Ten Things I Hate About Seattle

So Many Things Annoy Me. Why My Adored? Why? 

Pet Peeves That Annoy The Hiss Out Of Me 

WARNING: This is an article written while I am high on steroids to treat/cure work-related injury. (The doctor WARNED that steroids would make me BITCHY.) May you never say that I ever wrote a blog entry without cautionary instructions for how to proceed; in this case, with noted precaution. Even still, I write this with a bit of humor kept in mind.

#10. Bunch of bat-winged penis ogres
of Tanzania's Popobawa fame run Seattle

I have enough pet peeves to write an encyclopedia but this is just a blog entry so here are a mere few things that are wrong with Seattle.

1. What is it with bicyclists in Seattle who REFUSE to use the (very expensive) protected maze of bike lanes that weave around and through our city, such as the $1.5 million pilot project on 2nd Avenue. The bike lanes are something that motorized tax payers keep footing the enormous bills to expand, and yet cyclists themselves (who are not obligated to pay for any of it) insist on slowing down traffic in the too few lanes made for cars, trucks, motorcycles, and "Ride The Ducks" killing machines. I've sat for ridiculous hours in gridlock traffic without seeing a single bicycle use those lanes ... so why not open them up to motorcycles and people who want to abandon their parked cars when they can just run really fast?

Please bicyclists. For trucker's sakes. That solid white line between the bus and my semi, utility vehicle or midget-car IS NOT FOR YOU to roll your rims over! So stop splitting lanes. You're much too-easy-to-splat like a bug on our windshields. Move to YOUR skinny-spandex-wearing-bony-butt into the DESIGNATED LANE.

SAFETY FACT: Cyclists have a too silent and nearly translucent way of appearing out of nowhere like a scary poltergeist. Are you trying to ruin other people's lives by causing us to merge into you on accident? Wear a wind-whistle around your necks or something. For crying out loud!


2. Am I the only one who had driver's education instructions in my student manual that declared I must PULL my vehicle over to the side of the road whenever an emergency vehicle, or cop car, with sirens and flashing lights, is approaching? If not - then what-in-tarnation is the matter with you dumb-masses who keep on driving in the same lane that an on-coming ambulance is driving? Pull the Hell over! Stop turning our streets into "death row!" Your schedule is not more important than someone who just dialed 9-1-1. Right now I feel like choking the life out of you just to save whomever the fire trucks are racing to rescue.

3. Ism you hungry? Because this "ism" rant is a big one. To be a functioning society, we all must follow rules that fellow residents agreed upon, and if you don't agree with that particular society's rules then move more-than-a-yell away to some place where you do agree with the rules. You don't see me living in the Bible Belt, for instance. (The Pantheon of Gods forbid.) Yet when I went to an anarchist march in Seattle only to observe a bunch of fellow vagrants act like they want bigger freedoms while they wrote graffiti on metro buses and otherwise damaged or destroyed public property ... I just gotta say that's not anarchism slum-guts! That's vandalism! (Know that just because two words end the same way, they don't mean the same thing!)

4. All over the media Seattleites are presented as granola-eating, pacifists. For the most part they may pass on throwing a fist and get a sunburn every time it stops raining. Yet I really hate the stereotypes spoken about all of the wide and varied folks who live here and that whole designation about people from Seattle looking alike does not hold water; not the way our gutters, retaining ponds, and my feet do. People, meaning both men and women from Seattle, may grow beards to shield their faces from the wind but many of Seattle's women actually pluck theirs. We're not so distinct-looking that you can tell us apart from, say, someone living in the mountains of Kentucky, North Carolina, or Montana.

5. Notice how everyone who campaigns AGAINST the minimum wage getting raised to $15/hour in this hard-to-make-it city makes a lot more money than that? The naysayers should all be forced to live on the current minimum wage. That's all I need to say about that. Oh wait. I'll say more. Read #6.

6. There are definitely way too many homeless people living in Seattle and they didn't just move here because they like sleeping in soggy blankets. Why is nothing being done about it? No I don't think we should be giving everyone a hand-out. But why can't these people at least be given the opportunity to earn a decent minimum wage when many of them are working to earn their food for less than a sustainable income? Why are returning wages so low - especially if you're a woman who took time off from your career to care for ailing parents, for children, or for just five minutes when you got a hair cut. Why are people making less money today when they did this same job ten years ago at much higher pay?

7. I love Seattle's scenery, the clean smells from the forest, and the many natural attractions available here in Jet City. Yet if I were in control I'd declare it really should rain between the hours between midnight and three in the morning. Beyond that? All those many consecutive months of 24-hour drizzle mixed in with grey skies and downpour? It's torture! There are reasons why Seattle is affectionately known as the "Coffee Capitol Of The World." It's because sun-deprived residents must self-medicate with enough caffeine to not feel lethargic as a slug shriveling up on on a trail of sea-salt. Perpetual darkness and gray skies can suck the soul out faster than anyone attending Bram Stoker's Vampire Ball. Note: Seattle is also known as the "Suicide Capital."

8. "The Seattle Chill." We're not talking about outside temperatures here. Depending how long you've lived in this city - your experience may be a little better. Yet try being a tourist, a new resident or guest and say "hi" to someone on the street and you might wonder if all people from Seattle have severe hearing problems. Most don't talk to strangers; at all. There are many speculations as to why that might be. I grew up in Seattle and was taught early-on about "stranger danger!" (Don't get inside that white-paneled van with "free candy" painted on the outside no matter how friendly the driver may seem.) Yet perhaps a more logical explanation for the "Seattle Freeze" is because this evergreen city is a technology hub. Most people are too busy listening through their ear-buds to notice that you need them to unwrap their dog leash from around your ankles so you can enter the grocery store.

9. Until I moved to the Queen Anne neighborhood - I never knew any of my neighbors. That wasn't because I didn't try to get to know them. It had everything to do with Seattle's "no touch" policy when it comes to speaking to whomever you share an apartment laundry room with. Don't expect to get eye contact from your neighbors when you hold the door open for them either. Yet now that I live on Queen Anne? Because everyone looks alike in this neighborhood with various shades of blonde hair and blue eyes? I gotta admit there's at least one bunion in Seattle where people do actually speak to each other. 

10. No matter how long you live in Seattle, how much you dialogue with the powers-that-be, or how active you get in volunteering for the community your opinion will never count in this city no matter how many "troll be-gone" spells you cast. Your money will never be your own either. That's because a bunch of bat-winged penis ogres like the Popobawa run this city. Perfect example? Voters turned down the construction of the new Safeco Field stadium back in 1997. In fact we voted it down TWICE. So what did the Popobawa's (meaning: Washington State Legislature) do? They built the stadium with public money anyway.

Another example? Our Sonics basketball team was pulled away when we were promised it would stay with new ownership. This list for making voter opinion not count could get really long because in Seattle there is never an issue that ever gets decided permanently by majority rule. Not even when it regards building sky-rises in places where a house used to stand only to provide zero parking for it. Seattle seldom fixes the pot holes in its plethora of one-lane-only streets. Currently insurers of Bertha, the tunnel-boring machine, are suing to avoid paying $143 million for repairing it; a machine which tax payers paid more than $80 million just to get started. Pretty sure the average citizen will be picking up the repair costs too; against their will and vote.  

Let's Talk Trash. Because Bus Stop Garbage Is Changing How I See People

For the next six months I am cleaning bus shelters in the Northeast district of Seattle. That’s where a large number of destitute people, meaning panhandlers, homeless people, and folks with no better place to go to get out of the rain seem to want to hang out. It's also where people who are not so homeless spit gum on the sidewalk and fill the trash cans meant for bus passengers with things they don't want to pay to haul away: like seriously heavy car parts, their personal household garbage, and even 35 gallons of dog poo wrapped in individual-sized doggie bags (probably deposited by numerous dog walkers).

NOTICE THE BENCH. Short. Hard. Metal (to encourage
sitting but discourage comfortable sleeping on it)

Judging by the beer and whiskey bottles behind, used heroine needles, and pizza boxes that I throw into my truck with all the other trash, it’s obvious that bus shelters provide respite for many unintended guests ... mostly people who are not nearly as down-and-out as, say, the poor and homeless who live in places like Madagascar. Nope. These garbage-makers have some degree of affluence or they would not be able to create so much waste and debris

My Personal Experiences With The Homeless Who Hang Out At Seattle’s Bus Shelters

While I’m momentarily contracted to power-wash and collect trash, I start work at 4:30 in the morning. That means I’m sometimes waking people up in ways I never intended. The bright lights from my utility truck woke a woman who was sleeping in a store front doorway near one of my stops here recently. As she stood up to stare at me I noticed she was a bit smaller than me, also blonde, and she looked highly vulnerable to life on the streets. As I looked her way, I really worried about her well-being. Then she flipped me off, with both hands, and I was reminded there are many reasons why people become dispossessed or disinherited.

People Who Live On The Street: All Unique

Next bus stop? A homeless man approached while I collected garbage and started helping me clean. It was like he felt sorry for the fact that I had to pick up trash - or maybe he was the one who left it there, beneath the bench, and felt guilty when I showed up. Who knows. I thanked him for his help but pointed out the fact he didn't wear rubber gloves - so maybe I needed to be the only one tidying up. Insight about germs and contagious diseases seemed to dawn on him and he left me to work alone.

Nobody who is reading this blog entry right now is lowly enough, or so closely aligned with the very first amoeba that crawled out of the ocean, to diminish themselves by talking badly about society’s under-privileged (meaning the homeless) and that's not where I'm going with this article either. Just like any community in America, someone who is homeless could be from any culture, philosophy or religion. Some homeless people bathe. Some don't. Some are very smart. Some aren't. Talking about people from a low socio-economic status like they're all the same would show great ignorance on our part. So let's make it clear when I talk about the homeless I'm only talking about a very small segment of people of a particular soci-economical-housing-disadvantage and they're only people who have met ME (as opposed to homeless folks who live in people-shelters or avoid bus shelters altogether or who have met Johnny Depp and therefore make me feel very jealous).

It's a regularly established fact that some people become homeless after they lose everything thanks to life experiences like drug addiction, divorce or PTSD. There are also some very hard-working street people who have reasonably good habits - they just cannot afford to pay rent on their minimum wage paycheck. Heck, we have all heard of soldiers returning to America from the ravages of war who cannot keep things together now and become homeless thanks to their past trauma. 

No matter the cause for someone choosing to live on the streets, we all can agree it's a crying shame when someone cannot get basic necessities like a dry place to sleep. So I approach non-bus-riding customers who are staying inside a bus stop with the desire to be considerate.

At yet another bus shelter, I was power-washing and a well-groomed grey-haired man moved close from behind me to ask if I could please avoid getting his bedding wet. He didn't look "homeless" (meaning disheveled or poor) but in the direction he pointed was a sleeping bag; 5 feet past the “rent-a-bicycle” rack and another ten feet beyond the bus shelter. To accommodate him, I changed the direction I pointed my jet-steam. That’s when he offered to come home to live with me and, oh compliment of all compliments, said I was just as sexy as his sister. That's what he said. That's not a joke.

At the next stop, someone had left their cardboard “please help” sign along with a syringe with its uncapped needle ready to stab anyone who kicked it on accident. I've found as many as 15 needles left in a pile on the ground at other bus stops. One can only ponder what sort of "den of iniquity" that bus shelter provided for people.

When it comes to protecting the public from used needles, Utility Workers have a lot of rules to follow.  I treat each one like the toxic waste products they really are and feel grateful for nifty grabbers, where I don’t have to touch the pokey things with my bare hands.
 
Yet beyond needles and garbage that some folks leave behind, there’s also barf and, you guessed it. Someone just may have sat there on the bus stop’s bench with their pants down. Diarrhea is not a fun or pleasant-smelling splatter to clean up with a shovel and/or power washer.

Now I gotta admit I prefer to think that it's the homeless people who are using bus stations for toilets. Yet I could be wrong about that. Maybe it's just drunk college kids, or angry people who are expressing some political statement about tidy bus stops. Who knows.

Since I personally recycle or reuse packaging items as much as possible I often wonder why some people from Seattle would create so much garbage that it clutters public areas. I consider the reality that someone might be so high (on drugs) they just cannot function or do anything socially responsible at all. That idea seems more palatable than pondering that people might create trash either for shear laziness, or out of spite for society, or some other form of meanness. 

Should We Give Homeless A Handout?

Many years ago, when my children were little, I used to go to the food bank on a semi regular occasion because feeding my family was just impossible given my measly monthly paycheck. Back then, I would get donated food then would sit in my dilapidated old car crying out of gratitude for all the generous people who made it possible for my children to eat. The memory of that has caused me to donate money to food banks over the years whenever I can.

Contrast my personal experiences with what charity I find tossed away in the bus shelter trash cans today and I gain a different perspective. It seems obvious from the unopened cans of pork-and-beans, bottles full of juice, and boxes of dry goods that some folks pick through whatever they got from the food bank, keep what they like, and throw the rest away.

Add to that reality that it’s cheaper to go get a brand new coat for FREE than it is to put quarters in a washing machine to clean the one you're wearing and you understand why so many homeless leave their clothes in the park, along any given sidewalk or at the bus shelter where I am obligate to throw such dirty items away.

All my experiences have caused me to believe that for many - when food and clothes are always free such charity carries little or no value. The right recipient (no matter how needy) who is actively trying to improve their life situation will fully appreciate the charity and will use it to go on and improve their life. Other people? I just don't understand how they think.

While Seattle put "help the homeless" strategies in place many years ago - those seem to not be working. The homeless population keeps growing in this metropolis and so does the amount of garbage the city and county continue to clean up.

If there's a conclusion to this article about the homeless, and about garbage at bus shelters, I'm not sure what that moral would be. Yet there's obviously a segment of society that does not hold my same values for social awareness and polite cooperation. That segment continues to throw trash on the ground when an available trash receptacle is a mere foot away. I'm not sure if those litterers are being mind-controlled by extraterrestrial radio waves and therefore should be held harmless for the behavior they exhibit or if they all need to be sent to an island of floating plastic out at sea where they can smother each other in their own trash. 

Point is - there is no point. There is no answer. There is only trash talk and garbage. The telling of a story for the reader to decide why things are as they seem to be and whether anything could be done to improve life for all or even should something be done about anything.

*the end*

Who Is Tami Jackson

WHO AM I? MY NAME IS CHANGE!

Tami Jackson: Grandma. Mother. Sister. Lover. Writer. Healer. Intuitive. Author. Artist. Laborer. Gardener. Animal Enthusiast. Writer. Blogger. Editor. Web Designer. Trucker and Faerie Friend.

So often when someone writes a description of themselves they present some pigeon-holed story in too rigid of a way for anyone whose suffered, or lived life at all, to relate to that writer on a personal level. In my case? "Change" or maybe even “Spare Change” should be my middle name. It’s not that I enjoy upheaval. I hate it, especially when LIFE modifies my carefully-plotted desires without consulting with me in any way.

Yet metamorphosis keeps on happening. Now that I’m in my fifties I’m adapting to even more change and transition. I'm also going through “THE CHANGE.” That means I am finding cures for all kinds of obstacles and am learning to keep my body's triple-heater set at a normal temperature. It also means elder folk want to give me all kinds of advice. Typically they say that the older we get, the more difficult it seems just getting out of bed in the morning. "Yay!"

Glad to report that for the time being I can still sleep soundly thanks to my clear-conscience, and sometimes thanks to Melatonin and maybe some home-grown Valerian root.

SELF CRITICISM/CONCERN ABOUT AGING IS NEEDLESS AND BIZARRE

Since I'm currently working a very labor-intensive job, I will be posting a "how to heal carpal tunnel" article here pretty soon.

In the meantime, I’m learning that too hard of repetitive physical labor can actually make the limbs grow weaker, not stronger. At some point ya just have to "pace yourself" better. Take time to smell what ever's under our noses.

MY HISTORY:

Back when I was 18, I married a Seventh-day Adventist Preacher/sexual-predator. 8 years later we divorced and seeing how the church stood behind pedophile behavior, I found logic and became a witch (thanks to Scott Cunningham's book, "Wicca, A Guide To The Solitary Practitioner.") 

That's not to say my religious evolution has not grown since then. It's just that, at the time, witchcraft did not seem like a religion at all. It seemed much more like logic, especially after I grew up on a small goat-and-vegetable far. Cunningham's book, which embraced everything Nature has to teach us, just seemed smart.

It can be said, that due to all the changes life has brought me, I now relate to more to human suffering and people who are in transition. Fact is we all go through change (not referring to pick-pocketing here). So anytime someone is lost, feeling confused, or clueless about what they should do next ... I'm totally there to help them. That's largely why I offer Tarot readings online.

I also write about a variety of life experiences I've been through. That's what this blog is about ... sharing life lessons I learn along the way. In fact, here's a link to an article I wrote for a local paper about being a woman, working in a career traditional to men, and holding my own. "Mother Trucker!" (Enjoy.)

MY LIFE AS A WRITER

Born to write, *writing for hire* remains my life passion. As a little kid I wrote poetry and drew pictures and wrote short stories. My dad then said that for me to be a good writer - I should be able to write a story about what that cement fence post that he had just poured, and set, to hold up the fencing materials that would keep farm animals out of our front yard. So I did. I wrote a very emotion-filled story in first person about being a fence post for one year. In that story I shared how it feels to be crapped on by birds, how unappreciative folks are when I protected them from predators with no financial or emotional reward and how awful it is to continually endure all kinds of weather, not to mention dogs peeing on me. In the end, my dad thought my story was noteworthy enough to encourage my study at Washington State University, where I earned a bachelor's

degree in communications/English from their Edward R. Murrow program.    

WHY BLOG - A WRITER'S BLOG

I write and blog for many reasons. First for self-healing (writing is therapy). Second for money. Third because my family keeps evolving and one day I may be gone but my words might stay behind to let future generations know that I’m still around to haunt and protect them. (Hope that last part will make the unborn future offspring laugh.) Actually - I really write because I feel like I really have a lot of important things to say! (So listen up.)

The reason I design web pages is to stay connected in the perpetual evolution of our world at large. This blog and revampshebang.com are my way to stay current with an ever growing computer technology as I study social trends and throw around important-sounding acronyms like SEO, HTML and AYSKM (are you serious kidding me). 

MY LIFE AS A HEALER

In tech school, where I earned my massage therapy credentials, I earned straight A’s. That’s important because there are many times when I’ve gone to a traditional doctor for assistance with carpal tunnel treatments or whiplash injuries and they really did not seem to have the slightest clue as to why my arms, hands, were falling asleep on me. Thanks to the fact I actually paid attention in anatomy and physiology class - I am most often able to find ways to treat my pains when doctors merely seem to want to address symptoms with synthetic drugs; anti-inflammatory medicines which come in handy sometimes but are not sustainable for long term health care.

When newspapers started folding and it became harder and more difficult to find work as a professional writer, I studied massage, herbs and hypnotherapy to better care for myself – and that knowledge has often translated into my helping others heal. In the process of working as a masseuse, it also became evident (from touching people) that I’m also rather empathic. That reality – of hearing thoughts, feeling other people’s emotions, and completing their sentences before they could find the best word – launched me on a new journey for wanting to know how the brain works. How did I know the new massage client laying silently on my table was in horrific grief when they showed no signs outwardly?

My work as an intuitive massage therapist also led to me getting paid for doing other jobs, such as clearing houses of ghosts and other metaphysical critters. My massage customers determined if anyone could talk to the paranormal - it was their telepathic masseuse.

Such questions - about how we know what we know - are why I became fascinated with and studied hypnotherapy.  See this watch I’m dangling before your eyes right now? Watch the watch, the watch, the watch... Then? Make sure you subscribe to this blog! Watch the watch, the watch. Subscribe. Watch the watch, the watch.