Popcorn Jellybeans

This summer has been unusual.  To be real honest, I'm extremely grateful it's finally coming to a close.  I got quite a bit of traveling in, saw first hand what the benefit of having a grief counselor at camp is, brought home a new kitten, junked my car, resigned from my dream job, and moved back in with my parents.  I've developed new scars on my ankles, feet, and hands; given away about a third of what I own; and finally started reading the copy of Catch-22 that my brother gave me; and I've tried to be more honest with people about my feelings.  I've read more books and watched less NetFlix.  I got to spend some time playing with my nieces and nephews (though there's never enough time) and learned to write cover letters.  I toyed with recipes, hung out with friends, continued a long-standing word game, and even vacuumed behind my bed.  It's been a different kind of summer.

The past couple of weeks I've felt like I was losing hope, and I've been spending more time awake worrying and overthinking than I'd like to admit.  There's nothing better than trying to do math at 4 in the morning because you're trying to figure out what you have left in your account and if you're going to be able to make it till you find a new job or (which should just happen) someone finally pays you what they owe you for work you did earlier in the summer/spring.

But God shows up.  In my depression and doubt, I've been struggling to pray because I just didn't feel like I had anything to say that would be any different than anything I've said before.  I've dealt with depression before, but usually I find comfort drawing closer to God.  This time I just felt like I was in O'Hare where they keep moving my gate and delaying my flight with no end in sight.  Thankfully, even though I've been feeling like everything is pointless and my life is starting to crumble about the edges, my friends and family stepped up.  Someone was always there to remind me that they loved me and had my back, and just as important, they were praying for me.  My friends, my family, my church...they kept praying.  They kept reminding me that someone good was on it's way.

Today, after getting stung by a bee, bit by a beetle, not being able to find job postings, and being told there was no longer a job opening at one of the places I was trying to apply to, I finally got a call back about a position that I really was hoping for.  I go in this coming Wednesday to go over the details of the offer and start the hiring process.  I could not be more grateful for this opportunity.  It's going to make me have to learn to flip my sleep schedule completely since I will be going to work extremely early in the morning, but I will be able to walk the 3 blocks to work from my house and by November I will have real health insurance.  This answers so many prayers and I am so grateful.

God showed up.  I need to start remembering that just because I don't think it's possible or am feeling like things are a lost cause, I am not the final say.  God can make it happen, and He's not going to abandon me when I need him most.  He will show up and He will come through for me.  I hope you can see that too and find your own popcorn jellybeans.


ps.  Favorite Things of This Very Moment (1:45 AM CST):

• John Mayer
• The Cat Who book series
• My Hawaiian Breeze fan
• The fact that the temperature seems to be dropping
• Knowing I get to go to Rockford with my family in the morning
• Major League (the movie)
• Handheld Tetris
• My large and wonderful hospital water bottle that keeps things cold for ages and ages
• That I'm actually tired and should be able to fall asleep pretty close to instantly after I get off this thing
• Recycling

I Use to Play Bass for the Proper Villians

Lately life has been a strange mix of beautiful and suck.

I had a really great interview last Monday with a nonprofit that is located 3 blocks from my house.  THREE blocks.  I could walk to work every day.  Plus I'd have insurance.  Actual insurance.  These are dreams of mine.  A job where I'd be doing something good (in this case taking care of a kitchen in a nursing home); I'd be getting paid every two weeks (without fail...no excuses or exceptions); I'd have real health insurance (which I still desperately need and am still too poor to afford); and I wouldn't need a car (which would be helpful as I currently don't possess or have access to a car).  They said they'd let me know at the end of last week if I had the job or not, but I've heard nothing at all else.  I actually called them on Monday, but it was a holiday so no one was in the office.  I called Tuesday and gave them a couple of extra numbers to try getting a hold of my last employer with (as she is notorious for not having her phone on, with her, charged, or checking her messages), but they said nothing at all about the position.  If I haven't heard back tomorrow, I'm calling again.  I need a job, and I had really hoped this one was the answer to my prayers.

The thing is, if it's not, I have a couple other places to apply, and a nice woman with a mutual friend put in a good word for me with her boss at another local business here in town.  It is also within walking distance.  I am, as I said, frustrated, but I'm also not without hope.

An old family friend recently asked me if I might be interested in tutoring/babysitting for her grandson who, as it turns out, is autistic.  Having a younger brother with Asperger's, I think this might be a challenge I could handle.  The only challenge will be trying to find a way to and from the house.  Thankfully they're close and it appears I can make my own hours.  I'll be contacting her before the week is out to see if I can have a trial day with the little boy to see if he will let me work with him.  If he does, I will hopefully have found something I can do, at least part-time to keep me afloat for awhile.

I've also taken a renewed interest in baking and cooking.  I'm honestly looking forward to the cooler weather (fall has always been my favorite) if for no other reason than I'll be able to turn the oven on and work in the kitchen without feeling like I'm going to die.  I will never be a summer person.  In the past couple of weeks I've made a couple of cheesecakes (one which I made up using leftover experiment cookies as my crust), some cookies, and pie.  In the process of trying to completely unpack (yes, finally), I found all of my cookbooks, and I'm beginning to think I may have to start trying out recipe by recipe until I go through all the things I've collected over the years.  It will be a good way to get rid of stuff I'll never use again and hopefully find some new favorite dishes for the family.

On top of this, I've been creating notes all over the place about books to write.  God only knows what will come of that, but I've got a couple of really good ideas for kids books.  If I can get myself to hold still and type some of this up (or scribble it out on paper or at the typewriter), I might have something else to try and publish.  Plus I've started trying to pull together poetry I've written over the years.  I may have something to try for there as well.

Beyond all of this, I have found myself, once again, grateful to have the library across the street.  I have been checking out books and reading everything.  I'm finally going through the last of the books that I own but have never managed to read.  I may actually finally have everything read through by the end of the year.  It won't even take that long if I don't find more work soon.

Like I said, it's a mix of beautiful and suck.  At least, through all of this, I have good people on my side hoping and praying right along with me.  I am not sure what I want to do or where I'll be in the next year, but I continue to hope that I'll be smart enough to greet it as it comes and enjoy where I'm at in the meantime.

Intramural Sports for Porcupines

Hoping I find myself
dreaming of intramural sports
among 300 porcupines
instead of closing my eyes
and seeing you

I've Always Relied on the Kindness of...Well...People I Know (and Occasionally Strangers)

Everything is stacked everywhere and I feel completely overwhelmed.  I have stacks of job ads.  I have stacks of framed pictures.  I have a huge stack of winter clothes I won't need for months tangled up with a pile of dresses I never take the time to wear.  I have stacks of books and stacks of movies.  I have 2 little stacks of random gifts, letters, and notes that need to go into a box so I can send them to my best friend, Nikky sometime in the not so distant future.  I have stacks of photo albums, and tonight I just feel like my life is a series of piles strewn about on my floor.

Everyone wants to help, everyone wants to ask questions, everyone wants me to come visit them soon or to go to lunch, and everyone wishes this hadn't happened.

Me too.

I keep trying to tell myself that resigning from this job that I believed was my dream job would somehow rectify what was going on.  Doing this would help me find my path back, and I still think it will, but sitting here surrounded by all this stuff that I'd honestly like to throw into the street and never see again, it's hard to believe.  (In my head I can just see all my stuff stacked on the curb as I watch out our porch windows as people come and dance with glee at their good fortune to find stacks of wonderful books and music and movies and clothes and everything as if it were that seen in Elizabethtown where Drew gets to witness just that.)

What's keeping me together is the God keeps reminding me how loved I am.  My siblings, sister-in-law, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and close friends keep reminding me.  People keep trying to connect me to job opportunities or volunteering as references.  People keep trying to help me get all my stuff in one place or move things for me.  People keep hugging me and telling me how glad they are to see me home.  People keep offering to injure certain offending parties.  I guess I keep trying to spread out all those beautiful kindnesses and gifts in front of me and put them on top of all the stacks.  It may seem like that would add to the mess, but really it just makes everything a little brighter and more beautiful.

Everything about this is insane, but at least there's hope.

When Late Night Brain Attacks!

Having just finished reading Dave Barry's wonderful Big Trouble for the 2nd or 3rd time, I should be in the post-good-book stupor, but instead my brain is thinking about other things. About unfinished letters to a man from Nebraska that I'll never send to ask honest questions he'll never answer. About how I'm less than 2 years from being 30 and still don't know what I want to do with my life and am seemingly no closer to being at peace with myself. About how my family and friends are better than I deserve especially after the final epic explosion and disintegration of my relationship with my boss in SC and my car officially becoming a death trap and the 30-40 flea bites I got from spending under 24 hrs in the house is spent the past 9 months living in and trying to rescue and clean up my kitten. And the fact that it's becoming less and less likely all the time that I'll ever get a chance to have kids let alone find someone to share my life with. 

What I don't get is why my brain can't think about these things during the day with the sunshine and coffee? Can't these thoughts wait till morning when I can sift through them properly?

I've decided that I want to be happy with my body by the time I turn 30, and I'm wondering if I should ever eat again. Ha. 

Somewhere inside my head I am trying to remind myself that I need to find a job, put up bookshelves, clean out my closet, actually unpack, resign from the job I love that has recently decided I don't matter enough to pay me, and actually do something good for myself. I've already had all my bad luck. It's time to just find the good and help it grow. 

Siiiiigh. Most of all, I need sleep. Maybe tonight I'll have better dreams. 

Scott Madsen's Words to Kim Carpenter

"God hasn't forgotten you.  God will never forget you.  He says he will never leave you comfortles, and he won't.  You can't use him up or wear him out.  Hang on to him, Kim.  He's the most powerful force for good you have.  He won't forget you.  So please don't forget him."
- Kim & Krickitt Carpenter with Dana Wilkerson, The Vow

Go to Sleep.

I should be asleep. If I just put this stupid iPod down I probably could go to sleep, but I've got a lot of little half-finished thoughts scurrying and maybe sending them out into the universe will silence them for the night. It's worth a try, right?

First, what if I'm not the Beauty, but the Beast instead? What if I'm the wreck someone has to see through? What if I'm the one who needs to learn to love and somehow win someone's love in return or I'll be stuck like this forever?

I watched Beauty & the Beast the other day while I was watching Piper, and the thought's been rumbling around in my head. I remember reading Twilight for the first time and relating to Edward's "what if I'm not the hero, what if I'm the bad guy" line better than almost anything else. What if I really am damaged goods? What if I never find a way to be the good in me and instead become my dark? 

Second, sort of, how many times do you need your heart-broken, to be looked over, rejected, invisible, second best, the back up plan, best friend, or forgotten before you give up or your heart just dies? Because I may have hit that mark. I'm starting to think I really may get no bigger role in this story than comic relief/crazy aunt/awkward, invisible side-character. I am so blessed with my family and friends, but what am I trying for? I realized today that it's been nearly a week since I wore make up or earrings/jewelry or did my hair or plucked my eyebrows. I look like hell. No one has noticed. Hell, I didn't notice till today. I can't even find it in me to care. I'm invisible, so what does it matter?

And this is what scares me. 

I think I'm letting myself just say to hell with it and giving up because I'm so fragmented. I know I need to keep going. I know I need to be grateful. I know I need to sleep more, spend more time outside, write more, pray more, eat less, and do more to find a new job, but...seriously...what am I working towards?

I've spent the past 8 months of my life believing I had a future and that I'd finally found a place to belong and do some good. This turns out to be a bit of a joke, and I find myself feeling betrayed, completely broke, and moving back in with my parents at 28. 

Third, my grandma's making me a "magic" quilt. I know she is just wanting me to be happy. She wants me settled with my own family, and I love her for that. I just wish it would work. It's insane to hope for though because I still haven't been able to work through the mess of who I am and no one else deserves to deal with this. 

Fourth, the one bad thing about babysitting for Piper is that it makes me desperately want my own kids, but then makes me question whether or not I'd be a good parent. None of this matters since there's no guy in the foreseeable future, but whatever. 

Fifth, I am struggling. In everything. I am tired of answering questions:

• No, I am not going back to SC anytime in the foreseeable future. 

• No, I won't be at ABC in the fall like I planned (possibly not ever).

• No, I haven't been paid. 

• No, I can't pay my bills. 

• Yes, I am looking for a new job.

• Yes, I am still doing work for CofC. 

• No, I'm not dating anyone. 

Those are my answers, and I don't think things will change anytime soon. 

And now to sleep.