Retail Audits in 9 States

In my last post, I briefly mentioned that I did retail audits in nine states and showed off the magnets from each state and each city and metro area in my home state of Texas that I did them in. I can divide my working years into three main areas. Working with kids and being a child advocate, caring for elderly and disabled adults in their homes, and auditing retail stores. The job I’m working with my partner Kevin falls under the third one. It’s inventory. But during the pandemic, I did data collection on six different apps. 

I started doing the apps in 2018. I was working as a caregiver and needed extra money. I heard of two of the apps in a subreddit called r/beermoney. Those two apps led me to learning about the other four. Of the six apps that I’m on, two never have anything, two always have a lot, and two are in between. 

I went to college and got a bachelor’s degree a few years before this. It was expected of me.  However, that choice actually ruined my finances. It’s something I’ll talk about in another post. Maybe. So many people are so pro-college that they can’t comprehend that for some people, it actually makes life exponentially worse. I moved back home with my parents to help clean up the financial mess. Moving in with them made my daughter ask me to go live with her father. When it was just me and her in our own apartment, we lived pretty peacefully. My parents tend to yell and scream and get extremely angry at me for little minor things. The smallest thing could go wrong and they’d be YELLING. My daughter couldn’t handle that. I, however, was used to it having grown up with it, so I almost missed the fact that she was struggling so much until she asked me to go live with her father. 

Shortly after that, my dad passed away, and about six weeks after the death of my dad, the pandemic happened. My father died from shingles in the eyes that became meningitis. I came home from work at about 2:30 pm on Friday January 17, 2020, and he was unresponsive. I called 911, and the operator guided me through chest compressions. I did them until the ambulance arrived. They took over and did cpr for about 15 additional minutes before taking him in the ambulance. My dad was in the icu for three days and passed away on January 20, 2020. One of my aunts blamed me for his death saying I didn’t do cpr correctly and that’s why he died. She didn’t understand that my father literally got a pulse back for three whole days- getting a pulse back is literally the point of cpr. There was no explaining this to her, though and soon many people in my extended family started blaming me. My mom did absolutely nothing to stick up for me. If I complained about her accusations, my mom would just say “well, she’s old”. 

It was a combination of the disabling panic attacks my college degree caused, combined with these unfair accusations and the fact that I missed my daughter terribly that made me take off. I just packed whatever I needed into my car and left. I was so hurt about everything. I felt like I had done all the things people expected of me, and when those things proved to be bad advice that ruined me, everyone just laughed in my face. And my mom isn’t a very understanding person. She isn’t one you can actually talk to about how you feel, even if that thing involves grief. She will just start screaming at me. It’s pointless. I actually don’t remember what happened with my caregiving job at the time. I know I was still working there when my dad died, because I remember the boss telling me I could have a few days off. At some point between the death of my dad and the beginning of the pandemic, I stopped working there. When the pandemic happened, the pay for these jobs skyrocketed because no one wanted to do them. It was the ideal time to just take off and depend on them. So I did. 

I joined a subreddit for “car camping” (fancy term for sleeping in your car). It was very freeing. I am only 5’3”, so laying down across my backseat was easy. I kept all sundries in my console, snacks in a box in the back behind the passenger seat, dirty laundry in a bag on the floor behind the drivers seat, and miscellaneous in the trunk. I also kept a portable charger for the rare instance that my car didn’t charge my phone enough during the day. I used truck stops to shower and do laundry. I spent all day just driving around doing the audits. When I got tired, I found either a Walmart or a Flying J to sleep in my car. If I wanted a day off, I just checked into a motel wherever I was and relaxed. I got to see my daughter every other weekend, and went anywhere I wanted, just as long as I was back in the Houston area for my scheduled visits with her. When it was my weekend visit time with my daughter, I either got a motel with my daughter for the weekend or made sure we had something fun to do, so we wouldn’t have to spend the time with my mom. 

Since the pandemic was happening, I double masked and was very careful about keeping my hands clean. I had an array of masks hanging from my mirror. I never got COVID. 

Another thing about that time in my life was that I was on again/off again with a man who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. He was my second best friend in high school. We kept getting together starting after his divorce (which happened after mine) and then “breaking up” because of the distance. He was a single dad with two kids who were 3 And 4 years younger than my daughter. 

We were not “a real couple” because of the distance but still referred to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. I was very much in love with him and his children. I wanted so much for us to be together-together as a real family of five. I thought it would happen someday. The dynamic between us was so complicated. Obviously, I ended things with him in order to be with Kevin. We still keep in touch, because of the kids. I want him updating me on the kids. I adored them so much. Their mom wasn’t in their life at all, but I was. In a way, I think maybe they were like my “replacement children” because I was so hurt over my daughter going to live with her dad because of my parents. If it’s a crime to love too much, then I’m guilty 🤷🏻‍♀️. That was a time in my life that my heart was on my sleeve. 

One of the apps had a big job that happened quarterly. Coca Cola was the client for this. This was the biggest money maker. There were contests for whomever did the most locations. I won first place in two of the contests and second or third place in a few more. Then they lost that contract. All the jobs started paying less and less and being shuffled around as the pandemic ended and more people were willing to go do them. That’s when I got back into a “real job.”  And met Kevin. And the rest is history. History I’ll get into later. 

This post is about the time when I just wandered and did these jobs. I suffered from very severe panic attacks starting after I got my degree, and all this wandering and traveling was the beginning of my healing journey. 

I remember just how calming it was to drive past cattle grazing in the fields, or windmills, or a beautiful sunrise. These things reminded me that I was still alive, and I still had a purpose. The changing landscape from green thicket to red desert as you travel from Houston to Phoenix is breathtaking, and since I was stopping so often to do the jobs all the way there and back, I got an even more detailed version. This is a beautiful country, and I got to see so much of it- not just “the sites” that you see when you travel, but the backroads and the small communities. I met people, I had different foods, and I found myself. I also made a lot of money- enough to almost cut my student loans in half and get my own place again. I stayed in my own apartment for just over a year before I met Kevin. 

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the nine states. I may post more if I come across them.  

A weird tree in Arizona. 

A beautiful rest area in southeast Arizona along I-10. 

A homeless dog I found at a convenience store in rural Texas. I always kept beggin strips in my car for situations like this. H wouldn’t take them from my hands, but I tossed them for him. 

Rainbow at a truck stop 

Wind turbines in west Texas. 

Louisiana swampland 

Bluebonnets drying from my mirror. This was after mask mandates were lifted!!

Ya’at’eeh, welcome to Walmart on the Navajo reservation. 

Beautiful mountains

More beautiful mountains 

I know I’m not completely healed, I still have mild anxiety now and then, but I’m grateful to God that I was given a time in my life that I could wander around like this. I was truly suicidal when i finished my degree and discovered it was worthless. It’s so hard to put into words the conflict I felt. I’m still angry, but today I have many things to be grateful for and redirect my anger.