Educated Fool

I should have gone to college when I was young and stupid. Full-time school, full-time work, a household to manage, a family to care for. Tumbling, all the while, deeper into debt. I have another semester after this one and I should be done barring any irrevocable damage from self-sabotage. I'll have a bachelor's degree and over 50k in loan debt. I'll be another poor educated fool with more work experience than college-related learning and a higher debt-to-income ration than when I started. If I don't finish, I won't be able to advance in my administrative career. If I quit and get a lower paying job that makes me happy I'll never get out of debt. How stupid. I wish that one of those talented hackers out there would wipe away all of our collective college debt! Now that would be worth doing!

Fortified.

I am lucky to feel strong. My body is strong – even with this sedentary lifestyle’s pudge becoming visible, my heart is strong – even though I have moments of fear, and my self is strong – but it always has been.

This next bit of my life will be about recognizing and fostering strengths. I have high hopes for this interlude into the spring. To begin again things I have set aside in favor of class time. This semester my class time will be virtual giving me the gift of a freer schedule. A dive back into the fire service, studio pottery, and the solid evening runs my body craves. A new opportunity of employment is on the horizon as well that will grant me a higher wage and new perspectives in complex healthcare operations. I love when hard work pays off and drives goals forward beyond just completion but into triumph.

I have a true partner in life who supports my every step navigating my way. We are in this together. I do my best to help make his dreams happen as well. I am grateful to have someone that will help me make things happen and has new ideas to improve our lives. He is without a doubt everything I have ever wanted in a sweetie and is one of my very best friends. I am at my best because of his devotion and support. I am fortified by his love.

If it ain't broke...

It’s a new calendar year and nothing is different, thank goodness. My sweet little family is consuming in a way I couldn't have comprehended as a single woman. My life is full of love and hugs. It’s just so full. Work distracts me from my family, school distracts as well though I continue to work to finish my degree. I am the norm somehow. Most mothers I know are in school and balancing their lives on a teeter-totter made with a tightrope. This new life I have embraced has been mine only since June of 2012 but it feels like I have always lived this way. Perhaps I was just simply meant to live this way. My one-day husband and my part-time children have invited me with open arms into this strange new world. And somehow with all these different pieces placed together it works. It works so very well.

Home Sweet Heart

I have fallen in love in the most profound way. Not only with my lover but also with his beautiful children. I have never cherished moments in the manner I do now. I pay close attention to those small details and swim in the way he looks at me. We laugh, we love, we embrace. He is my best friend. My new children are also my best friends. I am exhausted and incredibly joyful. I am a new woman. This love, this one is different. I feel safe with my heart in his hands. I don't feel vulnerable though I have opened my heart as wide as it will go. I am happy and appreciate every sweet second I get to spend with him. He relaxes me but also thrills me beyond anything I have ever experienced. I waited for this, for some one like him, for years. It was worth every hopeless thought and every lonely hour. He's my only one and only.

I fart in your general direction.

I forgot how satisfying it was to quit a job you don’t like, at all. It is pretty awesome. I’m full time in the hospital’s Infusion Suite now. No more number crunching for me! I get to care for people who need me and work with folks who appreciate me. I am still clocking serious overtime in the ER. I am also taking classes. Back to school? Yep.

After hanging out in life’s waiting room for a bit things started to come together and solidify. Did they ever, like gangbusters! I had a feeling it would play out like that but man, when it rains it pours. I am beginning my new life with fresh vision of what I want things to look like and this time it actually suits me. I am in great shape and have the most amazing friends. And the best part is? None of this is supposed bullshit that I’m spinning. None of these statements is to convince myself of these hopes and ideals. These are simply the facts. Sometimes things still suck but perspective is my new best friend. It helps to know that you CAN pick up where you sort of left off, sort of. Or at the very least, pick up where you should have left off and run with it!

Arsenic and Old Lace

You'll want to give it back as soon as you get it. It's what you asked for. Here. Take it. It's yours now. Actually, it's just what you think you want. Those words you whispered to yourself late at night with your great hopeful heart have manifested into a reality but, not quite what you were expecting though, is it? The universe is very literal when it comes to granting wishes. Why all the disappointment when things seemingly come true? Duh. Our grandmothers were spot on with their warnings: "be careful what you wish for." I would like to add to that: "because you will get it."

$18.65 per Hundred Weight (Cwt)

I’m in limbo. It’s the good kind of directionless waiting room. I have done all my paperwork, said the words that needed to be said, paid what needed to be paid and now all I can do is wait and tend to the details. I am maintaining the processes but nothing has yet quite begun in any actual sense. It’s the beginning of the beginning; which means there’s nothing for me to anticipate. I quite like it. It’s been quiet on the overtime front so I have had some leisure time. So, of course I volunteered to milk. I helped a friend out this past weekend at a small production organic dairy. We only had a few Jerseys to do twice a day but it made me very happy to herd the cows down from the pasture into the parlor and milk them out. I got some good exercise, $25.00 and a quart of raw milk. I started thinking about where I used to milk and how much I wish that I could still be there. They’ve changed their milking schedule so it’s hard to stop by and visit (and sneak in my milking fix).

Even though it was bitter cold, I loved the wintertime 4:00am milking. Picture me in an insulated navy jumpsuit that was probably a young man’s snowmobile suit from a long time ago and my punk-rock red hair warming my hands on the filling glass milk jars, my bright blue fingerless gloves soaked with milk and iodine. The parlor was a shock of spearmint green and the heater would glow a vibrant orange overhead; the black and white Holsteins further warming the parlor with their body heat. When it is that cold in such a strangely humid environment everything feels viscous. I liked being still for a moment to just breathe it all in. To remember the wild colors and sensations coming together in the name of agriculture in this little room for these few hours each day. I would snap out of it as soon as I heard a milker come off. We’d all be cleaned up before the sun came up and I’d drive home into the brightening blue horizon in desperate need of coffee and a shower.