miscellaneous, random, purposeless and happy

In my regular life, things continue to move apace. I suppose it speaks to my complete and hopeless geekiness, but I love working at Borders. And I do mean love. I enjoy working with people, and the whole world knows I love books, and so far I have found the combination delightful. Perhaps, too, a break from desk jobbing does me good (although I'm looking for one of those too, to supplement my income. I've interviewed for two other jobs this week; this morning's took place at a small Erie law firm. I want the job; it's merely a question of how important a flexible schedule is to my newly called purpose. If I get this job I'll be working many, many hours every week -- basically I'll be one super busy girl, with earning a living and starting a church revolution in my hometown. So I'm not sure what God has in store. Whatever money I need, He'll provide; so we'll see what happens). Plus too -- and this I really love -- a fast-paced, one-thing-after-another kind of job, where people are mostly in good moods and like to chat, gives me zero time to brood. It takes me out of my own head and plants me firmly in the present and in humanity, which is a.) healthy and b.) helpful for gathering further fodder for future reflections.

The weather today typifies Erie -- rainy, overcast, sunless. I had forgotten the grayness. For whatever reason, perhaps because it's bred into the bone, it doesn't seem to be affecting my depression. (Lately I feel like I should give my depression a name; it's like some weird parasite to which I must always refer, and which doesn't really have a pronoun. It's like an evil, sentient, murderous, sneaky pet. Like an octopus. Remember the battle with the octopus in Island of the Blue Dolphins? Karana called it a devilfish. Maybe that's what I'll start calling the depression. The devilfish.) In fact, while the depression still manifests its daily presence, the Bad Head Days have practically vanished. Now I have Bad Head Moments instead, and those have decreased in frequency as well. This irritating condition is becoming, finally, manageable (maybe even soon I'll have the energy to do a Happy Dance about it!). And today, with the weather dreary and nothing on my schedule till the evening, and with my now-busy weekend due to suddenly increased hours at Borders (yay!), I feel that I will spend my time cleaning up the trailer while watching Cars and then listening to Christmas music.

Oh, speaking of cute animated movies...I finally saw Wall-e for the first time last week and LOVED it. Oh. My. Gosh. (Yes. I cried. A lot.) So much heart.

So things are going really, really well. My high school friend Gina had me over to dinner with another friend of hers yesterday; we get together about once a week; and I've been doing lunch and dinner with other gals too, so for the first time in about a year and a half my social cup is starting to fill. Which is remarkably satisfying. (Oh dear. So many italics.)

I actually love gray days, because I can go for walks and enjoy the browns and ochres and seres and muted greens of the woods (one of these days I'm going to hike up the little hill that hems in the west side of the trailer park to the cemetery sprawling over the hilltop to visit my grandfather's grave. I haven't seen it since he was buried there almost nine years ago, and I miss him, and I have always found cemeteries to be restful, quiet places of reflective peace). Gray days in early winter also seem to necessitate the lighting of many candles and the playing of jazz. (I don't know why jazz. It probably won't be jazz today; probably, instead, will be old Christmas records from the sixties and seventies converted to cassette tapes converted to CDs. I shamelessly adore "Seasons Greetings from Perry Como.") Also the stimulating comfort of mate. (Mmm...I can already taste the tea and smell the palo santo...) So I'm looking forward to the afternoon -- somehow being at home on a weekday feels clandestine and makes me smug. (And if you remove all the parentheticals from this paragraph you wind up with three short sentences and a phrase. In college my friends accused my conversations of taking sudden trips around the world before returning to the original point.)

Simon and I had a Moment this morning. I had just settled onto the couch to finish reading Galatians -- this time around, somehow, I appreciated it more than I ever have before; usually I view the epistles as obligatory, "eh" sort of books; but with all the thoughts working themselves out in my head lately, about love and God being love, the focus of Galatians on freedom and living in the Spirit of God, which is to say the Spirit of Love, had a huge joyful impact -- when I looked up and saw my kitty boy sitting on the desk across the room looking at me with round, sad owl eyes: I had forgotten to open the drapes for him to perch on the desk and stare out the window. So I jumped up and fixed the problem, and he turned his head to look out the window, and I bent to kiss him between the ears (he has such a kissable wrinkly little kitty forehead), and he tipped his head back and bumped his nose gently against my nose, purring.

I got all warm and fuzzy inside; I love that cat. I don't know how I would have gotten through the last few years without him; he is unusually gifted in empathy, he adores me, and he's such an intelligent, good cat. He doesn't take advantage of my forgetful absentmindedness on a bad day; I can leave raw meat or cooked meat or butter or cheese sitting on the counter and he'll never touch it. He won't use anything but his litterbox. He has adapted almost completely to his erratic feeding schedule, attaching his understanding of when he gets fed to my routine, and not to a time of day. If I'm wandering around in a kind of haze, he'll hook a paw around my ankle when I walk by to remind me that he's there. He makes me laugh. He tears around the house acting ridiculous and trots up to me to throw himself on the ground at my feet, all proud of himself for his cuteness. He hates when I disappear into the bathroom to shower, and curls up right outside the door waiting for me to reemerge, sometimes sticking his paws under the door, sometimes (less endearingly) sitting with his face to the doorjamb and screaming. Yup. I heart Simon.

And on a less gushy note, I saw a headline yesterday that threw me into serious indecision. I couldn't select a reaction to it -- disgust? derision? mockery? I selected derisive, disgusted, mocking laughter, with a dash of sorrow for the plummeting of modern intelligence.

The headline read, "Illusion Plays Mind Tricks."

No shit, sheriff.