Breathe.

"Trickle Down Theory"Taken October 20, 2007 with Canon PowerShot A550
“Trickle Down Theory”
Taken October 20, 2007 with Canon PowerShot A550

I’m …. tired. The last couple of weeks have been draining. I didn’t realize how tense things were getting, what with the good things, like gearing up for NaNoWriMo, the bad things, which I will get to in a sec, and the confusing things – mostly just trying to find “my place” at the J.O.B., which is difficult, as I was sort of dropped down into the middle of the project, and I feel like I’m just sitting around picking my nose most of the time. I don’t feel very useful there, truthfully.

I’ve outlined a couple of freelance magazine article ideas – another good thing. One, I actually wrote a proposal for, because it’s about an organization that I want to write about, but needs “interviews” with staff, and I thought it best to get the blessing of the head honcho. I got an immediate ‘yes’, and I’m excited about the project, which I already have a publication in mind for. And now (Sigh…*), I have to break it down into manageable chunks that can be dealt with on my lunch hour, since I kind of want to be face to face with the people I need to speak with.

My father is getting better. This was one of the “bad” things that I thought I might be jumping ship for, and I didn’t want to post about it, because we didn’t really know how things were going to turn out. He had a stroke, and then a heart attack, interspersed with several gushing nosebleeds just to make it all interesting. Even more interesting, he made friends with an imaginary bug that lives in the ceiling above his bed in the Critical Care Unit. He spent his whole first day there watching it dig a hole in the plaster and run around the curtain rail.

Yesterday, his 87th birthday, they let him out of Critical Care and he’s now in a general ward. A Co-Ed ward. With two “chicks”. He was a little put out with this at first, because he says he has enough trouble with women hitting on him, and he couldn’t see how he’d get any rest with two more hanging around his bed all day… turns out, he and my mom know the grandmother of one of them, so now it’s all good. I guess you don’t hit on the guy in the next bed if he’s a friend of Grandma. Or maybe you do but he doesn’t mind so much – I’ll have to ask.

My novel, now… I’m off to a slow start. Somehow, I’m not worried, though – I’m not sure why I’m not worried, but it may be that my main character, Emma, is very very solid in my mind, and I love her to pieces already.

I’m having trouble getting to the “getting it down part”, though, and that’s entirely because too many of the new things are still too new, and damn it, there’s too many of them. I want to go back to the more laid-back schedule of school and Ruby, J.O.B. and Ruby, Mom and Dad and Ruby, and rum on the weekends. Routine, please. The writing is more likely to happen then.

I won’t be going back to that routine anymore now, though, because I’ve gone and changed things and started a few things up that are designed to force me out of this place and into the Great Unknown, which, in my case is anything beyond 50 miles of here.

What, me – scared?! Pah!

Yes. Shitless.

I find the picture at the top of this post very calming. It reminds me to breathe, and to learn to take things as they come and actually do something with them. I’m learning how to recognize opportunities and yes, create some that weren’t there before, and Ta-DA! A life away from here is now “seeable”. The last thing I want to do right now is what I’ve been doing my whole life: hide from the things I want, and make up reasons to let them float by. I can’t dive at them though, either, because I’m likely to get myself run over. They are bigger than me.

I’m growing into them though… 😉

Random Song for the Day: “Aerodynamic” – Daft Punk

Almost Perfect…

Yeah, yeah, if it was all perfect what would I have to look forward to, blah, blah, blah. I wish I could remember the actual quote for that – it was killer.

BUT, regardless, it really was an almost perfect day. And the one disappointment isn’t getting me down much, because it may yet happen, and if not today, then tomorrow. ‘Cuz I wants it.

Matthew Mansel Falls & Eleanor Maude (Van Every) FallsJuly 28, 1948Meldrum Bay, Manitoulin Island, Ontario
Matthew Mansel Falls & Eleanor Maude (Van Every) Falls
July 28, 1948
Meldrum Bay, Manitoulin Island, Ontario

Today is my parents’ 59th Wedding Anniversary. FIFTY-NINE!!!!! Holy ol’ shit, Bloggosphere! My brother and sister-in-law (the Barber-Falls actor/director/producer/musician type people. Yes! Those famous ones!) took us all for a drive over hell’s half-acre and God’s green earth – we didn’t exactly get lost, but I don’t think we knew where we actually were most of the time – and poor unsociable, hermitaged, non-people-loving Me had a wonderful time. Me, who’da thunk?!

We ended up out for dinner at Trout Lake Resort where I ate an incredible white fish dinner (and a beer; can’t forget the beer – in public I drank a beer!) where we asked Mom and Dad how they got engaged.

Father: She called me on the phone and said she was coming on the train and to meet her at the station and that we were getting married.

Mother: I did not!

Father: Yes she did. She was desperate.

Aubrey: Were you desperate, Ma?

Mother: I must have been, I guess.

Me: So, how’d it really happen?

Mother/Father: I’m not telling you.

My sister (Tootie, of last July’s Caught Smokin’ video, for those of you that remember when I had a real blog) and her husband weren’t present for this celebration because of a trip to Manitoba to attend the nuptials of my Un-Brother, Ken, who somehow convinced his lovely companion that she should make an honest man out of him (she must be desperate), and who discovered the one romantic bone in his body (no, not that one, you pigs) and decided that he could only marry on the anniversary of his parents. And she went for it! She did! Congrats to them both, the foolish, foolish youngsters.

One more sister (Big Sis)was missing, as I think she may be up a tree somewhere in Southern Ontario. It’s okay, though – it’s her tree.

On the ride home, we popped into my cousin Carl’s driveway to get tasted by large dogs and learn how to get rid of unwanted Jehovah’s Witnesses. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long, long time.

As we unlocked the door, a tired Kyla, all “peopled-out”, sent me off to Ruby’s for coffee, crosswords, and more laughter.

I came home to my small, but soon to be remedied (wish hard) disappointment, but at least I have good things to write about. And I didn’t snark at anybody all. day.

Yup. An almost perfect day. It’s all good.

Random Song for the Day: “Walkin’ on Sunshine” – Katrina and the Waves

And That’s the Way It Is…

Taken May 13, 2007
with Canon Powershot A550
© 2007, Les Becker

I’ve quit The Dream Job. School was (is) going down the crapper and I’ve been spending catch-up time in school worrying about The Dream Job, and catch-up time at The Dream Job worrying about school. Nothing was getting done.

If I can “fast-track” through school somehow, I might manage to give myself a buffer of a few weeks to look for a job before the funding runs out. I’m at a point financially, finally, that I can start to sock a way a bit of an emergency fund against having no income, but I doubt I have time to build much of a cushion. Not to mention, that this situation is temporary. The funding will stop. And hell, I’m not even sure I can finish school by the deadline, let alone early.

At this point in my life… well, let’s just say that this is not where I expected to be.

Random song for the Day: “The Joker” – Steve Miller Band