Changing Times

Here I am, 48 now, unemployed, broke, and happy. The surgery was a 95% success and I have little residual discomfort. Sometime in the next few months the last 5% should be fixed with silver nitrate. I have kept the first hundred pounds I lost off now for a long time and am gearing up to get rid of the last 40. The grandchild is MY GREAT JOY.

I finally made some peace with my variety of religious studies, and that makes me happy as well. I am very close to giving up on painting. That does not make me sad. It would have last year when I was too busy and too bothered and in too much pain to paint much. Now it just makes me feel free to not feel like I must paint.

December 10, 2007

When I was young I was beautiful. My beauty was not that of
freshness or childlike softness, but rather that of good lines and
almost achieved perfection of face. It only brought me grief. No
one ever really seemed to see me. No one was ever happy with me
once the new wore off and they were no longer seduced by
packaging.

When I became very fat I was pleased. People had to see me as a
person now. The fat covered my bones and delivered me from
being the object of desire. Over the nearly thirty years I was very
fat I developed a few people skills, maybe not as many as I could
have, but enough to get by. Or so I thought. But in truth, no one
really liked me much. Smart, fat, snarly women aren’t any more
loved than smart, slim, snarly women. They just get less play and
more laughter.

Eleven years ago I met and married my spouse. He loved me fat,
but he did not love the fat. He loved me smart and snarly and he
loved me silly and childish as well. He saw the odd dichotomy of
geography and family, work and passions that made up the currents
of my life, and he accepted them, he accepted me. In those years he
never said I wish you would lose weight or I wish you would
channel your energies into making money or I wish you were
different...

And sometime during those eleven years the icy part that never felt
seen or loved melted and with it my reasons for being fat. So while
I give my vegan diet credit for my weight loss, the truth is that
someone loved me. Someone actually saw me, and still loved me.

There is a great deal of sadness and worry in my family right now
together with upheaval and uncertainty. Today is also the
anniversary of my father’s death in 2002. My heart is low with
these things. I give thanks for the love of family, which binds us all
together despite our differences, and provides a tower of sympathy
and quiet support for each of us.

Portrait II

Go look here http://www.jaredrbyer.com/photoblog/ to see the portrait of me I really like, the b&w with lots of eyeshadow. Thank you Jared!

Portrait

Today youngest son showed me a photo he took of me Sunday
night (at the Mosaic Halloween Party). I said “Wow, I wish I really
looked like that”, and youngest son, with a look of total incredulity,
said “Mom, it’s a photograph, you do look like that”.

Well not actually. Usually I have on thick glasses (purple and blue
plastic) and no makeup. Usually my sagging jaw line shows. But
sans glasses, plus gobs of eyeshadow, with the right camera angle,
SZOWEY! Like I said, I wish I really looked like that.

Home Again

I have made it safely home from the Florida trip. As always,
traveling with family leaves me exhausted and a little sad. On the
very high, very excellent side of the pro and con chart I have
walking on the beach in the moonlight, watching the sun come up
over the ocean and seeing my aunt and favorite uncle. Also good
are the laughs with sister and sometimes other aunt and mom.
Nephew is most always good company. On the slightly con side is
five days of never really being alone and prickly family issues.

Maybe the hardest was watching my uncle in his wheelchair in the
doorway waving goodbye. It really did feel like goodbye. This was
the uncle whose example of living gave me the courage and the
hope to not die when I was young and saw that I would never fit in
the expected mold.

Anyway, I am overjoyed to be home with my husband, my house,
my cats and my life. How dear is that which is ours. How precious
our common life.

Sunday

Spouse and I are cleaning and clearing up everything, even the
outbuildings. Yesterday he started on the red barn. Partway
through he asked me to come up the hill and sort through a few
boxes of books he had found. I did not remember sending any
books to the barn, ever. But there they were, boxes of books. So
I sat in an old rocker under the dying redbud tree and looked.
Some old friend were there, Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child,
many paperbacks on reincarnation, The Aquarian Gospel and
assorted other things. In the bottom of one box was a stack of
pristine magazine from 1997-1999. Among them, Sage Woman,
The Green Egg and a few odd copies of Tricycle, The Beltane
Papers and Kindred Spirits. I had forgotten these publications,
forgotten the pencil art, the matte paper, the thoughtful reviews
and articles. The motley assortment of books on reincarnation
and old “B” novels went back in a box for another reader but the
Lessing, The Aquarian Gospel and all the magazine went in with
me.

Which brings me to music. Once upon a time I fell in love with
campfire songs, especially the sweet and gentle “It Only Takes a
Spark”, “Day by Day” and “Let Us Break Bread Together”, but
also such prickly songs as “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”. Years
latter I added the Goddess Chants and the Element Song to my
list of auditory pleasures. Now, after having been most everything
you can think of, I still find myself singing both, Earth my body,
water my blood, air my breath and fire my spirit... and Swing low
sweet chariot coming for to carry me home... on the same day.
And if that strikes you as an odd mix try Its too late to save your
soul the Son has come and you’ve been left behind with We all
come from the Goddess and to her we shall return like a drop of
rain flowing to the ocean...

French Furniture, Cats, Hens and the Killer CPA

Spouse decided, with no nudging from me, that the husband of the
would be buyer of the french sofa was just too big for it and could
not have it. So I put it under the window in my dressing room, one
of only two remaining “girly” spaces in the house, where it will
probably stay. If the dressing room did not also contain the cats’
closet it would be a perfect spot for morning coffee. Maybe I will
have to break my clay litter rule and get some of that expensive
crystal stuff for the box. Maybe Leonard, the baby cat, will one day
start covering his stuff and not just throwing litter every which way.

As for covering it up, the hens have decided, for who knows what
reason, to cover up the daily egg. So every morning I have to go
sift through the bedding in the nest and retrieve the eggs. The hens
take great offense and make assorted alarm noises the entire time.
They aren’t broody this time of year so I don’t know what to make
of this. The hens alarm sounds get the old dog going and he
complains (loudly) about the hens. He thinks the hens are horrid
things and clearly suspects them of wrongdoing. He hopes I will
one day come to my senses and allow him to assassinate them.
Well, they say hope is good for the heart...

Anyway, the rest of the studio will be put back together this
weekend. I look forward to having a permanent place to work.
This will be the first time Spouse and I have, intentionally, shared
creative space. Joining us in the studio will be the large praying
Thai Buddha figure. Neither of us really wants to part with it so, at
least for now, we won’t.

Long ago I worked with a CPA who gave me chest pain and
anxiety. The work didn’t do this, the CPA did. I have been helping
her out a few days a week for the last few months. On the days I
am with her my BP goes up, heart races, head aches and chest pain
comes to roost. Really she is not a totally bad sort and her heart is
not actually black. But every single thing she does is contrary to
good (read profitable) business practice. We use QuickBooks, the
name offends me but the product is generally ok, at least I used to
think so. I have been working to get said CPA’s 2006 books
cleaned up and ready to close. I had the bank reconciled through
November. Since it was late and the December statement was
missing I left the rest off to finish later. When later came and I
went in to do December I thought the beginning balance looked
wrong so I checked the printed report. IT WAS WRONG. How,
why, who, what? Better yet there are now 5 copies of the company
books, none of which is identical to the others, some are on the C
Drive some on the network. YIKES! This happened years ago
when I worked for her before. I am at a loss now, and I was then,
to explain the problem. I use QB on other computers in another
office and have never ever ever had this problem anywhere else.
SO WHAT THE *%@^!. Anyway, the hurry is so she can file her
taxes by the Oct 15 deadline. Fair enough. The problem is that she
wants the QB fixed for 06 first. At this point it is a no can do. I
cannot fix it when I don’t know what is broken. She suggested I
take all the 06 bank records (maybe 1000 entries) and put them in
her personal set of QB on her computer. F— that. So I am doing
an old fashioned here are your deposits and here are your expenses
(broken into accounts) do your schedule C and shut up about the
darned QB. I realize I am ranting here, but it really is getting under
my skin. So instead of having a leisurely weekend with spouse and
pets and home I am going to be in a small windowless office
analyzing expenses and trade accounts.