The Rooster Crowed

Well, it wasn't quite so amusing to have a rooster running around the neighborhood when he started crowing at 5:30 in the morning yesterday. Nope, not amusing at all and roosters are LOUD.

Keith called animal control and they won't come out for a rooster, only rabid dogs, so he tried the college to see if they had an animal husbandry program and could use a rooster but they don't and he even asked one of the many gardeners that garden each week if they wanted a rooster, but no, nobody wanted the rooster.

The woman across the street in whose garage the rooster has been roosting found a feed store that would take the rooster, though, so it was quite an event yesterday afternoon to catch the thing. She and Keith chased it around for a while and then finally cornered it on another neighbor's porch and Keith grabbed it by the tail and stuffed it into a big cardboard box and off he went to the feed store.

So, no boisterous crowing this morning, but it was kind of fun to see a rooster wandering about all the yards and seemingly having a great time doing it.

Keith is working a late/overnight shift this week, doing radio control in the yard and trying to get the hang of it all without annoying his helper too much. He goes in at 10:30 pm and has been home again before I even get up. They have 8 hours to do a shift but if they get done early they can go home and still get paid for 8. Not bad, but kind of ripe for abuse with people trying to work too fast so they can go home. He is having a hard time trying to get enough sleep during the day, though, humans are just not meant to be nocturnal.

Nothing Much

Same old, same old around around here. Our weekend was extra exciting, with lots of yard work. We hadn't gotten a nasty gram from our homeowners association for a while, and then here comes a letter about how we need to make sure our yard is kept up. Which we do try to do except for the weeds growing in the cracks in the driveway and the brown spots in the yard. Not that it looks really trailer park trashy, but not as good as they want I guess. And not like you can't go down to the end of our street to what we call the ghetto street and see Christmas lights still up and junk cars in driveways. We have a whole section of our neighborhood that is rental housing and I suspect probably low income as well, judging from some of those wrecked cars, but okay, we will get the weeds out of the cracks in the driveway and try and get the grass to grow.

Weed whacking is not my idea of fun and the vibrations make your arms hurt, but we got the yard looking pretty good (except for the brown spots) so hopefully the spies for the homeowners association will be appeased.

Keith worked his first overnight shift last night, taking an evening nap until 10pm and then off to work to clock in at 11:30. I wasn't expecting him until around 8:30 this morning so when I heard some banging around a little after 6:30 I went to go yell at the cats but it was him coming home early. If they get their work done early, they get to go home but still get paid for the entire shift. So, of course everyone wants to get done early.

He is napping on the couch right now and we will see how it goes with him trying to sleep during the day. Today is of course the noisiest day, with gardeners coming  through the neighborhood all day long and lots of leaf blowers in use. Some day we will hire gardeners too, I hope.

Buddy brought in a cockroach last night and then I found another one (dead thankfully) in the middle of the floor this morning. Fun cat toys, those cockroaches!

I Thought I Was in Hell For a Minute There

I went to wal-mart very early this morning to get some packing boxes-yes, you are in hell when you step foot into wal-mart but the total wal-mart experience was made even more hellish for me when I heard this over the loud speaker:

ATTENTION OVERNIGHT ASSOCIATES!! IF YOU ARE JUST STANDING BY THE SIDELINES GET ON OVER TO THE BOYS DEPT AND START ZONING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As many of you may know, I worked for wal-mart for 3 years, the last year on the overnight shift-10 pm to 7am-part time in the cash office and part time as a stocker, which are the only overnight positions in this walmart since it's not open 24 hrs. Overnight stocking is the absolute worst job in the world as far as I'm concerned. I would rather clean out porta potties or flip hamburgers at McDonalds or clean fish guts than ever ever work the overnight shift at wal-mart ever ever again!
The overnight part is bad to begin with-humans are not nocturnal and it just goes against Mother Nature to have to be awake when it is the middle of the night. Humans do not do well trying to sleep in the daytime, especially when the rest of the country is outside your door using leaf blowers and gas mowers.
No, the sleeping is the least of the bad parts of working the overnight shift. The bad parts are being treated as a little less than human because you are working the overnight shift at wal-mart and you must be a little sub-human to have taken this job in the first place, so it's okay to treat you as you would someone who just isn't the sharpest crayon in the box. Besides the hard physical labor of slinging heavy boxes around and pulling 5000 pound pallets of freight around all night, there is last straw of being LOUDLY TOLD to go help clean up a department that isn't even yours at 6:30 am when you are exhausted and have had just about enough of the overnight shift at wal-mart and just want to hide behind an end cap somewhere until the magical hour of 7am when you can finally get the f**k out of there and go home!

What was really disheartening was seeing one of my old co-workers from the overnight shift looking about 10 years older than he did when I left wal-mart a little over a year ago-his hair had turned completely grey too.