When I'm not lamenting...

I'm actually doing okay. I use this blog as a major outlet for me, and I wonder sometimes what people think I must be like in "real life." I'm actually pretty damn funny. I always smile at you. I know one person at my old job that doesn't like me, but she's honestly it. Maybe other people talk shit about me behind my back...but in general, people like being around me and I'm blessed to have alot of friends drifting all around this great country of ours. 

(My best friend once told me when I was yakking about someone else she didn't know - "you have too many goddamn friends!" - now all friends other than her are referred to as yet another gd friend)

It really could be worse.

I'm still waking up each morning with a goal of to continue to get paid until the next day and to make it til bedtime without any kind of crisis. Things are okay. My meeting is going much better. All 9 of my panelists are now set, I've got 8 states coming, and my powerpoints are all made. I'm kicking it off and facilitating for the two days, so it's going to be a LONG couple of days, but after that I get to go home for memorial day and hug up some little ones and my friends and I'm determined to cherish things more this time.

My friend Tif, who I've known since I was about 8, and friends with since I was ....13? is someone that I email every day. I have since we graduated college (together) and I don't know nearly anyone that knows me the way she does. About 6 or 7 years ago, when I lived in DC the first time, she emailed me one day out of the blue with simply this: "Are you about done up there yet?"

Yep, she was ready for me to come home. She is a woman of very few words, we are not ones to be sentimental and we've had a long history of me metaphorically laying my head on her shoulder and her pushing me up to stand on my own two feet. 

She has two young sons, and is one of my favorite people in the entire world and I'd be lost without her.

This afternoon, we were grumping back and forth at each other about how it was Monday, we both were tired and we both felt fat and we both forgot our lunches, and, and....  We switched subjects into something else random and along the way I said "Ha! Yeah right. No one has ever loved me THAT much."

A few minutes later, I get this back:

"i do."

Two words - from someone who has seen my face at every age and every stage. Reminders of grace.

My former place of employment was in town last week - I absolutely loved seeing them all. Walking into a room and everyone knowing me and trading business cards with me and we laughed and grabbed hands and talked about a few years ago when oh-my-gosh-can-you-believe-that-actually-happened?

My life is rich, full, and capable of so much more than I often see these days. So this is me, peeking out behind the curtain, telling you I am okay and that I still have hope that someday, things will be even better.

The Hottest of Hot Messes

Today I feel like a scattered woman in every sense of the word. I'm struggling to absorb the impact of yet another thing that happened to shake America's psyche and to start us all bickering and attempting to define right vs wrong and in terms according to us and our interpretation of God. I'm struggling to keep my mouth shut to the absolutely moronic comments plauging my Facebook, comments sections of newspapers, talk radio, talk shows, talk talk talk everything. Can we all not be motherfucking quiet sometimes?

Work. Work, work, work. Changes are abounding here and they are WAY too long and messy and complicated to get into here in this forum, but lets just say, I need to find a new job. Tomorrow. So I start job searching -- sending resumes out, getting calls, getting on phone interviews. When all the while, I don't even WANT to work. I don't want to do another single policy position paper, or read another depressing report, or worry anymore about "whatthefuckarewegoingtodotokeeppeopleonMedicaid??" crazy disasters.

But work, I must. I got one call yesterday. I was excited until I learned it would likely be a $25,000 pay cut. I couldn't even pay my rent anymore.

In other but related news, I am holding a meeting in a few weeks and its going terribly. I'm bringing in seven state teams of people coming to learn from experts that I can't seem to get to the table. They are so smart that they can't LEAVE the jobs they are doing to come talk about them, and I completely understand that. Another state called me this morning and begged to come participate. "We won't even eat the food," she begged. I promise, we'll sit quietly. We just want to learn.

And I almost burst into tears at that. These people are struggling so, so much and for all their hard work, they're rewarded with idiots slamming lazy government workers on TV. Furloughs, taking away their benefits, pay cuts.

She wants to learn from me. And I feel like -- what can I give her? What kind of fortune can I wrap up in a cookie and send her home with when I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing every single day? How the hell did I end up here?

My life is as utterly uncertain as it has ever been. Sometimes I wonder if my desire for a husband and family is not quite as much about loneliness or biological clocks as it is that I so want to feel that something, anything, is solid. I walk every day waiting to have the rug yanked out from under me. I am clumsy, restless, and tense.

I need a vacation.

I've never taken one.