Texas Roundup
My Daughter's Newest Tat is Based Upon this Cartoon
I’ve been here since November, and I’m grateful. I’m still not sure where I’m supposed to be, or what I’m supposed to be doing, but hanging with my homegirl hostess Botmo is never dull. I’ve known this woman since I was nineteen, and we have a way of popping in and out of each others’ lives and affecting great changes. This visit (or landing or whatever it turns out to be) has been no exception.
There have been a lot of things happening, and I keep wanting to remember them and relay some of them to you, but things keep falling out of my mental file cabinet. Anyway, here are a few things that I remember.
~I’ve gone to a concert, a play, a museum and for Christmas, Botmo treated me to the best sushi ever. I’ve met many people, and heard incredible stories.
~”Alice,” the woman next door, lets me use her chiropractic equipment (great for my fibro!), and is going to teach me yoga. She comes over for dinner sometimes. We combine food and have these little mini-potlucks, which I love. Last weekend, she treated me to a bagel and coffee at Panera, under the tactful guise that it was repayment for the joy she gets from reading my blog. Sweet!
~Botmo had a memorial party for “Enid,” a friend who died suddenly last year, on Christmas day. The woman was only in her early fifties, and lived next door (Alice bought her house from Enid’s husband) . They had a wake/ memorial last year, and now Botmo’s carrying on the tradition.
It was wonderful. There were four of us, and although I had only met the deceased once, I still partook in the ritual. Here’s how it went: someone would tell a story about Enid, then we’d all clink glasses and down our wine. There were a LOT of fantastic stories, some hilarious, some beautiful. Their words painted a gorgeous picture of this amazing woman. At first, listening to everyone’s stories, I wish I’d known her, but by the end of it, I felt that I did. There were four bottles of wine, a bottle of champagne, and some pomegranite liqueur, and by the end of the night, it was all gone. Lots of stories. Lots of toasts. We wobbled our way into the back yard and stood around a fire and talked. I felt really honored to have been invited to share in the event, and to meet such great people. When I die, you’re all invited to my memorial fire party.
~Theo the Wonderpup® has been doing just fine. I have guilt feelings about leaving him while I go to work, but he seems to be adjusting. We snuggle up at night, and tell each other about our days. He had his first birthday on January 8th. We celebrated quietly at home.
~A friend called me one day to check on me. “So you’re still living with Botmo? Are you lesbians now?” I was a little flabbergasted by the question, but I recovered quickly.
“Yeah. We’re lesbians now. We’re just lesbianing all over the place. It’s incredible.”
For the recored, um, no, having a female roommate hasn’t changed my sexual orientation.
~Another friend called and told me that her husband has prostate cancer that’s metasticized throughout his body. They’ve given up their farm, but they haven’t given up hope. The news of this makes me want to pack up and head back to Arkansas. I know I can’t help them, but I just want to hug them. Please guys, regular checkups, m’kay?
~I’ve been attending a writers group, and last week, I actually brought something I’ve been working on for them to read. I was as nervous as a fly in a pesticide factory. This is a story I’ve been sweating over for a while, one that keeps going in directions that are different than the ones I originally intended. Anyway, they liked it– a lot. They informed me that it wasn’t a short story, but the beginning of a novel, and suggested that I send two chapters off to a publisher. I’m doing it.
~Last night, I went to happy hour with a bunch of Botmo’s friends. I swear, I haven’t been this sociable since 1981. What an incredible group of people! They were several margaritas ahead of me when I got there, and the party was almost over by the time I’d arrived. The energy in the room was incredible, and I gave my name and number to a couple of people that I want to know more about. Doing such a thing is out of character for me, but life is short, and it seems that so many people that I meet here are very special. We’ll see if I hear back from them.
~I saw my daughter! Two weeks ago, she was in Dallas and we met up. She’s so gorgeous and independent. She showed me her newest tattoo, which made me gasp in horror, but I gasped gracefully (I think).
~The other day, my son told me that he’s been diagnosed with narcolepsy. He doesn’t fall asleep in his soup; he’s just exhausted all of the time. His neurologist has been trying medication on him, and he’s not adjusting well to it, but he assured me that he’ll be just fine.
It’s very difficult for me to talk about my kids without breaking into sobs. I will never get used to the fact that I’m sort of incidental to their lives now. I can’t fix things for them, and they wouldn’t want me to if I could. Still, I imagine a world where my daughter’s skin is unmarred by ink and my son is rested and healthy, all under my nurturing care.
~There’s more, but for the sake of propriety, I think I’ll put it into a private post. E-mail me for the password if you’d like to read it (once I’ve written it), or you can just give me your email address in the comments, and I’ll send it. Or something. I can never figure out a good way to do it.
Update: Private post has done been removed, ya’ll.
Where’s My Mule?
There’s been so much going on since I’ve gotten to Fort Worth. I always have a million blog posts in my mind, but have been having a hard time coordinating writing with the number of hours in a day and my energy level. Those kooky, crazy biorhythms.
After a while, the amount of things I make mental notes to write about begins to grow to such epic proportions that I become overwhelmed and can’t figure out how to get started on blogging about any of them. I’ll just start with the job thing, and move on from there.
After I wrote that post about the FBLA, magic started happening. I love the way the world works. When desperation demons start possessing me, I put the word out to the world. I find that there’s a lot of energy in just talking about things. Anyway, as soon as I wrote about being unemployed and afraid, I immediately got called for a temp job, a four-week assignment.
The position pays very little, and it’s labor intensive. I started training with a young girl who complains a lot about her baby daddies. At first, I found myself depressed about the fact that my career was regressing to about twenty-something years ago, and about the insanity of the corporate world in general. I was also pretty down about my fluxy life. I’d been hoping that some stability would have entered the picture by now.
My roommate/ hostess/ friend Botmo was so understanding about my state of mind (don’t tell her this– she hates it when I get gushy or complimentary). She told me about her own career/ life crossroads, and while I won’t repeat the story here, her words had a huge impact on me.
I’ve met other women here in Fort Worth who either are going or have gone through similar changes as me– the kind of changes where the rug is pulled out from under you (or it gets caught in the vacuum cleaner and you pull it yourself). The kind of changes where you find yourself standing at the bottom of the Grand Canyon of Life wondering where the hell your mule ran off to.
Their stories are inspirational to me. Some of these people are a few years older than me, and have come through their crises and lived to tell the tale.
So, I bucked up and started looking for the lessons in all of this. I’m keeping my ego out of things. It’s just a job. I’m processing paperwork for the poor, the desperate and the deceased– death certificates, unemployment notices and medical records. As I go through the stacks of documentation, I say little prayers for these people whose lives have been turned upside down. Mentally, I say goodbye to the dead ones: “Bye, Mrs. Tilda McNamara– I hope you had a wonderful life. Good luck on the next part of your journey.” Hey, I’ve got to get through this somehow.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that about one out of every fifteen death certificates lists lung cancer as the cause of death. The age of the person is typically late forties or early fifties. It was kind of a wake up call for me, and I’ve decided to try to quit smoking (poverty has also been a motivator). It’s been almost a week, and I’ve lapsed a few times, but overall, I’m doing quite well. Nicotine gum tastes like mint flavored doo doo, but it really helps.
Last week, another temp agency called and told me that they’re submitting my resumé for an Administrative Assistant position. It pays six dollars an hour more than what I’m making, and it’s at least a one-year assignment. I don’t have some of the software skills they require, but I’ll still interview for it if they’ll let me. The name of the game is just to keep things moving.
Stagnation scares me, but so does the realization that I’m sort of becoming a dinosaur in the work world. In part it’s a crisis of confidence. I peruse job boards, read the qualifications and realize that I’m no longer speaking the language. It’s not even a language that I want to speak any more. I only feel that I’m in the right place, doing the right thing when I’m writing. But I’ll continue trying to bend myself into these strange shapes until I find something that fits a little better than what I’m doing now.
Boring post, I know, but right now I’m thankful to have the energy to post anything at all. It is getting better!
More to come…
Update
Good morning! The tide has turned a little. I’ve been given a four-week temp assignment, doing some stuff that even a properly trained circus chimp could handle. Fortunately, they’ve decided to use me instead. It’s leaving me a little exhausted, so my blogging is going to be curtailed a bit, but I’ll post again when I can.
