Is That a Great Big Arrow Over My Head Pointing To Where I Should Go?

Two Big Things were on my schedule yesterday:

1.) The long-anticipated inspection for licensing of our cobbled-together little storefront had finally been arranged.  We were going to lift our collective feet for that giant step we needed to take in order to bring Café de la Rue (the concession business we have owned since 2001) not only back to life, but push it forth to a life it had not, up until now, been fortunate enough to enjoy—i.e.: a complete and human-being-sized production kitchen of its very own.

2.) I had an appointment for a job interview.

A job interview?  you ask.  Don't you hate job interviews?  Wouldn't you rather spend a year on a desert island with Sarah Palin than go to a job interview?  Oh hell yes.  That is true.  But money has been tight, scarce and running through our fingers like water since January.  Between trying to get that building finished without breaking the bank, running up a $5000 tab at the vet for an “undesirable outcome,” forking over the final 1/3 of our property taxes, and various and sundry little $200 here, $400 there minor disasters, we have been scraping the bottom of the piggy bank. 

On top of that, we discovered that the bonuses that husband had been receiving for the past year, in lieu of an actual raise in pay, had dried up and blown away, at least for the first quarter of 2014.  Silly me for thinking we were finally going to get a chance to dig ourselves out from under 8 years of stagnant wages and soaring inflation.  

So I was forced to conclude, since a raise in pay was not going to be in the cards for the husband this year, and our bills demanded an increase in our income, it was time for me to step up to the plate and acquire some gainful employment.  About two weeks ago, I started sending out resumes in earnest, just to see what would happen.

And what happened is that, of course, I got a call back.  Surprised me, really…I had convinced myself that no one would be interested in my experience, but I had to make an effort in some direction.  Call back requested an interview on the morning of our big health inspection.  Who was I to refuse?  I penciled it in.

But ah…what an interview!  I’m trying so hard to put it behind me that  I can hardly go into detail about it.  Let’s just say that when you ask what the rate of pay is and they say, “We don’t know.  It depends…” and trail off into silence, you start to get the feeling that you have indeed entered the Twilight Zone.  Actually, I had that feeling almost from the moment I shook hands with the two interviewers, sat in the indicated chair and was met with the most uncomfortable stony silence I had ever encountered in a job interview.  After 45 ridiculously interminable minutes of the male interviewer wheezing out points on my resume, and then the female interviewer being given leave to open her mouth only after the male interviewer had apparently finished pontificating, the session came to an ignominious end.  I hurried out the door chanting to myself, “Well, that’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back.”

Ugh.

And  I still had the other half of my day’s challenges staring me in the face:  our date with the health inspector.   Not-so-inwardly stressing about how long of a list she would hand us of things that would need to be corrected before we could get our license, I rolled up my sleeves and began my resigned last sweep and scrub before she was scheduled to arrive. 

Considering how the first part of my day had already gone, my stomach was in knots when she walked in the front door.

She walked in, opened her briefcase, and handed me my license.  She went over a few questions on the pre-opening questionnaire, walked around for fifteen minutes and said everything looked great, had me sign on the dotted line, and that was it.  Push-pull, click-click—we were licensed.  It was decidedly…anti-climactic.

Anybody who reads this blog with any regularity knows that I chronically over-think things.  And I habitually search for messages from the Universe in the smallest, most insignificant occurrences in my life.

But if yesterday wasn’t a clear message from the Almighty when it comes to choosing between becoming employed or remaining self-employed, I don’t know what it was.

Maybe I should listen this time.   

Comfort and Questions

Today is one of those red-letter days.  I will be taking another giant step (it is to be hoped) in my journey toward the next phase of my business life.  This is a journey I have embarked upon reluctantly and with the bare minimum of zeal needed to inch me toward the goal.  I have no doubt the café experience scarred me for life when it comes to having confidence in my own ability to make wise and well-considered decisions.  This crisis of self-confidence makes me seek out any excuse NOT to do the things that need to be done.  Or that I THINK need to be done.  Because I’m never sure if I’ve correctly assessed that they need to be done at all.  And so, when I am not completely paralyzed by self-doubt, I am inching forward at a glacial pace.

When I come to one of these days where I am absolutely forced to move forward more than the most minuscule toe stretch, I find I often turn to the Universe and try to hide my head in her robes. “Don’t make me do this.  I can’t do this.  I’m afraid.”

And the Universe unerringly comes up with a wise reply.  Usually this reply comes completely out of left field, but is immediately obvious that it is THE thing to grasp…rather than retaining a death grip on my doubts and fears.

In the back of my mind, these days, are the things I’ve always wanted…things that I thought we would have by now, having worked all our lives and nearing retirement.  Things that it looks, now, as if we will never have.  Like a trip to Europe.  A beach house.  A paid-off mortgage. A car that is less than ten years old. The possibility of actually being ABLE to retire. 

I think of these things, and I get angry.  I want to know why we can’t have these things.  What have we done wrong that we are facing an uncertain financial future at this stage of our lives, rather than coasting through the last few years of feathering our nest before retiring to it in peace and plenty?  I look at the things that other people have, like mansions and private islands and $150k designer cars and 3000 square foot “cabins” in the woods, and I think, “Why can’t we have a few small luxuries in our autumn years?”  Instead, I’m almost sixty years old and making my half-blind way toward a small business venture which will probably do little more than give me something to think about besides the fact that we are chronically broke. 

This morning, I ran to the Universe with my sage and my crystals and my arms up over my head in a panic, all these issues—present and future—weighing too heavily to bear alone.  I wanted to demand of her why I couldn’t have the nice things I would like to have, at this stage of my life.  I didn’t have to form the words, or even the thought, before the Universe conveyed her answer.  It went something like this:

Look at your life and you will see that I have provided what you need.  Understand that.  Be content with that.  Perhaps you will also get some of what you want.  But there are no guarantees in that direction…   

Hmmm.  I’m not really sure where to take this ball, now that it has been shot back into my court.  I don’t think it’s a crime to want things.  But I can’t become embittered if I don’t get what I want.  If I define what I need, I’m pretty sure I’ll find I already have most of those things.  On the other hand, if I ever stop working toward something, I might as well not bother getting out of bed.

Comfort…and more questions.  Happens every time I open myself to the counsel of the Universe… 

Come Back, Spider

Back in the first weeks after we closed the restaurant in 2011, I was just beginning to research shamanic spirituality, and my awareness to messages given through animal spirit guides was heightened; to my surprise, one of the first animals to step up and be recognized was Spider.

Spider is associated with a strong feminine viewpoint expressed through writing.  From the time I understood this relationship, I began to think of Spider as a sort of patron saint (talk about mixing religious traditions!) of my writing. 

Since last November, after a heroic effort to post an entry in one blog or another every day for a month straight, my connection to the blogs—indeed, my very zeal for writing—has flagged considerably.  And this has bothered me a lot.  Discovering the Land of Blog back in 2003 kindled a great fire inside my heart for a lost love—a love I had not seriously entertained for twenty years:  my love of writing.  For ten years, I wrote as if I had found my heart, my voice, my song.  And then, something just…ran out.  I feel as if I have written all I have to say.  Or, more accurately, all I have to say that anyone is interested in knowing.

Still, Spider has kept with me.  Appearing in my life and my dreams, reminding me of her presence, trying to prod me back to my spot in front of the computer, contentedly click-clacking away.  Unfortunately, I pay her less and less mind.  Too busy with everything else, or nothing else, to drag something new and beautiful out of my brain and splash it across a page or two.

A couple of months ago, a little black spider took up residence in the window above my staircase.  I saw her every morning as I trudged downstairs to start my day.  Greeted her several times each day as I went up and down the stairs in the course of my daily routine.  Every time I came into view, she would turn and look at me.   We had a relationship, that spider and I.  And I knew what she was trying to tell me.

But I didn’t act on it.

About a week ago, I noticed she was gone.  I think she gave up on me.

Then, last night, I had a Spider dream.

I dreamed I was sweeping up a pile of the endless construction dust with which I’ve been dealing at our project building—the project that has sapped my weak stockpile of creative energy since the beginning of the year.  In my dream, a huge spider crawled out of the pile of dust, and I tried to use the broom to shoo it out the back door.  But one overly ambitious swipe of the broom reduced the spider to a damp smear across the dusty concrete. 

I am not very pleased with the message this dream seems to impart…

      

Choosing

Yesterday started out badly.  One of the cats decided he needed to be up, bouncing off things in the bedroom and yodeling, at 5:30 am.  This, of course, jolted me awake and I couldn’t go back to sleep.  I do NOT get up at 5:30 am. 

I decided to kill some time by checking out Facebook.  It was TBT—Throwback Thursday.  This is when various friends publish old photos they’ve dug out and dusted off and scanned onto the internet.  For some reason, a memory of a particularly ugly scene, starring my mother and me and a box of old family photographs at my sister’s house, shot into my brain.  It came upon me so suddenly it was physically painful.  I burst into tears.

It doesn’t take much these days to kill whatever small buzz of happiness or contentment I can muster.  I’m out of sorts, mildly depressed and fussy.  My life is not in a great or rewarding place, and I don’t know how to get out of the rut I’m in.  This was NOT a great time for a painful memory to raise its ugly head.  I was very nearly undone. 

I determined that I had very definitely "lost my peace."  I needed to take some sage, go out to my "coffee and prayer" deck and perform a self-smudging ritual, try to re-center and re-establish that peace.  I needed help cleansing away these ugly thoughts.  The Universe would help me.

When I finally got outside and started my ceremony, there were still tears in my eyes.  I couldn’t get rid of the picture of my mother looking at me as if I were a stranger, asking my sister, “Where is SHE going with MY pictures?”  I couldn’t seem to latch on to the fact that by that time, Mom was half-senile and not altogether right in the head.  I was wounded beyond endurance.  My own mother thought of me as “other.”  “She.”   The pain caused by this ten-year-old memory was almost as sharp as when it was fresh. 

I was desperate for cleansing, for forgetfulness.  I set a match to the sage, but it kept going out.  What did that mean?  Did it mean that even the Universe had abandoned me?  That I was going to be left alone to writhe in my misery?  I began to stumble down a steep path into a true depression that would probably last at least the whole day, if not longer.  I was no good to anyone or anything, so I might as well BE no good to anyone or anything.  What did it matter?

And then a thought sprang into my head.  A completely calm and coherent thought.  “You can choose to wallow…”  It was as if a rope had been thrown around me and jerked me back, away from that steep slope. 

“You’re right.  I am choosing to wallow.  How else does an ancient memory of a long-dead conflict threaten to undo your life ten years later?  Not gonna do that…”

So I didn’t.  I went out and pulled some bushes out of the ground instead. 

I felt much better this morning.  

Spring?

Another month gone by.  Spring has kicked into high gear.  Not necessarily the weather part of it, but certainly the time part.  Suddenly everything is green, fruit blossoms have burst and fallen to drifts of pink snow on the sidewalks, daffodils are a distant memory.  The garden center at Fred Meyer has gone from echoing emptiness to full to the rafters with all manner of green and flowering things in the wink of an eye.  It all just seems to be going too fast for me this year.  Increasingly too fast with every passing year, as a matter of fact.

We have been busy with fixing up the Junction City building to get it ready for restaurant licensing.  Every weekend for the past two months, the husband drives the 100 miles south to put in a couple of full days painting, scraping, plumbing and wiring.  And I have been spending weekends plus.   So far, we’ve torn out a sink, had a new sink installed (in a different room), torn down walls, scraped mold, painstakingly scratched old paint off of floors, created a real bathroom out of what once could be barely called a pot to piss in, balanced on ten-foot ladders to paint, scrub and plaster.

All things that could have been done much more handily by a group of folks twenty or thirty years our juniors.  But we did it.  We had to, actually.  Seems that business is so great for small contractors that they have no interest in getting paid to do the things we need done.  So we pulled on our big-girl and big-boy pants and did it ourselves.  The results are acceptable.  Honestly, judging by the quality of some of the work we DID manage to contract out, I’d say doing it ourselves saved us money while not necessarily compromising the quality of the work.  It’s not a professional reno job by any means…but it looks a helluva lot better than it did.  I’m kicking myself, now, for not taking “before” pictures.    

I mention this by way of explanation for why I do not come here and write these days.  But I know that’s just a smoke screen.  When I was exhausted unto catatonia in the restaurant days, I came here with my thoughts and frustrations, and even threw in a political commentary here and there.  No, it’s not that I’m too busy.  I’m just wrestling with demons that I’m pretty sure no one is interested in reading about.  And I guess I’m not interested in writing about them, anymore.  I’m so done with clawing at the same walls of depression, fear and anxiety that have surrounded me for more than fifty years.  

There are times I feel like I have victory.  Like the walls have finally eroded away and I am free.  This is not one of those times. 

And the hell of it is, I’m sick to death of thinking I’m free at last and then figuring out that, no, the walls are not gone.  I’ve just been too busy or engaged to pay them any mind for awhile.   But they never go away.  And at this precise moment, following a winter of illness and aimlessness and loss, the walls are looking as tall and stout as ever.  And I’m SO tired of them.  I hardly have the strength or the drive to scratch even a tiny toehold into the shortest one.

Of course, the answer is to get busy and engaged again.  I’ve recently come to realize my options in that direction are severely limited—by my age, by my resume, by my physical location.  And this has really put me into a funk.  Every other time in my life, I felt confident that all I had to do was get myself up off my butt and “get out there,” and the work or the distraction would be available.  I don’t feel that way anymore.  Unemployed near-retirement-age is new—and frightening—territory for me.  It is decidedly uncomfortable to realize you don’t have anything to offer anyone anymore.  That, after a lifetime in the workplace, you have not one skill that anyone would be willing to pay you for.  That, in fact, those years in the workplace haven become a stone around your neck, or a scarlet letter, when it comes to finding employment.

Life goes on.  I’ll do the building renovations, I’ll tend my yard, I’ll vacuum up the dust bunnies and do the laundry.  Rearrange the furniture and clean out the cupboards and closets for the umpteenth time.

And wish that spring—the season of rebirth and renewal—was more representative of what is going on in MY life.  Because my soul seems to be stuck in mid-winter.      

The Best Dog EVER

Off the top of my head I can think of four beloved felines who have departed our lives during the years I’ve kept this blog.  I love my cats…I really do.  If asked, I would call myself a cat person, never a DOG person. 

But we did love a dog.   A very special dog.  She shared her life with us for over thirteen years.  But I wanted her for more. 

Lucy was the child we never had, the “dog niece” to my sisters, “dog cousin” to my (human) niece and nephew, the “grand-dog” to my mom.  And, oh, how she loved Grandma!  She loved any Grandma, actually.  At Mom’s Assisted Living building, Lucy hit the jackpot of Grandmas.  She would walk down the halls and greet every old lady she met with her bent-in-half tail wag and excited “hoo-hooo-hooo” greeting.

The “hoo-hoo.”  She knew her family, and every member got the “hoo-hoo” greeting when they returned to “the pack” after being away.  If you got a “hoo-hoo”  from Lucy, you knew you belonged.

We were kind of “nazi” dog parents.  Lucy was not allowed on the furniture, never slept in our bed.  Didn’t, as a rule, get people food.  We didn’t feed her scraps from the table, and scolded our guests for trying to get away with breaking our dog rules. 

But she was always with us.  The back seat of any vehicle we drove belonged exclusively to the dog.  Asked to share with a human passenger, she would do so with great reluctance, evidenced by heavy sighing and passive aggressive stretching and nosing until the interloper was confined to the smallest possible share of the dog’s seat.  She was the RV dog, the campfire dog, the beach dog.  The “make sure the hotel/vacation rental/campground is dog friendly” dog.  She shared our lives as none of our feline children ever has, could or would.

She loved frisbees and tennis balls, nerf footballs and Mike Wazowski.  She loved playing soccer goalie at the top of the stairs.  She loved biting soap bubbles--the closer to the source (your face) the better.  She loved going for rides in the car.  She loved the dike, and the church yard down the block.  Did I mention she loved the beach?  She LOVED the beach.

And she loved us.  And we loved her.  We had a great life together, Lucy and her family, and her cats. 

And now she’s gone.  All quite suddenly.  But maybe not really.

And oh…how we miss her.

Obese, Anxious and Depressed

Headline on a Salon story today:  Why Americans are Obese, Anxious and Depressed.

I didn’t read the article.  I have my own theories about why Americans are fat, sad, and biting their nails clear down to their first knuckles.

It’s the economy, stupid!

And middle class Americans have realized they are an endangered species. 

Since the rise of the American middle class in the early 20^th century, there has been an enduring belief among the rich and powerful that every dollar added to the coffers of the middle class was a dollar “stolen” out of the pockets of the rich.  And they have been hell-bent to get those dollars back, one way or another.  For over 100 years, Big Business has fought organized labor tooth and nail, grudgingly capitulating to demands when required by law, while consistently plotting to get “theirs” back.  And it looks like they have succeeded.

All the best things, all the finest things, from food to medical care to education to housing to entertainment, have increasingly become affordable only by the rich.

We’re fat because the cost of proteins like meat, seafood and even nuts, along with the prices of fresh, unprocessed foods, have risen so astronomically that we subsist more and more on cheap, carbohydrate-laden fast foods or processed meals from WalMart’s shelves and freezer cases.

Since a college education is increasingly outside the realm of affordability, we’re sad because we watch our children grow up to an aimless, jobless, hopeless adulthood.  Or we watch them toil in the only industry left to them—the service industry.  Where they are abused and disrespected on a daily basis not only by the “haves,” but by the “have-wannabes” that live next door.  Or we cry as they are forced to join our "all volunteer" military,  because there is literally no other respectable avenue open to them. The military will promise them many things, but first they will be sent off to grapple with death in corporate-backed wars-for-profit.

We’re anxious because we know there is state-of-the-art medical treatment out there,  but it is not for us.  Even if we have the best insurance our money can buy, we will not have access to the best that medical science has to offer. We  know that the term “catastrophic illness” was coined just for us.  Should we be unfortunate enough to develop one, we will go bankrupt or die.  Or both.

I imagine this might be how the dinosaurs felt as they stared into the face of whatever event wiped them off the face of the earth.