December 7th's Book of Good Things

Yesterday's walk to work was surreally bright, the sky glowing a golden-white despite the many charcoal clouds in it.  I had forgotten my gloves as I walked out the door and soon had near-numb hands but was otherwise warm enough in my raincoat, while parents and children around me were emerging from cars bundled up in coats and hats, and a runner darted past me in just a t-shirt and shorts.  When there was a pause in traffic, all around me was hushed and stilled save for the leaves skittering down sidewalks and being whipped off the trees by the wind.  My umbrella stood up to the weather the entire walk, but I heard an embarrassed-sounding whoop behind me when another woman's began to turn inside-out in the wind just as we approached our building.  Yesterday's rain and wildness have moved on now, though, and a morning that began here in the low twenties will end with snow tonight only to disappear again this weekend with temperatures in the low sixties.  I give children at my workplace coloring pages depicting "Sesame Street's" Elmo making an igloo--I is for igloo!-- and Winnie the Pooh building a snowman and wonder if they even relate, the weather is so strange anymore and December is so rarely the way it was when I was their ages.  My work-schedule for today is an adjusted one that sees me starting four hours later than usual, so I've had precious time to catch up a bit with Mike before I leave for today's walk back to work.  The sun is shining.  I slept well.  My work-day is only eight hours.  I will treat myself to a slice of cheese pizza for lunch halfway-through it.  This news story keeps making me smile.  I am off tomorrow.  I feel I'm on an upswing.  'One day at a time, as ever, and today looks good. 

Looking for Santa (and Some Smarter Ways)

How sweet is Stuffed, staring at the empty Christmas stocking!  ♥  Or maybe he's looking at his own.  :)  This feels like the latest I've ever put up the tree, but it likely just seems that way because so much feels so out of control lately.  Tonight, right after I hit "Publish" on this and pour myself another iced tea, will be a feverish night of Decorate-the-Tree-and-Get-All-the-Holiday-Cards Ready-to-Mail-in-the-Morning.  Because of my wacky work schedule, I usually go to bed around 2 am, but I'm determined to get all this done tonight even if it means I climb into bed later than that.  I just can't handle having More!  Big!  Things!  hanging over my head another day.  I am still (forever and always) behind on laundry.  I have to finish Christmas shopping:  My big family Christmas is next weekend, the 15th/16th, since that's when I can get home for it, so I have to get it all done this next week.  Shoot, I still have to wash tonight's supper dishes.  Double-shoot, for that matter, I still have to put away the leaf and snowflake cookie cutters and frosting bags I used making my desserts on Thanksgiving.  (Containers of sprinkles, cookie cutters, food coloring tubes, sugars, etc. all need to be rearranged and re-fit into little tins and jars for these to be put away properly, but in the time it's taken to write this sentence, I could have gotten it at least half-done.)  And make that a triple-shoot:  I still have to put together the two bookshelves I mentioned in October.  There are just So!  Many!  little tasks like that to be done, is the issue, and I'm always exhausted, and in order to accomplish anything besides all the usual everyday chores, I either have to go to bed too late or force myself to start my day too early, and that's not  sustainable for long.  (That my writing and walking--and of course, running--have fallen by the wayside lately is almost more distressing than all the rest of this combined.)  And there are bigger to-do items too, which take more energy and/or a real chunk of time carved-out, and so it all falls further apart.  There are in-person bank errands to run, and student loan nonsense to sort-out and deal with, a new photo to be taken for my driver's license. . . .The lists are all long ones.  This is the first Christmas that I think I would have happily skipped both putting up a tree and sending cards--it's all just so much extra work and feels like a hassle this year--but I don't want to ruin Christmas for Mike, and I know myself well enough to know that maybe I would feel even worse, and life would feel even more out of control, if I had to look back on December knowing I didn't manage the tree or cards.  Everything that had been stored in the corner where the newly-put-up tree is, is now scattered throughout our tiny one-bedroom apartment, and the clutter--or THE CLUTTER (CLUTTER CLUTTER CLUTTER), since I say that word in a booming echo like enraged Saruman bellowing into the snowstorm--

--is driving me crazy/even more crazy, especially since everything-that-had-been-in-the-current-tree-corner-and-that-is-now-scattered-all-over was only in the current tree-corner because I had to move it from the hall closet to the corner in May when I turned the hall closet into the spot for my work-wardrobe.  I still haven't found a new spot for any of these things--but doing so was/is ON MY LIST!  Bwah ha ha!--so the fact that everything's now been shuffled around AGAIN just makes me want to give up and live in a hotel awhile.  This one, please!  

Add a pitcher of flowers, my journal, pens, and a stack of books, and fill the mini-fridge with iced tea for me, and I'M THERE, I tell you.  I'M THERE.  I hate clutter.  I hate clutter.  I am here surrounded by it tonight, though, and I am signing off to attempt the nightly slaying of a little more of it.  I am off both Friday and Saturday, is what I am holding onto in this regard tonight, and I can spend them reading in my chair with Stuffed, content knowing my cards are already are their way to everyone while the tree lights and decorations charm me from across the (I swear, I swear, if I have to stay up ALL NIGHT TONIGHT) organized and tidy apartment.  That will make me feel better for December, but I need to figure out some new and better ways moving forward because the schedules and routines that worked for me the seven years I had my now-old job are clearly just not the right ones anymore.  Alas. 

 

 
 

 


 
Oh, to have this cozy and tidy little home again!  Well, I had four days off every week with my old job, since all my hours were squashed into three loooong shifts before, so that made a huge difference.  And the hours themselves were quite different and allowed me to be home at times I could do noisy things like vacuuming, moving boxes and furniture around to reorganize things, clanking dishes together while washing them and putting them away, running up and down the three flights of stairs from our apartment to the basement to do laundry, etc. all without fear of waking Mike or any neighbors.  That made a difference too.  And I used to leave for work and return home from work at the same time every shift I worked, and I can no longer say that either.  Sometimes I get home from work at 6 pm now, but usually, it's 12:30 in the morning.  Other times, 11 pm.  Today's shift was supposed to have ended at 5:15 but saw me leaving at 6:05.  This is the job I had wanted for so long, though, and I am determined to make it work without letting everything else suffer.  I want some peace and organization and routine back.  I will get there again, I think, but it's going to take some real doing.  And realizing--really understanding now--that all the new jobs in my future will require that I figure out all new ways and routines to make them work too--has been eye-opening, indeed.  Ah, the constant adjustments and readjustments needed to make life run smoothly.  Onward and upward, and all that jazz, then, because I'm not climbing into bed every night of 2018 feeling like I just slid into home plate in a kick-up of dust (and to-do lists). 

♫ New Job and a Haircut, At Last ♪

Well.  :)  Almost exactly nine years after I first interviewed for it, I can finally shout from the rooftops say I got the job. Way back in June 2008--here--I had my first interview for it ahead of me, and today, after (not having enough experience for it back then, and thus) a lot of volunteering, seven years of working toward it at my now-previous position, and applying for it and being rejected at least six times since spring 2007--I've just completed my first two weeks on the job.  Last month, I shared the job announcement with one of the people who had supervised me during some volunteer work back in 2009, and she shook her head and cried out, "Val, your story shows the power of"--long pause--"PERSISTENCE!  It's a good, GOOD story!"  ♥  Indeed.  As my dad has long said, I am nothing if not stubborn.  :)  I got the job!  ♥   

A few days before I was offered the position, I found this graffiti on my walk to work.  I took it as a nod from the universe, as I tend to do, as it appeared at a time when I really needed the encouragement.  Little did I know that there was a bigger nod in my favor just a few days away.  Likewise, I caught a bus home a few weeks ago to visit my family for the first time since hearing the news and found this--

just the paper message, no fortune cookie or wrapper with it--resting on the window ledge beside the seat I'd chosen.  ♥

The day before I began the new job was not the smartest day to get a haircut--Anxiety, Thy Name Was Val!--but fortune continued to favor me, and I'm happy with the cut.  It seems to look completely different from morning-to-morning depending on how I part it and who-knows-what-else, but it suits me in all its variations.  Another "whew!"  Let's hear it for stylists who know what they're doing and can correctly interpret verbal instructions and clipped photographs!  :)  

Last night was my first night off since starting the new position that I didn't feel utterly exhausted, so it became Celebrating-Two-Weeks-on-the-Job Cake-Baking Night.  I wanted something joyful and summery, and flowers and berries were the way to go.

 I added mint leaves for a touch of green.  It is a season of fresh starts in these parts, after all. 

. . .I got the job!  I got the job!  ♥

Appreciation and a Pumpkin-Heart

Last night at work, I found this cute thank you note beside the remains of two packages of cookies I'd left for my coworkers Tuesday morning.  The person who wrote it could not have known that I appreciated the thank you even more than she did the cookies.  This small gesture made my day.  And moments ago while getting ready to slide a pan of pumpkin-apple muffins into the oven, I noticed a pumpkin heart left behind in the saucepan.  'A sweet start to this Friday. It is so often the little things that keep us going. 

Seven Nice Things

I was nursing a headache most of yesterday--yes, my turn, Lisa!--but am feeling better today for Day Off #2 and have gotten a lot done.  And am just enjoying myself.  Seven sweet things this week:

1.)  'Am still working on my 80s childhood memoir.  Loving!  It!  ♥  That pile of paper scraps in the photo above is all the remaining notes that need to be turned into index cards--which will later be turned into "real" writing.  The pile has shrunk so much since I started this in earnest earlier this year.  My goal for the rest of today is to get as many scraps onto cards as possible so I can move on to the filling-the-notebooks-with-rough-drafts stage of things.  Progress!

2.)  The building manager and a plumber had to stop by earlier this week for routine winter-prep radiator maintenance, and as I welcomed them in,  the plumber glanced around and unexpectedly greeted me with "Oh, I like it in here!  It's very family-oriented!" and moments later commented, "It smells really good in here too!" as he left.  I hardly knew what to say besides thank you, but both remarks made me laugh.  A sweet encounter.  

3.)  A coworker left a thank you on my note that accompanied the cookies I'd brought into work last week and later thanked me in-person.  A day-brightener for me. 

5.)  Chicago Cubs in the World Series playoffs!  I'm not wildly enthusiastic about any one team--I tend to wish them all well--and it would have been a treat for Dad if his Pirates had advanced in the playoffs, but how fun to see the Cubs and their fans having such a great ride this fall.  

6.)  This pup, an English Yellow Lab--

--is now my younger brother's dog.  So sweet!  ♥  My brother, his wife, and somehow-almost-two-year-old Bianca have all wanted a dog for ages, and this one looks so dear. 

7.)  Chilly fall weather has returned, and with it, a pot on the stove here of simmering cinnamon water.  Today's mix is simply cinnamon with vanilla, but as I finish my iced teas while I write this afternoon, I'll throw in the lemon slices too.  Snow flurries and a frost warning are in the forecast for the next few days.  Oh, fall!  Love, love, love.  

'Back to the index cards.  'A sweet weekend to you all. 

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. ~ Eden Philpotts

Before being hired for the position I've had the past six months, I spent two and a half years working as a cook. Although I love to cook and bake, the job was not my dream job, and although I knew I was still working toward my goals and doing the best I could, there were days it was all just maddeningly frustrating. Since it takes awhile to realize a pattern is, in fact, a pattern, I don't remember when I first started noticing this, but at some point, I began seeing hearts at work: Heart-shaped soap splashes by the kitchen sink's, one heart-shaped potato chip on the edge of the deep fryer while the rest of the chips had made it into the fry-baskets, a heart-shaped spill of maraschino cherry juice. My supervisor would call out from the walk-in freezer that a container of gravy had been knocked off of the shelf and would I please clean it up, and I would be greeted by a heart-shaped gravy spill before me. I would bend down to pull a red onion from their box and find instead a heart-shaped piece of Romaine lettuce on the floor in front of me. The other cook would bump his hand into my cup and my iced tea would slosh onto the table in a heart-shaped puddle. The daily sweeping and mopping of the restaurant would almost always find me reaching for my cell phone to take a quick picture of the heart-crumb or stain that was suddenly stubbornly stuck to the floor. If one of the hundreds of red potatoes was heart-shaped, it would be I and not the other cook on my shift who would blindly grab it from the bin. 

These moments sound like stretches of the imagination, but they happened so frequently, and only at work, and even then, only when I wasn't expecting them. If I looked down at the counter in deliberate search for anything heart-shaped before beginning to make a waffle for someone, I wouldn't see a thing, but two minutes later when the waffle iron would beep, I'd start to scrape the baked-on batter from around the iron's edges only to find that some had already baked into a perfect heart. I'm sure I was Cliff Claven-ish enough to show my coworkers the heart-shaped potato and chip, but I didn't tell anyone at work just how often this happened to me.



 
I began to believe at some point that all these hearts were not "just" hearts. Granted, they were not visions of saints in toast, but as crazy as it may sound to others--and as it did to Mike when I'd mention over supper that day's latest heart-discoveries--the hearts began to feel like signs to me. All those days working in a restaurant kitchen when I ached to be somewhere else doing something else, just when I thought I'd flip out and scream, I'd be "tagged" again and a heart-shaped bacon-piece would be left over on a guest's plate like a calling card from the universe and bring me some small comfort. It is silly and a bit sad, really, the things that help get us through the hard times, but whatever works, I say. Maybe the hearts were signs and maybe they weren't, but eventually I decided that every time I found one from then on, I'd take a deep breath, thank God that I had a job at all, and recommit to the goals of hanging in there and being patient while working toward something else.
 
What ended up being two and a half years passed, as time always does, and last May, the phone call requesting an interview for my current position finally came. Call me crazy, and point out that I reaaaaaaaally could have used some time off, but I take my magic where I can find it and am grateful for it when I do. I haven't noticed any hearts--edible, spilled, or otherwise--in ages. I found them when I needed them, and I am thankful.

One Fine Day

Today was my last day at my now-"old" job. At the end of my now-former workplace's daily staff meeting, the manager asked everyone, "Okay, anything else?" And a few people mentioned that it was my last day. The manager replied, "It is Val's last day. Great job, Val. Thank you for everything." And suddenly, everyone was clapping! Applauding me! It was such a sweet moment and so unexpected. I worked there two and a half years and saw so many people come and go but don't remember anyone else getting that simple recognition their last day on the job. As I told my managers when I stopped by their office suite to say goodbye a little while later, the applause was just the sweetest note to end on, and it meant so much to me. I choked up while saying as much, and then choked up again a few minutes later when I punched out for the very last time.

 And as I walked home, I sent Mr. Mike a text message letting him know I was done ("Done-done!"), and he, who had taken today as a vacation day so that we could go out and celebrate this milestone, wrote back "Yay!" and then surprised me by meeting me along my walk home. We took a picture together and went to lunch, and it was a wonderful meal and a great time.

Just knowing that this stage of my life is over and that I'm moving on finally. . . !   Thank You, thank You, thank You. ♥

Overnight Success

When I was about twelve years old, I was a faithful reader of Tiger Beat, Teen Beat, and Bop magazines, and I remember a number of articles and interviews in them in which the heartthrob-of-the-day, actor or singer or group, would proclaim something along the lines of "Everyone thinks of me/us as an overnight success, but I/we worked hard for this for a really long time, so it doesn't feel that way to me/us!" The "new" sensation would go on to outline the years of fruitless auditions or off-Broadway plays or free concerts performed in their parents' backyards for the neighbors, and I would read these details with such incredible interest. The hours of rehearsals the New Kids on the Block put in, just like the Jackson Five before them! The faith a pre-teen Debbie Gibson had in herself to create a home "recording studio" consisting of a row of tape recorders set up on an ironing board! The perseverance a fifteen-year-old Tiffany showed in doing her first "tour" in shopping malls! The chutzpah of a still-unknown-and-too-broke-to-afford-a-home-phone Michael J. Fox as he negotiated his contract for "Family Ties" from a phone booth outside a fast food chicken place! I devoured these stories. I love them even more this week when finally, a full ten years after graduating from college and four years after finishing grad school, I have been hired to do a job I'm truly proud of, excited about, and eager to begin. I'm not exactly where I want to be yet, but I'm on my way, and closer than I was before. 

It is slowly sinking in that a new stage has begun. Tonight I have flowers spread all around the apartment from a congratulatory arrangement from Mom and Dad. Tuesday will be my last day at my current restaurant job. That evening, Mr. Mike, who has been my friend since college and thus seen me through all my "pretty little rough patches" these past ten years, is going out to dinner with me to celebrate. Soon I start my new job. And I feel strong and optimistic. And I did not give up. There are fresh flowers in the toothbrush holder tonight to prove it. 

No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. ~ Elie Wiesel

It's been a crazy-busy couple of weeks at the restaurant and I've been more exhausted than usual. I started crying while trying to fall asleep Wednesday night because my feet hurt so much. After buying new work shoes and sleeping with my feet elevated a few nights, I'm in a lot less pain now, and I've made 7-8-ish p.m. my bedtime the past couple of nights to help combat the fatigue. Today was a better day, and I'll have a day off after this weekend. During the simultaneous chaotic breakfast-cooking and banquet-preparing the other day, though, the little duck above was spotted on a plate sent back to the kitchen to wash. The other cook and I oohed and ahhed over the sight and took this picture while we marveled that such a thing had magically emerged from just the leftover cereal pieces and scrambled eggs on someone's plate. It wasn't until I shared the picture with Mike later and he said, "So someone pushed their food together to make the duck for you guys to find?" that I realized that that's how this "magic" occurred. I would prefer to believe that this "just happened," but if an anonymous customer took the time to do something to give us a smile while we worked, I count that as magic too. We needed the time-out and laughter this week. Thank You, Unknown Breakfast Leftovers Artist. :)

Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch

I had the pleasure this weekend of cooking breakfast at the restaurant for a dear elderly couple. Friday morning, I answered a number of questions for the woman about what we offered for breakfast, what I could cook for her and her husband, and where she could find various items at the buffet. She was so pleasant and appreciative, but she apologized nonetheless, "I'm sorry. My husband isn't well, and we just need to be careful about what he eats." She would find another potential breakfast item for him and walk back to their table where he was waiting and report her findings, then come back to the buffet and either add it to his plate or return to their table to ask him about something else.

"They have scrambled eggs," she could be heard telling him. "How about some scrambled eggs and an English muffin?" She made the trip back and forth from the table and buffet-area a few times before they decided on his breakfast, and I talked with her while she arranged his plate. She and her husband were in the city for his appointment at the cancer center, she told me. She hoped the center wouldn't be too hard to find, since they had arrived in the very early morning in the dark and during an ice storm. I explained where the center was--right down the street--and wished her and her husband well.

Yesterday morning, the woman and her husband were back in the restaurant, and this time, the husband was well-enough to visit the buffet-area and fix his own plate. The fact that he reminded me so much of Mike's dad made seeing him walking around on his own even sweeter. He, like his wife, was such a pleasure to talk with and help, and when I told him that I could make pancakes, French toast, or waffles if he didn't feel like eggs again, he smiled and said, "Oh, a waffle sounds good! I don't know if I could eat a whole waffle, though." I explained that I could make him a tiny waffle, or a couple tiny waffles, and he turned to his wife and exclaimed, "We should get waffles, then! This is a celebration, after all!" I told him I'd bring the waffles out to him, and as he made his way back to the table, I smiled and said to his wife, "I take it his appointment went well yesterday, since you're celebrating?"

"He's terminal," the woman quietly explained. "We come here for his chemotherapy so we can buy him some time and get our affairs in order. But yes, it did go well yesterday." We talked a few minutes more as she got her own breakfast, and I felt close to tears as I listened to her. I told her I'd keep her and her husband in my prayers, and my mind was filled with thoughts of Mike and his parents and marriage and commitment and love as I made the silver dollar-size waffles.

I arranged a couple of the tiny waffles with still-smaller bowls of maple syrup, strawberry topping, and butter and margarine pats and took them out to the couple. The husband laughed in delight at the presentation and thanked me so kindly, and about an hour later when he and his wife got up to leave, he stopped me as I walked by and said again, "Thank you very much for that. That was really something, really very nice." I thanked them too and wished them well, and my choked-up feeling stayed with me quite awhile back at my cook-station. People are always so much stronger than they think they are, and I have lived through enough broken hearts to understand that life goes on, but there is such sweet wisdom in knowing what that couple knows and still celebrating with waffles. 
 

My Year

Last week at this time I was putting together a beef stew supper and a bag of treats for Mr. Mike for Halloween and thinking about Halloween of last year and about just how much my life has changed--or how much I have changed my life--in the past twelve months. Halloween 2006 saw me working noon-nine pm at a job I hated, missing both a family dinner that day and the chance to see my little nephew in his scarecrow costume that evening. The misery I felt all day last Halloween was the same that colored so many of my days last year. But last Wednesday, in a new apartment in a new city on a day off from a new job and baking peanut butter cookies for Mr. Mike, I was overwhelmed by how happy I was and by just how dramatically I've changed my life in one year's time. Mom called while I was scrambling to get the Halloween show on the road here, and in the cozy glow of apple cinnamon and pumpkin pie-scented candles, I sat down to tell her I was happy. She has been telling me every year for what seems like forever that "this will be [my] year," and finally, last week, with only sixty-two days left of what has been an awesome year, I could tell her that she was right. I am so happy, and for the first time in a long time, I've had months in a row of looking not backward but forward.