WooHoo!! Just looked at my schedule for the week after next, I'm up to 20 hours. I would have disappointed with that amount a year ago but after being scheduled for under 15 hours a week for the past month 20 hours is reason to cheer. This week I was to work 7 hours and bumped it up by coaxing another server into going home early and letting me finish her shift but I'm still going have to pinch some serious pennies to grocery shop this week.

I'm still searching for houses. It is amazing how few there are for sale in our price range. MI isn't a rich state you would think there would be more inexpensive housing but the market seems glutted with houses in the 400k to million dollar range. I don't run in the same circles as people who live in those houses. I'm pretty sure they don't come to my restaurant much either. I made comment once that part of the reason we have such division in this country is there isn't any positive interaction between classes.

Also people are unaware of their status. For example, I once worked for a man, CEO of a small company owned by a much bigger conglomerate. He was a self made man and I take nothing away from him. He was kind, generous and valued his employees. When he was replaced by a professional CEO/salesman the tenor of the business changed and the snaky quality he brought colored the whole place. I was gone before too long. But this self made man was telling a story about his vacation in Italy. He recounted sitting on the balcony of his hotel looking out into the bay and seeing the gigantic super yachts. H mused on seeing how the rich people lived. I couldn't help but think at the time that if your trip to Italy doesn't involve a bus and thirty other people you are the rich people. This man was so occupied looking out from his bay side balcony at the ridiculously rich he thought of himself as just ordinary folks. He was oblivious to the fact that sharing that story with me, who might never afford such luxuries was insensitive. My Father, who toured Europe on a bus with thirty people, shared with me that he felt most people could never afford a trip to Europe under any means and he considered himself well off.

I think one of our biggest problem in this country is that so many people don't realize how rich they are because they still work for it and the very rich think they deserve to be obscenely rich because they are just better humans.

Nature vs Nurture doesn't just apply to personality, it can also be applied to success. There are many people who have received all the opportunities a person could hope for cling to the belief that their success isn't because of more opportunities but their superior self. This allows them to turn a blind I to good decent people who struggle to gain the bare minimum. They point to the anomalies, the rare few who have climbed out from under all the rocks in their path and found the smooth pavement to suggest that anyone could do that and lack of success = either lack of effort or inferiority. Either way they can happily dismiss any responsibility they might have towards their fellow man with a they could have what I have if the worked harder. If not then they shouldn't exist, shouldn't reproduce, they are lesser and undeserving of life.

Goodness me, look who found their soap box. People call me an idealist, even my husband thinks I am unreasonable "it will never happen, this ideal, so why even try?" But even they can not escape the fact that even they must admit that we are not living the ideal existence.

It's like the folks who don't what to restrict guns in any way "criminals will ignore the gun laws so why have them" while ignoring the reality that by that argument there should be no laws because criminals will ignore them anyway.

I don't want anarchy, I don't want survival of the fittest I don't want some power hungry dictator's make believe communism. I want true communal living, Love they neighbor stuff, we have heard it before, from every wise teacher humans have ever revered, but no, people just don't want to do the one thing required to have the ideal, stop being so selfish.

Wow, that was a tangent...I should go, clean...um...something, get my mind off...stuff.

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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