sad and worried

Laid off... again... third time in under two years. Where's NPR to put a tape recorder in my home so my less-than-stellar work life can be broadcast for the whole nation. Today is my last day of work... so bittersweet. At least I know I can go around the corner on a weekend and visit these new and funny friends I've made. I'm soooo worried about finding a job. I have an interview in the morning for a family-school liaison position. I want to go in there and wow them. I know I'd be really good at this job. I've been looking around on line at other family-school liaisons and what they are offering so that I can be fluent in the subject by tomorrow morning. I'm anxious. Trying to stave off disappointment on the other side of not getting the job. Feeling like crying. Snapped at my son this morning and then cried and said I was worried about not having a job. He came over to me and rubbed my back a little and kissed me on the shoulder saying what a good worker I was and that he was sure the interview would go really well.

I'm thinking that maybe I should send the job description to my sister on the West coast so she can go out in the yard and hold it up to the California sunshine and maybe that will work some magic. Or maybe I should bury a copy in the back yard and burn sage over it.

Maybe I need to get a grip.

I will prevail no matter what although I will stop short of selling my little pumpkin on the street corner.

more about the moon

The moon was low and soft in the late late afternoon sky, as if it were trying to disguise itself as a planet, deep yellow with grey streaks of cloud. Later it rose and was disguised as a Necco wafer, Canada mint, or possibly the cross-section of a marshmallow. I realized as I drove home tonight that I don't think of the moon as a sphere, rather as a disk, as if it had an edge and was vast in its flatness. Completely mysteriously it hangs up there, sometimes round, sometimes narrow, sometimes gone behind a drape of shadow. I have come to depend on its presence, through heartache, through raising a teenager, through a parent's lifechanging illness. If the moon were a word instead of an orb nearly 24 thousand miles away, it would be FAITH.

winter moon

A very, very short post albeit a necessary one. The moon, oh man, the moon this evening was down by the horizon, a huge heart-squeezing orb glowing through the winter tree trunks and I was driving and thinking of love at the same time and then I was crying and feeling good and sorry for myself and somehow connected to every other sad lover since the beginning of time. Ah, such sweet drama.

fireworks

We watched the fireworks… for hours they exploded and sailed above our heads all up and down the Milford beach, an annual friendly competition among residents with plenty of money to spend on this sort of thing. Spark lines whistling upwards and then ear-splitting booms, light blooming, spinning, and falling on sand and ocean. We were in the very middle of this celebration, not watching from a distance as I was used to, but underneath it. The final embers could have landed on our shoulders. We walked the crowded beach road, little kids on bikes, older people in chairs, everyone in between having to walk sideways to avoid bumping shoulders. Lots of stop-and-chats along the way: Hey how are you? Great to see you! How’s the boat? Are you ready for the race? Can you believe the World Cup? And these firework displays! John says he didn’t buy new this year, these are just his leftovers but I don’t believe it. Hey, this is my friend Lizzy.

Sitting on two chairs facing the harbor, we passed a metal thermos back and forth, sipping the last of a fruity bubbly tipsy concoction Lou mixed for the night’s travels. Bonfires fading behind us, the beach still busy with people glad to be out late under a deep July sky with the salt water nearby. A group came by collecting chairs and we got ready to give ours up, they laughed and said, No no, stay as long as you want! They wandered away, lugging their empty chairs and we settled back, happy with the ease and beauty of the evening.

life in the fast lane

I have no idea what day it is and I am going to bed wearier than I can remember in years...it's been a long time since I took care of three little kids yet the non-stopness of it is coming back to me all too easily. Butter needs to be spread in a certain way, just the right pink shoes cannot be found and it is absolutely time to leave for school, and from the back seat of the car, "HENRY! STOP TOUCHING ME!!!!" I've also been reminded of the general unfairness of things on a regular basis.

No blue skies today... just clouds but still the sky reminds me that I'm not at home. The clouds spread across the sky and then congregate over the mountains where they are pleased to look like a picture postcard. There is a breeze bringing an aroma of lavender (which grows in great wild bunches around the bases of the light poles at the grocery store) and scents of I don't know what-all but it is without a doubt, sweet and tempting.

lemon trees and lavender

Are there blog police who snoop around to find out how often you are posting on your blog? I'm guessing not and it's a good thing, too.

So guess what. I'm in California! For a week! With three small children under the age of 9! While their mother and father are far, far away across the ocean! No worries, only 4 more days to go and besides, I'm in California! It is kind of the land of exclamation points, I mean, the weather and the friendly people and the roses and poppies and the lavender that leans waaaay over as you walk down the street just in case you didn't notice it as you rounded the corner. And get this, there are lemons ripening on a tree outside my sister's kitchen window. I'm pretty sure she didn't put them up there with twist ties to impress me.

The air here is shiny and calm and full of color and light. I'm sure if my life were really here, my job and my social commitments and all the rest, I wouldn't feel this faint sense of being drunk as I wander the streets, my 5-year-old niece's hand pushed firmly into mine. As it is, possibility seems to lurk in the way-up-there fronds of a palm tree, in the impossibly blue expanse of the sky, even in the smile wrinkles of a Chinese woman's face as she points us in the right direction, looking for all the world as if we just truly made her day by asking her the way to First Street.

Checking out my last post, the one where I discuss my personal attributes. Two paragraphs about character and four about domestic talents. I may need to reconsider my presentation.

why you might like to fall in love with me

Woke up this morning thinking about why someone might like to fall in love with me. I mean, what does that come down in this world? It's what we have to offer. It's what we give each day to each other, to the person you pass on the street, to the gas station attendant, to the little kid in the park who stops at the top of the slide because she sees you and your big dog coming across the grass. I love my cats. God, that's corny. But you would know what I meant if you saw B.C.'s missing eye and if you felt Momo's paw on your arm. Enough about the kitties, it's overload at the first word if it's about someone else's kitties. Very good advice: never, ever tell people cat stories. Their faces will be the picture in the dictionary next to "and then his eyes glazed over".

Next? I am nice to the person on the street. I smile, say, "how ya doin", sometimes they want to talk about the dog and we stop and talk for a while. I like these connections, I like finding out what's behind the guy's lined and crinkled face at the gas station. It was a Full Serve out on route 63, I barely knew what to do when he approached my car. He was full of friendly remarks, he spoke as if he was talking to himself about the cars he was working on, the hot rods he was restoring, and I was just lucky enough to be in on the conversation. He commiserated with me about having to put in a new transmission, he really paid attention when I asked him not to top off the gas tank, he loved the 1956 hood ornament on the hood of my Toyota, he nearly apologized for the final total as if he were paying out of his own wallet, "gas is crazy these days", he said, "...gotten so high!" You could fit dimes in the creases on his face.

What else? Does baking really well count? I know all those Betty Crocker tricks of measuring a level cup of flour, not overmixing the biscuits, switching the cookie trays around in the oven so they cook evenly, knocking on the bottom of a loaf of bread to see if it's done, really gently folding in the beaten egg whites so the final product comes out high and lovely, carefully flouring and papering the cake tins so the cake doesn't get stuck. Using quality ingredients helps, but honestly, people can't always tell.

I can sew. I'm good at this... I can make a dress, a shirt, a skirt, simple or complicated but I can't guarantee there won't be tears (as in the kind that needs a box of Kleenex) before the more complicated items are completed. That's allright, one of my favorite stories about my mother is from when she was young and making a dress with a kind of collar that my grandmother had tried to advise her against. That evening the dress came flying down the hall, having been hurled out of the room by my mother, furious that my grandmother was right and the collar really did look awful.

I can make curtains, pillows, and dollies. That's dollies, not doilies. My sister did give me an antique tatting tool for Christmas last year and I love it, but I'm not sure I'll really take up tatting. That's what it's called when you make doilies. Dollies on the other hand... pretty fun to make their bodies, I love how their arms and legs might look a little crooked and the best part is their faces... I'm never sure what their expression's going to be when I'm stitching their eyes, nose and mouth but then there they are looking at me earnestly when I'm done tying the final knot.

I can garden. Oh man, I love to do this. The dirt, the weeds, the flowers giving their all when they open up and they're asking for very little in return. The birds and butterflies who come to visit, does it get any better than this? And talk about forgiveness. I once worried to a neighbor of mine who'd been gardening for 30 years that a plant of mine was not going to make it through the season. She looked at me incredulously and said "dig it under! You can try again next year." What a relief.

And speaking of forgiveness, I'm very, very good at this. I don't have time to carry grudges around. Life is too short. As a matter of fact, life is fleeting.