And It Would Not Have Mattered If I Had, At Least Not Today
Hi, there. So, after a January that saw me going to Texas and making my almost-only SLR-camera pictures on that trip, today, more than midway through February, I took a brief trip back home for a meeting tomorrow.
Before I get to today’s pictures and stories, I will, per my new custom, spew some personal commentary from the days since the last article.
Thursday, February 1st
It was somewhat hazy this morning. I haven’t been feeling well since we returned from the two-day Texas trip. I might be feeling better had we stayed another night. I think that the problem was less the trip and more that we returned so late on the second night, disrupting my sleeping patterns. I hate this damn house. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
It looks like I can’t count on Facebook for much more income than that which I am getting from it, which is fine, because I shouldn’t.
Stanley came sit next to me reeking of cigarette smoke at that table.
There have been only a few times in the last month that I have done a full, hour-long walk, and probably no time that I walked for more than an hour. Now, I walked for almost an hour on Saturday morning in Texas. I got to know that neighborhood better. I did that back in September. I did it again this past Saturday morning. So, I am kind of writing that neighborhood in my head, and it makes me somewhat appreciate this neighborhood more.
Monday, February 5th
Fifteen years ago today, I took a day off of work to go and chase what would be the second-to-last train on the Lockport Branch.
Four years ago today, there was a run on the Abbeville Branch that I photographed, the first run that I photographed after I permanently moved out of New Orleans.
And, then, three years ago today, I photographed Port Rail action in Lake Charles.
This photo project has just consumed my life, my time and my energy for the last few months, and I still have work to do, still have to do the rest of the 2023 pictures.
The scale said I weighed 180.6 pounds, and I can’t tell if that is good or bad, because, lately, I have been fasting plenty, but, also lately, largely due to that Texas trip and just general whatever, I have been eating some not-so-good foods. So, what I’m going to have to do is ratchet up the fasting and start waiting until 12 hours after I awaken, which, if I do that today, will mean not eating until 5pm.
I bought bacon, like real bacon, pork bacon, at the store yesterday, at Walmart, the first time in a long time that I buy bacon, and, to me, that’s like my Mardi Gras. That’s how I will celebrate Mardi Gras, by eating that for my breakfast meat instead of turkey bacon, which is a weird thing to say after I say that I need to ramp up the fasting and dieting, but, in recent days, I have gotten caught up on cooking, which I hadn’t been since that trip to Texas, which is one of the reasons that I did eat fast food several times last week.
Taco Bell got rid of some of my favorite menu items! It got rid of the Fiesta Veggie Burrito and the accompanying chicken burrito. They could have just raised the prices on them. I wonder if not wanting to do that is why they just got rid of them.
Yesterday, at the gym, The Gym People Pleaser’s husband was there. She wasn’t there, at least not that I could tell, though I don’t know how she would have been there and I not see here. Of course, he has his ear buds and never looks at me, but he apparently now knows who I am.
And, so, that got me to thinking about all of that again, and, then, that got me to thinking this morning about how, again, this is how my trust issues with people happen, why I have acted passive-aggressively before. That whole situation with them helped me to realize that, like, for example, my real problem is not so much with cigarette smokers. My real problem is actually with enabling non-smokers, non-smokers who enable smokers and don’t have solidarity with me against the smokers. Even before I see how a non-smoker behaves in a situation in which there is cigarette smoking and it’s annoying, I am naturally drawn to the non-smoker and naturally repulsed by the smoker, and I want to be able to trust the non-smoker, but I am coming to see now why I never fully trusted non-smokers whom I didn’t know to be as opposed to smoking as I am either, which is practically everyone. It’s the same with noise and light and with people like The Gym People Pleaser. My problem isn’t really with the noisy people.
My problem isn’t with the really noisy people. My problem is with the not-noisy people who enable the noisy people and act like I am the problem! That applies to everything else. My problem is not with the people who type “u” in place of “you”. My problem is all of their enablers who don’t do that but who then defend the people who do and blame ME for the confusion and conflict. If the enablers wouldn’t enable, then people wouldn’t do that “u” crap in the first place, people wouldn’t do that to me and others in the first place.
There was a thread on that Louisiana Facebook group this morning, started by a guy who is from Louisiana who lives in Texas, and someone replied to him something about “U” in Texas, but it was the letter “U” instead of “You”, and I initially read that as “University Of Texas”.
and, of course, what that does to me is that it conditions me to see, when I do something that actually is “U Of Texas”, I will now think “oh, that person means ‘you'”, because that already has happened before, even though, in that case, it actually would be the University of Texas.
And, so, my problem is with everyone else in that thread who responded to her in a way that acknowledged that she meant “you” without even protesting it. Those people are aiding in my confusion, because the “u” people aren’t getting the message about how rude that is, and, in case anyone asks, yes, I actually would be in favor of changing the spelling of the first-person singular pronoun from “I” to “ei” or something like that.
I wonder if “I” being capitalized and, maybe also, a single letter is due to this Great Man, capitalistic mentality that we have this single letter and capitalized for only the first-person pronoun, while every other pronoun is not capitalized and has more than one letter.
So, that’s what I wanted to say this morning. I realized why I am like I am, untrusting and passive-aggressive, because of the way that the enablers, the people who don’t do the thing itself but who enable others, act, and, once again, what helped me to see that was complaints from immunocompromised people about how they are being treated in the pandemic, and other disabilities, like the way that “wingedisis” treated Nichole Schroeder. I felt that. I felt that, like as if she was talking about me, even though I have no problem with an activity that centers around food.
Actually, there are all of the awkward social situations that come with eating. There is that thing about how Mrs Barras and I had to leave and waste our money from that faculty Christmas party, though that’s not really a food thing; it’s more of a sound thing. But it’s still very much related. I think about what she and I could have done in that situation, but the thing is, again, us actually doing something and standing up for ourselves would have been us outing ourselves, would have been disclosure. So, that’s the neurodivergent tax right there.
There is a cost for NOT speaking up for yourself, because we could have gotten our money back and established a standard for future gathering, but it would have come with the cost of us being labeled as uncooperative jerks, even though it was the people who did that crap in the first place who are the uncooperative jerks, and the reason that they get away with it is “nobody has a problem with it except for y’all.” Another cost is that people learn a new way to torment and exclude you with plausible deniability.
This helps me realize why maybe I couldn’t have made it as a musician, and I think about how terms I have heard like misophonia, etc, like why does it have to be *my* responsibility to understand all of that? Why don’t you people just not do that painful crap in the first place? Just don’t do it. You’re not the only people who have to live in society.
I am not by nature oppositional. I am the way that I am because society has been oppositional toward people like me. That’s something that I realized last year. I am not by nature oppositional. I do not want to be this way. I have done so much fawning in life, so much. I mean, think about the way that I acted in high school, trying so hard to fit in and failing. That should have been a warning.
It was a warning, really. I understood that a long time ago, just not like I do now. My efforts to fit in failed, but, in some ways, I internalized that as me being a bad person, a failed person, a defective person, a dud.
But some part of me understood as early as college that being out of that setting helped me thrive better, and, of course, an important question here is, what would high school and other things have been like had I not tried so hard to fit in like that? and the answer is that I don’t know, and it might not have been good. Now that I realize that I am autistic, and now that I had that The Gym People Pleaser revelation, I don’t see what my other options were.
It helps me understand that, maybe, having taken an attitude of “to hell with trying to fit in. I will be friends with the fellow outcasts” actually might not have worked well for me in high school. I don’t know. I have thought about that before. It’s impossible to know. I should think about it again. One obvious thing is that I should not have gone to a particular official-but-not-mandatory event. That’s pretty obvious.
Not going would not have cost me anything. In fact, it would have saved me a little cash, but I felt like I had to do it. I knew at the time that it was kind of stupid, though. That is an easy one. The other ones are difficult. What about in general, like going to parties? I am generally glad that I did that, if for no reason other than that it helped me understand the world and how it works, which is what I say about being on the football team.
I think about how there is so much happening in that incident in me watching the train from football practice and Boyd deciding that that was the time, because I was back from the pack, that I needed to be reeled in. Like, no, I am watching the train, counting the cars, probably the last time that this train was running. That was more important! I didn’t realize that back then.
That’s about the time that K was born, which is a sick think to think at this point. I haven’t heard from her, which makes me feel kind of bad.
I got a message late last night from Ali asking me how my weekend was. How do I answer that? It’s like, I want to go help out at this church, but then people will ask personal questions. What do I do in that situation?
I can’t lie, and I can’t tell the truth.
I can’t lie, and I can’t tell the truth.
I can’t lie, and I can’t tell the truth.
I can’t lie, and I can’t tell the truth.
I can’t lie, and I can’t tell the truth.
I can’t lie, and I can’t tell the truth.
I can’t lie, and I can’t tell the truth.
I can’t lie, and I cannot tell the truth.
What do I do?
Tuesday, February 6th
There is not a cloud in the sky.
I am supposed to take him to the endontist in Lafayette today.
I was just randomly thinking about Lubbock, Texas, before I started the recording, because I was thinking about a little passenger train between Amarillo and Lubbock that could connect with our Sunbelt Route passenger trains.
Anyway, there are several scheduled postings on the Jimbaux’s Journal Facebook page for today, because the pictures that I made one year ago today were good! I might have to do some more. I have some autism content coming up on the Jimbaux Facebook page, because I have a break in the railroad content coming up.
I think about trains all the time, but I wish that I wouldn’t – or wish that I could manifest this, to make my “Sunbelt & Pacific” railroad, how about that? “Sunbelt & Sonora” . The Rock Island with Warbonnets
I was thinking about Budd RDCs, too. Oh, well; oh, well.
I cooked bacon yesterday for the first time in probably years, probably the first time at this house. It’s my way of celebrating Carnival. It was okay. I realized how much fat is in bacon. It’s crazy.
Okay, I am running out of stuff to say here, but I have to contact the MGA people to see what’s up.
Saturday, February 10th
This was a big day!
I had a nice morning walk in the peaceful predawn shortly after 06:00. There was a slight breeze.
Today was the day that I finally got involved with a friend’s local church.
I went to the gym yesterday and had a good, solid gym workout, my first full workout since before the Texas trip. So, I may try to replicate that tomorrow.
Anyway, I just keep thinking about my proposed Sunbelt To San Diego Railroad, rebuild the whole CHOCTAW ROUTE from Memphis to Tucumcari and just extend it up into western Arizona with a turn southward toward Yuma and into the Imperial Valley and punch tunnels through the mountains to reach San Diego and keep it all in the United States, unlike the San Diego, Arizona & Eastern.
That would be neat. I just keep thinking about that, something that has essentially no chance of happening, especially in my lifetime, but it’s a good idea, I am convinced!
I had a good workout. I went later than I normally do, at the gym. I left at 16:00. I did not have problems with people playing music on their devices. That dude who normally does it wasn’t there, but there was a woman who was on hold on the telephone with a bank or something, and she had to have the speaker phone on, with the waiting music blasting all over the gym while she was on hold, and, then, later on, the same woman was pressing on the doorbell, sounding it, trying to get back into the gym.
There were about five or six other people in the gym, half of them without headphones, and they, too, seemed to have heard the doorbell, and, of course, I am thinking that I am persona non grata in this place. So, I am not the person who is cool enough to break the rules and get away with it. It’s making me realize that this whole set up with everyone having a digital key to get in when no staff are there is a set up for this kind of situation where you have to exclude someone who really is a member to avoid breaking the rules and subjecting yourself to penalties.
So, at some point after like the fifth time that the bell rang, I looked around and noticed that that woman was not there. So, I thought to check without being detected who actually it was trying to get in. So, I looked out the corner of my eye, tried to make it look like I wasn’t looking at the door, and I saw the woman who had just been inside of the gym.
What’s funny is that I have never seen her before, at least not that I remember, because I don’t normally go at that time of day. So, I went and let her in. She said that she left her keys inside. Okay, so, that is not a violation, because I let in a paying member, but what if I didn’t know that she was a paying member? Really, I don’t know that. In other situations, I wouldn’t know such.
There needs to be a sign on the door saying that, if you ring the doorbell and no one answers, it’s because we are unstaffed at the time.
Aunty replied to my e-mail about trying to meet, saying that we could do it this coming Saturday.
I should let her know that I could do it on Friday. I want to try to photograph the Union Pacific Railroad’s New Iberia Turn. I really want to do that.
I went to Walmart after I went to the gym yesterday, and I got one of those servings of 16 pieces of barbecue boneless chicken wings.
Hey, cat!
Anyway, I brought a washed, clean empty container that they use to sell the chicken, and I asked her to fill that, but she said that they can’t do that, even though I had done it once before, where the woman took a washed container from me and filled it. Oh, well, that ends that, and that makes me not want to buy that chicken anymore, even though the alternatives are just as environmentally unfriendly.
I am imagining Silky tooting the horn as he is bringing a train through downtown and people throwing beads at him.
I might try to shoot the UP local train at the Saint Charles Church, instead of Melodia, next Saturday. That’d be good.
I really need to send my 70-200mm/f2.8 lens off to be repaired. I really need to do that, but I might wait until the weather gets warmer, because, if I hold the lens right, I can get the clarity right, still, but that’s still a bad situation.
I left the church at 18:23, and I volunteered to leave because someone wanted my parking spot.
What a great day I have had! I don’t even know how to describe it. It was good. I was there for 11 hours and had so many great conversations and met people and had experiences, all of that.
I forgot to bring my SLR camera equipment, in addition to my Power Crunch bar, chocolate candies, and a rain coat.
Anyway, I had a good time, I was treated very well, and I was told that I was very helpful. I helped to solve a problem with a door, a latch on a door. I more helped properly diagnose it than I did solve it.
I went to Whataburger on this night and got two of the sweet-and-spicy bacon cheeseburgers and ate them by BNSF Lafayette Yard, watching nothing happening there.
At the Whataburger drive-thru, I had another experience where the dude kept pressing me about combo-versus-sandwich despite my specifying what I wanted.
ME: “I would like two sweet-and-spicy bacon melts. That’s all.”
HIM: “Do you want the combo or the sandwich?”
ME: “I said I want two sweet-and-spicy bacon melts. That’s all.”
HIM: “Okay, but do you want the combo or the sandwich?”
I was about to drive off if my next response didn’t work.
ME: “I told you already. I want to sweet-and-spicy bacon melts. That’s all.”
He complied. Had he not, I’d have gotten the heck out of there. I am tired of that obnoxious crap. That’s so rude. Make the inconsiderate neurotypical people who wanted a combo to be the ones to bear the brunt of THEIR lack of specificity. To hell with them. To hell with them.
So, after I ate those burgers, I got a Blizzard at the Dairy Queen, and it was getting melty by the time I got back to the house, where I put it in the freezer right away. I took a shower and ate a banana. I got out of the shower and took my melatonin. I started eating my Blizzard and chatted with Megan for a little while and then went to sleep.
I didn’t check Facebook until I got out of the shower. I had gone almost 12 hours during the daytime without checking Facebook. Imagine that!
I have to find a better way foodwise, but the problem with the idea of waiting until I return to the house to eat is that it is past my bed time. So, that’s another health thing that I am trying to do better. By the time I got out of the shower, it was time to take melatonin. So, had I wanted to eat something at that point, it would have been even later. So, the thing is that I would have had to have brought something with me to the event and eaten it there.
Sunday, February 11th
I keep thinking about all of my railroad plans that I cannot put into fruition. I had a heck of a day yesterday, a good day, tiring, definitely tiring, which caused me to eat unhealthy food toward the end of the day. I have to do something about that, because that is not good and not sustainable, but it was good anyway.
There was nothing remarkable, nothing good or bad either way, on Facebook when I returned to the house last night. I have plenty to do this week, because I’ve got to go to Lockport on Saturday morning to talk. I need to check the weather, too, see what the weather is going to be like. I will want to get out in walk in places like Morgan City or something, also in Lockport. I probably should bring Power Crunch bars.
Anyway, I keep thinking about my Sunbelt Pacific railroad.
Thursday, February 15th
It’s Ash Thursday, which I realize is not really a thing. It was a mostly-thickly-cloudy morning, which I like, when I started my morning walk at 06:27. It looked great out there.
I saw something on Facebook a little while before, like maybe just 10 minutes before, that made something finally click for me, that helped me to realize that Lafayette and this whole area could never be what New Orleans was for me and why New Orleans was more legitimately my home even before I moved there than Lafayette is or could be, which is, quite simply, that I grew up from birth in the New Orleans media market, to a lesser degree the Baton Rouge media market, but, beyond the national media, the relevant media markets for me was the Houma-Thibodaux markets, the New Orleans markets, and the Baton Rouge markets, the latter being the least relevant of those three, but it was still relevant.
What made it click for me was seeing a Facebook post from the new mayor-president of Lafayette, Monique Blanco-Boulet, a URL of an article about a former sheriff of Lafayette Parish, I think named Don Breaux, who had died. Of course, I didn’t recognize the name or the face, but I likely would have recognized the name had it been a New Orleans area figure. That’s the thing. Even as a kid, I was in the New Orleans media market. We would occasionally go to New Orleans and, more often, to Jefferson Parish. I never was exposed to Lafayette media when I was a child.
The Year 2014 is significant, because that is when I started getting quite active in New Orleans Twitter, and Megan was a part of that even though she lived in Lafayette.
There is, however, a somewhat critical part of the story. In 2002, I get on the local railroad enthusiast forum and start hearing about Lafayette stuff from the Lafayette people on there. As early as Carnival Season of 2003, I would have either read something on the forum or, as I vaguely remember, heard something over the railroad radio – or maybe both – about parades in Lafayette, about trains and how they interact with each other, and I learned only this year that, yes, the parade route crosses the track. I don’t know if the parade route is the same as it was 20 years ago, but it very well could be.
So, I have more of a Lafayetteness than I would any other comparable sized city, like Lake Charles, Alexandria, Shreveport, Monroe. I do know Shreveport a little tiny bit from my railroad enthusiasm, and I have a very childhood memory of Lake Charles from the Frances.
So, I started this monologue talking about why Lafayette is somewhat alien to me and never will be as familiar to me as New Orleans and Baton Rouge are but then took the conversation in the opposite direction to talk about the familiarity that I do have with Lafayette. Aside from New Orleans and Baton Rouge, I have more of a history with Lafayette than I do with any other comparable-sized city anywhere around here.
Today
Today is Friday, February 16th. At 10:18, I pulled out of the driveway to head east.
I almost forgot my camera, though it might not matter much if I had. I was not interested in checking out New Iberia and whatever is there. It’s probably boring as hell, because trains are now boring. The L&D is boring now. New Iberia is kind of boring. Everything is depressing.
It was cloudy and drizzly here, but that is not why anything is depressing. I was thinking about where I might eat. I was upset that Rich is non-committal about meeting. I didn’t have anything else to say.
I want my life back. I want what is left of my life back.
I stopped in Morgan City and took a picture.
That is what is left of the old loop track at left, the port track at right, and the runaround track next to the mainline where the car in the back is parked. I think that it’s neat how there are cars on all three tracks.
Next, I was in Schriever. Here is the traditional eastward view, at around 12:36 CST.
There was a centerbeam flatcar on the old Houma Branch being unloaded as I was there. The car is TTZX 862685, and Sierra Pacific products were being unloaded from it.
I ate a Power Crunch bar, a Chocolate Mint flavored bar, while I was there, the first food that I eat today.
I had the AC on low speed. I have been Twitter DMing with Megan on the way over here about that conversation with Landry this morning.
That’s enough. I had to go and do a dreadful task.
It’s a task that I had to do because of what they did to me.
It should never have happened.
They destroyed my life.
The meeting was informative.
I then went to a happier place.
It was a small meal, but a good one, a chicken quesadilla.
I got to the food court a few minutes before it closed. I didn’t realize that at the time. I may have been the last customer. There may have been three or four behind me.
It’s open until 19:00 on Mondays through Thursday, but it closes at 14:00 on Friday. It opens only at 10:00. So, that’s a fairly short day for those workers. I guess that there are no off days, since they already don’t work on Saturdays and Sundays, and Friday is a short day.
The food was good, but I now have these unopened sour cream packets that I may be able to use in future breakfasts at the house.
This place is very special to me.
It is a crucible for me.
It’s probably a crucible for many, many others, too.
I then went to my friend’s house.
He is out walking the dogs right now.
We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Jim
