Unlock a Mind and Peer Within

Okay, let’s get right down to it today. Day one of the Writing 101 Challenge is as follows:

Let’s unlock the mind. Today, take twenty minutes to free write. And don’t think about what you’ll write. Just write. And for your first twist? Publish this stream of conciousness post on your blog.

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Okay, my twenty minutes is starting now. I don’t really do that well on these “stream of conciousness” things because I tend to always be thinking two and three steps ahead of what I’m writing, and thus it’s kinda like planning it out, but I’ll try to just keep saying things as they come to my head.

So I’m on the bus on the way back to camp after one of my 12.5 hour work days. I know I always say that they’re 15.5 hour work days, but that’s including the bus rides and whatnot. I actually only work for 12.5 hours. But don’t think that that means the rest of the time is a break…nah, the roads out here are beyond awful, so the bus rides are bumpy, swaying transportations from hell. Okay, I might be exaggerating just a little bit, but seriously, it’s not fun. And it’s a really really really long day. I don’t even know how I make it through the day most times, considering how little sleep I get at night.

It is outrageously difficult to type while on this bus, seriously. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was on a laptop, but I’m actually using my tablet and bluetooth keyboard, and in order to manage that while sitting in a bus seat I have to have my backpack propped up against the seat in front of me, with my tablet propped up against that, and the keyboard so close to me that it’s touching my stomach. Also, the zipper on the pocket of my jacket is broken and the sharp edge keeps digging into my arm.

How long has that been? Crap, only four minutes. I don’t know if I can just talk about whatever comes to my mind for sixteen more minutes. This is actually more difficult than it sounds.

Okay, so I’m one of precisely three women on an almost full bus, and one of those is the bus driver. The other? Our administrator (i.e. the lady who books our flights and whatnot). I’m the only female tradesperson on the team. Not that that bothers me. I’ve been around mostly guys my entire life, so it’s not a big deal. I still occasionally get people asking me if it bothers me though. I’m not sure why it should. It’s not like I sleep in the same room with them or something. We’re completely separated at the camp, and at work we’re coworkers, just like anyone is coworkers. People are weird though. People always come up with reasons why something should feel uncomfortable, but really it’s just people looking for something to whine about. At least that’s what I think.

My daughter and husband had Chinese food this evening. I could really go for some Chinese food. I wonder what’s for supper at camp tonight. Normally tonight would be fish, but we had fish last night. Maybe we’ll have a pub night. I could really go for some pizza and wings. Mind you, Albertans don’t know how to make pizza. Sorry Albertans, but it’s true. And you really don’t know how to make donair meat. Where are the spices, Albertans? WHERE ARE THE SPICES?

I’m trying so hard to have a continuous stream of conciousness, but the bus is bouncing so hard that I keep making constant typos and having to go back. I suppose I could fix all the typos later, but that’s just not the kind of person I am. Even during NaNoWriMo I can’t restraing that little part of me that insists on hitting the backspace button.

Woo, we’re up to eleven minutes. More than halfway there. Maybe I can do this afterall.

I can feel my lipstick peeling. That drives me nuts. I use that kind of lipstick that is basically like paint that stays on all day because I hate having to reapply every five minutes, but the downside is that by the end of the day it’s actually peeling like paint off an unsealed deck. Is that a random analogy? Our deck is peeling something fierce, so that’s why it came to my head.

Jeezum crow, this drive is awful. I can barely even seen the screen while I’m typing because we’re vibrating so bad. It’s actually kinda pathetic that the road is this bad. We’re in oil country. Surely to god there’s enough money floating around to pave a MUCH traveled road. I’m just sayin’.

So like a lot of my posts lately, I’m actually writing this one in the past so that I can schedule it for the future, so I’m just realizing that I might not even be at work when this post goes live. Does that blow your mind? It kinda blows mine a little.

God dammit, my backpack is slipping and mussing up my set up. One sec…okay, there we go. Rearranged. Ah, but dammit, now that broken zipper is jabbing me again. I just can’t win.

My coworkers showed me a couple of pretty funny videos today. If you’ve never seen them before you should look them up. The first one is “Jeff Gordon’s Test Drive” and the second one is “Jeff Gordon’s Response to Test Drive”. Honestly, I just about peed myself I was laughing so hard, especially at the second one.

I am so ready to go home (in the past). This shift has felt super super long for some reason (in the past). They all feel kinda long because, come on…14 days straight of 12.5 hour days, and I’m 3000 miles away from my daughter and husband. But this one in particular has felt really long. Maybe it’s because I’ve been working so hard on getting blog posts scheduled during my miniscule moments to myself and I’m starting to burn out. Yeah, I definitely think I’m burning out. It’s going to be a really good set of days off. Unfortunately I have an outrageously screwed up set of flights (in the past) to deal with before I get there. Let’s just say that mistakes were made, fingers were pointed, and now I’m looking at over 28 hours of travel time to get from Cold Lake, Alberta, to Sydney, Nova Scotia. How screwed up is that? Mind you that a large chunk of that is staying overnight in a hotel in Toronto, but still, it means I’m pretty much losing every second of my first day off. It sucks. I’m going to need a lot of little missy snuggles and cuddles and kisses to get over it.

And woo, look at that! Twenty minutes! Thank goodness. My brain has officiall shut off. -.-zzzzzzzZZZZZZZ