“She was everywhere, she used to do everything. And the good thing was, she never called out.”

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a news article that has had me thinking ever since. 

It's here if you're interested. 

The gist is that a 32 year old woman named Maria Fernandez was driving to work when she decided to pull off to the side of the road and take a nap in her car. She also decided to leave the car running, presumably because it's pretty cold in New Jersey. Unfortunately, a petrol/gas can had turned over in the back of the car. The combination of the petrol fumes from the can, and carbon monoxide from the exhaust was enough to kill her while she slept.

That part where I said she was driving to work? What I forgot to mention is that she was actually taking a nap between jobs. "Between jobs" doesn't really cut it though because apparently she might've been working at as many as four different Dunkin' Donuts in the area. I wonder if she was granted any last thoughts as the sleep which she would never wake from took her. I'd like to think there's someone she was looking forward to spending some time with. Maybe as her eyes closed a song came on the radio, one of the good ones, and she just drifted off..... comforted by an overwhelming sense of nostalgia and memories of better days. I want to believe that. Let's be honest though. More than likely she was thinking about bills that needed to be paid, and the fact that there would never be enough hours in the day to catch up. 

That brings me to the point of this I guess. I don't have any solutions, nor am I enough of a hypocrite to pretend that I really give a shit. Really though, that's what it comes down to. Stories like this remind us of just how rigged the game is, how much the whole thing just fucking blows. Do we do anything though? Can we? Is it all just destined to suck? I was struck by a quote in the article that prompted, and resulted in the title of, this whiny, pissing in the wind little rant. 

One of Maria's coworkers said the following about her: "She was everywhere, she used to do everything. And the good thing was, she never called out." Just for the sake of emphasis, I'll repeat the last part again "And the good thing was, she never called out." I'm struggling to see how that's a "good" thing. Maybe "convenient" would be a better word. It's a helluva lot easier to overlook people if they're not calling out. How many Maria's am I ignoring every day? 

When I started typing this, I had a clearly defined goal of what I wanted to say. It would've ended up being something along the lines of "how fucked is this? Since when is working 4 jobs not enough? what the fuck is wrong with my homeland??" Blah blah blah, the usual "evils of capitalism" bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I could go on for hours about how I think people are getting screwed by a system that just doesn't care. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm starting to wonder if the people who are being screwed care even less. They don't seem to care about themselves, and they damn sure don't care about each other. Basically, we're screwed, and I'm not even sure if that's undeserved anymore.

Anyway, here's a picture of one of our dogs being awesome. Why? because I can.