of it. I had plenty of time to soak in all of my surroundings. We reported to work when a whistle blew and our breaks were made known to us in the same way. I couldn’t understand the women that did this and had been doing it for twenty years or more. One lady in particular, named Hazel, had been working their since she graduated high school. Hazel was the fastest packer in the shed. This actually does mean something as you are paid per box. She made around 11 dollars an hour. I made minimum wage. I stunk. My supervisor more than once told me to pack more carefully as I was bruising the fruit and apparently one bad apple DOES ruin the whole bushel.

Every morning I arrived there greeted by my co-workers who were drinking Folgers with non-dairy creamer out of Styrofoam cups. They were tightening their wrist braces and loading their bodies up with enough Advil to numb the carpel tunnel until mid morning break. At lunch they either went home to throw in a load of laundry or they heated up a bowl of Maruchan Ramen in the break room’s microwave. Finally at 8pm after the day was finally over we went home.

My first few days I went home at night I would crash immediately. I was so tired from the boredom. In my bed I would dream about filling boxes. All night long. I felt as though I was working twenty four hours a day.

There were men that worked in the shed as well. Men drove forklifts, lifted boxes and place them elsewhere, and were in general, the bosses. There were mothers and daughters, and husbands and wives working side by side. This was the way that many people survived and it was all they had every known.

I got hired at a local diner at the time I quit working here. And I was so grateful for that new job. But now I just cannot look at apples like most do. Whenever I am in the grocery I look at the produce closely to see if any of the PLU stickers are from the shed that I worked in. And I would buy it if it were. And I would think of Hazel.

I was waiting on a table today and this happened.  I think it’s funny.  Please don’t try to rationalize with what happened.  Because you cannot:

Me: Hello, can I get you a drink started?

Customer: Yes, I’d love a soy latte.

Me: I am sorry, we do not have soy milk.  Would you like one with regular milk?

Customer: (looking dissapointed, but not unpleasant) OK,  but then you’d better make it decaf.

Long pause

Me:Ok I’ll get right on that!

I’m female and if I can be general and sexist I have to say we like buying stuff. I like buying new sheets and scented laundry soap and lattes and of course clothes. But there are things I have to buy that I would get out of if I could. These are those things:

7. Toilet paper-seriously

6. Health Insurance-Because I was self employed I had to get me my own or go without. I figure I’ve spent nearly twenty thousand dollars on “what if”

5. Car Insurance- see above

4. Speeding Tickets- well, I have not paid it yet, but I am going to cringe when I sign the check

3. Healthy Food- It’s only fun to buy donuts and smoothies and cheeseburgers. Healthy food should be free, like sleep and fresh air

2. Daycare- I am paying someone to do something I wish I could do. I would rather spend that money on a maid.

1. Parking for work- It costs me 7-12 dollars (depending on how far I am willing to walk) just to park at work. Unfortunately the bus is not an option for me.

I realized i could make this list much longer, but I won’t cause it’s crabby enough already. Now I am going to go watch a hilarious movie cause crabby pants are ugly.

When I was a boss I had employees. Great intro there. They were mostly of high school age and had great insights into my life both personal and well just personal really. One girl told me one day to just put my name and an unmentioned (now totally forgotten) into the Love calculator to see if we were compatible. I was game for this experiment so I went with it. Turned out we were not a match so all is good.

Tonight I decided to try it again. This time I entered my name and “Your Mom”. We were only 19% a match. So she’s safe I guess. Then I entered “Robert Smith” and we got a whopping 93%. I now believe in you, love calculator.
Wanna to try it? Go here: http://www.lovecalculator.com

Just about a year ago I felt very very crabby. I hated my job, and my job was all I ever did. It got to the point where I thought I might be eligible for one of those pills they advertise with people running through green fields on sunny blue sky days. I was indeed crabby. One day while searching for the newest Stephanie Plum novel at Barnes and Noble I decided to check out the Happy Books. Happy Books being the ones meant for crabby people such as myself who wanted to get out their funk. I found one, I cannot remember the exact title, but it had the phrase “party pants” in it and dammit I wanted some party pants. I don’t think I ever cracked it open. At that point I think I realized that I had to start doing things as opposed to reading about them.

I made a New Years resolution to go out. Yup. This 28 year-old was going to start leaving her home and job and venture into the world. Now you must assume that “the world” equals smoky bars that may or may not have pull tabs and karaoke. And it did.  Me and one of my co-workers kicked the resolution off my spending the night in the world’s diviest bar attached to a bowling alley.  And last winter I met 4651 people. Well, not that many, but compared to the year and a half previous to this it felt like a million.   One out of these million and I were having a conversation one day and I was trying to sound like I had goals beyond making sure there was enough milk in the fridge for the next day.  So, I told them I wanted to go to school.  Although it wasn’t a lie, I did want to go to school, I just never had actually though of doing it for real.  But I am.

So I made more decisions.  I also decided to buy Powerball tickets.  Although my sister says they are for people who cannot understand mathematics, my dad says it only costs a dollar to buy a dream.   I don’t know that I would make a splendid multi-millionaire, but I’d like to dream that I could have two houses in my two favorite cities in the country and spend each Thanksgiving at the Macy’s Parade.  And I would have a room in each house dedicated to storing toilet paper because it is one of those items that I hate buying and if I could just have it delivered once a year and fill up the room and go from there, not only could I not have to buy toilet paper while I am squeezing oranges at the grocery I would probaly never run out.

I also began keeping my car tank full, because if I am ever in the position to be able to get away I want to be able to go right away.  Stopping for gas would take all the beauty and poetry out of driving off into the whatever.  And you are not truly away until you cross a state line.  You need a full tanks of gas to do this.  Maybe this won’t work in Texas.  So, I am proclaiming now, “I shall never reside in Texas!”   Yeah, take that.  I totally messed with you Texas.

Q:What is the opposite of fun?

A:The DMV line

What’s your answer?

When I was in the seventh grade, I attended a school very far from where I lived. I was in a carpool with NINE other kids. We were driven to school by one of the mothers of the three families who went there. So yes, there were 10 people rolling along in the minivan. On Halloween of that year it snowed, over three feet. Our commute the next school day was extended from one half hour to two hours. I decided to pen an excuse note to give to the office. I was sure the entire school was going to be late like us, so I did not take it too seriously. I must not have needed it, because I found it this week in the most recent care package from my mother. I used to think I was funny.

I spelled tragedy wrong.