another perfect day for rainbows

Today was a perfect day for rainbows,
But I didn't see a single one.

the list of things I should do

.
the list of things I should do

is much longer than the list
of things I have energy to do. 

I suspect that this
is how it will always be. 

I am trying very hard to be okay with that.
.

How not to fall in love with a house

How not to fall in love with a house

• Don't meet the neighbors.
• Don't measure anything. 
• Don't think about exactly how things will best fit.
• Don't like the closets.
• Don't think about how you'll clean it.
• Don't think about how lovely the tree in the front yard will smell in spring.
• Don't notice all the places you could walk to (book store, another book store, library, Panera, Home Depot, park, every restaurant I ever go to).
• Don't notice how quiet it is. 
• Don't notice the pond and the turtles and the ducks.
• Don't think about what life will be like when you live there and not where you live right now.
• Just don't.

giving up haiku

I would settle for
sleep without dreams if only
I could get the sleep.

Full lunar eclipse on the winter solstice indeed

I totally freaked out the employees of an optometrist today by crying in front of them.  (I apologize, desk lady, because I know it had nothing to do with you.)  Slightly mortifying, but it's been a long semester.  (At least it washed that goop out of my eyes.)

Last week, I stopped in to check and make sure they would accept the coupon I had, and they said they would extend it for me, and I was so happy.  I read what my insurance people gave me, and I thought I'd read all the fine print on the coupon, but, in the end, I had to pay $75 I didn't really have budgeted when I'd expected to pay $0.  And they charged $10 more per box of contacts than my regular place, so I could only get 3 boxes for what amounts to $75.  I am not making this up.

It's a scam.  I give up.  I can use the $75 to get 6 boxes of contacts next year when I have FSA money, save myself the hassle and the cynicism, and also save myself from finding out my vision has gotten even worse.  (I thought it had stabilized.)  Now I'm so worked up, I don't even trust the eye doctor.  I want to say he was lying about the prescription, too, because he knew when it gets up that high, the contacts cost even more. 

I think I should be avoiding humanity right now.  They don't deserve to have their happy Christmas season screwed up by an adult crying in front of them.

I really need some sleep.  It would also be nice not to be in pain.

In other news, full moon, full lunar eclipse, shortest day of the year.  It can only get brighter from here, right?

Sports memories (sans cats)

They're having a softball tournament at work.  I got all excited and marked it with a follow-up flag.  Three girls have to be on the field at all times!  I don't think our department could have a team because we're 95% female.  Maybe someone else knows of a team that needs another girl!

Oh. 
I can't play anymore. 

I forgot.

I still remember a time when I could not imagine living without softball and volleyball.  I remember when I wanted to be the old person out there playing.  I wanted to be like my dad: the oldest person on the team and still capable of contributing.  I remember thinking that nothing could stop me.

I think I hear cats singing something about memories.  (But weren't those cats supposed to be old and rickety?)  Ah, well . . .

I wonder if there are softball tournaments in heaven.  Guess I'll find out when I get there.

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.

How to break a finger

I may have broken a finger pumping gas.  Yep.  I'm magical.  I'm sure it will be fine. 

This week has been difficult, with its combination punches of potential elation dashed and crushingly demoralizing "performance reviews" at work and that pesky hope springing eternal when the ceiling is really low.

In other news, yesterday, it didn't rain until the sun came out, and I thought that seemed deep and significant.  Somehow.  Today we had gorgeous grayscale watercolor wash skies and brilliant sun coming out every so often to paint the trees a disturbing shade of yellow.  I would rather think about light than about darkness, but it's hard when there's so much darkness and so little light.

Thank God for books.  Other people's triumphs will do in a pinch.  :)

Have you ever injured yourself in a weird way?

Some things I did during my vacation

What I did on my vacation

• + Exercised 7 days in a row (about 18 volumes of manga, and it was glorious except for when those three obviously very under 16 brats barred from the sauna and exercise room without adult supervision were running in and out of the exercise room without adult supervision, opening the door to the sauna while turning up the heat, making it about a million degrees in the room I was trying to exercise in)
• - Didn't get any sleep on three separate nights (arms very awake, very awake)
  
• + took care of several piles
• - couldn't complete the most important piles (job applications, writing, researching) because my hands are just shot right now
• + caught up on several shows I've been waiting to watch (hands free!)
• - couldn't do much with my blogs (to prepare for rough holiday weather ahead)
  
• + had two concerts that went really well
• - got sick (thanks for coming to that concert sick, fellow choir member, and then coughing on me; I really appreciate it)
  
• + heard Brahm's Requiem for free . . .
• - . . . from the lobbey because I was coughing so hard it would have just been rude to try to stay in the auditorium
• + was able to avoid leaving my house for one whole day (ahhhhhhhh)
• - got my final "screw you" from Uncle Sam
• + didn't cry
  

Yet another one sails away

Well, that tears it.  My new friend at work had enough and left.  What a huge, stupid waste.  She was worth at least two of my incompetent sales manager.  There is very little justice in a world where I'm stuck with the stupid sales manager and have to lose a great co-worker because our management is . . .  Yeah, you've heard it before.  Sorry.

But I can't resist this great example of my sales manager's greatness.  Because of this sudden situation, I was asked to come in and work on my day off, and, because I desperately need the hours/money, I came in early in the morning after a late night leading a small group for church.  Then, that morning, I picked up another sick co-worker's shift for that night, but I could only work from 6-10 (so I could get some rest before coming in early the next morning for my next shift).  As I was leaving at 10:15, my sales manager got extremely snippy with me for having to leave before 10:30 .  Yes, she got mad at me after I came in and saved her bacon twice in the same day on my day off outside of my regular availability.  She is a real winner.

I'm looking for a new hopefully less crappy retail job along with my regular job hunting. 

Morale is just so shot right now at our store, and sales, which were up, are dropping.  It's sad because it doesn't have to be and shouldn't be this way.  I wish there were something I could do to make it better, but I really have tried everything I can.

I was thinking about good companies and how they value their employees.  Maybe I'm still kind of an idealist, but I thought companies wanted to hire good employees and use their strengths as individuals and team members to help the company prosper.  My RetailEstablishment never read these books, I guess.  They would rather try to force everyone into the same (bent) mold and break them. 

We're all breaking. 

It's rough to watch.  I have so much to give, and they don't want it.  It's . . . frustrating not to be able to use any of your skills, talents, personality, etc. in a way that helps people.  It's worse when you can't just quit, when you're too damaged already to be sure you'll ever be able to find another job.  Being so invested in one place used to make me sort of stubbornly determined to do my best to help things change for the better, but when you have resistance and an endless landslide of dumb policies coming from your district manager to your store and thus know that the "open-door" policy is a quick way to get fired, it just grinds you down.

At least I'm proud I've hung on for over 6 years.  :)  Find your sunshine where you can, I guess.


Do you have any suggestions for retail jobs that would be good for a cripple?

On to the next strategy . . .

I had fallen into a sort of cycle of pain, more of a spiral, like the one water makes as it's draining.  I'm trying to break it, so I'm doing things a little differently this time. 

I'm near the bottom of the cycle, so that means almost constant pain, but it usually results in my starting to favor my left arm even more, which results in more pain to my right arm and back, etc.  This time, I'm not babying the left arm.  I'm forcing it to remain on the steering wheel or the handle of the grocery cart when I would usually let it hang.

The result is not the miraculous one I was dreaming about.  I'm still in pain, and I'm still unconsciously favoring it (I can tell because the tendons in my right arm are outlined in fire, and I keep thinking someone's stabbing me in the back [wouldn't be a total shock at my RetailEstablishment]).

Maybe I'll treat it "normally" for another couple of days, but I'm not sure if I can.  Strike that idea from the list.


Anyone have any suggestions for strategies of how to outsmart my neurological problems?

Not to be a lawyer

There was a time in sixth grade when I thought I might want to be a lawyer.  It made sense at the time.  I liked to argue, and I liked to win (by having the best argument).  I also ran headlong into some injustice issues with my child-hating teacher and school princi"pal" who was apparently not my pal but my secret arch-nemesis, only I never knew. 

Anyway, I stopped considering law as a profession when I realized that sometimes you have to defend scumbags or people who are guilty but saying they're innocent, but you have to do it to the best of your abilities because it's your job.  No thanks.  Also, truth and justice don't always prevail.  If I couldn't clearly be on the side of truth and justice, I didn't want to play the game.

I don't really know what got me remembering that, but I think it had something to do with my lawyer for my OWCP case not emailing me back like he said he would.  He doesn't usually get back to me clearly and directly because he's a lawyer, and he knows the import of words as proof committed to paper.  He'd rather leave me hanging.  I can't really hold it against him.  We know my case has no chance, truth be d----d, so I guess I forgive him for giving up. 

Some games you can't win, no matter how well you play, so why play?   What a thoroughly reprehensible, practical, adult thing to say.  "Give me back my youth!"


So, do you remember a certain thing you wanted to be when you grew up and when you decided to cross it off the list and why?  (Sometimes it's really weird things that seem unrelated, but those make great stories.  :)

Dependence and Dependents

I technically qualify for government-subsidized housing.  When I went to the office to get an application, I found out why they were so vague on their government website: they're backed up by about five years and don't even let people fill out applications anymore.  On one hand, I appreciate that they don't want to waste my time and get my hopes up.  On the other hand, it makes me sad to think that my situation isn't as unique as I thought it was. 

I was told that they often make exceptions for people who pay more than a certain percentage for rent, but I left that information and my contact information, and they never even called me back.  From what I could tell, they don't even work at the office they're supposed to work at any more because there's nothing they can actually do.  It's impressively bad.

I've been a drain on my parents' finances since I got hurt, and I was willing to go on government assistance to prevent them from having to help anymore, but that's apparently not an option.  I feel bad for my parents.
 
It's funny: my mom was always afraid I was going to become a starving artist, but it was the completely non-artistic, government job that's going to lead to me starving without their help.  It just seems wrong and ironic in bad and obvious and unsubtle ways.

I'm really blessed that they are able and willing to help me out so much; it's incredibly humbling how kind they are about it, but I really wish they didn't have to be. 

Things I wish:

• that I wasn't crippled and basically unemployable.
• that the government would take a bit of responsibility for this situation.
• that I could find a good job with health insurance very, very soon.
• that I can somehow pay them back.

They say I can just be the one who takes care of them when they get old, but I'm more decrepit than they are, so I don't think I'll really get the chance . . .