What was that college degree for?

I have three jobs, all of which are in or near town. The first, and most exciting, is at the used book store! I work for this little crazy lady named Jane who is very smart. very political, very business savvy (she was once an accountant) but also very unfocused, with no sense of sanitation. When I started working at Pyewacket Bookstore, I spent the entire first day (8 hours) cleaning up, which meant picking up all the books off the floor or from on top of chairs or all over the front counter. Also, you could not actually get behind the front counter since Jane and Gretchen (the other employee who only reads metaphysical books and has trouble alphabetizing) got to the point where they were simply throwing garbage on the floor and not picking up notes, books, flyers or anything else that fell there. They must have been somewhat careful with food because I didn’t find much more than lots of dusty cashews, thank goodness. I’ve been getting a lot of strokes from the regular customers about how good the store looks. So, I worked there Monday-Thursday of last week; the last two days were on my own and I got to read for much of the day since Jane didn’t get me the materials I needed to reorganize the rental videos, which is my next project. Overall, I like it very much. The second job is at the Exchange, which is on Fridays with Jeff. I think I explained that to most of you when I came back from the first trip. Email me or leave a post and I'll elaborate if you need me to. I get to meet a lot of people there and have gotten some really neat stuff. Yesterday, we accepted a 9 foot couch that was all funky (stylish not smelly) and were very excited until I realized that it would not go in my tiny trailer of a house. I try not to take more than I need right now, so I don’t get burdened down with a lot of stuff again. But, I have acquired an entire kayaking outfit of name-brand outdoor clothing that actually has quite a bit of style. Finally, the third job is at a little convenience store type place that is shifting from being a convenience store to being a hoity-toity gourmet food store that specializes in Northwest wines. I started that yesterday and the two people that work there seem really cool. My mother is so proud that now I can earn up to 9 dollars an hour! I acknowledge that it might be hard for her to see me headed in what seems like a backwards direction, but I’m trying to explain that it’s like pulling the toy wind-up car back to go forward. She gets it, I think. She's pretty cool that way.