Jay's new job...

I have a little confession--I wash dishes for money. In my experience, dish-washing (and the larger subset of restaurant kitchen work in general) has a reputation for being physically demanding, fast-paced and usually unpleasant work. It seems strange then to announce that, I’m actually enjoying my job. That’s not to say that I think it’s a “good” job: meaning respectable, in any way glamorous, providing adequate monetary compensation for the effort expended, or even that the tasks I perform repeatedly all night long are enjoyable (who would find reaching into a tub brimming with uneaten food and dirty dinner plates, for example, to be enjoyable?) Still, I’m enjoying this job.

Why?

Though requiring relatively low-level thinking to perform, it is nonetheless challenging work – every night is different and there is always something to do better, or faster. It is a game to play against oneself – a continual improvement of dish-washing techniques and strategies. I like to pretend sometimes, when faced with a frightening stack of dishes on say a busy Friday night, that I am a dish-washing ninja. Each dish is washed with frightening accuracy and speed; my hand movements blur together into blinding white light. Really though, it is not hard to outperform my immediate predecessors. One of them (whom I worked with one night), moves at a pace so devoid of speed and motivation that I am constantly astounded that he still has a job. I have to believe that there are, somewhere, folk who are out of work and would gladly move faster than molasses for an opportunity to earn a wage. I can’t help but focus on this lack of ambition to do a good job because in my own life I can’t help but try to do the best I can at whatever I’m doing. I am realizing this about myself: I take pride in my work, even when the work sucks.

Scraping out half-eaten rice bowls with my bare hands is humbling. Those who know me well know that, while I’m no slouch, I’ve never actually had “a real job.” I’ve worked in direct exchange for room, board and most of my other needs since I graduated high school, doing both hard and highly skilled labor. But the distinction (often pointed out by family and friends) is that I’ve never filled out that familiar I-9 or W-4 form that officially sanctifies and designates work as being “a real job.” I feel oddly proud, considering that my wage has decreased to the absolute minimum rate allowed by Oregon law. In this there is a lesson I’m learning with every exhausting shift about the value of money: how the conversion of hours in my life to numbered pieces of paper is a dynamic and ever-shifting relationship; I get a raise and suddenly I have more money in my pocket per hour worked. I will value this money slightly less, because I’ll have more of it for the same time and energy used to earn it. My theory (developed while hunched over the stainless steel sink) is that the more a person gets paid for their time, the less they value a dollar. It’s pretty obvious and elementary I suppose – though somehow it seems insightful to me.

Regardless of my wage, I have steady, paying work in a time of ridiculous unemployment and I make much more in one hour than over half the world lives on each day. That single fact, paired with the inherent frugality of our lifestyle means that I am not actually under-employed. Even at the lowest possible pay allowable by law and working a part-time schedule, I will earn more dollars each month than I spend to meet my needs. As long as I can put something in savings, I can’t really complain. Plus, I’m starting another job shortly which will supplement my income further. I definitely don’t see myself washing dishes long term, or even moving up in the ladder of restaurant positions—-I don’t really care that much about food service—-but I am grateful to have the job I do, for now, and determined to be the best kung fu kitchen ninja that I can be.

B-day weekend adventure-ing

Last weekend we escaped from the dusty bus and headed out on the open dusty road. It was my 25^th birthday (mid-twenties-life crisis!!!!!!!!) on labor day and this was the last weekend for a good long while that we’d be able to steal away….so we went to the redwoods! YAY! I loveeeee giant trees. They make me giddy like a 5 year-old on a huge playground. Which is actually a good analogy, because I do think of the redwoods as a big playground. They just happen to be a playground that is FULL of life. Amazing.

Me loving the giant trees.

But I digress.

I just wanted to report, in my first blog entry, that even when we leave the bus and head out on what is supposed to be a relaxing weekend, jay and I end up sleeping in some bizarre places. The first night on our adventure we drove down to Arcata and couldn’t find any camping spots on the way. Being labor day weekend, all the spots in parks were booked well in advance or snatched up by midday. Soooo we ended up sleeping in the backseat of my ultra-classy Buick Regal on a dimly lit street in town. Lilllllll bit sketchy. It was also not a very big sleeping space. We moved the front seats all the way forward and then filled the backseat’s foot space with things from my trunk until it was the same height as my back seat. Then we put my camping pad on top of that and almost had the width of a twin size bed. Being my birthday weekend, jay was nominated to sleep on this awkward side. He said it actually wasn’t that uncomfortable. What was uncomfortable however was the length of our sleeping space. We’re both around 5’9” to 5’10” and the inside of the buick is not. It’s more like 4’9”. Soooo there was a lot of adjusting through the night and trying to stretch out the legs. But we slept in a surprising amount nevertheless: until 9am!

The teeny sleeping space.

The following day we meandered down to the lost coast, the only isolated, hard to reach, and undeveloped section of california’s coast. It was really beautiful. And really really really windy. There was an option to sleep in a campground a few hundred yards from the beach for $8, or you’re allowed to backpack in and set up camp anywhere for free. Naturally we chose the latter. We didn’t hike in very far (at all). We found a driftwood wall that had been built on the beach facing north (where the wind comes from most of the time) and spent the afternoon running around gathering driftwood and building an extra 2 walls to protect our tent from the elements. The wind never ceased and it was harder to actually sleep there than in my car. But man oh man it was it all worth it when we woke up, unzipped the tent fly, and saw the ocean right beside us first thing in the morning.

Jay on top of the fortress.

We traveled back up to the dusty bus through the redwoods (I can never get sick of them) and then through windy mountainous backroads and forest service land. It was a wonderful weekend with my man, but it’s sooooo good to come back to a comfy bed in our lil bus.

The dusty bus goes digital.

Thanks to the converging miracles of Google, parabolic scrap metal and a long USB cable, we are now broadcasting live from the inside of our bushome. The aforementioned materials, cobbled together with a cheap WiFi adapter have become a funky--but functional--internet antenna.

I have to step back from it to truly appreciate the incredible and seemingly contradictory experience of a lifestyle that right now, amounts to little more than glorified camping, yet includes an invisible cyber-link to the world. It’s a universal link that enables the research of any question, immediate communication on a global scale, and even face-to-face video conversations with anyone, anywhere – without cost. Email, Facebook, and Skype replace what used to be a process of communication that could have involved months (or years) to send a message and receive a response. The concept of long-distance conversation was probably unimaginable. I’m astounded then, to be living with space-age connectivity and yet totally unencumbered by masses of electronic circuitry, wiring or other evidences of this technological advancement. A glance out the window places us, essentially, in the woods; our only hard connections to the grid: a 20 amp extension cord and the food-grade hose that is our water supply.

Anyhow, back to the blog. I cannot say for certain when the idea first emerged, perhaps Katarina remembers, but it was probably in the midst of one of our weird and elaborate projects when someone proclaimed that, “We should have a blog.” And so a seed was planted and the idea took root. It wasn’t until the completion of this rusty, odd-looking internet antenna and the resulting convenient internet access, that one of us actually clicked our way into this new blog. It is actually a hybrid of two different blogs: the original bus-house construction blog that I began two years ago and used only once, and Katarina’s much talked about but still imaginary blog called ‘Katie in the country’ (also a potential PBS series) which would chronicle her many strange adventures living in Southern Oregon. It makes sense; we spend most of our time together, do so many projects—some of which were inspired by reading other blogs—and have a lot of mini-adventures that seem extraordinarily weird and fun. We both wish we lived closer to family; So, I think this blog is both a way to document some of our lives so we don’t forget and then take for granted all the cool stuff that we make and do, and also an excuse to post pictures and share stories with our people. I hope it will be, at the very least, interesting.