… time turn on your flight!  I just thought of the comeback I needed last night!”

I know that likely isn’t the actual wording on the comical turn of phrase I heard a long while back, but that is what stuck in my head and makes me smile from time to time when I feel as though I’m constantly running a day late and a dollar short.

Where has January gone?  Here it is already past the middle of the month and I haven’t even stopped writing 2009 on my checks yet.   January has definitely been better than December (and a whole pile of months that came before it), but things are still challenging.  When a train is barreling along in one direction, it has to take time and slow down and make the transition before turning around and hauling full steam in the opposite direction.  My train is working on turning around, but there are still a few rough edges here and there.

Eric had his first day of classroom college today.  He’s worked a bit on his online classes, but was waiting for the in-house stuff to begin before giving it his all.  Both finalize on the same day in the middle of May.  I felt like I should take a picture of him at the door with his little Star Wars lunch box (he corrected me to say “Return of the Jedi” while I told him this) and backpack.  He didn’t really have those things, mind you, but in my head, he did.

After having him here at home under my feet for the past 2 years, it’s going to be strange to have him gone 4 days a week.  The kids also had a week off in December because of the electrical outage, went to school for a week and then had 3 weeks off for Winter Break, followed by a week of school with a half day that Friday and then MLK Day yesterday.  Now they are all gone as well.  The house is very, very quiet and things tend to be where ever I let them for hours at a stretch.  I can watch anything (ANYthing) I want to on TV and there is not a running dialog/monologue playing through the soundtrack of my life.  It’s just me and the dogs and the fire.

…and the telephone.  I am still working long, mad hours and by “working,” I don’t necessarily mean “working” as much as sitting and waiting for the phone to ring.  Yesterday was a 12.5 hour shift day and that’s not so unusual any more.  Calls have been extremely slow, so I have to widen my scope of availability to catch as many as I can.  Out of the 12.5 hours, I was only actually with clients for 55 minutes.  It’s not always like that.  It tends to run in feast or famine.  Now we’re in famine.

We are also sitting in the middle of winter storm warnings for California.  We’ve had a good bit of rain, around 4-5 inches, and it’s snowing in that snow globey kind of way now, but not sticking much.  I suspect it will later.  We’re supposed to get dumped on a good bit this week and I am putting a LOT of energy into the kids being able to stay in school and the power staying on.  I’ll take the first part of the song: The weather outside IS frightful and my fire IS so delightful, but I’d rather the lights not be low and that we not “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.”

I had a minor melt down last week.  Nothing like the dark, dismal month of December and nothing that lasted for longer than a good pout.  I just deleted several paragraphs of complaining before I realized that it’s past and not really worth putting that kind of energy out there in the world.  Suffice it to say that long work hours plus having to take back the housework due to Eric’s college and work schedules did not put me in a happy place.

The premise of “you may be working, but you’re here all day” sort of made my eyes cross for a while.  I got better and told him I’d take over everything through the end of January and then we would revisit the idea – just while he settles into his schedule.  I have a feeling that’s going to fit him comfortably and it’s going to be challenging to dig him out of it, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.  (Oh please, we all know it’s staying this way.  Let’s not pretend.)

I had a feeling that it was only a matter of time before that whole working at home thing came back to bite me in the ass.  When I started, I proclaimed that when I’m in the back room with the curtain closed, I’m “working” and it’s the same as if I’ve gotten in the car and driven away to a job in town.  Ah, how completely naive I was back in those oldish, golden days of youth.

As a result, I am doing my best to get things done between the calls I do get.  I am good at rising to a challenge, so I know I’ll get the hang of it eventually.  Single mothers do it all the time and I’ve done it as a single mother before, so I just have to dip into that adage of old and “demand more from myself.”  It’s not by any means what I planned for my life, to spend my every single day running between housework and phone calls without any time to do the things I want to do, but it’s the reality of things.  Since Eric makes about enough money each month to cover the mortgage, I’ll think of it as “single mom with a free house.”

I will confess to feeling a sense of the wistful as I see Eric going off on his journey as he starts 4 years of college, his life pretty much laid out in front of him.  I see my 4 years of doing things I don’t really want to be doing with my life in order to support his dreams and goals and plans.  I know he’s doing it to better our situation, although honestly, I am a little confused about what a degree in Geology is going to accomplish specifically.  I know that’s likely my own lack of foresight and experience.  I trust he knows what he’s doing.

I just don’t trust that I know what I’m doing.  When you’re staring hard at 50, signing away a minimum of 4 years of your life and  is a little more daunting than it is when you are 33.

What I know I have to do is take responsibility for my own life and create one I can must love that is not involved with anything Eric is doing.  He is working on his own life that crosses paths with mine very, very little due to scheduling.  By spending so many of our hours together in the past 2 years, I have gotten used to involving him in almost all of my plans and now it’s time for me to begin thinking in terms of just myself again.  I have to remember how to do that and to embrace the freedom that comes with that change.  I have to start thinking as a person instead of as a couple.

The really good news is that Eric has worked it out so that I have a vehicle to use.  It needs some work (blah blah blah front differential blah blah blah pick and pull blah blah blah around $300 blah blah blah SAFE TO DRIVE), but at least I am mobile while he is gone so much.  I do love it too.  It’s a Jeep Cherokee we’ve been keeping for friends for almost 2 years now that needed some drive line and axle work. (Isn’t this riveting?)  Now that’s all fixed and I’m sort of good to go.  We will be paying it off with our tax return.  One of my favorite things about it is that it is dark green.  Since I first got my license, nearly every vehicle I have owned – and there have been many – has been blue, silver or white.  I now hate blue, silver and white vehicles.  Dark green works great for me.  My favorite car ever was, in fact, one of the blue ones:  a 1989 Buick Regal that was light blue.  My second favorite was 1999 Dodge Intrepid that was bright, fire engine red.  Eric traded it in on what?  A 2001 white Dodge Intrepid.  *sigh*

I am painfully close to decorating the Cherokee with reading material like the Coexist sticker and the one that says, “Fat people are harder to kidnap,” but I know at some point, Eric will no doubt have to drive it and he is vehemently anti-bumper sticker.  Of course, putting the stickers on there could be like licking the top of your soft drink can to keep other people from drinking it, just as the inevitable fact that he will undoubtedly smoke in the Liberty, after countless times of me asking him not to, will keep me from driving it despite the better gas mileage.  Nothing makes me wretch more than opening up a car – especially one I own – and getting a face full of ashtray smell.

Agh.  When did I turn into this helpless, hopeless, rag of a person?  Surely some of you remember me when I was strong and decisive and assertive and wise.  That was a great 15 minutes, let me tell you.  I was shinin’.

I think that’s why gender roles are defined as they are.  If we spend too much time with our spouse, we stop being able to think for ourselves.  Thought processes get too incestuously bound into how our every move affects them or what they might want or the possibility of making waves.

The dark of the year is the time when I decide what I am going to plant in the coming year to manifest as a goal and I think I’m starting to figure out what that’s going to be.

It’s time for the independence to kick in and for me to be finding my own happy in the midst of the higher demands being placed on me.  I’ll be taking some days off work here and there to go out and do my own thing, getting some air that has not recirculated through my own house over and over and doing some things that aren’t being done because they have to be.  As it stands now, I pretty much only leave the house to go get groceries once a week.  I need to get in more meditating time, more sleep time and give the kids more chores to do.  They are great about doing whatever I ask them to do, but the schools here load them down with so much homework that it takes up a good bit of their after school time and I do like for them to have some down time in their day.

This year is about finding myself and creating the happiness I want to have.  It’s about forging my own identity and pulling up more strengths inside myself.  It’s about finding my own rewards and my own joy.  It’s about making my own choices and allowing others to do the sacrificing sometimes.  It’s not about defending my wants and needs as being just as important as those of others, but insisting that they be, by force if necessary.

As such, I wanted to post this to my Facebook wall, but it was too long:

If your parents didn’t really have much of a clue on how to raise you and kind of screwed you up, if your kids and/or grandkids are overall decent, but can be a pain in the ass, if your husband is a good sort who has said things to you to destroy your self-esteem and fatally wound your very soul, if you honor Jesus but think many of His followers have no clue what He was really teaching and have twisted His words to meet their own agendas and if you don’t really think it’s anyone’s business what color your bra is or what kind of panties you wear, copy and paste this to your wall.

In light of my new found independence, I did the unthinkable and changed both of my phone numbers.  Even with talking to them honestly and attempting to negotiate, I was still getting 20 or more calls from bill collectors every day.  Enough already.  They’d started phoning on my work phone, which was never reported to anyone (but was also not unlisted).  My work phone used to be Eric’s business phone line, so I would constantly get faxes in my ear.  I changed them both, just like that and like shaking an etch-a-sketch, it all disappeared.  I was so excited over my day or so of knowing for a fact that any time the phone rang, it would actually be someone I wanted to talk to.  Then came the telemarketers.  It takes up to 30 days for your entry to the National Do Not Call Registry to be effective, so I’ve now had all sorts of offers and surveys and other crap coming in.

I realized around 3:30 am today when I got up with the dogs that because I changed the number late on Friday afternoon, the schools did not yet have the update and if weather was bad enough to cancel, the autodialer would not reach us.  Hmmm.  Fortunately, the weather held out, off they went and I got the schools updated today.

It has taken me all day to write this.  Sad, I know.  Fortunately, it has been because I actually got a few phone calls here and there.  The kids are home and acclimating and I am thinking about what kind of pasta I can make them for dinner.  I am going to take a few hours off of work and just sit and be.

I hope all of you get “sit and be” time as well.

Peace, yo.