off balance

My inner ear has gone AWOL. While I spent the morning getting ready for work, which usually involves a lot of darting through the narrow doorways of my historic home because I've forgotten to do three or four things in the same room at the same time before moving onto the next in a sensibly systematic fashion, the walls and doorframes and corners of my bookshelves kept lurching at me and catching me hard on the shoulders and shins. Mean old house, I thought. Has it in for me this morning.

But no, it's my inner ear that decided to curl up in bed and stay behind while I did the responsible thing and went to work. All the walls, doorframes, filing cabinets, and desk corners ambush me every time I turn around. So I'm going to arrive home tonight with some stunning new bruises. On the day I decided to wear a tanktop and skirt, too.

Maybe it's the earplugs. I wear them sometimes at night because the neighbors across the hall get noisy from time to time, and as my bedroom borders the stairwell, I can hear them stomping up and down the stairs as they come and go about their God-knows-what nighttime business (they appear never to sleep), and last night they were fighting. So in went the earplugs. But apparently the pressure inside my ear canals did my balance no favors.

But it does make for some funny moments. You don't realize how much you rely on your perception to line up with reality until your perception's out of whack and reality smacks you a good one. It's especially embarrassing to bounce off a wall that's quite obviously and solidly there in front of a client. I kind of half-spin a pirouette and laugh at myself and offer them more coffee.

In other news, I feel like I've taken another step toward settled adulthood. When Kevin moved out, he gave me his recycle bin. At any time during the past two years I could've asked the City for one of my own, but since the City is so lackadaisical and accepting about recycling -- they'll take it in trash bags -- I never bothered. (And, really, South Bend recycling is great. You don't have to sort anything, and they'll take everything. Plastic, paper, cardboard, dead rats, whatever you want. Well, not actually dead rats.) The recycling is so great that the garbage men are evil and won't take cardboard boxes. If you pack them carefully into the city-supplied bins, come Thursday morning, trash day, you'll find them tossed back, rejected, onto your lawn. Evil.

Anyway, since the garbage men come up and down the alley on Thursday, there's no need to go dragging the garbage cans around, and since I've been for two years without a recycle bin, I've just thrown my recycling into other people's bins or into a box or garbage bag and let the containers get recycled too. But yesterday was my first recycling day using Kevin's old bin, and when I got home from dinner with Meg and Phillip, there it was sitting by itself on the curb, and I thought, Oh. I have to bring in the recycle bin.

So there it was. Something that ordinary grown-ups do that I've never had to. And now I do. And I was excited.

turn, turn, turn

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Strangely, after Wednesday, things began to stand on their head, in the best way possible. The Anti-Midas got out a box of baby wipes and began to clean up after himself, while I peeked through my fingers from where I'd collapsed on my extremely comfortable easy chair.

First, after dragging myself through the thickest sludge of exhaustion I've endured since the crash-and-burn my sophomore year of college, I decided the problem was my medication schedule and went back to taking the antidepressant at night. I'd been taking it in the morning since my doctor put me on the new stuff, because it was giving me fitful sleep and the weirdest dreams I've ever remembered (fun, but really weird. Loony Tunes variety dreams). And for the past four days I've felt like a new woman. Chipper, perky, energetic, able to concentrate, able to do stuff again, able to eat, able to sleep, able to work, able to relax. Amazing.

Second, I got all my tax refunds back, paid all my bills from last month and this month, including the medical bills (just the monthlies, not all of them off altogether), and still have enough leftover to eat, and maybe buy some new clothes, for the first time in well over a year, next month -- hooray!

Third, I've been eating real food on a regular basis for the past ten or eleven days. I'm no longer starving. My hair is still falling out, but that should (I'm hoping) stop soon. I've greatly increased my protein intake, switched from soymilk to whole dairy milk, and no longer have cereal for dinner. At all.

I also cleaned the house this weekend, am becoming obsessed with my Dyson vacuum cleaner (it does BARE FLOORS, happy happy joy joy, bye-bye broom-that-never-picks-up-cat-litter-and-cat-hair), and washed all my dishes. I think I can keep the apartment clean. I am Very Happy.

Best of all, I had a perfect weekend spending time with a person I greatly enjoyed.

So while I had very little to do with the residue of the crap being alchemized into green pastures (which are, I think, much better than gold), I'm happy and exceedingly grateful.

is the alarm going to ring soon, or did this day actually happen?

Bad day. Really, really awful. I did a terrible screw-up at work -- I can't even articulate how bad it was -- and my boss was great about it, as always -- but I spent most of the afternoon on the verge of tears and wished I could turn myself into something about an inch tall so I could hide under the copier or get eaten by the dog.

I knew it wasn't going to be a good day -- I woke up twenty minutes before I had to leave, so no shower, no coffee, drove to work in a blazing hurry through the dissipating fog of bad dreams, had this awful sense of forboding all day, the temperature plummeted forty degrees overnight and was windy and sour and overcast. N.g.

Won't know for another month how bad it really was. So I'll be kind of on tenterhooks until then.

I need something very strong to drink.

It was one of those days of which I like to say, "This one was planned at a board meeting in hell. And somebody got a promotion."

the horizontal compulsion

Gravity appears to be stronger at the center of my bed. I'm almost positive a close atomic inspection would reveal compacted matter approaching the density of a black hole, and, thus, an extremely strong gravitational pull. This has to be why it draws me to it straight upon walking through the door after work for ridiculous things like six o'clock naps, and why rising in the peaceful, birdsong-sweet summer mornings has become a feat worthy of Atlas. Maybe the poor guy shouldn't be sculpted holding the world anymore. In our modern era, that's almost too dramatic. Maybe he should be depicted holding a bed.

home, home on the range

Mom and Dad came out to visit this past weekend, and it was fantastic.

Visits in the past have been kind of touch-and-go, depending on how I'm doing, and as I haven't been at my best lately, there was, perhaps, some trepidation on all sides as to how this one would fly. But my parents were wonderful. I didn't have time or energy to clean the house, and they didn't care; Mom washed all my dishes, and they were happy just to sit around and hang out with me. And I really needed that cup o'parental love filled up. It was perfect.

Friday night we went out to eat with my bosses, and then went back up to their place to go shooting. Both my parents are good shots, and I did well, and everyone was proud of me, and we all had fun. (I learned a few more things about my style, as my boss bragged on me man-to-man to my dad. "Do you know what kind of revolver this girl likes?" he said to my dad. "An N-frame." "What's so special about that?" I asked. "Honey, that's the massive one. The biggest kind," my dad said." "Oh," I said. I had thought it was the one for smaller hands. Nope. And then my boss was laughing at me because, after shooting off a round of .38s, I said, "Gimme the .357s." He looked over at my dad and said, "Can you believe her? She's bored with the .38s!" I asked my dad later what a .38 is equivalent to in the semiautomatic world, and he said it's about a 9 mm, what you shoot from a Glock. A man-stopper. Oh, I said. Well, what about a .357? Dad said you can drop a deer with a .357. Ha! Heeeere, Bambi....)

Anyway, then Saturday night we had dinner with Meg and Phillip, and Saturday and Sunday we lounged around. Dad helped me reset the air conditioner in my living room, which was clogged with water, and they gave me some new toys: a Dyson vacuum cleaner (only in Western PA we say sweeper) and a guitar!!!! My furniture is already cleaner and my fingers are already blistered.

Pslightly Psycho Kevin moved out for good yesterday, so the drama begins as to what kinds of strange people the AL will rent out to, since evidently he has decided NOT to become the Live-In Landlord (Yikes!). But as I discussed it with Downstairs Neighbor Jim yesterday, I mentioned that I was going to learn the art of canning this summer, and he GAVE me a 22-quart pressure canner and wouldn't take a dime for it. SWEET!

So my summer is all set for learning new things, and getting my life back in order, and I have my cup running over with family love, which I desperately needed.

I'm hopeful for getting myself back. Work is going to be crazy for the next month while we search for a replacement for the office assistant, who left last week, and train the new person, who will (fingers crossed, prayers fervently said) be smart and competent and a fast learner, but I'm attempting to keep perspective and reserve some energy to myself so I keep a balance and start enjoying my life and my hobbies again.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

more of life

The cat's not feeling top shape again. Boss-Man's in court all day, so I took the morning to take Kitty Boy to the vet (saves me expensive ER visits -- 80 bucks just to walk through the door, plus whatever else they do for him, ugh), and they think he has lesions on his bladder that make litterbox use uncomfortable. So, more medications, new cat food, another hundred bucks kissed goodbye.

I'm tired. I spent most of the weekend sleeping, and I can't seem to get quite caught up. After a month and a half of The Cereal Diet, born of the Bill Catch-Up Financial Plan, a scramble to reintroduce red meat to my dietary intake has resulted in a digestive upheaval that had me in considerable gastrointestinal pain over the past week. Looks like I need to sit down and, for the first time ever, come up with something strategic in regard to my diet. More protein, starting with the white meats and fish, iron supplements, and a slow reintroduction of the red stuff. I'm pretty sure the fatigue, the weakness (carrying one of my air conditioners up from the basement yesterday was really hard), etc., all result from iron deficiency.

Ridiculous. This has got to change. Fortunately, with my Income Tax Return on its way, and my rigid frugality (my Scots ancestors would be so proud), and my upcoming paycheck, the next couple of weeks should see a leveling out of the financial worries that have plagued my waking and sleeping hours all year. I'm hoping that those are the reasons I've been so listless, and that the light at the end of the tunnel will see a happy return to my normal hobbies and activities -- cooking, cleaning, reading, writing, and getting a little more exercise.

I'm seeing my wonderful new doctor this Thursday, so I'll get to discuss all of this with him as well, to make sure I'm on the right track.

There has been some interesting new drama in Sarah's Apartment House of Insanity, so I'll be posting on that soon -- it's much more entertaining than my bank account and the dwindling numbers on the scales.

The Gray-Painted Bus

There is, occasionally, a sort of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, that crops up in my neighborhood, in the form of an old school bus. It’s been repainted gray – even the windows, except for the front ones – boarded shut in the back, and has a cooking-stove pipe sticking out of one side. It appears to be inhabited by a Jesus-looking fellow, all in black, his two androgynous, half-intelligent, heavyset teenaged progeny, also in black, and a snarling pit bull.

I’ve noticed this bus over the course of the past year, as it tends to park itself on the street across from my friend Colette’s apartment, although last year it was emblazoned with the fading insignia of some Apostolic Church. This year it’s just lived in. The other night as she and I sat on her front lawn, talking, our conversation faded like the daylight as we watched the Boarders of the Bus coming and going between their dwelling and the lovely, trim, well-kept house that the Bus is usually parked in front of.

It was an intriguing kind of people-watching. The discrepancy between the house and the bus, and the frequency of the bus’s visits to the house, made for some interesting speculation. Colette says a woman lives in the house. The paint on the house is all new. There’s scalloped wood trim around the eaves. The landscaping is lovely. It has a fence and a gate. She drives a hybrid. She’s evidently earth-friendly. Then there’s The Bus. With cooking smoke pouring from the pipe. Noisy engine and gas fumes. Long-haired people living inside wearing jackboots. Where’s the connection?

Colette surmised the Jesus-looking Fellow is a boyfriend; I thought maybe a brother. She warmed to the theory – maybe the siblings took their earth-friendly natures in different directions, she to a more "upscale" environment, he to a more "hippie" one, working an "honest" job, kind of a drifting, Bob Dylan-style.

But the kids were weird. They looked like twins, and in the half-light you really couldn’t discern their gender. We swore at least one of them had breasts, but their voices cracked and soared, and they both were running around the bus playing hide-and-seek like they were four, when they were at least fourteen, and giggling these really off, strangely pitched goblin giggles. They went into The Bus and lit some kind of lantern, and then we heard the dog yelping. It was disturbing.

When it was fully dark the Jesus-looking Fellow came out, got into the front seat, started the engine, tried to pull out, got stuck in the brick ruts, got out, pulled down the hood, fiddled with the running engine, got back in, ground The Bus back and forth for a few minutes, then tore away. I found myself wondering what it would be like to live on a bus, driving off at night to some new place to park, and some Conestoga corner of my spirit grinned at the thought of the freedom, and the simplicity. But the childcare worker in me thought it had turned out pretty badly for the kids.

annie, get your gun

The past two Sundays, I've gone with the boss-man to a nearby shooting range and learned to handle a gun.

For those of you who know me fairly well, this isn't that surprising. As a cop's daughter, I've been wanting to learn to shoot for a long time. And as they say, what's bred in the bone will out in the blood, or something along those lines. I've been foaming-at-the-mouth-rabid about the Second Amendment for years. I love that Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop carries a beautifully animated Glock. Everyone else in my family can shoot.

So now it's my turn.

I got to experiment with all different calibers and all different kinds. I really like revolvers. Interestingly, since I'm ambidextrous (though trained since childhood to favor the right hand) and left-eyed, when it comes to shotguns and rifles, I'm a lefty.

I've had a lot of fun. I'd only been out shooting once in my life before, and that was seven years ago. My first shot since then, last Sunday, was just below the red circle in the center of the target. My boss was amazed, and happy to watch my progress. He's said the following:

1. I'm a natural;
2. I'm better than people who have been practicing for 8-10 years;
3. I'm the most adept girl he's seen;
4. I can go into competitions.

Since he and his wonderful wife (also my boss) have been trying to think of ways to marry me off, we all agree that might be a potential way to meet men. (As long as they know how to read.)

Anyway, I think I've discovered a new hobby. Now when I'm in a good mood, I smell the tang of gunpowder.

the iron hills of Pittsburgh

Whenever I want to revitalize myself, I buy new music. A few months ago, Marianne introduced me to the group Hem, through our music guru Kelly, and so I purchased a few of their albums, and started out with Funnel Cloud. Track 12, titled "Reservoir," is so filled with that strange expatriate's longing for home, even while not longing to live there again, that it makes my insides swell with something close to tears.

For anyone who's been to Pittsburgh and knows those iron hills, how the sometimes beautiful, sometimes plain and downright ugly houses cling to the rocks, how the trees manage to grow where the houses can't and force liminalities of forest amongst the inner city spaces, how the rivers create the downtown and the hilltops make the parks, how the years of soot stain the old churches and factories like watermarks and the streets zigzag over and under and through and around each other like a tangle of gum bands, how the lights at night in the bowls of the hills under the overcast sky are softer than almost anywhere else, this song brings it all back. If you've never been there, go.


Late last night
I missed my train
Walked back to the car and drove home again
Just outside of Pittsburgh
It's really not that far
I saw a light come shining 'cross the reservoir

The sun in California
It drops right into the sea
I took a coupla pictures, they don't mean that much to me
Just outside of Pittsburgh
I saw it from my car
The light shines to the bottom of the reservoir

The starless night
come fall around me
Over all
we left undone
I know a light
that shines forever
Howsoever we may run

The moon hung on a hillside
In eastern Tennessee
With rows of honeysuckle blooming over me
But the iron hills of Pittsburgh
Where all my memories are
Gather in the light around the reservoir

The starless night
come fall around me
Over all
we left undone
I know a light
that shines forever
Howsoever we may run
Howsoever we may run


Incidentally, since all of my accompanists turn out to be tremendous disappointments, within the next year I have a new goal of buying, and learning to play, the guitar. The lead singer's voice is right in my range.

apologia

I've been thinking, the last day or two, about the choices I've made over the last four years, and why I made them.

From the first moment I set foot in my kindergarten class, I wanted to be a teacher. The shape of the teaching changed, evolved, as I grew, until I went to Grove City with a clear vision of myself as a high school English teacher. Without second thoughts I signed up for the double major in English and Secondary Education, and prepared myself to change the world. (This has always been the primary goal -- to change the world. Teaching was the vehicle to that destination.)

And then I hated the education part of my major. The academic aspect of studying literature appealed to me much more strongly than creating worksheets and grading tests. So I dropped education. Teaching took one more evolutionary step: I'd be a college professor, instead.

Until I didn't want to go to grad school.

That's where the conscious journey began, the knowledge of the wandering. Really it started when I signed off on the Education degree, and shut the door on fourteen years of certainty; but my senior year of undergrad, watching some of my friends apply for and achieve acceptances to graduate programs, stripped off the remnant insulation of adolescence and left me standing on some windswept plateau with no map but a voice in my head saying, Go to a land I will show you.

I think that was when my faith was strongest, and that due largely to idealism and inexperience. I'd had some pretty arduous tests, certainly -- watching the near-unraveling of my family, the near-death of my sister whom I loved best of anyone in the world -- but I'd seen God pull us "out of the mire and set us on a rock" and I had no question but that he would continue to care for me in my next blind step into the absolute unknown. I'd never had to manage on my own resources before; I'd never been in actual need. So even though I had no plans, very little money, and no prospects, I had faith and that voice in my head and with few qualms I helped my parents pack the U-Haul and I moved to Indiana.

I was excited as well as terrified. Within two weeks I had found two part-time retail jobs and worked those for nine months. I had no health insurance. I managed. I found cheap medical centers when I was sick. Looking back, I think I was insane. But God was as faithful as he'd promised, and when I couldn't cope with the hours and the drudgery anymore, I found a better job at the Center for the Homeless, working with infants and toddlers -- something I'd done a lot for my summer jobs, and, though having nothing to do with my degree, something I enjoyed.

I was terrifically blessed. I met Meg and Phillip through that job. I had a few harrowing experiences, and a lot of laughs. But the kids wore me out; and then I moved up to my job in Events, and then just under a year ago, my fellow coworkers in Development, whom I had grown to enjoy and trust, got rid of me.

That was the worst experience of my life to date. Then I was thrown back on my own resources, then I really had no promises, no guarantees, and then, for the first time, I experienced the frailty of the protection that being a good person affords. The Unsinkable Sarah Peters went under. I was alone, facing unemployment, and I couldn't understand why. (There's this great passage in Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury -- gorgeous book -- that describes, perfectly, my reaction to the blows of life. I'm Will Halloway. Injustice always takes me by surprise, always hurts and confuses me, always wounds me, and I never come quite to grips with it, never quite understand.)

But now I'm working a great job with people who have become a part of my family, I've sorted out a lot of things that needed sorting, and life is on a steady upswing. I didn't have to tuck my tail and slink home. I didn't have to leave my apartment. I have fallen in love with the upper Midwest. I'm coming, increasingly, to be centered in who I am. I'm growing consistently, and rapidly, in my faith. I'm stronger. I have learned to separate some of the wheat from the chaff in my relationships. I still have a long, long way to go, and the journey is almost all uphill (cf. Christina Rossetti), but I'm moving.

In all of those flux times, I still could have gone back to school. But it's only been a temptation when I've been backed into a corner and thought myself without options. The inclination to pursue a degree in English has waned so much since college that I don't think you could offer me a full ride and get me to go.

I'm happy where I am. I still don't know if it's where I'm supposed to stay, but for now, it's good, and it's where I'm meant to be. I knew that for certain, last night.

A long time ago, at the end of my junior year in high school, I was running neck and neck with a guy for Valedictorian of our class. Our high school offered weighted courses (so that, if a student elected to take every weighted class, s/he could graduate with as high as a 4.5 GPA), and he and I were just about tied (I was a teensy bit ahead). When it came time to sign up for our senior year schedules, I had a choice to make -- to take Organic/Biochemistry, which Nick was taking, and which was certainly weighted; or to take Publishing Seminar, our competitive yearbook course, which wasn't weighted at all, but which a lot of my friends were taking, and was ambitious in its own way, and from which I'd learn a lot.

I took Pub Seminar. I knew it would probably cost me my class rank. It did. Nick beat me out by one hundredth of a point. And it galled me, a little bit. He was popular (though not very nice; I had a lot of people come up to me that year and whisper viciously, "It should be you, you're nice, Sarah"); I was picked on and awkward and badly dressed and school was the only thing I cared about or did; but I loved Pub, and my classmates and my teacher, and they were a fantastic support system throughout the year, and I had a lot of freedoms to write articles and roam the halls during class hours without a hall pass and yank people out of class and ask them intrusive questions, and so I didn't regret my choice.

And a few weeks ago my mother called me to tell me that one of the kids in our home church, who is a senior in my high school this year, and who is taking honors English from my favorite teacher of all time, came home to tell his mother the following incident from his English class (his mother then passed it on to mine):

"All these girls in my class were crying about their class rank because they weren't as high as they wanted, and Mrs. C. stood up and said, 'You're looking at this entirely the wrong way. Eight years ago Sarah Peters made a choice. She could have taken an honors course and had the Valedictorianship, or she could have taken a course with no weighted grade that would have made her happy. She picked the one that made her happy, and she made the better choice, and I admire her for it.'"

And of course my jaw hit my chest when Mom told me this on the phone (having this woman's admiration is like having the admiration of Queen Elizabeth I, I wish there were a medal for it), but it also made me realize, since I'd been questioning my decisions, that these are the kinds of choices I've always made. I have a great mind. I would have done well in a graduate English program. But I didn't want it. It wouldn't have made me happy. Or satisfied. Or fulfilled.

Because I've always lived with an eye on the future. Someday I'll be great when --. My life is going to be perfect if--. When this finally happens then--. And I've had a hard time embracing the present. Embracing life. And what I chose to do, when I graduated college, was to build a life for myself, in the now. With nothing but my own hands and eyes of faith. Those eyes have failed from time to time, but God is faithful (as Scripture says, he cannot disown himself), and he's held his hands under mine when mine have shaken, and I'm building that life.

And I would rather have undergone all the heartache and uncertainty and suffering of the past three years than have read about it in a book. I would rather have faced what I've faced than written a paper on someone else's creative rendition of the same experience. It's not that study is meaningless, it's not that writing is bad (I would never in my life say that -- hello, writer!) , or that my friends who have gone on to study are wasting their time; no, they're fulfilling their own destinies and callings, as I'm fulfilling mine.

And in its way, this is my calling. I haven't wasted my time blundering around: Not all those who wander are lost. One of the things I believe in most strongly about life is the struggle, and I find it best in the field, where I am. Working a 9-5. Fighting with hospitals and insurance companies. Sitting in the animal ER with the cat. Pounding out my own taxes. Ulcerating over money. Loving and losing. Learning to stand up for myself. Battling depression. Switching meds. Bouncing from job to job till I find one that fits. Casting about for my ultimate purpose. Waiting for that word telling me I've found it. Listening hard. Hearing a voice that almost sounds like my mother's, early in the morning just as I'm coming out of sleep, saying my name.

Something amazing? This IS amazing. This is living on the edge, where the next wave might bring a shipwreck, or an enemy vessel, or an iceberg, or an island, or a strange country, or home. It's lonely as hell -- there are nights when I cry myself to sleep, wishing so hard for a warm body bigger than my ten-pound cat's in the bed next to me that my whole body aches -- but there are compensations of joy so intense it seems my skin's expanding with the pressure of my soul against it. Simple things -- the silhouettes of pine trees, irrigators and barns against the purple-blue wide-open Michigan skyline just after dusk. Daffodils "on a hillside like a wall of new TVs." The neighbors' lawn mower. Slips of the tongue when I'm arranging to visit Meg and Phillip and I tell Meg that "I'll probably get home right after you do." My boss's wife saying over dinner, "Sarah can do no wrong. Mess with her and you mess with us."

I wouldn't trade any of it for the most prestigious degree in the world. I'm looking at broadening my academic knowledge, though the field has changed to theology instead of English. But I'm still not sure, so I'd start slow. An evening class, next semester. Because I think the difference I can make, I can make outside of school. If school is where I belong, fine, I'll go. But for right now, I'm fine where I am.

It's been a long, hard pilgrimage thus far. But I've walked it myself, and I wouldn't go back and take any other path. Because it's brought me to where I am, and this is where I am supposed to be.

it's a boy! no, it's a girl! no, it's a...well, it's fun, anyway.

This fun little site, which I found on a friend's blog, swallows paste-ins of texts and tells you, based apparently on an algorithm (which works best on exerpts over 500 words), whether it thinks the author is male or female:

http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

Have fun! I found out, to my interest, that while my fiction declares me to be overwhelmingly female, my blog posts and essays tip the scale decidedly in a masculine direction. All I can say is, Dr. Price would be proud. So this one's for him.

fresh(er) starts

X
Mold mouths the rims of the dishes
in the sink.
I should do the housecleaning.

Angels come in unexpected forms sometimes. This week the form of choice was my loud, energetic friend Jess. She has a degree in chemistry. She seldom speaks below a shout. She's always exuberant. And when, a week ago, she heard me mumble that I haven't been able to wash my dishes in about three weeks, she sat up straight and said, "What night are you free? I'll come over and wash them."

And she did. I threw a chuck roast (marinated in oil/red wine/garlic/carrot/onion/bay leaf/thyme/parsley) in the slow cooker with carrots, diced tomatoes, garlic, bacon, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and black olives for dinner, we watched a couple episodes of Bones Season One, and she washed all my dishes. We folded my clothes. We chattered. It was nice not to sit alone in my apartment all evening. It was amazing to see my countertop. And I was distractedly, exhaustedly grateful.

There were a couple of sticky moments -- not just sticky in the coffee-residue-at-the-bottom-of-the-twenty-first-mug sense. Like when she told me to put in some "upbeat" music. I stood in the middle of the kitchen floor and stared at her. "Umm...I uhh....I don't have any." I mean, my music isn't all depressing and glum -- not all of it -- it's just...indie. The best I could do was music that was happy in a sad kind of way. The other sticky moment was folding my clothes when she found this hoodie in my laundry pile:



which she declared she hated, and which, to be fair, I don't wear at all when I'm actually feeling that way. Otherwise I just think it's funny.

But we had a good time, and last night I kept out of the house and talked on the phone for awhile with my childhood best friend Hill and ate out with Megster and Phillip.

So things are looking up. A little headachey today (hm, maybe it was the sangria at Don Pablo's), but the sun's out, and it's almost Friday.

Oh, and according to Phillip, Baliwood's most popular soap take place in a call center. Every week features a call from The Irate American. I find this hilarious.

but joy cometh...

Another sunshiny day in South Bend.

I had a follow-up appointment with my new doctor in Granger. He took one look at me, quickly addressed the headache question, and said, "Are you ready to change your antidepressant?"

I was a little taken aback. I'm used to having to walk into a doctor's office with my own diagnosis, and I've been paying poor attention to myself lately. And my old doctor wouldn't have noticed a problem with my antidepressant if I'd walked into his office with a knife in my hand.

So we're trying something new; I'm a little trepidacious, but hopeful: This guy knows his meds. And he wants to see me back in another week and a half, so he's keeping close tabs. We'll see.

AND I talked to my boss's wife's tax man, who assured me that the Indiana Department of Revenue isn't coming to take me away (haha), and I actually have a ton more money to call my own than I thought, thanks to some strangely lucky breaks. So after a month of hyperventilating money stress, I'm getting a decent-sized check back from the government, and have a nicely padded bank account.

Now I just have to bark at the insurance company.

but not in nottingham

Well, I guess Prince John won't be evicting me anytime soon for nonpayment of taxes. In fact, he'll be paying ME something, which is nice.

Baaaahhhh I hate dealing with the frigging taxes. Fortunately I don't make enough money and don't own enough valuables or any property for it to take more than three or four hours to get through.

The problem with taxes in general is that -- well, that first of all, the government takes your money away from you and then makes you tell them how they did it; explain THAT one -- is that it's all so complicated. I'm becoming a fan of the flat tax. Anything to avoid the foul 1040s. Sure, you'd have to pay almost half again as much for anything you bought, but at least it would all be paid in one lump sum. Or something. I hate dealing with anything pertaining to accounts, so I don't pretend to understand the particulars. But people, this system SUCKS. Especially because, if you're doing your own taxes, and you aren't sure of one piece of information, or you got a wrong piece of information from an employer, you start to worry if they're going to hurl you in prison and strip you of your citizenship if you turn out to be wrong.

But, on a more positive note, YAY, they're e-filed and just waiting for confirmation.

Now if I could just slink out from under the nagging suspicion that the axe is about to fall somehow. TurboTax doesn't make mistakes, does it? And I told them everything I had in front of me, everything I knew...

It's worse than finals.

hrmmr*yawwwn*gmrghMonday

Some days....there just isn't enough coffee in the world.

changes

There are a few, so I'm feeling listy.

1. Pslightly Psycho Kevin is moving out in May, to be replaced by the Absent Landlord and his family, inclusive of a wife, one small (and adorable) toddler, and one or two foster kids. This should be interesting. Good, I think, because things like broken basement doors and wonky electrical wiring will be fixed more quickly. Bad, potentially, because the living room is located directly beneath my bedroom, and I can imagine evenings complete with loud TVs and screaming children. Also I have to come up with a new acronym; AL won't fit anymore. I'm considering the Live-In Landlord (Yikes!), or LILY for short.

2. I've finally gotten mad enough at my insurance company to call and bawl them out tomorrow. I sat down with a pen and piece of scrap paper today and calculated that my medical bills from last December, which, thanks to my own suffocating poverty (until now) and the overwhelming nonsympathy of multiple hospital billing departments, have been threatening my credit (but not actually damaging it -- I do work for a lawyer), have skyrocketed about four hundred dollars beyond my deductible. Unforfuckinggiveable. I looked over my various hospital/doctor's bills and found very little insurance coverage on most of them. This could lead to a tirade about the state of American health plans, but won't; I'm just going to call a few places tomorrow to straighten out some payment plans and then give the insurance company a stern talking-to. (These are things I have been dealing with all year, which have definitely contributed to poor sleep, tight muscles, depression, and headache. But I haven't talked about them until a light at the end of the tunnel appeared. What was the point?)

3. Consternation and much mental wrestling with thoughts of the future have still produced nothing definitive. I have a few embryonic ideas, which are far better than the nothing I'd come up with so far (I've spent the last three years in a limbo of What-the-Bleep-Do-I-Do-Now?, working six different jobs and sorting through my changing passions and constant gifts), but again, no "go here, do this"; just a "wait here, do this," so I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, with a twist: buckle my bootie down and start taking my writing seriously. I did pretty well for awhile during Lent with the getting up at five a.m. thing, but that really petered out, and it's time to get back on the horse. There are a lot of things to write about -- some fiction, the church, Christianity, the Bible, etc. -- a lot of things I love, and a lot of raw blog material waiting to be harvested and threshed. Now I need to set down some concrete goals, but I've been sitting on this talent for way too long, and it's collecting no interest.

4. I have a new goal of regular church attendance. Nothing beyond that for the time being; I just want to go every Sunday on a regular basis through the end of the summer, before I look at ways to get more involved. Church is one of my bigger problems. I'm afraid of it, even when I enjoy it and want to go. I'm always sure that at some point it's going to turn out to be terrible, that the people will ostracize me, that I won't fit in, that it will be high school all over again, but in a worse way, because these are supposed to be my spiritual family. When it comes to other Christians, I've tended to feel like the little latchkey kid looking in the candy shop window at everybody else eating jelly beans and having fun. Maybe I'll meet another urchin like me, another Charlie Bucket or Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn or Little Arliss or Caddie Woodlawn or whatever, and we'll watch for awhile and rub our grubby noses against the glass and stick our tongues out and laugh about it and then go running off looking for frogs in the creek, but my "place" has always been on the margins. Sure, wah, get over it; so I've been trying to attend, and wanting to get into the swing, but I'm still afraid it's going to collapse on me and I'll be worse off, more hurt and more disillusioned than I was before. So I'm taking it slow. Baby steps. Regular attendance first. Not counting on finding friends. Then praying a lot and at the end of the summer seeing if maybe there's something more there I could be doing, and particularly some small group or Bible study I could join.

5. Grrr, taxes. (And where did I put the W-2? Where? I remember when it was handed to me. Now where did I put it? And why do I do this? Why?) But yay, later filing date. (Procrastination, hm, that's not a change at all. BUT, I'm doing my taxes all on my own this year, with no help, so that's a change.)

6. More hot baths. Fewer sore muscles. Candles. Book. Mm.

7. Spring.

break

Yeah, a day off, a lot of sleep, a lot of doing nothing, and a deposited paycheck all help. A lot.

So do the Harry Potter movies. I can't seem to get enough HP lately. I've reread Book 6 all the way through this week, with smatterings of Book 5, and now I need to rummage around in the basement to where I think I may have left Book 3 (which was the first HP I read all the way through, and the first to hook me on the story, and will always hold a special niche in my story-obsessed heart).

Sometimes it's hard to watch movies alone. TV on DVD, no problem. I have all of Buffy and all of Angel and a whole bunch of other TV shows and that's always fine. But I have a tonne of movies I'd love to watch but never get around to...some of them are just tough to watch alone. Harry Potter, though, I can do. Readily. Besides, with HP I have this habit of rewinding to catch certain facial expressions or vocal inflections of the characters over and over to help my own interpretations, which would probably annoy a companion.

Can't can't can't can't can't wait for the HP5 movie and the HP7 Book to come out. O.M.G.

Bed.

obliviate

If I throw myself hard enough into my job, nothing else will matter. So I've thrown myself into my job.

And I've been doing it fantastically well. So well, in fact, that I feel like I'm earning my extraordinary raise. So well that I'm managing, with creative ideas, to overhaul a few of the office systems. So well that the front office is becoming, well and truly, my domain. So well that my boss's son, himself going to law school and looking to join his dad in the practice in two years' time, gets panicky at the thought that I might have moved on by the time he becomes a partner.

So well that come day's end I'm too exhausted to process anything but my exhaustion. Which is, after all the goal. I'm becoming terribly efficient.

But there's a catch. It only works when I'm alone. I spent some time with friends last night, and things I thought weren't bothering me had me close to tears, and I realized, it's been a Bad Head Month. A long one.

There are reasons. It's not just the depression. That factors in, of course, but even "normal" (har) people have bad weeks and months. The "understood boundaries of my self" have undergone continuous strain the past four weeks. There's my own health. There are the usual What To Do with My Life and When Do I Do It crises. There's the I'm Always Alone Factor. But those are constants. The headaches wear me down, true. But still -- business as usual.

The burdens that made the harness straps creak were mostly the cat, and money. I'm an Introvert. I receive my replenishment from solitude (yes, I was just mourning my aloneness. But I mean, I need companionship. You can have solitude and still have companionship), and to have solitude, I need a sanctuary, a safe place, a refuge, a hiding place, a hobbit hole, a cave, a hermitage. That's my home. And Simon's sickness shattered the peace, serenity, and safety of my home. Instead of a place where I could retreat from stress and relax, home became my primary source of stress. And after awhile I couldn't deal.

Not to mention that the cat's bills maxed out my credit card and the last of my health savings account. I'm on my own, kids. Without that raise, I wouldn't be able to do it. Which makes me feel both enormously grateful and absolutely terrified. My parents help where they can, but when it comes down to it, I'm my own support system, and I can't count on another human being to bail me out. It's just me.

So all of that makes the Aloneness worse. I don't have anyone around to give me a hug, or to say, Sarah, calm down, you're making this way bigger of a deal than it is, or, simply, cool it, it's going to be fine and you know it, or, I'm here. Because I know I freak out over nothing when I'm tired and stressed, and that when I have a Bad Head phase I keep bad hours and don't sleep enough and don't eat enough (six or seven or maybe more pounds have mysteriously vanished from my person) and imagine the worst possible catastrophes in order to "prepare myself" (except what a ridiculous thing to do, you can't prepare yourself for that kind of stuff anyway) and stop cleaning the house and lose all my energy and stop cooking and that the only things I have the energy for are working, reading, listening to Sufjan and watching movies or TV on DVD and don't feel like talking to anyone or writing or blogging and wish I could have a week off so that I could do nothing but lie curled on my bed and sleep and do nothing and just heal.

Yeah, it's bad, friends. I know it's bad because of everything in the above paragraph, and because at the bottom of it all I don't feel all that sad, I just don't feel much of anything, and that's when it's bad bad. But I get up and I do my job and I distract myself and I'll pull through it. Because God's love is still there, it's the one thing besides the nothing that's coming through still clear. And the weather is bound to improve someday, that will help.

When the night falls
I carry myself to the fortress
Of your glorious cost
Oh how I may seek your fortress
When the night falls,
We see the star of wonder
Wonderful night falls,
We see you, we see you there

I see the stars coming down there,
Coming down there to the yard
I see the stars coming down there
Coming down there to my heart

[Those days, days, days run away
like horses over the hills...]

odds and ends

I had a lovely Easter -- spent it with my boss's family -- my boss, his wife and son Rob and son's fiancee, my friend Stacy -- at the family home in Michigan. We enjoyed heated conversations on the present state of social affairs, an excellent lamb roast (I've never had lamb for Easter, but does anything make more sense?), and a good, relaxed time all around.

I've always been hard-pressed to choose a favorite between Christmas and Easter; I love them both, and the one that's in season is always my favorite. Christmas embraces the joys of everything sacred and secular, as perfectly noted in Sufjan Stevens' "Christmas Tube Socks" essay accompanying his "Songs for Christmas" album released last November. It's a hodgepodge, a mishmash, a fantastic revelry in the holy and the hilarious, and the lines are finely blurred.

Easter, on the other hand, is different. The juxtaposition between sacred and profane is clumsier, the rift between Christian and pagan wider, more easily identified (cf. Eddie Izzard's commentary in "Dress to Kill"). And Easter, preceded as it is by Lent, and followed by Pentecost, is surrounded by a starkness, an austerity, that throws its clearest meaning into sharp relief against the backdrop of bunnies, eggs, plastic grass and marshmallows. Christmas is entirely a celebration of a beautiful mystery: Incarnation. Easter comemmorates three days that encompassed the most terrible despair, and the most terrible joy, of earth's history. Seventy-two hours of gut-wrenching spiritual whiplash.

Bit dramatic if you don't go for the whole faith thing. But there it is, for those who do. Nietzsche got his moment on Good Friday, Saturday, and that very early Sunday: God is dead. Even we couldn't argue with that, if he'd said it then. The disciples didn't. (Well, whether or not they really KNEW Jesus was God, at that moment, is up for debate.) There was a stone in front of God's tomb. And then...there wasn't. Something incredible happened. In seventy-two hours everything turned around. Violently. Darkness fell over the earth in the middle of the day, the temple curtain was ripped in two, there were earthquakes and some of the holy dead came walking out of their tombs, alive, and Jesus was back. And nothing's been the same ever since.

I love Easter best because everything hinges on it. I love it because it's so simple, because thousands of years of orchestration, hundreds of prophecies, nine months of gestation, thirty-three years of life, and three years of ministry contracted to three days...contracted to that one moment, that one second, when the walls of Jesus' heart shuddered with blood and the walls of the tomb whispered with the echo of a breath. When the glory of God that left the temple in Isaiah chapter 6 looked through the newly opened eyes of the once-dead Christ (Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days). And I love it because it foreshadows the fulfillment of his promise when he said, Because I live, you also shall live...

Anyway. Yay Easter!

So work is going well -- it's been kind of consuming my life. I have trouble with balance. My life inner ear tends to go all wonky and I fixate on one aspect and let the other ones go to pot. So right now my house is a disaster zone and I think they might be calling in the Health Inspectors about my dirty dishes, but the office is about to become a phoenix of order and cleanliness. I've been working massive overtime, battling the ongoing sinus problem & headaches, and struggling to pay my medical bills (damn you, medical bills!), but the light at the end of the tunnel is nearing, and this time I'm confident that it's really the light of the summer sun and not the headlight of an oncoming train.

an exerpt from East Coker, in honor of Good Friday

IV
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

V
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

~T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

accountability: a survey: take 2

Okay, scrap that last, it was way too specific; I couldn't even answer the questions. Can we try it free association style? Please? (I'm pretending you just gave me a pitying/resigned/I'm-your-friend-and-you're-looking-so-cute-and-beseeching-so-I'll-say-yes-but-I-secretly-hate-you look.) Goody!

Right, so I say, "accountability," and you say whatever comes into your head.

Ready?

Accountability.

Go.

to a recalcitrant friend

Dear Mr. Cold Front:

I really must protest your untimely re-arrival in my neighborhood. I understand that you make your circuits throughout most regions of the world on a semi-regular basis, namely, during the late autumn, winter, and early spring seasons, when I find you a most welcome companion. I further understand that you do not actually violate any law of nature in visiting me at the beginning of April; however, your persistent company, this late into the spring season, is becoming increasingly unwelcome.

You must understand that I have many responsibilities and obligations to fulfill which your sudden presence is rendering difficult. As an unmarried individual with gainful employment, I dedicate the majority of my waking hours to my job. This, naturally, requires a great deal of energy and mental focus, which necessitates copious and regular amounts of rest.

The general depression (marked by a decline in productivity) caused by unseasonable weather would, I think, be reason enough in itself for you to vacate the premises, should you pause to consider your effect on those around you. Also, it is beginning to seem that you need a map to direct you to your next stop, which I would think you would find embarrassing. The Canada geese are enough of a laughingstock across the entirety of the North American continent, without lumping you into the mix.

Furthermore, for the past three weeks, all of the aforementioned requirements for a fully productive life have suffered significant depletions due to the poor health of my cat, who has required continual and watchful care, and also due to my chronic headaches.

It is these last for which I hold you most responsible, Mr. Cold Front. Your accompanying frigid winds have often, in my short trips between the door and the car, reduced me to tears due to intense sinus pain. Said pain persists throughout the day, perceived as tight bands wound along my cheekbones and across my temples, and pressing inside my nose. As a result, my concentration has been sharply limited, as well as my energy levels and enjoyment of life.

It is my hope that you will reconsider your venue in this neighborhood and migrate, in a VERY timely fashion, to a more suitable region of the globe. Antarctica, I believe, is looking for residents such as yourself this time of year. I'm sure your particular characteristics would enjoy a more popular status in that climate.

I have appreciated your presence throughout the duration of February, and I look forward to your return in December. (You were a bit late, in 2006. Please feel free to arrive and unpack your bags somewhat closer to December first this year; I'll always have a mug of hot cocoa waiting for you around that time.) But "for all things there is a season," etc. & etc., and it is my understanding that now is the time for fledgling birds, flowers, and sinus drainage.

Wishing you well on your way, and thanking you for your cooperation and understanding,

Sincerely yours,

Sarah

accountability: a survey

So I was talking with my mom yesterday, and the subject of accountability came up. I was surprised to discover that her experience was vastly different from mine.

So I thought I would ask you, friends, Grovers, random readers: If you have had any experience in the church, or in a "churched" environment such as a Christian high school or college campus, with the idea of "accountability partners," what was it like for you?

I have several particular questions in mind:

(1) Did you ever have an accountability partner yourself, or even a series of accountability partners? If so:
a.) Was it a deliberate arrangement, with both parties agreeing to meet on a regular basis to "be accountable to each other," or did it arise naturally out of a mutually supportive friendship?
b.) How did you select your accountability partners?
c.) Did you share similar struggles, or were your personalities, backgrounds and challenges widely different?
d.) How long did each accountability relationship, particularly of the contractual variety, last?

(2) If you didn't participate in this phenomenon, did you observe it in others? What are/were your observations?

(3) Did you find the "accountability partnership" to be a source of encouragement, support, and joy, or a source of discomfort, discouragement, self-judgment, and despair? Did you look forward to your weekly/biweekly/monthly/whatever meetings as a chance to share joys and progress, or dread them as a time of tallying the good against the bad, with the bad usually winning out?

(4) Do you, if you have some experience with the "accountability partnership," fall into the 12-20-year age group, the 21-30, the 31-40, or the 41+?

(5) What was your predominant religious, or, if Christian (as I'm supposing respondents will generally be), denominational background? Was "accountability" widely practiced, taught, or encouraged by your denomination and/or church, or did you experience it from another source?

(6) Was the idea of accountability important in your family life as a child/teenager?

I'll keep my own experiences and opinions, for the moment, to myself, and follow them up after I've heard from a few people. I do hope to hear from some of my fellow GCCers, since this practice seemed pretty widespread there, and I know a lot of us Grovers came from surprisingly variant denominational backgrounds. But I'm also looking for input from as wide a selection of sources as possible, so if you have something to say, please, chime in!

because he turned his ear to me...and new plans

I got a raise yesterday. A substantial one. One that slightly exceeds my salary at the Center (and that's only based on a 35-hour work week). And, since it's hourly, it has potential to be even more.

So, yeah, I cried. In gratitude, and relief. I worked out a new budget -- one that will allow me to pay my bills, live comfortably, pay off my various debts within two years, and save.

I feel...settled. Or on the way to being so.

My summer project: Produce picking! My boss's wife is getting rid of her deep freezer, and giving it to me. (She won't take any money for it. I'm trying to figure out how -- or whether -- to sneak in a "loan to the business," since I help work on the books from time to time. I can do stubborn, too. But I don't want them getting mad at me, and I always have massive conflict about taking gifts, especially when they've done so much for me, and I feel like I have nothing to hand them back and I don't EVER want to look or feel or have them feel like I'm mooching or taking advantage, but I want to just accept the gift if that's what they really want.) I'm pretty sure it will fit and be able to plug into the basement. Hello, strawberries, green beans, cherries, peaches, blueberries, rhubarb, applesauce, and corn! Hello, canned tomatoes! Hello, jam and jelly! Hello, grape juice! These are all the things Mom used to can and freeze when I was a tyke, and it helped us save a lot of money. Plus I plan on learning to master the pie this summer, and when I want pie, I don't want canned pie filling, and I don't want to shell out buku bucks on store-frozen fruit. Gimme the real deal, the locally grown, hand-picked, straight-from-the-mouth-of-summer goodness. And I get to play with other things, like dilly beans and pickles.

I find I'm increasingly restless if I don't have an ongoing Susie Homemaker project to keep me occupied, so I think that one's going to do nicely for this summer, now that my apartment is nearly perfected. It also means I get to buy new kitchen toys (which will fit beautifully into my new sparkling budget): a fruit-and-vegetable strainer and grinder attachment for my KitchenAid stand mixer, a pressure cooker, a juicer. It'll mean sweltering days laboring over boiling water in the kitchen in August, newspapers spread with peaches all over the basement floor, hot jars of grape juice taking up all my counterspace in the fall. [Lovely sigh of delight.]

But first my landlord needs to get his @$$ in gear and fix the frame of the basement door, which someone attempted to break into a few weeks ago, and which !surprise! hasn't been fixed yet.

Which leads me to my next big project, which will be taking place over the next year, two at the most: buying a house. Yes, folks, I'm ready to put the renter's life down in favor of a mortgage. I'm thinking a small house, with a small upstairs and a small basement, lots of room for Simon to frolic, a yard for light gardening, MY OWN SPACE. No one else's music blasting the soles of my feet through the floor, no one else banging up my stairs at ungodly (or not my) hours, no arguing with or bothering or pestering the landlord to fix in three weeks what can be fixed in three days, no negotiating costs with anyone (I'll have to pay for everything, ulgh, but the responsibility is worth the freedom). MINE. Safer neighborhood. Room to put guests. A couch-sized couch. Dining space. Closet space. Cupboard space. LAUNDRY. My very own piano, waiting for me in my parents' dining room.

So yes, I'm moving up the By-the-Time-I'm-Thirty-One-I-Will-Have Goals considerably (the house was the real biggie; a king-sized bed and a dog will follow naturally), but it's time. Like in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door -- it's time to Deepen. I've been whirling around in my young adulthood in a farandolaic frenzy, and it's been fun, and I've learned a lot...but it's time to Deepen, stop running around, be still, root, unfurl my fronds and become a mitochondria.

I'll probably relocate to Michigan. The housing market in Niles, just north of the Bend, is decently reasonable, it will be nice to deal with taxes from only one state, and I won't have to pay what amounts to a property tax on my car every year like I do in Indiana. Plus in my time in the Midwest I've fallen head-over-heels in love with Michigan (not so much with Indiana). Niles is a big enough town to have all the necessary big stores -- Lowe's, Meijer, Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut -- as well as the smaller, quainter shops and markets -- and Niles is close enough to South Bend to merit a trip to the Farmer's Market, visits to friends, etc. But the factors that made South Bend more ideal than Michigan -- namely, proximity to all the "happenin' places" -- don't matter much anymore. I seldom go out; I prefer to visit, or entertain at home, or entertain myself at home and hang out with Simon. I enjoy my quiet life. And if I like it this much, I might as well move to a more scenic location and line a nest that is truly mine, closer to Lake Michigan, fruit picking...and Meg and Phillip. :)

i suck at money

Well, it's time to crack back down on the old finances.

Taking a four thousand dollar pay cut from my job at the Center to this one has been harder than I thought, and I'm seeing the difficulty over time. Fortunately my pay now is hourly, so if I put in the work, I get the pay; but I've been wearing myself out and my spending habits still need adjustment.

This week is pay week and I'm going back to the cash-only system -- no more debit card. (Debit card = evil.)

The irritating thing is that I don't go insane and buy things like new cars or expensive clothes...I buy little things, like bedspreads, cupboards, and wooden crates. But they still add up. It just doesn't seem fair. But I have medical bills to pay off -- mine and the gato's -- so there you have it. I'm going to be eating a lot of leftovers, buying fewer groceries, and living simpler...and paying only with cash. And when the weekly cash allowance is gone...tough.

Sigh. Time to go roll up the sleeves...

well, hi there

Yesterday was hot. Blazing hot, after six weeks in the single-digit degrees. Having celebrated the advent of Spring by shaving, I wore a pretty, flowy brown skirt that hits about mid-calf and a flower-print blouse over a tangerine tanktop. After work, I took off the blouse, leaving me in the tank -- modest straps, V-neck with some fun half-ruffling that comes a little low, empire cut -- which, while not in any way immodest, is admittedly on the clingy side. To complete the attire I wore casual open-backed sandals with chunky heels, big dangly bronze earrings with matching necklace, and sunglasses.

So I stopped at a gas station on the way home, one with an open garage attached, which I passed on my way inside, and as I walked in and approached the guy behind the counter, he stepped back and his eyes went enormously wide in a strange combination of delight, appreciation, recognition, and horror -- which I didn't understand until I heard the walkie-talkie in his hand -- presumably connecting him to the garage -- crackle and roar, "OH. MY. GOD."

Looking half-protective and half like he wanted to fall through the floor a few feet, the attendant said into the talkie, "Don't say anything. Mike. Don't--say--ANYTHING." He then proceeded to wait on me in an effusion of demonstrated apology, which I found cute, even offering to throw away the garbage I was digging out of my purse, and as he was ringing me up, he muttered, "I don't want him to say anything."

I thanked him, smiled, and left.

But see, those kinds of experiences always leave me feeling weird. Not so much like a bombshell, but like I've grown a tail or I'm bleeding profusely or there's toilet paper sticking to my back or something I don't know about.

Still, it was funny.

update

After three consecutive days at the Animal ER (I have now met all the rotating physicians and most of the assistants and they know my cat and my voice), Simon's systems seem to be in mostly working order. He had a urinary blockage, so they had to catheterize and flush him out, and then he wouldn't use the litterbox at all, so last night I had to lock him in my bedroom with the litterbox and a bowl of water until he peed. But this morning he did his business as usual, so I think everything's going to pan out (haha), and now I'm just left to recover from the exhaustion of the headaches and a weekend of no sleep and stress and worry about the cat and the finances.

I've been holding up fairly well under it all -- it's taken me until today to start getting irritable, which is pretty remarkable. Simon has a follow-up with the regular vet on Saturday, and I've been seeing my doctors here in town about the headaches, which continue to a lesser degree, and which we still suppose are mainly sinus-infection-related (nasssty, evil, longlasting sinus infection), so hopefully after a couple of weeks I'll have more or less fully recovered.

In the meantime...damn, I'm tired. I think it's time to do what the Momster suggested awhile back, and switch for the time being to Styrofoam bowls and paper plates, because I just don't freaking have the energy to wash dishes. Sad, very sad.

blessed be

So, my headaches are better, but now Simon is bad again.

The temporary verdict on the headaches is that it's a sinus infection from January, which I never treated, and which never actually went away. The young, "chill" doctor at the U of M reluctantly prescribed an antibiotic and the strongest dosage of Motrin a human being is capable of consuming (as he said), and the combination has been delightfully, amazingly effective.

Laura and Keith are visiting this weekend (and for some reason, having that extra parking space behind my house for overnight guests -- since the neighbors across the hall don't have a car -- makes me feel like a real grown-up), and we were settling in last night on stomachs burgeoning with good Mexican food to watch some Star Wars when Simon's ear-splitting shrieks cut through the Mos Eisley Cantina music. I called the Animal ER (a number I never really wanted to have saved into my phone) and we packed him up and took him over. Three endless, hot hours later (that place, so freaking cold the last time I visited, was a furnace last night) we left with nothing very conclusive but a few suggestions.

The vet thinks he may have a UTI. The ultrasound revealed no stones in his bladder or kidneys, but his bladder was completely empty, so they couldn't do a urinalysis. So she prescribed an antibiotic anyway. She thinks he may have torn something in his leg or hips (the injury from last time) and it resurfaced because I hung a new cabinet in the kitchen which he figured out how to jump on top of (it's much higher than the top of my head), and he possibly has some early onset arthritis. So she also prescribed an anti-inflammatory. She also wrote a prescription, based upon my reports of his difficulty with urination (because all of his problems, even the pain in his hips, arise when he attempts to use the litterbox), for a medication for urethra spasms (a human medication which I would have to fill at a people pharmacy).

I like this vet because she basically said, This will get you through the weekend until you can see your regular doctor on Monday, which will be Much Cheaper. (It's eighty bucks just for walking through the ER door, plus whatever they do for him.) So I took him home and dosed him up and fell in bed...and woke up to him crying in the litterbox at 8:30 this morning. So I threw on shoes and a jacket and drove to the (completely empty) 24-hour CVS to get the people pills, only to be told by the lazy-ass pharmacist on duty that they wouldn't have it ready until tomorrow, at which point I took the prescription across the street to the 24-hour Walgreens and told THAT pharmacist I was having some trouble getting it filled and needed it today, and he said he could do that, but it would take at least an hour to mix up the dosage, which is totally fine.

So I'm waiting till I can go pick it up, and loving up my little guy, and trying not to plan for the worst (which Laura says is ineffective thinking anyway, because you can never actually prepare for the worst, so it's not worth getting all worked up about), but really it's horrendously stressful to spend all my time at home listening for him to use the litterbox and waiting for him to start crying and growling and licking himself and not being able to do a damn thing to make it better. And he's such a sweetheart too. He never bites, he never holds a grudge, and when it's bad, he comes dragging himself looking for me.

Sigh.

Now, onto something completely unrelated, and that's Star Wars. I was deceived by misleading packaging into buying the version of the originals that I didn't want. I wanted the Originals. The old, campy, filmed-in-somebody's-half-dug-swimming-pool originals. The ones I watched through my childhood, the ones that spawned hundreds of thousands of bad fan fic, the ones my parents went to on dates ("in my beginning is my end"), those ones. So I bought the boxed set that said "the classic movies." I thought "digitally restored and remastered" meant, you know, touched up a little bit.

No, no. It meant full of all the technocrap that George Lucas can't seem to help putting into his stuff. Mr. Worship the Force of Technology. High Priest Sacrifice the Story on the Altar of Special Effects. Captain Forget the Plot, Lookee What I Can Do!

I was all caught up in the hype when the Special Edition Episodes IV-VI came out, like almost everyone else; but it wore off quickly, and in the wake of sharp disappointment in Episodes I-III I haven't been in the mood to watch anything Star Wars until now...and then I wanted to go back to the beginning. To the before. The genesis.

And I couldn't. No, the Tattooine canyon R2-D2 first travels through just had to be changed to look more "alien." The Mos Eisley streets had to be crawling with digital alien rats. The people walking around had to be edited out and replaced by dinosaur-type critters.

Meanwhile there are droids walking around made of garbage cans. And Shop Vacs. And cameras. And clowns. Did we edit those out to make them look cooler? No.

See, and there's where the problem lies. Lucas was so excited to dispense his "original vision" to everyone that he forgot his original effect -- that the true glory of the first Episodes IV-VI lay in their campiness, in their home-done touches, in their "let's use what we have to hand" methodology. Maybe in his head it was all perfect. But if the technology had been able to support his orginal vision, I'm thinking they all would have been as bad as the most recent three, and we'd only be watching them now through the sarcastic lens of Mystery Science Theater. Because the originals had heart. They were campy. Some of the effects were bad. And when you take away that obvious humor -- haha, look, that droid is a garbage can! -- you take away what made the story fun as well as poignant. You take away most of the audience connectivity. And you completely erase the nostalgia.

Which, since he didn't do that entirely -- didn't make over every cheesy effect, every silly puppet -- but only added a few things like rats and dinosaurs and ambulatory Jabbas, he created, instead of something even more glorious and cohesive, something choppy and dissonant. You jump from trash cans and hovercraft races against a blue screen to way too sharp and clear backdrops replete with state-of-the-art, soulless digital aliens about whom you care nothing. And then back again. He made his epic schizophrenic. There's a subjective breakdown in the delivery of the narrative. And it sucks.

So I had to take back the deceptive "classic" version and buy instead the "Limited Edition" version that includes, as a bonus, the original theatrical releases.

So not only is George Lucas a big sellout prostitute to his own imagination, and a big liar on his packaging, he's trying to pretend that the originals never even existed, and hoping to wipe them from the memory of the earth.

Yeah, right.

the thorn in my head

The headache is back. I stayed home from work yesterday. My boss's wife is taxiing me up to Ann Arbor today to see about getting a referral to a specialist. These don't seem like normal migraines. I'm wondering if they're somehow psychosomatic, stress- or depression-related, and what can be done to avert them.

I think I need to get back in therapy.

Looks like money's going to get tighter. But that's okay; I need to get better.

Anyway. Looking at a computer screen hurts. I'll keep you posted.

i will never challenge Monday again

Do you hear that, Monday? I give up. I surrender. I will slink through your corridors with my head meekly down and try to stay out of your way. I will keep my gloves off and my fists tucked in my pockets. I will wear a raincoat and a suit of armor. But I'm out of the boxing ring. You win.

Because my right uppercut is nasty, but Monday's left hook is worse.

Last Monday and the Monday before it were hell. I spent each minute writhing in internal agony. There was definite gnashing of teeth. This one isn't too much better -- after a weekend of nonstop activity (however pleasant, nonstop activity just plumb wears me out) and one missed dose of my antidepressant, I woke up with that never-ending headache and an exhaustion that would drop a bear.

Fortunately my visit to the new doctor went very well. I was favorably impressed with his personable professionalism, his brisk pace, and his apparently instant understanding of my headaches and allergies. I am now on a daily preventative migraine medication, and am armed with a stronger dosage of the as-needed migraine meds I already had (because the bad days will come. I get that; even on an anti-d, I get what I call Bad Head Days), and am going back on my old, beloved, faithful allergy medication that I had to stop taking after college because I had zero/crappy health insurance. Yay!

The phones are ringing off the hook at work, I have no time to get my other tasks accomplished, and everyone who calls has been saving up all their panic over the bad things that happened to them on the weekend to pour into my ear today. Which is fine; a lot of these people have to deal with some serious crap, and I don't mind being a listening ear. It's just hard to do the juggling act.

But I did have it out with my sworn enemy, FedEx (oh yeah -- their incompetence with an auction incident regarding the Center last year was on the list of Bogus Reasons For Letting Me Go -- I spent WEEKS on the phone tracking a Huge Expensive Package that they, oh yes, lost, which became somehow my fault -- because I'm in charge of a nationwide company's royal screwup in losing Muhammad Ali memorabilia in Utah), about an invoice for an item we never shipped. The package was sent from somewhere in Texas to somewhere in Texas (we've never done business with anyone in Texas) by someone who's never worked at my office. And I won that round. So that's a feather in my hide-from-Monday camo cap.

I've been making some huge life decisions this weekend, and I think I'm finally finding some direction in my What Do I Do With My Life dilemma, which has been plaguing me for three years now, so I'm terribly excited about that. It means another year or two in the Bend, and then...possibilities. It also means I'm going to be getting a lot more involved at church, and writing a whole lot more.

And with that teaser, I bid my faithful audience (whoever remains) adieu for the remainder of Monday. I have to put on my Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak and duck out into the hall.

there aren't enough apples in the world

Why is it so hard to find a good physician?

Let's take a quick survey, shall we?

High school: A crazy woman with an extremely uncomfortable physical presence who never told you what she was doing until she did it (first mammogram = blechy, scary, freaky, etc.).

College: A grumpy volunteer physician who hated his volunteer hours at the college clinic and overprescribed Vicodin for me in the days when I knew nothing about narcotics, thus sparking an unnecessary and terrifying detox period that I had to do on my own. (The stuff is addictive after three DAYS. He prescribed it to me for four WEEKS.)

South Bend Year 1: A series of free clinics (nod to no insurance), most of them actually not all that scary, but run by basically powerless doctors who could barely prescribe antibiotics.

South Bend Year 2: A doctor at a cheap clinic who told me I was bipolar after talking with me for two minutes and sent Mormon missionaries to my door.

South Bend Year 3: A doctor who did everything (chiropractic adjustments on my neck, prescriptions for mild pain relievers that made me sleepy at work) except prescribe a migraine medication...for my migraine.

This last gent isn't all that bad, but he isn't all that great either, and thanks to double-booking bumped me out of my appointment today (his secretary was exceptionally snotty in informing me. Okay, yes, I was late, I got what I deserved, but I didn't deserve that tone of voice. And I object to double-booking on principle). Which I made because the migraine is back. Grr.

So, being the hot-headed, proactive me that I am, I zoomed back to the office in a transmission-roaring rage and found a new family doctor. I see this next specimen on Monday. God only knows if that will be any better, but it's worth a shot.

Finding a good doctor is almost worse than finding a church. (Almost.) You never know what kind of person you'll run into -- a quack, a creep, an asshole, a fool, a blowhard, a megalomaniac, an incompetent -- the list goes on -- but you keep trying in the effort to find SOMEone who can actually help you, and whose staff utilize professionalism.

Of course, as I was informed by the accounts manager at one of the hospitals I'm paying bills for, medicine isn't an exact science. There's a lot of trial and error involved, and I get that. But surely a migraine medication for the worst headache of someone's life isn't too big a diagnostic leap? Particularly after the doctor has informed the patient that ongoing migraine disorder is a common development among women in their twenties?

Anyway. Now I have to check with my insurance to see if they cover the newbie. (They don't cover much of the current guy either.) I hope I wasn't rash. (Har.) I'm tired of being unthrilled with my physicians. The best one I've ever seen, and with whom I'm still a patient, is 3.5 hours away, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; but seeing him and missing an entire day of work just isn't practical unless it's an emergency.

Le sigh.

one of those weeks

I hate those weeks.

And this one was one of those, especially at work. That week where I didn't really do anything right. Where every beginner's or careless mistake I've made in the past six months came to a boiling head all at once, in the midst of massive hearing and trial preparations that had to be done on top of reorganizing my entire system. Where I worked my ass off and stayed till almost seven o'clock each night and came away feeling like I was rowing against the current and getting nowhere.

Grr.

Top it off with my worries over Simon and the now-glorious migraine pressing down on my skull and it's been great.

But there were a few perks. Like realizing that from time to time that I enjoy the fracturing stress. I was running around finding this and copying that and answering phones and talking to annoying clients and I realized, This is just like theater. Like production week, where the mics are broken and the sound system blows and we run out of man-blush and people are sleeping through their call times. Which made me, in spite of everything, grin. I can get a lot done under pressure. It's the gift of the procrastinator.

And God has always been unreasonably good to me in those times when nothing ought to work out. But a lot of it does. And I tend to be clever, and tenacious, in yanking solutions out of thin air when there isn't any other choice. I got by this week mostly on sheer stubbornness and ridiculous amounts of grace.

And slept eleven hours last night.

I'm exhausted. But since I can't seem to get caught up on the backlog of stacks of papers that need filing, and that one damn letter that never seems to get written, I'm heading into work for a few hours this afternoon, where I can slough around unshowered in a sweatshirt and jeans and ignore the phones and make a huge mess and put it all back together without being at anyone's beck and call. Of course, it's my job to be at everyone's beck and call, and when I'm caught up I don't mind a bit, but at the moment there are things that I desperately need to get done, and I DON'T want to walk in Monday morning to the same chaos I walked out on Friday night.

Screw the headache. Screw the exhaustion. I don't have any plans anyway, and when you're single your job is the one visible thing that gives your life daily meaning, right? And my bosses have been so good to me, and done so much for me, that working hard is the one thing I can do to repay them.

I won't deny that it's a form of self-flagellation. Sometimes the hardest thing about being a Christian is the utter, irrefutable dependence on God's grace. It goes against the human grain. What? My sins, my debts, my flaws, my mistakes are all forgiven? Just like that? (Not that that -- the brutal death of the incarnate God -- is simple. But we can't do anything; He already did it.) And there's nothing I can do to make any of it better myself?

Nope. And sometimes it drives a person crazy. Because we want to fix it, we want to make up for it. We want to atone. But we can't, and like it or not, there it is, the grace on which we stand, and we can't add a single act or deed to it. We can't tip the balance one way or the other. And it's such an incredible gift, we feel guilty for having to accept it continually and unconditionally. Like every day being handed something expensive and amazing that we did nothing for -- a house, a brand-new car, a whole new season's wardrobe from designer outfitters, a four-carat diamond necklace, a state-of-the-art, gleaming grand piano, a fur coat, a pedicure, a gorgeous garden, when you're, at worst, mean, dirty and derelict, and at best just average or mostly decent, and you're looking the giver in the face with your hands loaded with things you didn't even ask for, and saying, But what can I do? And getting, Nothing, I love you, this is for you, as an answer.

And the only thing you can give in return is gratitude, and striving to live a better life, and reaching out in kindness and protectiveness to others. Passing on the jewels, as it were: "He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

Maybe that's the root of my feverish ambition to get the office organized this weekend. Gratitude, and a chance, not to rectify my mistakes, but to clean up some of the mess they left behind, and to prevent them from happening again, since I've been so absolutely, unquestioningly forgiven.

And there's a certain satisfaction in hard labor. You feel it has a purpose. That you're doing something -- cleaning the house you've been given, polishing the necklace, tuning the piano, weeding the garden -- and not just sitting still. You can't earn it, you can't give it back, but you can keep it beautiful, small as the ways might be.

worse cat story

I had to take Simon to the Animal ER on Monday because he fell on the floor and started shrieking in pain. I usually get a grumpy "mrrwrrr" out of him, but never screaming.

So I took him to the ER, was told something was wrong with his hips, probably wrenched them jumping down from something, and I have to keep him quiet for the rest of the week and if he didn't improve by tonight I'd have to schedule him for X-rays.

Fortunately the meds they gave me to administer to him seem to be working, although I can't imagine he's happy about being locked in my bedroom while I'm at work (with litterbox and water dish, of course). He never holds a grudge, though, the darling.

The only last concern, besides of course "will he heal?" is his excretory system(s). I am again the Monitor of Cat Waste, checking his litterbox obsessively and panning through the litter looking for little nuggets or large clumps that will tell me he's going to be all right. Because if something's wrong with his hips, it's hard for him to, well, squat to get the job done. And he's had urinary blockage before (although they did a partial urinalysis at the ER and said everything looked just fine).

But on the whole he seems to be feeling well and full of his usual vinegar and demands for food.

I hate when something's wrong with him. He's currently my only Life Companion, and he fills my whole day with such indescribable joy. Like when he picks the one spot on the bed that it's most awkward to bend my body around, but no matter how much I shift around or shove my legs under him, he won't move; or when I wake up periodically throughout the night to find him working his way up the bed bit by bit, snuggling down close against my calf or knee or thigh or hip (when he used to HATE close contact with anybody); or when I first hit the alarm and fall back asleep and he knows I'm not getting up, but as soon as my eyes open for real, he's walking all over me, shoving his head in my face, purring so loud I can hear it through the earplugs; or when he tentatively steps onto my lap while I watch TV and, looking like a fish out of water, hunkers down and starts to purr, because he wants to be nearby; or when he thinks he deserves food and I walk right past him and he gets mad and swats my ankles; or when he finds me out of his sight and yowls to know where I am; or when he ambushes me from behind the chair and I KNOW IT'S COMING but he scares the crap out of me anyway, and I shriek, and he struts away all proud of himself with his tail waving, and flops down on the ground to look up at me and his eyes are saying, "See how cute and clever I am?"

Or when he's perfectly happy, and stretches his whole length as far out and back as it will go, and he looks like a big black hairy piece of elbow macaroni, which earned him the nickname Noodle.

Or when he follows me all over the house, and brings his toys into the room where I'm standing, and plays with them there.

Well, he looks all right at the moment. I'm praying, of course, and I know my parents are, too, and my sister is sacrificing chickens, so I'm hoping all will work out the way I'd like. Where he's all healthy, and happy, and his sweet Simon self.

successes

Yesterday I...

1. Successfully made it to church;

2. Successfully made delicious rosemary garlic bread in flowerpots. I was exceedingly relieved, because I fiddled with the recipe, and it came out PERFECTLY. The loaves are very rustic-looking, the crust is so crisp and fine as to melt in your mouth, the texture light and smooth, the flavor subtle but rich;

3. Successfully cleaned my apartment (it's gross when Simon gets up off the floor with particles of whatever all over his fur, although this can be attributed in part to the lurking presence of static, since it hasn't been that long since my last vacuuming);

4. Successfully went to bed relatively early, which was really great considering I had gotten up only twelve hours before.

All right, Monday. Let's circle each other warily and have at it. Watch out. My left uppercut is nasty.

unexpected fulfillment

I'm trying an experiment with pancakes. I ran into a woman the other weekend at the Farmer's Market who was selling bits of antiques and pretty junk, and when I saw a gorgeous, heavy cast iron skillet in her stall, I paused to oooh and ahhh appreciatively. She eagerly came around to the front of the stall and started expostulating on the glories of cast iron skillets, with which I just as enthusiastically agreed. "I have a Griswold," I said, "my family's from Erie." "Don't EVER sell that," she said. "They're worth a LOT." She then told me one of her favorite ways to make pancakes is to pour them into a cast iron skillet and bake them in the oven. I've been dying to try it, but pancakes seem somehow opulent for a weekday, so I've been waiting till today. Saturday breakfasts beg for a break from the week's austerity and hurry.

I had to guess at the temperature, so we'll see how it goes. I have the timer set every few minutes so I can check on it. (Seems to be doing okay so far.) I'm hoping this will circumvent my usual charred cinders method of griddle-frying them on the stove; I usually have to air out the apartment when I make pancakes, and it's cold today.

I also decided to make them from scratch using the basic pancake recipe found in The Joy of Cooking.

Anyway. I've been realizing over the last few weeks that I love my job. I've been there seven months now, and instead of getting restless and bored (that was the six-month mark) and continuing in an escalating sense of displacement, I find I'm settling in. My boss's very shy standard poodle, who usually jumps in fright when I enter the room, has come around and now follows me everywhere, begging for attention (and biscuits). My boss and his wife (who is almost the same person as I am, just a few decades older, and who runs the financial aspect of the office) are like family, and we have a lot of delightful conversations throughout the day; there's a lot of joy and joking that spreads around and leavens the focus and stress that comes with the legal field.

And I've been enjoying my duties. When I first took the job, I thought, I'm way too good to be a secretary, but whatever, I've gotta pay the rent. That sensibility persisted for quite some time, but in the last few weeks, I've found myself humming contentedly as I go about making copies and getting people on the phone for my boss. I don't think I'm above it anymore (although I know I could be doing anything I wanted to); I like it.

There's a lot I'm responsible for, and most of it involves making sure my boss's life and daily duties run smoothly. If I'm really good at my job, he's not even aware that I'm doing it, and there's a certain a-ha satisfaction to that. And now that I've been there for awhile and gotten to know his habits, I can anticipate what he wants and have it ready or get it done.

And yes, I make the coffee every day, and deliver it to my boss, his wife, and the clients. (I take orders from some of the clients, which is exasperating but funny; the coffeepot lives upstairs, where the clients can't go, so I have to do all the pouring and stirring and carrying.) This should be stereotypically humiliating, but the great thing is that no one expects me to do it for them; my boss only very infrequently asks me if there's any coffee. Plus it had been so long since I'd had to work with a drip maker that it's been fun adjusting the amount of coffee to the perfect proportion to make an excellent cup. And I do make good coffee. I know it, and everyone says so, and it's fun to showcase my coffee-making skills.

The thing is, I love to help people. I love to make their lives easier in practical, small ways. That's a lot of how we express love in my family -- Dad will make the bed once in awhile, which is Mom's usual task; or Laura or I will stay up late washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen while Mom's in bed so she can come down to sparkles and shine in the morning; Mom will tidy up our rooms or do our laundry when we're visiting; and when we're eating in front of the TV in the living room, if someone gets up to get more food or more water, he or she always extends a general offer to get someone something, or take their plates to the sink. That to me is real caring, and I'd like to perpetuate that in my own family when I have one. Romance in the form of flowers is nice, of course; but I most prefer the little tasks of thoughtfulness that make my day unexpectedly easier.

And since it's almost impossible to do this well outside of a nuclear family (the folks, particularly men, that I've done this sort of thing with have tended to take advantage of it without reciprocating), this job is the perfect outlet for those natural expressions. It helps that I really like my bosses. And they've been so good to me. They advanced my sick time in December when I was Queen of the Killer Headache, they pay me hourly so I get compensation for all the hours I work, they're charming and delightful and fun and take an active interest in my personal wellbeing. Doing my job well and being as helpful as I can is the least I can do.

Is my job prestigious? No, of course not. I'm a secretary. But I'm a pretty, well-dressed, wide-smiling, fun secretary who bonds well with the clientele and has a knack for making even sad or stressed people laugh, and angry people calm down.

And I'm happy. And that matters more to me than anything else.

Pancake verdict: Very promising. I need to play around with the temperature, but on the whole? Mmmmm.

my latest cat story

Simon would be a vegetarian's dream come true.

Now, he will eat meat scraps if he can get them; the other day I had to chase him off the coffee table when I caught him stealing mouthfuls of shredded pork and running into another room with them.

But the cat loves his vegetables.

I knew he had strange, uncatlike tastes to begin with -- he loves a good chickpea or a lick of hummus -- but I was mindboggled last week when, in the process of preparing Thai curry, I knocked a piece of green bell pepper to the floor...and Simon ate it. In fact, he liked it so much that when it kept skidding out from under his chin on the linoleum, he picked it up, carried it to the hallway carpet, and finished it off.

I tried with orange bell pepper last night while I was making a salad. (I don't ever feed him "people food," but if something "accidentally" falls to the floor from the counter while I'm making it, it's fair game.) He loved that even more. The piece fell on the rug next to my feet and he devoured it.

And yet one day I forgot about an entire stick of butter that I'd left on the coffee table, and when I came home it was untouched.

So I know in the future that if I have to leave the room with food on the table, I can peacefully ignore the butter, but I'd better take my salad with me.