Charles Baxter once said the world could use more tenderness

I could go in stomping and snorting and pushing myself past my so-lowered limits again, but that doesn't work.  It didn't work last week.  It won't work this week.  This is a task that calls for delicacy, sensitivity, tender care of self, and concentrated attention, and I am not very good at those things, especially right now.  I remind myself that I love a challenge (in theory) and that I can't just keep galloping full-speed ahead as I have been because that didn't work, isn't working, won't likely ever work again.  Patient and tender attention to me and the now immediately around me: this is what I need.  Harder than self-destruction in small doses any day.

practice makes perfect

.

maybe life is practice letting go
because there's nothing
you can hold on to when you leave

.

the layoff

The rain falls
on the just and
the unjust.

Selah.

not really one of my better days, but the pain is having a ball

Today it has felt as if some small creature with dull but strong teeth has been hanging from and gnawing on part of my left arm.

I am sleeping even less than average, and the night was very long when I watched it nearly all the way through until the light returned.

My right hip is throbbing like some caged creature needs to escape from it, and sitting up for hours at a time is more of a challenge than it should be for someone my age.

A tiny, invisible, serrated worm pokes at my right wrist and sometimes wraps itself around and goes into spasms--probably of joy and affection.  If so, I'm glad someone is having a good time here.  I just wish it were me.

not mother's day

My sweet and amazing friend is pregnant
with a baby without a brain
that will die at birth or soon after.

"Although some individuals
with anencephaly may be born
with a main brain stem, the lack
of a functioning cerebrum
permanently rules out the possibility
of ever gaining consciousness."

I wrote the due date
in my calendar.
May 13th is
Mother's Day, and I
hate that this is so.  Why
couldn't the doctors know that
and pick some random other
not-Mother's Day day?  It's not
as if the exact date matters.  So
why that day of all days?

"There is no cure
or standard treatment
for anencephaly and
the prognosis for patients
is death."

They have decided to carry it to term
and they will love their little incomplete
baby until the day it dies.

"If the infant is not
stillborn, then he
or she will usually
die within a few hours
or days after birth
from cardiorespiratory arrest."

There will be a lot of
broken hearts over this.

"Reflex actions
such as breathing and
responses to sound or touch
occur."

I'm not sure if I wish
the child to be stillborn
to save them
from their little one
responding
brainlessly

to the sound of
mother's voice or the touch
of father's hand.

I'm not sure
they would want
to be saved
from that.




Fair warning I didn't get: the images are disturbing; quotes taken from here.

Toad Herding for Fun and Profit

Yesterday night, my flimsy building key stopped working, and I was locked out of my apartment.  This was a bummer because I live alone and had no one to call and let me in at 10 pm. 

This morning, I called to arrange for a new key, and we agreed it could be shoved under my garage door, though the trauma of smashing the crap out of my finger in said door on Saturday was fresh in my mind. 

I got home and opened the garage door, looking for my ticket into the building, and a mid-sized toad hopped in and promptly got itself stuck thinking there was No Escape even though three directions were open to it.  It kept hopping further and further along the wall when it wasn't playing the If I Don't Move the Large Thing Menacing Me Will Forget I'm Here and Go Away and Leave Me in Peace game.   

I suspect that toads are not one of the brightest species in the ecosystem. 

There was no way I was going to just close the door and let the thing die and stink up my garage.  I tried to gently herd it out, and it just wasn't working until a lady walked by and, attracted by the sound of a possibly crazy person waving her hands and cell phone at the ground and trying to be some sort of toad whisperer, stopped to get a better look. 

I explained my problem.  She laughed at me as I kept trying to humanely get rid of my newly acquired amphibian, but she eventually got fed up and whacked that sucker back out into the driveway with a hand like a trowel. 

I was horrified as I watched it tumble and come to a dusty and very final stop, sure she'd killed the silly thing whose only crime was being stupid and confused.  After heart-stopping seconds of being stunned, it rolled over.

"It's alive!" I thought and rejoiced until it hopped toward my garage.  I stomped and waved it away and closed the door before any more drama or trauma ensued.  The woman walked away laughing as I thanked her.

I watched the toad as, at a loss, it headed back out into the middle of the parking lot where it hopped in strange, possibly concussed polyhedrons for a while, despite my encouragement to get out of the place where cars go.  I washed my hands of him eventually, as he seemed destined to end up flattened by someone's tire.

Good night, sweet toad.  May flights of angels sing thee to they rest.  One way or another.

Inhabiting new spaces

What I know about my new apartment:

• I have some very kind neighbors who help without even being asked.  (Some of them even before I pass them looking pathetic.)
• It's easier to like my neighbors when I have the AC on because then I can't hear them.
• The sliding toilet seat of doom will either improve my posture or destroy my sanity.
• I don't mind sleeping on the floor, and neither does my back.
• Over 90 degrees with matching humidity is a bit of a chore for the poor AC for some reason.
• I want to be done unpacking.
• The stairway I prefer sings if you walk up too fast.  (It also smells less of cat wee.)
• I still love alphabetizing, despite the pain.
• When I am done unpacking, there will likely be fewer bruises.  I sincerely hope.
• It is unfortunately likely that I will fall down the stairs at some point; it will then be rather difficult to navigate the labyrinth I have made out of this apartment.  (High priority: getting bed frame put together, so I can finish shifting and unpacking, so there will be enough clear space for me to negotiate with a cast, should the need arise.)
• I have a freezer again, and it is marvelous.  Once I clean off the stove, I can even make use of the freezer's few inhabitants.
• I still can't hang things straight.

Signing off clutching my checklists,
TMIA

It hailed today

I have now spent over 30 hours researching for this job interview.  I have read several books.  I have talked to wise people without getting totally neurotic and annoying.  I have researched strategies for answering questions and looked at thousands of questions.  I have made plans.  I will write stories to tell in answer to questions.  I have lots of people praying for me.  If this job was awarded to the person who did the most homework, I would get it.  If it was awarded based on financial need, I would get it.  If it was given to the person who wanted it most, I would get it.

I am unlikely to get this job.

My most helpful inside resource told me he hopes that the interviewers see me as the winsome underdog.  He did not have to finish by adding that there's no other way I'll get it (the four times he started a sentence with, "If you don't get this job, I have some ideas," kind of sufficiently filled in the blank.

I should be discouraged.  I should be giving up on the other ten hours of prep I'm planning on doing before the big interviews.  I should feel done, defeated, beaten.

But I'm not stopping.

Is this peace that passes understanding?  It doesn't feel like secret foreknowledge or anything.  It's not really confidence, either.  It's partly my innate stubbornness and love of a challenge.  Don't tell me I can't, because I'll want to even more was never really a mindset I struggled with as a child.  (Except where tree climbing was concerned.)

Maybe this last push will be the thing that sends me over the top.  Maybe these last hours of effort and attention and work will be necessary for success.  I'm desperate; it's true.  I'm in a bad situation (nothing new).  I'd hate to give up before giving everything I possibly can. 

The rest is up to God.

Handel handling us . . .

We are singing some Handel in choir.  Technically. 

Honestly?  Handel is kicking our heinies (pardon my faux-German).  12/8?  With dotted notes?  You have got to be kidding me. 

Since we are, essentially, an amateur choir, it might be a bit much to imagine we can learn this (and several other pieces) in time for a dual concert with the orchestra in five weeks, especially since YouTube and all the library systems let me down with their selections from Judas Maccabeus.  There isn't a single recording in any of the surrounding library systems.  Even on YouTube there are no recordings of two of the more wickedly hard choruses we have to learn.   

Makes me want to learn 'em even more.  Now I just have to figure out how.

Any tips or tricks for those who can't really play piano with that many accidentals in the key signature in that time signature with that many dotted notes?