oh life

What a fabulous week.

I'm finally beginning to settle in at work; I'm not making as many stupid mistakes, and I have apparently worked out an excellent organizational system which allows me to manage my menagerie of tasks without losing track of what I'm doing.

The legal secretary thing is a challenge. On any given day I'm responsible for drawing up documents, transcribing letters, and making copies of said documents and sending them to the appropriate people (with nearly every one of them I sign an affidavit or proof of service, swearing under oath that on that particular date I served the opposing counsel or unrepresented parties the documents by placing them in the mail, which means that if I forget or lose them I can get my petutie tossed in jail). I also have to open and copy the mail, send and receive and copy and file faxes, make sure my boss sees the important ones, file papers in their appropriate files, be absolutely certain to send clients their notices of hearing, manage my boss's calendar, get his office going in the morning, pack and unpack his satchel for court appearances, take his messages and make calls for him. Furthermore, I'm also the receptionist, so I am in charge of answering phones, taking messages, making appointments, putting new clients in the system and helping them complete their paperwork, accepting monies through the mail or in person, making receipts, and keeping track of all charges made for appointments, documents, enclosures sent through the mail, faxes sent and received, phone conferences, and court appearances.

With absolutely no prior training, and so much room for massive errors, it's been a tough change. Add to that my recovery from the trauma of my previous job, betrayal from and loss of people I had considered friends, difficulties with my antidepressants, major spiritual upheaval through exploring Catholicism (which, some days, nearly kills me with stress and uncertainty, and other days fills me with certainty and joy), a sudden sober awareness of the state of my finances and a need to screw down a really tight budget, and it's been a grueling summer and early fall.

But I'm coming along. Very well, in fact.

I'm beginning to work on my writing again; the past couple of weeks I've sat down and begun to revise my poetry, and to consider where to begin to submit it for publication. I'm getting more sleep. Simon has once again become my bedfellow through the cold nights (he stopped sleeping on my bed when I began to be hit hard by depression in April, and I've missed his warm little furry body tremendously). I'm starting to get up earlier and be glad to be awake. The weather has morphed over the past week from rainy and miserable to perfect sunny crisp autumn. I've stocked up on staples for my forays into the world of Indian cooking. I feel like I'm getting myself back.

The past few weekends have been filled with several important home improvement projects (nest-lining in preparation for winter), which have made my delightful apartment even more a beautiful home. The other week poking around in an old antique/junk store down the street from where I work, I found a gorgeous 1920s dresser (for $34!!), which Joan helped me transport into my apartment last Sunday -- finally I can get the majority of my clothes out of the plastic bins under the bed! I also found a heavy old drawer reinforced with rusted iron, once painted yellow but now almost entirely weathered and gray, and divided into four segments; last Sunday I figured out my drill and screwed it into the wall and turned it into a spice rack, and hung my "Chat Noir" pictures on either side of it. I also found an authentic old spice rack, with eighteen empty clear glass spice bottles, so now I have an attractive display for all the Asian and Indian spices I bought, which all come in plastic bags. I battled with the drywall and studs and hung all my pots and pans on another wall. A weathered beer crate has become a shoe rack in the entryway, an old window trough serves to hold my writing projects under revision on my writing desk, and an old wooden box with a worn leather strap now contains all of my stationary.

My house is beautiful.

It's been over a year since I first moved in, and I've fallen in love with the neighborhood, with the local Farmer's Market, and with my apartment. And now, with the additional furniture from last weekend, and with the writing desk and huge armchair I bought over the summer, it feels perfectly settled and at home with itself.

And now that I see Meg and Phillip at least once a week (we spent Friday night eating pizza and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation -- joy! rapture! I love Data!), and Marianne nearly every day, and the grad students who have become like family at the newly-instituted Sunday dinner (a perfect way to pretend Monday is never coming, and to sit down and enjoy a home-cooked meal with wine among familiar company and excellent conversation), and talking to Leigh Ann every Wednesday night while watching Bones, my social calendar is pleasantly filled with people I love in relaxed settings.

So life is settling in and I'm beginning to enjoy it again. Autumn always brings out the best in me anyway, and the changes have reached what appears to be an equilibrium, and all has turned out, indeed, for the best.

And I'm inexplicably content and perfectly happy with being single. I can't actually imagine dating right now, and I'm treasuring too much this refreshing time of loving my life and feeling settled and glad in myself, my God, my friends, and my existence to feel like I have room for someone else. Of course, when the time comes, I'll be glad to greet it. But this is, simply, wonderful.

Oh life.