I'd like some cheese with this whine, thanks very much.

OK, so in my 'other life' (aka, when I am not Facebooking and putzying around doing house stuff), I am a writer.  I know it might be presumptuous to say that, but I think I can legitimately lay claim to the title, if not by virtue of the single published piece that I have, then by the file boxes and computer folders full of stories told and in the telling, half-written or waiting to be told.  And by the novel that has me in its thrall, daring me to break that magic 70K word count.  (So close!  So close...)  But I'm also a whiny lazy thing who flits like a flicker from project to project, and frequently leaves things half-done. 

This is one thing I really, really want to finish.  Even if just to say I've done it.  But here's where my resolve runs dry.  I really envy people that have time to commit to writing every day. I know that sounds like an excuse (and truly - today it is. I had time, and I chose to finish a craft project and work on a painting instead), but on most days, there just isn't a whole lot of time to carve out for something that requires a great deal of concentration.

I work full time, and getting up earlier just isn't an option. And here's how my weekly commitments play out: Mondays are Zumba class. Tuesdays on occasion are City Council meetings, which require my presence for work. Wednesdays are writer's group chat meetings, which can run late. Thursdays are Zumba days (the ones I paid good money to attend). Fridays are usually free, but nearly always involve running a kid somewhere and back to stay the night someplace, and every other one is a payday, which means Wal Mart grocery shopping and a fast food dinner. Saturday mornings are for writer's group meetings, when I can get there, and the rest of the day usually involves spending time with my hubs on some sort of project. Sundays are housework-catch-up days from the rest of the week, and most of the time involve a weeks' worth of ironing in front of the TV watching a movie.

Ironically enough, I watched "The Tommyknockers" last week. I never laughed so hard in my life. When the main character invents the magic-enhanced-dream-typewriter that allows her to sleep for eight hours and wake up with a fully written novel (in her sleep!), I'm thinking 'Invent THAT, honey, and you'd be rich!!" What I wouldn't give! LOL

So it's mostly a matter of sneaking time in between, which is what everyone in the world does with a hobby when they want to devote more time to it. And I know that if I disciplined myself more, I would get more done. I reallly want this to be more than a hobby. I've been telling stories as long as I can remember. I learned to read when I was two, so the literary life has never been far from my heart. I spent the majority of my school years writing stories when I was supposed to be doing homework, and I can remember joyful hours of passing dreadful bodice-ripper stories to my girlfriends, written longhand on backs and fronts of papers, and watching them eat them up and ask for more. I always wanted this.

But I have also known the pain of writer's block, and that's where the excuses come in. When the writing comes, it comes in a torrent. I hardly want to eat or sleep, just to get the words on paper (or nowadays, in the puter). But to write for an hour daily? That's like trying to go to the bathroom when you're not ready. Terrible analogy, I know... but think about it. When you're ready, you're ready, but forcing progress when it just isn't there doesn't give very satisfying results. LOL

So... here I waste my time talking about writing, and not actually WRITING. Blogging and posting on Facebook will bring me nothing, especially not satisfaction. I need to carve out a little hole for taking down the words. I dream my story almost every night. I write the words in my head. I just need to find the time to get them down.

My characters aren't moving where I want them to, but maybe, if I follow where they lead, they'll tell me the rest of the story. All I need to do is chronicle it. But they're counting on me to listen.

So much pressure.  What stays, and what goes?  Doing something to make my body healthier?  Housework?  Cooking?  Time with B?  Painting?  Or is there a magic shoehorn somewhere I can use to fit a few more hours in the day?

Crazybusy

WELL, it's been a hectic week and promises to be just about over (I hope).  Yesterday alone (which I took off work without B), looked like this:

7:30 a.m. - dropped B off work

Shortly after 8:00 a.m. - got to the neighboring city, where the courthouse is.  I went there for an appointment to see the court facilitator to go over my child support modification paperwork.  The appointment, of course, isn't till 9 am.  But I didn't want to be late, and you never can tell how long it's going to take to get through traffic.

Sitting in car in the parking lot killing time - 8:15 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. - Got a text from the girl saying the screw in her foot is bothering her and we need to schedule a time to get it taken out.  Called the doctor's office and set her up for tomorrow while we are going to be there anyhow (B has his 6 mo. neuro checkup), since it's an hour and a half out of town.  Called my hair salon to see if I could get in.  Texted B to let him know that the girl would be going with us on Thursday.

9 a.m. - Met with the facilitator.  She doesn't know much more than I do, but thinks my papers are all in order.  I could file them this morning, but I'm uncomfortable with the 'I THINK so'.  Decide to call my own attorney and see if he can just look them over to make sure all my ducks are in a row.  The whole meeting with the facilitator lasts fifteen minutes.  I see my organization boss on my way into the courthouse.  He looks at me funny, but waves.  I follow him up the stairs to Superior Court.  At the top of the stairs I turn left for the clerks' office and he turns right into the courtrooms.  Hmmm... wonder why he's in court this morning?

When I get back to the car I call my attorney's office and talk to the girls there.  I have to call them anyway - it's on my list.  I had to give them the last details for our wills and schedule a time to come sign.  They told me to bring the paperwork in and leave them for the attorney to look at. 

On my way back to hometown.

9:45 a.m. - Stop into work and give B the heads up that we have an appointment to sign wills on Monday.  Try to explain everything up to there but he gets frustrated, confused, and then angry.  I leave.

10:00 a.m. - Stop at the lawyer's office and spend half and hour shooting the breeze with the girls, whom I haven't seen in six months.  Recap B's daughter's wedding and all the intervening fun.  :-)  Drop off the paperwork.

10:30 a.m. - Text the girl and tell her I can too go to her doctor's appoitnment with her this morning.  Run up to the school and pick her up.

11:00 a.m. - We go into her ultrasound appt and who do we see at the counter but a familiar person?  Grandma, who works upstairs!  :-)  The girl has her ultrasound and we have bad news - the clot is still there.  The girl is distraught.  We go upstairs to talk to Grandma, who takes a few minutes between patients to talk the girl off the cliff. 

11:30 a.m. - The girl and I get Starbucks, because we darn well deserve it.  And then we run the car through the car wash, since her boyfriend is working there and B hates to do it.  It starts sprinkling approximately 5 minutes afterward.  LOL

12:00 - I have a hair appointment.  She decides to go with me and go back to school afterward.  Aaaaaah....I could lie in the hairwashing basin and have a scalp massage FOREVER.  The hairdresser is slow, and doesn't get done until 1:15.  More on the haircut later, when I decide if I'm keeping it or not.  I am minus a LOT of hair.

1:15 p.m. - Take the girl back to school so she doesn't miss another day of AP English, since she has to miss tomorrow.  Consider running another errand, but I don't have time before my doctor's appt at 2, so I go to Walgreens' and pick up a novel to read out of the bargain bin.

2:00 p.m. - OB/gyn appointment.  Long story.  Routine girly exam, blah blah blah, plus new stuff.

3:15 p.m. - Off to the lab for bloodwork.

3:30 p..m. - Can't pick B up yet, must kill a few minutes.  Decide to go pick up make-n-bake pizza.  Lo and behold - guess who is behind me in line?  My dad!  In one day we see both my parents, whom we haven't seen since Christmas.  What a funny!

4:00 p.m. - Pick B up from work.  He is too stressed out to talk about anything, and doesn't have the resources to process anything I need to tell him about the day.  Maybe later....

5:30 p.m. - After baking the pizzas, it's time for my online writer's group.  Lots of fun, but takes forever.  I finally get tired and log off at about 7 p.m. when they haven't yet gotten done bs'ing and gotten down to work, and B comes in asking if I want to watch a movie.

7 p.m. - Start 'The Fellowship of the Ring'.  Aaah.... curled up on couch in B's arm.

9:15 p.m -  The boy comes in.  His friend needs a ride home - to the other side of town - by 9:30.  Guess who got voted to do it?

10:00 p.m. - Finally in bed. 


Today?

Drop B off again
8:15 chiro appt for me
11 a orthodontist for me
3:30 neuro for B
4:00 podiatrist for the girl

and both of those last are out of town.  And Zumba, at 7 p.m., cause I missed the last one.  Holy cats....  If I survive the day, going back to wrok tomorrow will be a mercy!

That boy shoulda been a Laaaaaayer!

(great mousepad - get it here:  http://www.zazzle.com/liar_liar_pants_on_fire_mousepad-144824612005737975)

ONE OF B's favorite sayings is that there are only two things he can't stand:  a liar, and a thief.  And in actuality, you can boil that down to one, since a liar is really just a thief of trust.

The girl, who recently turned 18, after several years of heartache and hassle, has finally turned the corner and begun to blossom.  She is currently enjoying the fruits of some hard earned trust, having had to prove herself over the course of the last two years.  She has been permitted to make most of her own decisions recently, within the parameters of the house rules, of course.  So far, so good.  This trust comes with a price:  we expect her to tell us where and when she will be in and out of the house, and stick to her word. 

This has been a big step for the girl.  She has not always been honest with me, particularly when she knows I'm not going to approve of what she wants to do.  I think since B's been here she's made lots of progress.  I will say with fair certainty that, while I know that she does not tell me *everything* about her world, she tells me most of the things that matter.  I know, for instance, that she smokes.  I know she sees a boy off and on that I don't like.  I know that she's sexually active here and there.  I know these things because she comes to me and we talk about them.  I trusted her enough for her to tell me when she thought she needed to get on birth control, and she trusted me enough to say so.  Between us, we've been able to make sure that, while I don't think she should be out having sex, she's protected enough not to get caught with unintentional consequences.  She understands why we need to keep the lines of communication open and honest, and we agree to disagree on some things.

This hasn't come about overnight.

The boy just turned 16, and we are beginning to have labor pains.  Now that they're older, I see that the real pains come not when they're born, or during that 'terrible two' period, but here, as they stand on the line between childhood and adulthood.  Nowhere else has it been this difficult to be a parent.  At this age, they do not accept things blindly, nor do they suffer a fool.  It's very easy to put a foot wrong and be in the swamp before you know it.  The plus side is that as they grow older, I see a maturing in their thought process; the development of an ability to see things from multiple sides, rather than blindly in black and white.  The boy is almost there, but not quite.

To his credit, he's been dormant for fifteen years.  He's the kid who you never heard a peep out of, who lived in his sister's longer and brighter shadow.  Docile and mild mannered, he was the 'easy one'.  He is now a six foot monster with facial hair and a voice built for movie trailers.  He's still the same goodhearted kid, but now he wants all the priveleges of adulthood, all at once.  Some he's ready for, some will take a while.

We thought he was making some progress at about the same rate as his sister, but this past weekend he shot himself in the foot.  Friday night two of his friends showed up at nine o'clock at night, wanting him to go over to their house for a little while and play video games and hang out.  Since it's a kid we know, we said he could. 

B looked at me a little curiously after they left.  It was strange, them coming so late.  We puttered around the house for another hour, winding down before bed.  The whole thing tickled at the back of my mind.  Before we went to bed, I texted the boy to see what was going on and what time he'd be home.  No answer.  Hmmmmm....   I texted him again.   No answer.   Finally I picked up the phone and called.  He answered it nearly on the first ring.  "OhhiMomhowsitgoingwhatareyoudoingareyouhavingfun?"  Hmmmm squared.  This is not like my kid.  His usual communication on the phone is limited to "Yeah". 

"When are you coming home?  We are going to bed soon."

"I wanttostayat Friendshouse. We're playing games and having fun."

"You're still at Friend's house, and you're staying there for the night?"

"Yeah."

"Okay..." 

"I love you Mom.  You guys just enjoy the peace and quiet with us gone."  Effusive.

"..............................................I love you too, honey.  I'll see you in the morning."  

Hmmmmmm CUBED. 

"He's staying at Friend's house tonight."  I told B.  He just looked at me.  "My momdar is going off all over the place."  I confessed.  "He's not staying at Friend's house.  He's at least not telling me SOMETHING.  I just hope he doesn't get in any trouble."

"What are you going to do?" B asked.

"I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what happens."  I said.  "He's got to learn to start making some of his own choices sometime.  Give him some rope and we'll see what he does with it."

Flash forward to Saturday.  B went to his class, I went to mine.  My group ran really long and the boy came home shortly afterward.  But - lo and behold - he did not come home with Friend.  He came home with his girlfriend.  Hmmmm....  And 2 + 2 equals what again?

We didn't say much that weekend.  But it came up several times over the course of the week.  B and I sat down and had a long talk about freedoms and trust, etc.  We felt like we'd been hoodwinked by both kids over the course of the week; the boy on this incident and the girl on a smaller one.  

I knew we needed to sit down as parents and hash out how we were going to handle it between us, and I'd been dreading it.  The potential for conflict made me sick to my stomach, and as we talked, my hands shook.  I confessed that I struggled with it all the time - the desire to avoid conflict and the temptation to let the kids get away with things I knew they shouldn't just to keep from having to confront them.  I hope by the end of the evening he understood what I meant.  For B, the conflict and craziness lasted twenty years, but he can remember a time when things weren't like that.  For me, it's been all my life.  It's harder to get past that automatic avoidance response.  So all this time I've been enabling the lies the kids tell, and now it's time to pay the piper.

The only way around it was to unite as a parental front.  And lo and behold - who should come home in the middle of the discussion but the girl.  We sat her down and hashed some of it out with her, and came out of it satisfied that we were all on the same page.  The boy was gone, so we didn't get to do it with him.

But last night, he asked to go again (since we had some no-school days at the end of this week).  AHA.

To make a long story short, I seized the day and sat him down to chat with him.  B was in the other room, able to hear and make comment, but not up front and imposing.  We actually got pretty far with the boy.  Yep, he lied.  He confessed that he'd gone to spend the night at his girlfriend's house.  And he confessed that he had been smoking off and on (which, I found out, B already knew).  I still don't feel like I handled it very well.  I wasn't very imposing, and I felt weak and waffly.  But I did get some surprising truths out of the boy, and a promise to always be truthful, even if he knew I wouldn't like it.  Whether we get that always is doubtful, but I hope between us we are building a place where it's safe to tell hard truths, knowing that even though you might not be approved of, you are still loved.  And that there are parameters that are flexible, and those that are hard and fast, and that's just the way life is. 

After an hour of hard talking, I came away from it with one knowledge.  He is still a little boy who needs his parents' approval, despite how 'mature' he thinks he is or how big he's gotten.  He knows right from wrong, and is going to have to learn about making choices and the consequences.  And that there is a large part of him that is really stressed about keeping secrets.  He likes things on the table where we can see them and dissect them.  In that he is his mother's son. 

Nothing is too big to handle but the lie. 

Homeostasis

HOMEOSTASIS:  noun
1. the tendency of a system, esp. the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus tending to disturb its normal condition or function.


2. Psychology. a state of psychological equilibrium obtained when tension or a drive has been reduced or eliminated. _________________________________________________________

I NEVER noticed when I passed that mark in my new life, the one that separated the craziness that came before from the new balance that we now share.  All I knew was that the pain, fear and insanity had gradually begun to fade into the past; the more distance that time put beween us and the past the more it faded. 

What I did notice was that I began, slowly but surely, to feel better.  Not stressed all the time.  No fear when I was away from home that something bad might be happening while I was gone.  No wondering what new calamity awaited when I walked in the door at night.  No screaming.  Ah, God...all the screaming, all the time.

In that new environment I watched my children settle, and begin to grow.  I didn't notice that I was growing too. 

For a long time I spent every waking moment buried in B; living and breathing him.  I felt like I couldn't exist if he wasn't inside me.  I don't mean that in a sexual way (although there were a great many nights spent absolutely intertwined, as if neither one of our hearts could beat if they got too far from the other.)  In the beginning we had to spend a great deal of time in absolute physical contact.  We are each others' touchstones, and we had a burning need to touch frequently, like an antidote to the outside world.  I always felt like B would disappear if I left him for long.  I remember in the beginning the PD weighed heavily on my heart.  I was frantic all the time, cramming as much into a short time as I could, afraid that it woud all be taken away.  I have never been so aware of my own mortality as I was when B and I joined our lives together. 

Now that things have settled down, and we are sure of each other's permanence (or as much permanence as we are granted by the grace of God), we've been able to do our own growing.  We did a lot of changing in a short period of time. I don't remember ever growing this much, in all my life.  It sounds funny to say, but it's true.  I think I've shed a hundred skins in the last two years.  I feel like an onion.  The further down I peel, the closer to the heart I come.  The old and tattered falls away, leaving clean and new.  It's ironic - like the onion, the more layers come off the smaller I am left.  Eventually I will be left with nothing but the center - just the soul I came into the world with, with no tangibility or care to weigh me down anymore. 

It's had a calming effect on all of us.  I did not know how much I had changed until I picked up the phone today.  It was my ex, looking for some advice on a paper he was writing.  I spent thirty minutes on the phone with him, during which time we made absolutely normal chitchat, and when I got off, I was amazed at how stressed I was. 

I realized something that I had not realized before:  my ex yells EVERYTHING.  His normal speaking voice is very loud, insistent, and intense.  My blood pressure skyrocketed after just a few minutes, not because he was being rude or confrontational, but simply because of the way he interacts.  I could hardly wait to get off the phone with him. After I hung up, it dawned on me that I had lived that way for twelve years.  My teeth were gritted, my hands sweaty, and my concentration totally shot; with one little phone call I was lost in PTSD. 

"What was that all about?"  B asked, passing by my office. 

"I feel like I've been raped in the ear for half an hour."  I said, astounded.  "I didn't know how bad it was until I had something to compare it to!"  And it's true - for twelve years I thought that was normal.  The arguing, the fighting, the sarcasm, the put-downs, the barely controlled hostility that ran like a poisoned river beneath all of the communication, even when he was happy. 

B just smiled, and just that smile put things to rights again (that and a few laps around the office complex to stretch my legs and reset my brain).  I never realized how quiet life had become until I heard loud again.  I can look back now and see that line that we crossed into sanity.  We never realized we were crossing it at the time, carrying the remnants of all of our baggage with us to peel off on the way when we finally figured out we didn't need it anymore.  We are naked and clean, like the onion, and with every layer we peel the clarity gets better.

Life has finally found a balance.  It took a while, as things always do, but we have found equilibrium.  We have been able to back slowly away from the center of the teeter-totter where we were clinging, slowly edging out to the ends, in tandem.  He takes a step, then I, and we may move up and down a little but the balance stays put. 

Recently we have been expanding our circles to include other things.  It took excising all of the things that weren't working to find room for the things that did (including not taking phone calls that might be unproductive).  B is taking a tai chi class on the weekends that he is enjoying, and I have not only been taking a dance class that I'm having a blast in, but have taken up writing again, and have hooked up with a local writer's group.  It has given me back dreams that I thought were dead.  I always wanted to be a writer, but never had the faith to pursue it.  With B's encouragement, I'm beginning to fly.

I look down and realize that maybe it's time to draw another line beneath my feet:  the line between the old thought and the new.  I can do this.  Watch me fly.

Things unspoken

THERE ARE, in any relationship, several categories of disclosure. There are the things you talk about when you get together, as you are getting to know each other. Those are the surface things – what you look like on the outside and who you are. There are the things that you learn about the other person as you interact and face challenges, either together or separately. That’s when you find out how they deal with things and what kind of person they are. And then there are the things that go unspoken – the things that came before, the things that contributed to making you who you are today. Those are the whys.

It’s been my experience that you get them in approximately that order. The whos you get right off the bat. You are X years old, you have two brothers and one sister, you work at Y corporation, you have two kids. You have brown hair, blue eyes, and love baseball, beer and dogs. The whos are the initial attractants, and the sorters. We use the whos to decide whether or not this person is compatible enough to get to the next category.

The hows come a little later in the relationship. Does this person have a long or short fuse? Are they respectful? Are they the kind of person who chews out the pizza delivery guy when he comes two minutes late? Does she kick the dog when she’s had a bad day at work? If I were at the airport needing a ride home at 3 a.m., could I call him? The hows are the trustbuilding questions. The hows build a foundation upon which the relationship is built. When we know the hows about our partner, we can establish a predictability. Maslow calls this stage “safety and security” in his hierarchy of needs. These needs have to do with people's yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are under control, the familiar frequent and the unfamiliar rare.

The whys are unpredictable. Sometimes we get them in the beginning: the disclosure that a partner has an ex-spouse with whom they had an abusive relationship. The parents that died before their time. The confession of an incurable disease. For the most part, whys can be deal-breakers. They are the big disclosures, more weighty and fraught with emotion than the simple facts of age/appearance/disposition. Whys are the skeletons in our closets. We bring them out when we finally feel safe, and we generally haul them out one by one, instinctively comprehending the devastating power of a sudden and all-inclusive dump.

It’s been my experience that the whys trickle in throughout a relationship, usually triggered by some precipitating similar event. It might be a family secret, exposed by an unexpected outside contact. It might be a wild oat, come home to roost. Or it may be as simple as another drop of truth seeping out from underneath the finger held on the hole in the dam.

B told me when we first got together that his parents were both gone. It was something that affected him profoundly. I never really had a clear picture of what his relationship with his father was. He talked a lot about his mother and how they were close, but all he really talked about his father was the fact that he had a bad heart and died from it, a condition that he passed down to B’s older brother.

A little later on, as we got to know each other more intimately, we talked about the years that had come before we met. B talked about his young adulthood, and how he’d spent a few years down south taking care of his uncle, who was elderly and very ill. And if my memory serves me right, that’s how he put it – ‘very ill’. He talked a lot about the good it did for him, and how much he got out of spending time with his uncle, who taught B a lot of things about being a man.

We had been trying out the new sushi restaurant the night he talked about his uncle, and it was my first time having sushi. I asked him where he’d had it before, and he talked about the time he’d spent with his uncle, and how he’d introduced him to a nicer lifestyle than he’d known before. I remember him telling me all about the places they went and things they’d done, and that finally he had died. 

After that B came back up to home where his father had also taken ill. He told me that he’d taken care of the business for his father when he was unable to, and had cared for his father as well, but didn’t go into a whole lot of detail. I knew that his father had died of heart problems, and had had several surgeries, so I assumed that was what B was referring to.

We have danced around the subject of Parkinson’s since the very beginning. I knew, of course. B ‘came out’ at work shortly after he was diagnosed, and it’s just been a fact about him, like his blue eyes or his wavy hair. I did not understand all of the ins and outs of PD when we were just friends, but you can believe that when we became romantically involved, I took the crash course. I know now just about everything there is out there except what it really feels like to live in his body, which I can only know secondhand.

We talked about Parkinson’s in the context that he did not initially want me to fall in love with him, because he was afraid of hurting me. He told me I would be a young widow. He fought me in every way that it is possible for a man to fight the love of a woman, but I persevered, because I love him as much as I love myself and I knew that we would both suffer a great loss if we were to pass this thing by. I knew we could not let fear take control.

B is one of the bravest people I know. A large part of his bravery, I suspect, is on the outside. We both fight our fear with some parts denial. As long as he feels pretty good and the meds are working, we can pretend this elephant is not in the room with us, and indeed, we avoid talking about it like the plague. We have to talk about medication, and we have to talk about doctor’s appointments, and he knows I notice when he has a bad day. We talk about it for the most part as if it were any other thing – as if it were just a headache or a sore neck. I see it, I acknowledge it, he confirms it, I commiserate, we move on. He prefers it that way. I think that’s his own survival mechanism; if he does not wallow in the disease, it has no additional power over him. He keeps on going precisely because he keeps on going. And I celebrate that.

But occasionally, I get another drop or two that seeps out from beneath his finger on that dyke. It seemed like an innocent drop, the one that trickled out the other day, but it took me by surprise.

He posts occasionally on the caregivers’ bulletin board that I frequent. Mostly he does it in support, because sometimes they like to take a chunk out of my posterior, whereupon he sails in with white hat and charger ready to do battle for my honor. Lately, his posts when he makes them have been aimed at the caregivers’ disgust and frustration with their PWP. He has made several posts about how it feels from the other side of the fence. The caregivers shoved back, telling the patients on the board (there are a handful) that they should not be there, because they could not understand what the caregivers points of view were and that the board did not apply to them.

And my beloved B posted back. What he posted was a why – one that we had not even shared between us, as intimate and close as we are. I had thought that I knew everything about him after these two years, but I’m coming to understand that there is far more water behind that finger than I thought.

B’s father and uncle both had Parkinson’s too.

That was why he was caring for them.

That was the end that he saw.

I thought it was denial, but now the blinders have been slipped from my eyes.

It’s not denial.  He knows. And that’s what makes it so hard. He knows, firsthand.

Does it change anything for us?

Only in that my heart has cracked open a little wider for this man, my brave man. I know that there are more drops and trickles and whys to come, and all of them paint a picture of a person that I not only love most dearly, but greatly admire.

There will always be secrets, I know.  But these, our skeletons, once they come out from the darkness can only set us free.  Painful as they are, they are still valuable pieces that connect the dots between who we are, who we were, and who we will be.  We will make our way through them all, in time.  And I know that once our fingers are removed and we have all of the whys on the table, we can finally, finally, be free.

On goals

I HAD my annual birthday lunch with my mom the other day. We were both running late; with our busy schedules, It’s sometimes hard to find time to make connections unless it’s a holiday. She is in a similar position as I am – we both have recently bought new homes (hers is a new mobile home on her existing land) and we are both trying to figure out this new reality and how we are going to restructure our lives with changing circumstances and new obligations.

“I have some news.” She said over coffee. “I’ve made a decision. I’m going to retire in three more years.” I looked at her in surprise. She has been the primary breadwinner for as long as I can remember; Dad hurt his back a long time ago and has been on disability. They had their place free and clear until they finally had to get out of the decrepit and unsafe trailer that they had been living in. I knew that new mortgage bill had to be a big adjustment. We were adjusting, ourselves, to a mortgage quite a bit more than our rental had been.

“How are you going to do that?” I asked.

“I have been paying down all of our credit cards and bills.” She said. “I only have one left, plus your Dad’s Harley. I made up a plan and I think I can have them all paid off in three years . Then I’m quitting.” She said placidly. “I’m getting my chickens this year, and we’re retrofitting an area out back for some pigs. With that, my garden, and the cows, we should be good.”

I sipped my coffee and stared at her, thinking about that. “Wow.” I said. “That’s really great!”

“I want to go camping this year, too.” She said. “Before we can’t anymore.”

It was funny to hear that coming from her. Those are thoughts that have been circulating through my mind for the last year. We missed our vacation this year since we had an unexpected trip to Iowa for B’s daughter’s wedding. Not that it wasn’t fun…. But I’d promised my kids that we’d go to the beach or go camping at least once last year, since it had been some time since we’d taken a family vacation, and that hadn’t happened. Heavier on my conscience was the promise that I’d made to my daughter – that we would do it last summer since she wouldn’t be able to have another family vacation with us again, with college looming. With the new house, and M’s wedding, and hosting family on several occasions, there just hadn’t been time or money. We had to make choices, but how do you prioritize family members?

We too have talked about getting out and going on a vacation, somewhere with no attached doctor’s appointments, events, or obligations. Just an opportunity to relax. Underlying it all is the unspoken thought – we need to do this while we still can enjoy it. It’s odd to think that my parents and I are in the same place in life – trying to grab onto life’s experiences while we still can. It’s somewhat unsettling, but at least it gives us some common ground.

B and I sat down with our taxes last week, and we think we can pull ourselves out of most of our remaining debt from moving, the wedding, and what has been left of his divorce settlement. That alone would be a blessing. If that’s the case, then by my calculations, once the kids leave home and our daily expenses settle into just the two of us (no more last minute “I needs”!), we can actually live well and put some away in savings. But, as with anything, that’s all just on paper. And that’s provided B still is well enough to work.

That will change too, eventually.

I didn’t have the nerve to ask Mom how she’d planned for the eventuality that both of them will no longer be able to work the farm. I have a feeling that it’s something she hasn’t wanted to think about. But Dad is already having problems doing the daily chores, and has had to give up his side jobs to a helper. It’s an eventuality for all of us.

And that’s an eventuality that we have to plan for, but only have a hazy view of. For now, we think we have it licked. We think we’ve covered the bases. But life has a way of slipping one to you here and there. I hope we’ve done our homework, and can be in the same place Mom and Dad plan to be in three years. That’s my goal, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Flexibility

JUST WHEN you think things are going great, Life has a tendency to get squidgy.


Flexibility is a wonderful quality. I have it; my daughter does not. Not a condemnation, just a fact. If things don’t work exactly like she’s planned out, she’s absolutely blotto – dead in the water. She can’t make a coherent decision beyond that point, because she hasn’t thought out any of the alternate scenarios beyond the one she’s chosen.

Flexibility is a survival tool.

Like the reed vs. the oak tree in a hurricane, if we can’t bend, we gonna break.

This week B went to pick up his pills from the pharmacy. Because he’s on L&I and they pay for his medications, he has to fill them at precise intervals. If he happens to use more than what’s in the bottle in the interval between fills, he’s out of luck. This means both that the neuro prescribing the drugs has to be generous in the monthly estimate, and that we have to be vigilant in ensuring we fill as soon as we need to but not before.

The only challenge comes when the pharmacy can’t keep up.

This time when he went to pick up his script, the pharmacy was out of Requip and it was on a back-order. It’s not like an antibiotic or something that you can wait on a few days, of course – he had to have it NOW. The only alternative was to take the generic formulation, which they did have in stock. “It’s made in the same factory with the same drugs”, they told him. And so we tried it.

Yesterday was pretty miserable, to put it concisely. Not only were the side effects a whole lot worse, but the variation in the drug formulation makes it incredibly hard to titrate a dose. I wondered why he had been so stressed and testy, but didn’t put two and two together. Last night the drug unexpectedly wore off. We were killing time before bed, me with my laptop and he with his puzzle books. I went out to find him when I got sleepy, and knew right away that something was amiss. You could tell by the way he was standing. When it’s bad, he collapses in on himself, in pain, all the strength and confidence gone.

I went over to give him a hug. He rested his chin on my shoulder. “I’m stuck, honey.” He whispered, sagging in my arms. “All the meds were just… gone.”

“I got you, love.” I whispered back. “Let’s go to bed.” We made our way back inside, took another pill and went to bed. Even then he was in a lot of pain. “What can I do?”

“Snuggle with me.” He said, and I curled up around him for as long as his muscles would let him lie that way. As he turned and moved, trying to get comfortable, he kept a hand on my skin, like a touchstone. I wished I could take it all away, the pain and the stiffness, but at that point there is nothing to be done but wait for the drugs to take hold. Finally, after a half hour of misery, he said “Get your laptop and post something on the bulletin board for me”. He dictated and I typed, a missive to caregivers about what it’s like on the other side of the fence, when the meds aren’t working and what it feels like to be trapped in your body, unable to escape.

After an hour and a half, he was able to get comfortable and sleep. But here we are, stuck with another months’ worth of generic pills and unable to trade them in even when the good ones come, and L&I won’t pay for them twice. So we have to endure.

Deep in the middle of the episode last night he said “What have I gotten you into?” My eloquent words always fail me at the time of crisis, and so I said something comforting and throwaway. What I should have said was this:

You have believed in me, you have cared for me, you have loved me, you have brought me the best moments of my life. Being with you, even in the hard times, makes me into the person I always wanted to be – the best version of myself. I would no sooner trade my time with you than I would take out my own heart and throw it away.

We are tested in the fire. The weak ones burn up and fade away. The best of us turn into diamonds. Will this road be difficult? Of course. Is it worth it? Over and over and over again, I would choose this life.

Today is a better day than yesterday was. He knows now that he has to play very closely to the rules with the generics, and can’t push them out as far. This means that we will have to be a little bit flexible. But then, what are we if we cannot bend for life? If we cannot bend for life, life will break us. And that would be a waste, indeed.

New uses for your Beautyrest

I FOUND this little gem a couple of days ago and forgot to post it.  Looking for something 'new' to do in bed?  Feel like you're wasting those eight hours?  Wake up hungry?

Why not kill two birds with one stone?

BED BREAD

Ingredients

2 packages active dry yeast
1 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 c. warm water (100-115 degrees F)
1/3 c. butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 c. hot milk
2 tsp. salt
5 1/2 to 6 c. all-purpose flour
1 egg white, lightly beaten
Cornmeal

Directions

1. Stir the yeast, sugar and warm water together in a large mixing bowl.  Let sit until yeast dissolves and starts to proof.
2. In the meantime, melt the butter in the hot milk and let cool to lukewarm.  Add salt and combine with the yeast mixture.
3. Stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon, add the flour, one cup at a time, until the dough almost comes away from the sides of the bowl.  (Don't worry if it seems soft and sticky; it will stabilize in the next step.)
4. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface, add flour while folding the dough over several times until it's easy to handle.  Knead for two to four minutes.
5. Lightly grease the inside of a one-gallon plastic resealable storage bag (Ziploc).  Put the dough in the bag and get into your jammies.  Snuggle your dough until morning.
6. Next morning, dump your dough onto a floured surface.  Punch it down and knead for two minutes.  Divide dough in half and roll each half into a rectangle about 12" x 8".  Starting from the wide end, roll it up quite tightly, pinching the seams as you go.
7. Butter a baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal.  Place loaves on the sheet, cover with a clean dishcloth, and rest in a warm spot in your kitchen for about an hour.  Loaves should almost double in size.
8. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  After the dough has risen, brush the tops of the loaves with beaten egg white and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until they are a rich, golden brown and sound hollow when you tap them on the top.
9. Cool on a rack and eat while fresh.  Yum!

Me:           *rolls over in the morning*  ".....Ummm...... is that the dough rising?"

B:              *naughty grin*   "Why don't you find out?"

Porky blasting

SO, MONDAY morning I get up and get dressed for work.  Work in my situation can involve anything from getting called out in the field to inspect a sewer overflow, to meeting with members of the City Council or other government officials, or merely sitting in the office holding down my chair for eight hours, so as you can imagine, getting dressed appropriately is sometimes a dicey proposition.  Not too fancy, not too casual.  It's a hard line to straddle.  If I know I'm going out and about, I'm usually in jeans and a nice-ish couple of layers (think LL Bean), and I wear my trusty work boots (most comfy footwear in the world).  If I have a scheduled meeting, I'm in my blazer and a pair of slacks.  And once in a while, usually on the days I've designated "Uncasual Fridays", I'll slip back into one of my nice skirts or dresses, just to remind myself that I'm still a woman.  Never underestimate the power of a pair of heels to rule the world!!

So  Monday, thinking that it was going to be one of those hang-out-on-the-puter all day days, since it was in that awful tweener-week in the valley between two major holidays, when every SANE person has thought to put in for the week off and the place looks like a ghost town, I split the difference, threw on my jeans and a pair of loafers, figuring that confort reigned.  Alas, that is just tempting the fashion fates.

I had one sip from my cup of coffee and was settling comfortably into checking my work email favorite blog sites and filling out my timesheet seeing if there was a new Dilbert strip when the phone rang.  It was my maintenance supervisor, J.   J is my cohort in our maintenance office; while I handle the paperwork and the bureaucracy, J handles the day to day operation of our utility.  He's the one who schedules the street crews to plow snow, or lay deicer, or, as today, "other duties as assigned". 

"So, do you have the handheld GPS unit ready for the guys to come pick up?"

Say what??  I look over at the GPS unit, sitting on my desk.  It's charged and ready, but nobody's had the chance to play with it to make sure we knew how to use it since we purchased it this summer.  I knew we were going to need it in a few weeks, since we always go out to do outfall inspections in mid-January, so I've scheduled a time to tackle this chore next week.  "Today?"

"Yeah," J says.  "There's been no snow and things are slow up here, so I'm going to send the guys out on outfall inspections this morning.  They're going to be down in a few minutes to pick it up."

This sends me scrambling. I normally go with the guys and do all the paperwork and take annual photos, but my boots are still in my nice warm closet at home.  I have my coveralls, but with these fancy little loafers, I'd slide like a greased penguin down the frozen lakebanks that we have to scale to get to the outfalls.  I look forward to this inspection time, but this time I have to take a pass.  The guys come down to my office, and we muddle our way through figuring out the GPS unit.  I hand them the clipboard, teach them how to fill out the inspection forms, and send them on their way. 

In the afternoon, I get another call.  It's J again.  He's sending the guys back down to bring the GPS unit back.  Evidently one of them slipped and fell down a bank and hit a key on the way down, so they've rendered it useless, since nobody knew how to get back to the main menu.  Clearly we need to have more time to work with this piece of equipment. 

"By the way," J says "They didn't get very far.  There's a porky in the very first line.  D bent over to straighten the grate in front, and something hissed at him.  We're going to borrow the flush truck from the Sewer department tomorrow and go in and flush him out."

"I want to come!" I say immediately, sensing a fun and exciting adventure.  I make him promise to call me when they are on their way out.

TUESDAY

I get a call from J telling me they will be ready to meet on site at 1 p.m. after everyone gets back from lunch.  I suit up in my insulated coveralls and race out to the site, camera in hand.  When I get there, J and two of his crew are there, plus Daisy from the Sewer Department with the flush truck.  Daisy is the only woman in her department, and she's an absolute sweetie.  She gives me a grin and a shout hello as she drops her flush hose into the catch basin grate upstream of the outfall. 

For the unfamiliar, a catch basin is the storm grate you normally see at the curb on the street.  It takes runoff water from the streets and drains it via a pipe to wherever you want it to go.  In this case, this one goes under someone's yard and out to an outfall: an open ended pipe that discharges water into the lake. 

The pic to the left is the outfall to the lake.  This one has a 10" pipe and a concrete hood around the mouth that keeps the flow from eroding the bank where it comes out.  Typically these concrete hoods have a grate over them to keep debris and animals from getting into the pipe and blocking flow.  Here, the grate has been malfunctioning, allowing Mr. Porky to move in.  You can see porcupine poop all around the mouth of the structure.  They have an elongated scat pellet similar to a deer.  Looks like this guy has been here a while - this is the inspection pic from last winter's inspection, although he wasn't home when we looked at it last.

As the guys and I cluster around the outfall (but not too close!), D turns on her hose about a quarter of the way.  In this pic, I am standing uphill, so you can barely see the outfall hidden in the grass.  It's to the left of that rebar hoop.

We see the water beginning to come out of the hole, but after a few minutes, it becomes evident that it isn't sufficient to evict Mr. Porky.  J shouts up to Daisy to turn er up a notch.  

She turns the pressure up about halfway, and we begin to see porky butt, but this guy is holding on tight (how can he hold his breath that long??)  J tells her to turn it up again, full blast.

She cranks the pressure up all the way and finally he begins to emerge, the water pressure pushing him to the edge of the outfall.  The water is hitting him in the face and jetting upward, splashing out about fifteen feet into the lakebed below.  He wavers, clutches onto the concrete for dear life, and digs in.

After a few minutes of this, though, he's had it.  He lets go and backs away to catch his breath.  We've got him now.   The guys warn each other not to get too close, because we don't know what he'll do.  One of J's guys jumps in with the shovel and bangs on the concrete.  "Shoo!"  He tells the porky.  "Go on now!"

Mr. Porky has had enough of us.  He moves slowly off to the side a few feet and into the base of a nearby tree.  He is truly the most pathetic looking creature I've seen in my life.  He sits there absolutely soaked, looking back at us as if to say "I hate you guys..."  There's no menacing attack; he's sodden and shivering and miserable.     While Daisy shuts down the truck and comes down to join us, the guys work on getting the grate fixed and bolted back into place.  The porky sits in the crotch of the tree and watches us.  Both Daisy and I feel sorry for him, having to find a new place to live in the middle of the winter, and sopping wet to boot, but it can't be helped. 

While the guys work on their stuff, I sneak around on the lakebed and take a pic of Mr. Porky from the backside, where I can get a better shot.  He turns around to look at me after a while.  He or she is a pretty good sized beast - I hadn't realized they were actually that big.

Eventually he decides that we're too much trouble, shakes himself off, and begins to amble away down the lakeshore.  Standing on the lakebed, I get a few more good shots.  I am surprised by its nonchalance - it really doesn't seem much afraid of us, despite what we've just done.

As the guys gather up their shovels, the porky shuffles off into the underbrush.  At times like these I"m glad I don't speak porcupine, because I'm sure he was cussing us out all the way!

When I got back to the office, I read up on porcupines.  It turns out that they have great longevity, so the scat we have been finding for the last several years in this outfall was probably his/hers.  I hope it finds a new den quickly and is able to cover for the winter and recover from its dousing.  I feel bad about having to evict it from what was probably a really nice warm den, but when snowmelt occurs, the flooding upstream can be a big problem. 

It's not every day that we have exciting days at work, and it's not everyone that can say that they spent their day porky blasting!  Today it's back to tackling the foot high stack of paperwork that needs filing that I've been procrastinating all year long.  I'll be just waiting for the next call, when I can zip up my coveralls, hop into my truck, and jet off on another STORMWATER ADVENTURE!

12 Questions That Will Change Your Life

Will this quiz change my life?  Let's see.....

Original article, http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/just-dreaming/articlerb.aspx?cp-documentid=22782071


1. How do I spend my alone time?

Alone time comes very seldom, so I cherish it and use it very selfishly on things that please me and make my soul smile.  You can nearly always find me in one of a few places:  on the laptop, writing, painting, or just drabbling.  Reading a book (preferably in the bathtub, or in my comfy chair, weenie curled up beside me, with a hot cup of great coffee).  Or catching up on one of the many little projects that I always have going (painting a room is one of my favorite occupations!).

2. Do I pay attention to what my body needs?

I like to think so, but I know it's not always true.  Sometimes it's more like "Yeah, body - I hear you, but I need to finish this right now."  I eat convenient, mostly, and not always well, and I will forgo sleep in the interest of completing something that I've started.  However, my body always tells me about it, usually in the form of a migraine, which stops me in my tracks and forces me to do the things I should have done all along.

An odd note on this one is my love/hate relationship with my partial hysterectomy ten years ago.  Yes, it's wonderful nice (and convenient!) not to have a period anymore.  No more week filled with inconveniences and migraines, no more messy and expensive supplies to buy.  But I find that being period-free is somehow lacking.  I don't have that week anymore - that week that my body whispers to me "Slow down.  Rest up.  Draw inward, and care for me". 

I miss the heaviness of my body during that week, that softness and fullness.  The physical reminder that my small cycle was part of some larger, more important cycle.  During that week I typically stayed in more, moved less, became introspective and moodier - a big old round gravid moon, silent and beneficent.  Even the cramping seemed to have purpose, as if in rehearsal for a grander event.  My period was the monthly test of the Emergency Broadcast System - "This is a test.  This is only a test.  If this had been an actual pregnancy, this test would have been followed by a baby." 

It was a week built not for the outside world, but only for me.  That week does not exist anymore.  I have no excuse.  It almost makes you long for a cold, just to take that sick day, to stay wrapped in comfort and warmth and feed your body the very best things and listen to the slow tick of the clock rather than the frenetic motion of the outside world.  I miss it.

3. To whom am I grateful?

I am grateful for B, for replacing the funhouse mirror that I have used all my life with the one he sees me in, where I am OK after all.  

I am grateful to my kids for making me live rather than just exist.  For challenging my viewpoints rather than just swallowing them.  They make me THINK, and clarify my worldview and all that I hold important.  Every important thing in the world that I have ever done I have done for them.

I am grateful to work for giving me the chance to prove that I could do what no woman before me here had done: succeed in the mens' arena, and shine.

I am grateful, more than any other thing in the world, to God, for this life and all that is in it.  Thanks for never giving up on me, ever, even when I was giving up on myself.  May I be worthy.

4. Do I compare my life to other people's?

Ugh.  Yeah.  (Who doesn't?)  Too much, I think.  I want to be like my friends, who have church families and scads of close friends, who seem to be gadding about everywhere all the time doing fun things together.  I want to go off on all the vacations I hear about all over my Facebook page, just once. 

I want to be like the "Safeway ladies", the ones always in front of me in the checkout lines, four inches taller, perfectly coiffed, looking like they stepped from the pages of Vogue or Town and Country as they do their shopping.  I wonder how they look so perfect all the time:  perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect clothes, perfect smiles.  I get my hair done and for a shining hour or two after the salon I look great.  The next day, the perfect haircut looks just like my own, with a few pieces standing every which way and the cowlick behind that flips out.  *sigh*  I wish I were comfortable in my own skin.  Of all the deadly sins, envy is my worst.

5. Do I spend money on things that speak to my soul?

Mostly I spend money on bills and necessities, but occasionally I buy something that speaks to my soul.  There were two chairs at the furniture store recently, mismatched but beautiful, deeply discounted because they were onesies.  Both were in that deep rich wood that I love so much, with gorgeous fabric seats and deeply tooled details (one with wrought metal accents).  I bought them and took them home, where they please me every time I look at them.  No, I didn't need them (although I needed a place for B to lay his clothes at night, there were other cheaper options), but they tie the room together and make me feel rich in spirit.  That alone was worth their price.

I painted a wall - one wall - yesterday that had the same effect.  Paint is not a necessity.  Paint is love.  I could not live in a world bereft of beauty, and I have a need to create it wherever I go.  I don't always have the money I'd like to do what I want, but I usually make it happen by finding a cheaper way.

6. What do I see when I look in the mirror each morning?
Just plain old me.  I actually have grown fond of this old face.  It's taken years and years, but I think I'm okay.  I love my eyes, even though they (and my nose) are my father's.  I see the high cheekbones and strong jawline of my mother, and the 'i-want' frown lines between my brows and the smile brackets that are my own.  I see that I'm twenty pounds too heavy and that the cellulite is aggravating, but the curves are still curvy and they light B's eyes.  I'm trying my best to see what he sees.  Slowly, it's working.

7. Have I figured out a way to handle the less-than-perfect relationships in my life?
I think so, but this is a very recent development.  I have decided to say "no" to the things that are toxic, and to set some boundaries.  More on that later.  It is an ongoing struggle, made easier because what is at home is so wonderful and so fulfilling that I no longer need the approval and opinions of these toxic people in order to survive.  Slowly, I am working to build those healthy walls so that what we have created is not threatened.

8. Do I have faith in something bigger than I am, whether it's God or some other spiritual form
Yes.  My only sorrow is that I can't seem to pull my spiritual life and my home life together as well as I would like.  And I wish I'd worked harder on bringing my kids up in a spiritual way.
 
9. What positive things do I bring to relationships with my husband, my kids, my friends?
I'm an organizer.  I always have the things everyone else forgets.  I think ahead.  And I never forget to say "I love you". 

I don't know what else.  It's hard to think of good things to say about yourself.  I always feel like "I just do what needs to be done."  Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

10. Is there a space in my home to do the things I love (paint, practice yoga, play cards with friends)?
I usually just find a space.  B has carved me out a corner of the office now where we can sit side by side as I work on the puter, where he can play Bejeweled and I can paint.  It's great.


11. How many hours a week do I spend on my computer, my TV, my BlackBerry?
Ouch.  A LOT.  But a lot of my 'me-time' is on the puter as well, as is my work. Does that count??

I text a lot, but that's the best way I have of keeping touch with my kids as they're off and running about.  I think it makes our relationship stronger. 

12. Do I feel older or younger than my years? How often do I feel good about being exactly the age I am?
The morning after we got the Wii I felt WAAAAAY older than my years!   LOL  But truly in many ways I feel much younger than my years.  I'll always be 20 in my head: somewhat naive, wondering, awestruck by life.  Somewhat off balance next to those supremely confident people like B, always a half step off.  I'm the stumbler, the fumbler, the bumbling bubbly redheaded bimbo.  B and I laugh at my misadventures all the time, and he calls me fondly "Lucy".  But I'm okay with that, because he loves me.  And more importantly, as I have come to understand very slowly and with no small degree of struggle, I love myself.

The best laid plans

WELL, SO MUCH for the concert idea.

We took the half day so that we could have some time to get there early and do some shopping.  Realistically, what that REALLY meant was that we came home early and took a NAP!  ;-)  One of those blessed, long deep ones, about an hour and a half of bliss.  It was hard to get up and go.

We set off about 2:30 and got out of town about 3, once we'd made a few stops.  It's an hour and a half drive to the big city from our little town, and we wanted to be able to stop at Costco and do some last minute shopping before the concert.  The tickets I bought were at the will-call window, and we wanted to leave enough time as well to be able to go through the line.  I had a really weird feeling in the pit of my stomach as we left town, but I wrote it off to the seafood dip from our buffet lunch earlier at work. 

The dashboard thermometer read 33 degrees when we headed out.  It was foggy, but not terribly bad.  The weather report said fog all the way, but we figured if it looked like it did at home, we were home free.  The miles passed, and gradually we became aware that the thermometer seemed to be moving along with the miles. 

31...30....29...  The tumbleweeds from last week's windstorm, blown up against the barb wire fences and the wheatfield circles, were glistening with hoarfrost.  Our attempts at chitchat seemed to close in as the fog did. 

28...27....  The fog got deeper the further we went.  Big semi trucks were slowing down.  The cars that passed us threw up no road spray.  It became apparent that the fog was freezing on the road instead.  My unease deepened, and I looked over at B.  He was intent on his driving, and he frowned.

"How much did you pay for those tickets?"  He said finally.  We were about an hour into a drive that should have taken us thirty minutes.  The turnoff to Highway 17 which marked the middle leg of the route was coming up in a few miles. 

"Not enought that I'd risk my life for them."  I said.  We looked up at the thermometer again.  "It's really been dropping."

"Holy crap..." he said, watching the numbers change.  "It was 29 a minute ago."  We watched it turn from 27 to 25. 

He took the turnoff, white knuckling as a braver soul in an SUV rode our rear down the off ramp.  Luckily, we were able to stop at the intersection at the bottom.  "I'll just go up to the next little town and see."  He said.

As we pressed on it just got thicker.  By the time he got close to town, you couldn't see much beyond the car.  We pulled off the road in a parking lot and sat to regroup.  The what-ifs loomed.  What if we didn't make it to the city?  What if we made it to the city, and then had to come home at midnight?  Did we really think it would be better at midnight?  And there was a long stretch of road ahead of us in a steep canyon to go. 

We looked at each other.  "Let's go home." 

I called the box office and found out what I knew - that the tickets were non-refundable.  The lady at the ticket counter said that the show was sold out, and that I could give them to someone who could come.  I told her no one in our town would want to make the same drive (especially this late) and to go ahead and make someone's day.  "Give them to someone who is looking for tickets."  I said.  I thought later that I should have told her "And tell them 'Merry Christmas'." 

Almost immediately when we turned around I felt better.  Something was telling us not to go.  We lost a hundred dollars, which was to be our joint Christmas present, but the way I look at it, I could have lost a lot more by insisting we make it to a silly concert.  I'm very, very happy that B feels comfortable enough to speak up out loud.  "I guess I'm just the chicken."  He joked, but for that I am very, very grateful.  Too many men would allow their pride and testosterone to press the issue, and to what end?  He is not a risk-taker.  He is a thinker, and for that I love him.

We came back to town and had a wonderful dinner out to celebrate instead.  Then we went home and put on our jammies and had a fire in the fireplace.  I think whatever it was bothered the girl too.  She was visibly relieved to see us home, even though she said if she were in our place she would have gone.  I told her "At my age, I've learned what's valuable and what isn't.  I no longer feel like I am bulletproof." 

Later that night as she was going to bed she said "I'm glad you came home.  I don't like it when you guys aren't here." 

I know what she means.  Yep, I'm a mother hen.  I don't feel whole unless we are all present and accounted for.  The whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.  I can't think of a single thing in life- no concert, no event, no experience, no possession, that I would trade for one of my family members.  There will be other concerts.  I want to make sure we are there for them.

Christmas miracle

This is your Christmas miracle story for the day, but I have to keep it quiet. I had to tell someone, since I can't tell B yet.

Christmas is light this year, since we bought a house and had several unexpected things come up (B's daughter's wedding out of state, the girl's medical crisis). I was worried about it, and about bills that, while they were getting paid, weren't getting paid very fast.

This morning my HR guy came to see me.   He's one of those guys that you never want to see coming - it usually doesn't mean good news.  He had a rolled-up sheet of paper in his hand.  It looked like something official.  My pulse went up about twenty points as he came in and sat down.  "I have something I need to talk to you about." he said.   My mind raced.  Yesterday I had a migraine, and spent most of my work day with my overhead lights shut off and the monitors turned down low.  I figured he was here to talk to me either about the fact that my leave was perilously low, or that people thought I was gone since the office was dark.  I thought fast, meaning to tell him that I was here despite feeling miserable, and if anyone had complained about my lights being off and the office looking a bit unconventional, well, that's what it took to make sure I was able to be here working rather than home in bed.

"I heard you weren't feeling good yesterday."  he said.  "Want me to make you feel better?" 

I sat back in my chair, nonplussed.  He's never been my best friend, and I couldn't imagine why he would come to exchange pleasantries.  I watched him unroll the paper, and wondered why he was suddenly the one who looked uncomfortable. 

It turned out the story was this: 

Last April I got moved into my new postion at work. When you move into a new position, you have to go through a year of probation all over again, just as if you were a new hire, and you're at what they call "B step" for pay - which is a percentage of the full rate for the job. When your year of probation is up, your supervisor makes an evaluation, files a paper with HR indicating department approval, and you get moved up to "A step" - the full rate.  It's called 'getting the bump'. 

I'll back up.  This year has been SO busy and SO crazy between work and home that I did not even remember that April 13 was my anniversary date. Evidently neither did my supervisor, nor the HR guy, so no one put in for my bump. It was discovered on an end-of-the year audit (I suspect).  He was extremely apologetic, and not sure how it had happened, but made certain to assure me that it was remedied now - the paper in his hand was my official department approval notice - and that I would be getting my raise retroactively on the next check. 

Our next payday is Christmas Eve. On that payday, I get all of my bump differential retroactive to April 13 (about $1.06 per hour). 

GOD IS GOOD. And prayer works. Believe it.

I am SO overwhelmed right now. B and I will be going out tonight to the nearby 'big city' to see Mannheim Steamroller.  It's our joint Christmas present, and we've been looking forward to it for weeks - a night out just for us two. I think I'm going to tell him then.  I'm having a hard time believing it this morning. 

 

God bless all of you, my friends.  May your Christmas miracle be right around the corner, whatever it is that you've prayed for and needed badly.