Working Girl

I have returned the land of the gainfully and respectably employed. I started work on Wednesday and worked a whole 16 hours last week. I dressed in my new “big girl” clothes (referring to “grown-up” clothes not “fat-girl” clothes), brushed my hair, wore shinny high-heeled shoes and commuted to and from downtown each day. It was a little bit weird actually. I haven’t done anything even close to that for almost two years. I had my brother take a picture of me on my first day of work, but it turned out with me looking really weird so I’ll refrain from subjecting you to it.

On top of that I met with a temp agency Friday morning to try and find little things here and there to get a little extra cash, meet different people and basically keep myself out of trouble. (Idle hands being the devils tool and all.) It isn’t for sure, but they might have a ten-week placement for me working 27 hours each week. It pays above average for a temp job and would let me meet a lot of people because I would be a receptionist-type person in an office busy with many clients. If it comes through I would go from being a shiftless, bored, underemployed massage therapist to working two jobs for a total of 43 hours a week.

I’m actually looking forward to it. I’ll have some long days (8am – 7pm most days) but after so many months of feeling rather idle, I’m eager to be busy. I also figure that if I’m busy busy busy working then it will distract me a little bit from missing my Christopher. I’m also eager to be making money so I can add to the “house fund” savings account my Christopher and I started January 1. In any case, it is only for ten weeks and even if it is most awful, I can get through ten weeks.

Missing my Christopher

My Christopher and I left Grass Valley around 4am Saturday morning and got to my dad's, just south of Portland, around 1pm. We lolled about watching football most of Sunday and then I had to drive my Christopher to the airport where he flew back to California.

Separation will make us really "appreciate" each other and really "value" the time we do have together and "make our relationship stronger" and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I already actively appreciate my Christopher deeply and tell him so constantly. He does the same for me. We also already make a point of doing fun things together and valuing the time we get together (even if it was a luxurious six out of seven days.) I don't need a 500-mile gulf to give us these things.
I have a bit more trouble combating the argument about it making our relationship stronger. It isn't weak, but it also hasn't ever been tested by any challenges or difficulties really. So maybe it will be good in that it will make it stronger. I really don't like this being far apart thing AT ALL though. I'll make the best of it, as always, and try to gain what we can from it, but I want to make it clear to all that this is not ideal and that it actually rather sucks.

Destructive Weekend

It started on Thursday afternoon when I sliced a little bit off the tip of my left index finger. I was making soup and rushing to get the spinach chopped. The knife was very sharp. Next thing I knew I had chopped not only the spinach, but also a bit of my finger right off. Gone. It bled a lot. I immediately pressed a paper towel against the tip of my finger and, while compressing, somehow finished up the soup. Afterwards I gingerly I pulled back the paper towel to examine my filleted flesh. I glanced away for a moment to open the Neosporin and by the time I looked back my finger was covered in blood again. I compressed the finger for a while longer while I ate my lunch. Eventually I was able to get the bleeding stopped and the injured finger bandaged, but it hurt like $#@&. Thankfully I didn’t have to do any massage until today, Monday, and it seems to have healed very well.

Next was the fireplace Saturday evening. My Christopher and I arrived at his home late in the evening to find his roommate Bart steeping in a smoke filled room. After about five minutes my eyes started burning and I was coughing a bit. How Bart was able to loll around in that environment all afternoon and evening is beyond me, but we opened up all the doors and windows until the house was habitable again. The fire didn’t seem to be leaking smoke from anywhere so we just assumed that smoke had gotten into the room when the door was opened to stoke the fire. When we added logs, however, our assumption proved false. Smoke immediately started seeping from the top joint of the chimney despite no apparent crack or misalignment. Christopher, being the handy hunk that he is, made his way up onto the roof (at 10pm in 25 degree weather) and found the top of the chimney to be totally caked with soot, thus greatly diminishing the ability of the smoke to exit the chimney. He was able to clean it out, we aired out the house again and 40 minutes later were settled back into our movie.

Sunday morning Christopher discovered his carboy (a five-gallon container for fermenting beer in) was full of ice. He’d set it out with water in it a couple of weeks ago and forgotten to clean it out. In the meantime the water had turned to ice because of the weeklong cold snap. After setting the carboy in the bathtub to thaw out he noticed a crack running along the side. As the carboy defrosted, water started seeping out that crack and others while the glass container sort of dissolved around it. The bathtub isn’t the best place to have a five-gallon, inch-thick glass container dissolve into numerous pieces large and small. Christopher carefully picked up all the pieces and so far we’ve only found two stray bits. One Bart found right by the toilet and one we found embedded in Christopher’s slipper. I’m planning on keeping my slippers or shoes on at all times in the bathroom. This might be a challenge when bathing, but I don’t want my feet to wind up like my finger.

Sunday evening Christopher came with me to my parents’ house where I’m residing until I move to Portland. I don’t spend a whole lot of time there because it is rather cold (I don’t want to heat up their whole big house) and because it is sort of far away from everything (like the gym, yoga, the track, grocery stores, things to do, etc.) Also Chris doesn’t come down too often because his puppy-dog Samson needs to be taken care of. Last night, however, we left Sam with Bart and headed down to my parents’ place. Thank goodness he came with me as we discovered the outdoor shower was gushing water. It turns out the valve inside the faucet-thingy busted, probably because of the cold. It was mostly hot water that was gushing out so first Christopher turned off the hot water. Then it was still pouring out so we had to turn all the water off. Turning all the water off proved quite challenging as the water main was buried in the yard. Something had shifted after it was installed so the casing around the water main had shifted, making it flush with the handle and making it impossible to turn the water off. In the dark we were digging and pulling and digging and pulling (all in the 25 degree air with frozen ground) until we were finally able to turn the handle and shut off the water. Handy hunk Christopher took apart the faucet and valve, discovered the problem, and MacGyver-style fashioned a plug out of a latex glove and was able to stop up the faucet so we could turn the water back on so that we could eat, drink, do dishes, laundry, bathe and all those other things that require water and which we take for granted. This all took about an hour and a half.

Finally we’d finished our movie (started Saturday night before the chimney incident), finished dinner, had a couple of sorely needed stiff drinks, and were taking the garbage and recycling down the driveway for pickup the next morning. I was dragging the trash down the long driveway when I heard a crash immediately followed by swearing. The bag Christopher was carrying down had broken, releasing half a dozen glass bottles into the starry night. I watched as they rolled down the steep driveway, tinkling and pinging as they danced along until finally shattering and smashing along and beside the driveway. After retrieving the flashlight for the second time that night and another plastic bag, we carefully picked up all the little shards of glass. Or at least I hope we picked up all the little shards of glass. By this point I was sort of laughing hysterically while swearing cheerfully. I was so cold and so tired and we had been dealing with these sorts of things for far too long. Going to bed, with the electric blanket and everything, was such a relief.

I escaped this destructive weekend and am now at the office where I do massage 1 1/2 days each week. It is about 40 degrees in here and just as I finished setting up I discovered my 9am client had called around 7:30 to cancel. I think there also may be a frozen or broken pipe here as I tried to fill my water bottle and found there was no water. At least this gives me the time to recount my adventurous weekend and call the plumber I would like to come fix the faucet. In general, however, I don’t really need all this in this very busy last week of mine before moving and starting my new job.

Saying Goodbye

I’ve moved a lot. I’ve made a lot of big changes in my life a lot of times. I’ve said goodbye to a lot of people. Somehow this time seems harder, and the hardest part is saying goodbye to my clients. The relationships I have with my clients, while very professional, are also very personal. Some of these people I’ve spent two hours with once a week, every week, for months. I don’t see or speak with my best friends that much. I know about their health, injuries and other massage-related issues but I also know about their lives, their partners, their kids, their work, their vacations, their worries, their joys, their houses, their hobbies, their pets and so much more. In turn they know about me similar such details of living that come up when you spend so much personal, focused time with another person. Despite good intentions all around, I know that I probably won’t ever see or speak to many of them ever again. We passed through each other’s lives for a brief moment and while invisible strings will connect us for a while, at least in our hearts and minds, eventually those strings will stretch and fade and disappear.

It is almost made worse by the fact that everyone is also so wonderful and supportive too. Not worse, I should say, but harder. It is easy to break-off connections with jerks, but these lovely clients are all so nice about it all. They are in various stages of sadness, from mild to crestfallen, about my leaving, but even the ones who will most miss me are so understanding and supportive of the exciting changes I have coming up. I almost started crying yesterday when the chiropractor asked if there was anything they could do to help make things easier for me. For some reason I was feeling so bad and almost guilty about leaving, and instead of being upset or mad with me (not that one would ever think that is how they would respond) they gave me hugs and offered to help. With all the flurry of change I’m a little bit wound up and emotional right now to begin with so when she said that I felt myself well up.

Leaving is helping me gain a deeper appreciation for the people I’ve known and worked with here. I know I need to leave, but I hope I am able to bring all the kindness and love I’ve had here with me.

California Sunshine

Sunday was 61 degrees and full of brilliant sunshine. Saturday was also 61 degrees and full of brilliant sunshine. According to weather.com, today is scheduled to be 63 degrees and full of brilliant sunshine. It is, I remind you all, January. This is one of the extraordinarily nice things about living in California again. And why am I leaving in two weeks? Oh right, job opportunity, better quality of living, family, culture, a future, other young people and all that.

Californians often tend to not quite appreciate what they have here anyway. It is common for people to characterize a whole winter as “awful” because of one or two rough months. Chris even had a coworker say, “I’m already sick of the rain.” This was after a scant week of rain that had been preceded by six months of drought. Ungrateful wretches.

After spending so many years away I find myself feeling a bit desperate with every sunny winter day. I see the light sparkling all around and feel driven to get out of bed, go outside and do something. If I have to work inside for most of the day I feel like a great opportunity was missed. When seven of the ten days in the future forecast indicate bountiful sunshine with not a wisp of a cloud in sight, taking full advantage of every single one of them can be exhausting.

Saturday Chris helped me get started with my running resolution and I ended up running a very hard three miles plus a bit for warming up and cooling down. Then with tired, achy muscles we got up early on Sunday and went for a 32-mile bike ride. Needless to say we were wiped out by the evening and struggled to keep our weary, drained, done in muscles up until 9:00pm when we dragged our spent carcasses into bed.

Oregon will definitely be a bit less full of glorious sunny days, but I keep telling myself it is better than the northeast and the rain will help me appreciate the sunny days. The whole, "there is no light without the dark," concept. It will probably help keep me from overdoing it in general too. And I’ll still visit the sunshine when I visit my Christopher, an even better sort of sunshine.

New Year, New State, New Job…

I have strayed from my wayward tendencies. For the entirety of 2006 I was, for the most part, in the same place, doing the same thing. At one point I even had an apartment of my own and a lease. The universe, however, has intervened and presented me with an opportunity.

Wednesday evening an inspiring woman I met through my dad called to offer me a part-time position with the magazine Oregon Business in Portland, Oregon. I start in two weeks. It is an administrative position working to help organize a giant project next fall. For the first few months I’ll work 16 hours a week and progress to 20, then 30 hours, as we get closer to the event. Additionally, I will probably have the chance to do an internship with the editorial side of the magazine. The internship won’t be paid, but it will be a great step toward what I want to be doing. I am extremely excited to be making these changes. If you see my previous post, from all of four days ago, this is exactly what I want to do. I don’t know for sure yet, but I also have the sense that the people I will be working with are bright, intelligent, organized, positive, supportive people doing great work. After a year of feeling like I’ve been treading water, I’m finally going somewhere.

I am also excited to be in Portland in general. Grass Valley is a very lovely area but there is a serious lack of job or economic opportunities, culture, young people or things to stimulate the mind in general. The people are very nice and the hiking, camping, biking, running, swimming and other such outdoor activities are stunning, but neither I nor my Christopher can see being here three years from now. Portland, on the other hand, has over a dozen close, supportive family members, friends, museums, nightlife, a myriad of job opportunities in a wide range of fields, relatively affordable housing, public transportation and all those things that make a place easier and more appealing to live in. It also has great outdoor activities. One must, however, be resigned to getting a little wetter than here in California.

The pay at my job won’t be great, but it will be enough to live on and I’m trying to work out a plan to do some house sitting for family friends. This way I will still be thoroughly wayward and be able to buy lots of plane tickets back to California. I will need to be buying lots of plane tickets because my Christopher will still be living here.

This is, of course, the giant dark cloud in the equation. Unfortunately my Christopher has this super job, doing cool stuff, getting all sorts of opportunities and working with great people. To make matters even worse, he also has this great house with cheap rent and great roommates that is right by his work and is perfect for his dog. Rotten huh?

So, for now, we’ll have to do that terrible long-distance thing. Fortunately I’ll be working part-time and so will have lots of time to fly back for long weekends. And the job only goes through September. So we’ll see how things go. Maybe his job will start to suck and he’ll move up. Or maybe I’ll really get going with freelance writing and then be able to work from anywhere once the temporary job ends. We are just trying to take it one step at a time and trust that it will all work out. These are, after all, changes that need to happen and it is a wonderful opportunity.

Resolute

New Year’s resolutions have a bit of a bad wrap. So often they are made with little or no intention of actually following through. I, however, take my resolutions very seriously and have had a fair bit of success with them lately. Last year one of my resolutions was to do my yoga every morning. And, except for six mornings all year, I did do my yoga every morning. I also resolved to interact with humans more. This means resisting my hermit inclinations. If I was asked to do something or go somewhere, I was supposed to say, “yes” unless I really, truly, honestly was unable to do whatever was being asked. For example: I was asked to join a Dodge Ball team full of people I didn’t know. I was supposed to drive a half-hour on a Sunday evening to have balls thrown at me by and with a bunch of strangers. But I did it. And it was even fun. I also went on match.com to meet people. I had no intention of actually dating but then I went and met my Christopher and well… you know the rest. I would say that my resolutions worked out pretty well last year.

And here we are with a new January once again. This year I resolve to write every day. Yoga every morning is nice. It is good for my body and my mind, helps me focus, center and all that stuff. And I love yoga. I hope that it will always be a part of me and that I will continue to be able to bring a yoga mind-set to the way I live. But I don’t feel like I need to be a better yogina. I do, on the other hand, feel the absence of my writing in my life and want to change that. I want to really commit myself to writing more. My goal is not to publish a book or article or poem or even to write well. I just want to get back to writing. Writing about anything and everything. So every morning, instead of my yoga (or possibly some mornings in addition to) I will write for at least 20 minutes.

And this connects to my larger, less tangible resolution. I want to find “direction.” I like massage. It is very nice. I like the people I work with and I like the flexibility it gives me. However, I don’t want to be doing massage full-time anymore. There are other things I want to do. I want work that stimulates and challenges me intellectually and I want work that has both a future and room for growth. I am very glad that I focused on massage this year, but I feel that I am ready to move on. And where I would like to move on to is writing and editing. I want to work for a magazine as something like an assistant editor and/or do writing or editing on a project basis for companies, organizations or people who need help with that. Actually, I guess that is pretty tangible.

Lastly, I resolve to run faster. I think it is good to have a concrete fitness goal. If I don’t then it is terribly difficult for me to exercise at all. Lately my fitness goals have been to simply complete some extremely difficult event where there is a question as to whether or not I will even be able to finish – like running a 15K or finishing the Donner Lake Triathlon. I’m good at driving myself to be able to finish something grueling. I’m not good, however, at sprinting. It is hard and uncomfortable and not fun at all. So I think I should work at it. I won’t disclose numbers because they are embarrassingly slow, but I would like to be able to run a 5K (3.1 miles) in a certain amount of time that seems quite fast to me. I’m giving myself until September or October.

So there they are, my New Year’s Resolutions. Committed down to “paper” and everything.