An Elegy for the #3:

I feel listless and sad. My bus route has changed, and now everything in life is strange and unfriendly.

The #3 is no more. It is replaced by the #50, a harder, more institutional number than the simple, unassuming 3. The bus doesn't go down much of Sheridan, the loveliest street in Lincoln, anymore; instead, it snakes around tiny backstreets from A to 37th, almost knocking sideview mirrors from parked cars and barrelling over unsuspecting residential-area squirrels. I don't see any of my bus-regulars anymore. Where are the crazies I was just learning to love? Even my familiar drivers are different. Instead of seeing the bald man who looks like a Phil or a Dave, or the bearded, sunglasses guy who used to drive for Pepsi, it's just these "new guys," who brake hard and don't know me from Adam.

To be fair, the buses now run more regularly. I think they've consolidated routes, which is probably saving the city money and hopefully helping more people. And a couple of the new routes suit my shopping purposes very well. But still . . . I'm a bit heartbroken.

It's like I tried to step on a stair that wasn't there. Or I'm a Mac owner trying to work someone else's PC, and it feels wrong and nonintuitive. I feel like I came back to school after the summer, and everything's the same--except all the people I knew are gone. It's an episode of The Twilight Zone--"And One Day, The Buses All Changed."

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Nope, no, it isn't. I just had to finish the sentence the way the song does. What I was really going to say was this. "It's beginning to look a lot like I won't have a summer job."

My own fault, really. I have a passion for local food, and so this summer I decided I'd like to work somewhere locally owned and food-related. I've only applied three places, and although one has rejected me (Bread and Cup), I haven't even bothered to call the other two back (Blue Orchid and Open Harvest).

Other places I've thought of applying are: Magnolia, because Somsri, who owns it, knows me; and Ivanna Cone. Magnolia has a typical application, but Ivanna Cone--wow. If you want to work there, you have to make an art project of some sort, and include your contact info. One girl who works there made an apron and sewed her number on it. I was thinking about making a pop-up book. Or making an Asian meal and delivering it to the manager, complete with fortune cookies . . . with my contact info inside!

To be fair, though, I did contact BrightLights, a (non-food-related) Lincoln Public Schools summer enrichment program, to see if they needed teachers. They don't. But I found out something interesting along the way. The way to apply for BrightLights is to put together a proposal for a class you'd like to teach at the elementary/middle school level. You don't even have to be a teacher! You can just get an idea for a cool class (hopefully one that you can actually teach with some authority) and then submit it! For instance, on this summer's schedule, there is a class on Harry Potter! What?!? Amazing.

But so far I've been a strange combination of busy and lazy. I've been teaching a summer class, which finished last Friday; and I've been working on two articles for Cord Magazine, both of which will be done next week.

I've thought about another writing project. About a year ago, or maybe more, I was working on a story called (for lack of a good name) "Green Valley," which was set in a town very similar to Collegedale in the 40's. It was gonna be about religious hypocrisy and grace rising up in the strangest of places, but since I didn't like any of my characters, I mostly wrote about the landscape.

Well, yesterday I was vacuuming and remembered how I used to work for Merry Maids in Chattanooga. That was a fun job--I like cleaning, and I got to spend the better part of each day in the lavish, beautiful, air-conditioned houses of Chattanooga's wealthy. And I thought about how much you can tell about a person just by looking at their house--their decorations, furniture, family pictures on the wall.

So I might write about a "girl" in "Chattanooga" working for "Merry Maids" . . . okay, okay, obviously something autobiographical. But with a twist. Haven't figured that part out yet. Hopefully it will come to me as I'm writing . . . if I don't get lost in the roses, oak trees, and peach orchards this time.