You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January, 2008.
Me (driving in the car): Look at the moon guys–it’s big and orange tonight.
Kids: Oooooh!
Me: Oops, it’s so low that it’s hiding behind the trees, maybe when we go around the corner, we’ll see it again.
Three year old: I can’t see the moon.
Me: Just wait a minute, hon.
Three year old: Mom! I CAN’T SEE THE MOON.
Me: Yes I know, but it’s coming back.
Three year old: Mom! I CAN’T SEE THE MOON! I CAN’T SEE THE MOON!
Me: I CAN’T MAKE IT POP OUT OF THE FREAKIN TREES, YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO WAIT.
Ah. The harmony of daily life.
I can’t quite finish a post. There’s too much pressure to say something brilliant since I’ve been so delinquent about my blog since September. So here are all my drafts in whatever state I left them:
I’ve been dreaming about houses.
Two months ago, I dreamt that we were buying my supervisor’s house. There were all sorts of problems in the dream because they weren’t leaving and wouldn’t take their stuff so that we could move in. (The freaky part about that story is that he came into work the next day and announced that his house was on the market.)
Two weeks ago, I dreamt about a house for my sister and her family. They are looking to move into a house this year. I saw the entire layout, down to the furnace in the basement. Built in the 1940’s–single story tudor with a bashed in garage door.
Two nights ago, I dreamt about a new (old) house for our family. The backyard had a patio painted to look like a pond and every evening all the kids in the neighborhood went out to get free root beer floats. There was a door to the backyard from the dining room. We had a tractor.
I can’t tell if I’m exploring elements of my psyche or if I’m just feeling trapped by my house and all the junk we have piled into it.
When you see me at the grocery store, you never want to be stuck behind me in the checkout lane.
(Written in November)
This post has been painfully slow in coming. I think I’ve been waiting to get some perspective. Maybe I just don’t know where to begin. Especially since my most recent posts (months ago!) are so full of hope about making money using my artistic talent.
I live my life with absolute certainty that I will have very colorful chapters in my memoirs.
Photo business plans are officially relegated to the back burner because I need an actual regular paycheck to keep us afloat. (As if we were floating. We’ve been sinking slowly for a long long time.) So, I started a full time job on October 22.
At an egg farm.
When we moved from St. Paul’s notorious East Side to rural Minnesota five years ago, I went from full time working mom in the ’hood to stay at home mom in the country. Needless to say I experienced a bit of culture shock. (Okay, I guess we still hear gunshots, but at least they’re not directed at people.) Within the first five minutes of conversation you have with anyone you’re meeting for the first time out here, the subject of which church you attend comes up. Our kids see cows every day on the bus ride to school. It always takes the same amount of time to drive anywhere, no matter what time of day. The only thing that will slow you down is a giant tractor, usually towing a trailer full of enormous round bales of something.
These aren’t judgments one way or another. It’s just a very different lifestyle. I knew that eventually I would go back to working, and I even guessed that it might be hard to find a job close to home. I never guessed that I would be working as an administrative assistant at an egg farm.
My great grandparents and grandparents owned a hatchery. I’m suddenlyaware of the “come full circle”ness of the chicken/egg industry in my family’s history.
And it’s actually a very good job. I start work at 6 AM, which means that I get up and get ready to go before anyone else is awake and demanding anything. The commute takes about 15 minutes. I work in a newly remodeled office with windows, there’s a fridge stocked with pop and water, and my hours put me at home before my kids get off the bus. The pay is decent and the benefits are great.
I’ve resisted getting a full time job for all sorts of reasons, the biggest of which is that I’ve spent about thirteen years reconciling my role as a mother and I’ve finally gotten to a place where I actually really enjoyed my life. Well, that and I’m scared that I’m not actually skilled enough to be useful out in the workforce. Why do you think I chose to work part time as a lunch lady? Maybe because it was such a ’safe’ and ‘easy’ job.
I’ve been making a huge, conscious effort in my spiritual life that is too big to describe using words. And here I am, listing this as ‘number three’ as if it’s something separate from our financial crisis and my journey back into full-time employment. It’s all hopelessly connected.
Even though I grew up in the city, I always felt drawn to the country. I remember visiting my great-grandparents’ farm (which is less than 10 miles from where I live now) and playing the old piano in the barn and being shown the trees that had been torn and twisted by a tornado.
The day the farm went to auction my sisters and my cousin and I played all day in the field, building cornstalk forts and making up secret signals by tossing dried ears of corn into the air.
I’ll never forget the sound of my footsteps and the sight of my breath in the cold air and the hot tears that sliced down my cheeks as I realized it would be my last time playing out in the field at grandma’s. I was probably eight years old.
