Finding the Things I Want

You know that feeling of possibility when you turn in an application for a job that is meant to be yours? Yeah. That's how I feel. But then the rational part of my mind says odds are you won't even get a phone call.

I was talking to someone last night who applied for the same job and my fantasy of more money and a better job evaporated. That person has way more to offer; more degrees, more experience, more answers to the questions that will be asked in an interview.

I hate it when I feel like this.

So, I wrote a couple of story pitches and felt a little bit better. And next week I start my volunteer work with a local animal shelter where I will not only play with dogs and cats but have the opportunity to write copy for animals up for adoption. This makes me feel happier than any other job I've applied for lately. I guess I know where my heart wants to be, while my brain just wants to make more money.

Since the end of April, when I last posted, I've been doing a lot of soul searching. May was a month of insanity at work; too much to do and not enough people to get it all done. But did I really love what I was doing? Not really. I felt like I was just treading water and not really contributing anything of worth. June didn't improve, until now that I'm on vacation. One of the traps I fall into easily is making the mistake of thinking that just because I can do a job well that this is the job I have to keep. I'm lucky I have a job, but there has to be something more waiting for me...somewhere...

Doodles

What passes for spring in south Texas is a real learning experience. I could whine about how it's not like Washington and how much I miss having four seasons and low humidity; not to mention real mountains and the Pacific ocean just a few hours away from my old home...but I won't. I was told recently that to really appreciate Texas, I have to look at the ground.




Flower name unknown. I will have to get a wildflower book.

Right now, it is mild and there has been enough rain for the grass to turn green and the wildflowers to bloom. When I moved here last August, it was HOT, dry and brown. Only the trees had green leaves outside of the irrigated landscapes. Just a few weeks ago, the edges of the highways were just sprouting green and then boom! the wildflowers bloomed. 

Wildflowers are hopeless optimists. Every year they bloom and spread their seeds.

 

I used to live in a house on a hillside overlooking a tulip bulb farm in Washington. The first year I lived there, I was mesmerized with gazing over the explosion of yellows, reds and oranges from my deck. Sitting on the deck with a cup of coffee and my dogs on a Saturday morning, as the sun rose over the mountains to the east and flooded the tulip fields with soft, spring sun, was like a living vision of Monet. The heavy green of the woods, the purple and white foxgloves springing up on tall stalks and bursting with conical blooms, blooming blackberry vines, wild rose bushes, buttercups, daisies...and then on the valley floor row after row of vibrant colors. Doesn't everyone live like this?



 

 

 

 

I like to take blurry pictures with good form and play with them. Holding flowers up against the sky can show different details.  

I will have to look down, take my time and learn to appreciate subtler things. And learn to appreciate different things, like cotton fields and live oak trees. Trees that don't shed their leaves in the fall are disorienting...

 

 ...as is looking down and seeing a cactus in bloom. The cactuses are fat and colorful from all the rain and cool weather. I can imagine them all thinking what a good deal this is as they store up water against the long, hot summer; like I have stored up my memories of a cooler, gentler place.

 

 

 



LunaNina!

I say ... and you think ... ?  This is a game from LunaNina that uses free association with words to have a little fun. Try it!

1. Pork :: Bacon bacon bacon! Is there anything better than bacon?! I know, it's almost a cliche to love bacon...but I LOVE BACON.
2. Work :: The necessary evil that pays the bills. I'm still looking for a job that doesn't feel like a job, that doesn't degenerate into a five-days-a-week obligation where I watch the clock sit at     2 p.m. for an eternity every afternoon. Don't get me wrong; I'm grateful and happy to have a job...I'd just like something better eventually.

1. International :: If only I had a current passport.
2. Board :: of directors? silly? Oh, no, that would be bored. Diving board, running board, skate board...
3. Idea :: Yes. I have one. I'm saving it for tomorrow.
4. Spinning :: In circles. Life is like that sometimes.
5. Relations :: People I don't live near anymore. Maybe a few of them will visit...but Texas is a looong way from just about everywhere else in the U.S.
6. Dresser :: I regret buying oak dressers for my bedroom. Beautiful but so heavy when we move.
7. Poster :: Girl for inappropriate language today. Shit. I forgot to throw in another load of laundry...
8. Inappropriate :: Saying shit. Or saying "shit."

A little something

My father passed away on March 3rd, twenty six days before my 44th birthday. We were not close and we had not had a meaningful conversation in at least a decade. All sorts of stupid things got in the way and now all those things are completely meaningless. Now I have a mother who is trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life since she no  longer has someone to take care of and share a home with. Will she finally reach out to me and salvage something of our relationship?

I should have demanded that my parents put aside all the junk and just be parents and grandparents. Regardless of what happened in the past, I was willing to just let things be and at least pretend things were okay enough to have a relationship with me, my husband and our children.

I think by saying that it was nothing personal to myself is a lie. I think by saying get over it is useless. And I think continuing to feel like I, as an adult, should just let the past be the past is both mature and insensitive...to myself.

I once had a professor in a writing class tell me that my mother was emotionally abusive. No one has ever said that to me. Is it true? That's the real question now that I'm left with the parent around whom all the mess of my feelings revolve.

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In June of 2012, my father went to his doctor because of a sharp and unrelenting pain in his back. My father had a large aortic aneurysm that just happened to be pressing on a bundle of nerves. Surgery was scheduled for that afternoon and the aneurysm was fixed. However, my father caught a strep infection in the hospital. Before the infections was detected and treated, it attacked his heart and lungs and caused congestive heart failure. Well, that's the short explanation; throw in 30 years of smoking, too. This was a chain of horrible events that came out of nowhere. It would have been much kinder to just die of a burst aneurysm.

My husband and I went to visit my father in the hospital. It had been over ten years since I'd seen my parents, and it was awful, painful and awkward. What I saw was a stranger who sounded like my father but didn't look like the man I remembered. When I saw him make familiar gestures and use familiar phrases, it was both comforting and unreal. What I saw was a skeleton and a ghost of what my father had been. He had lost so much weight and looked so fragile and afraid in that hospital bed that it was hard for me to connect that physical person with my memories of my father.

Congestive heart failure is a terrible thing to endure. Slowly drowning is an unfathomably cruel fate. My father's death took nine months. Sorting out my regrets, my memories, and where I go from here will take much longer.

Winter...

The season I don't have:

 

 

I miss the cold wind

the chilblains and frostbite,

snot frozen on my scarf and

scratching my face as I walk,

frisky dogs panting steam and

begging me to hurry up and stop taking pictures already!

 

 

 

And then there's the snow and ice

wiping out visible landmarks and creating

new vistas,

ephemeral and magical,

once seen and then gone,

and I never know how to make others understand

how much life there is when everything contracts and

waits for spring.

 

 

 

The deeper the cold,

the bluer the sky,

the deeper the snow and

the thicker the ice,

the more alive I feel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

This week, from the bowels of my mind...

To play, just click to go to Lunanina.

Week 524

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Massage :: What? Strangers touching me?! The horror, the HORROR!
2. Financial advice :: You. Are. Screwed. Prepare to work until the day you die. Doesn't exactly make me want to live to 100...What if death-by-chocolate really is a viable way to end it all?
3. Guide :: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Would it really matter if the planet was blown up?
4. Packing :: UHaul. The bane of my existence.
5. Trombone :: I started playing it in 5th grade. Continued through high school. I just donated it to Goodwill a year ago. What I loved about it was the deep, mellow tones. But I hated the spit valve.
6. Water cooler :: Office Space. Pieces of Flair. Swingline Staplers in Red. Horrible Bosses.
7. Delivery :: It's all about the delivery. Don't let them smell your fear.
8. Smoke :: I just watched "Thank You for Smoking" and I still dearly love that movie.  
9. Cane :: When I'm 80 years old, I will have a cane and I will use it on people who piss me off.
10. Suitcase :: That story about the rocket man, by Ray Bradbury, where he longs for home when he's gone, but longs for space when he's there. And his son sneaks his dad's uniform out of the suitcase to touch it and smell it to try to understand where his father has been.

Shot down in flames...

The arthritis doctor totally shot down the "leaky gut syndrome" theory. I half way expected that. I respect this doctor and moved this theory even farther down on my list of things to do. Is it worth the time, energy and money to change our diets this radically? Probably not. Realistic, small changes and small choices made day by day will probably be just as effective. Why someone's immune system gets so out of whack that it attacks him or her is still a mystery.

What this really reveals is my momentary wishful thinking that there's solution to my question: Why him? Why this disease? That's the danger of publishing articles about one person's supposed - and maybe accidental - solution to his or her problem. I realized when I was reading the article that one or two people finding a cure to a disease that plagues millions is not representative of a real solution. It was an accident, a coincidence, or maybe a real solution specific to only one person. That's not a cure. But there's always that tiny voice that says, "It might work."

As I perused websites on gluten-free and refined-sugar-free foods and recipes, the marketing of this lifestyle was pretty slick. Beat cancer! Lose weight! Cure arthritis! Look younger! Live longer! Feel younger! There is a grain of truth in all of this...but a whole lotta wishful thinking, too. It's marketing. Play up to the current, trendy fears. Show pictures of people who achieve the ideal along with slogans and quotes that make this achievable and relatable...It is so easy to get sucked into a dream, isn't it?

But here's something that really hit home while I was perusing recipes online...there are plenty of articles on "the end of the era of cheap food." What?! No more walmart prices on food shipped from the other side of the planet so I can have whatever I want whenever I want? The continued drought conditions in Texas - where more cattle are raised for slaughter than anywhere else in the country - have caused cattle ranchers to cull herds or go out of business. Smaller herds destined for market equals higher beef prices. And that's just one example. 

So while I'm still contemplating making small, weekly changes to our diets, the reality is that I might not be able to afford some of the foods that promise to boost our health. The luxury of adding berries and fresh vegetables in place of cheaper starches could become a luxury I can't afford.

But ironically, I can afford arthritis medication thanks to insurance and a co-pay program from the makers of humira. Twelve hundred dollars a month on their part, five dollars on mine and to hell with worrying about what we eat, right?

My favorite line from the movie "Cloud Atlas" keeps reverberating through my head:

Soylent Green is made of People!