I was born in the elevator going up to the third floor at Auburn Memorial Hospital in NYS. Well, truthfully, my head entered the cold air, but my body waited until we reached the delivery room. I like to joke with people when I tell them this and say that I've been having my ups and downs ever since. Well, that part is true, just as it is for most of us, but the key thing to remember is that the elevator was going up. A sweet and wise gentleman pointed that out to me a couple of years ago and I am grateful.
So, last week, when I received an awful shock that my hours at work had been cut in half, I didn't handle it well--at first. I asked our GM if he'd like me to lay down on the floor so he could kick me. He wasn't pleased. I wasn't either. I didn't deserve this to happen. I'm a good employee and I work consistently if not super fast, but I'm dependable and trustworthy and I do my best for the company. I was, in a word, heartbroken. I was also scared. Trying to survive on half my income isn't possible without some serious help. So, I dutifully applied for unemployment and this week I will be talking to SS. My CEO informed me this week that he will try to bring me back to full time as soon as he can. Wish someone had told me that last week when I desperately needed to hear it!
Once the shock wore off, I can't say I was any less scared, but I realized it could have been so much worse. I'm still employed albeit part-time and no benefits, I have a little more time now to accomplish some things that I've been putting off for a while, AND I can still work on my books. The books come first; the lovely thing about housework is that it will still be there when I'm ready to do it. I do try to keep up on the basics--dishes, laundry, sweeping the floors and dusting, but since I'm allergic to dust--both to breathe and to touch--I generally vacuum the dust.
I will survive. I am a very determined woman, feisty to the core, and nothing gets me down for very long. I'm back up and ready to try again in no time. I've always been that way as a dear friend once pointed out to me long ago. I don't think I could have survived my childhood if I hadn't been that way.
However, now, I have an added benefit--the most important one of all: my testimony and faith in Jesus Christ and God, their love for me, and my belief that when a window closes, God will open a door for me. I don't know what is going to happen. I don't have any real answers at the moment. All I can do, I will do--and ask God to help and guide me. I believe He will. He has guided me before for which I am very grateful...
I'm getting more daring in my young age. As you can see, I've made some changes. Most of them were after watching videos that didn't tell me what I wanted to know. I just clumsily trip over what I need and sometimes, I get lucky enough to recognize it for what it is. These are my "Aha" moments. The really frustrating part is that even though I've changed the main picture before, I couldn't for the life of me remember how to do it tonight! Kathy, where are you when I need you?!! :)
So, I have been terribly derelict in blogging as of late. I'm going through some changes in my life and trying to steer my course through them. As we all know, life can throw you some really hard curves to navigate. My income has changed, my hours have changed--at least temporarily--all because I took a bad spill three years ago. I had started writing my books before that for which I'm grateful--it gave me something to focus on as well as something to do for the long months when I couldn't do much of anything. Still, three years later, I'm still paying for falling backward off my front steps. For whatever reason, I can't physically handle filing and I'm way behind. I did it last year, the year before, and even the year before that even though I had injured myself only a couple of months before. Management decided to bring in a temp to do the filing for which I am grateful, but as a result I'm working half-time for the time being. It could be worse! I could have lost my job completely, so I'm grateful to still have it with the hope that I will be full-time again very soon. I should, at this point, say that my back is getting better, but my doctor thinks I need strengthening exercises now. I've been favoring it for a long time and so she is most likely right.
I consider myself lucky in spite of the injuries and in spite of the job situation. I'm not happy about either, to be sure, but I have a friend who fell the same week I did--she fractured two vertebrae and her fractures were far worse than my little hairline fracture. She required surgery and pins or fusing--can't remember, but it was a lot worse than mine. A friend's mother fell and literally broke her own neck. Her top two vertebrae were seriously fractured. This happened last March and she's been going through a terrible time since then. She's doing better now, but she hasn't seen her own home in all this time, and maybe she won't again. How sad.
Four friends or relatives of friends have been diagnosed with cancer. They are in various stages from just being diagnosed to deep in treatment to recovering and praying it doesn't come back on them. Another friend is going through the testing to see if some abnormal cells are cancerous. I'm praying for all of them.
The point in this dismal treatise is that no matter how bad things get, someone else always has it worse. I had a difficult childhood, but one day I watched a movie where a child sat on a hill and watched while his parents were murdered by enemy soldiers. I was grateful I didn't have to go through something like that in my childhood.
A few years ago, I watched "The Secret" and liked it so much that I purchased the DVD. If you're interested, check out thesecret.tv. It talks about attracting good things into your life, but it works best when you want good things for yourself as well as for others. It's not easy to do--we are programmed to lament everything in our lives that isn't the way we'd like it to be. For me, the trick is to think of one good thing in my life and to be grateful for that, and then build from there. It's not always easy--we all get our down moods. Or life hands us a hard curve to navigate. Sometimes, you feel like flying off the edge. I know I was there last Friday when I learned my hours were being cut. Yesterday, our CEO told me that he hoped to bring me back full-time as soon as possible, but that if I wanted to take another position, he would give me a glowing recommendation. Glad I didn't fly off that curve now! I love my job, the people I work with and for, and I am eagerly hoping to be full-time again soon. In the meantime, I'll do the best I can, picture myself selling a lot more books, and I'm really looking forward to the movie deal! It doesn't hurt to dream BIG!
I have been up to my eyebrows in proofing my third book, TSUNAMI, and so have not been making entries to my blog. Shame on me! I was up until 3:30 this morning putting the finishing touches on a chapter. My characters have picnics, shop, struggle with out-of-the-ordinary family issues, and I haven't been on a picnic in years--yet, I don't really miss it. This past week, I went to a friend's home to celebrate her birthday. She has a beautiful home in a clearing in the woods--not much lawn to mow! I have close to an acre-and-a-half to mow, but I don't really mind it. I listen to audiobooks while I'm mowing (super, heavy-duty sound-proof ear muffs over the audio buds). I also hunted down a salvage yard for a windshield-wiper arm for my 1999 Saturn, Sadie. Yes, I name all my cars.
The man at the salvage yard was only three weeks into his recovery from knee surgery. He was telling me how his shop had been broken into just a few nights before and the thieves made off with the computer and some other office equipment and a ton of tools from the work area in the back of the building. I can't imagine someone having the nerve to break into someone else's property and stealing. Oh, I know it happens all the time, but I just can't imagine having the audacity to do something like that. I felt sorry for him--he really needed something like this while he was trying to recuperate. I've never understood man's inhumanity to man.
Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a hurry--I had six gallons of milk in insulated bags in Sadie's trunk. I wasn't at liberty to buy them last thing on my errand-filled trip home and I drive as few miles as possible in an effort to keep Sadie going for as long as possible. When I first arrived at the salvage yard, the man simply yelled to someone in the back. To my regret, when I told him I had milk in the trunk, he got up, walked outside, and around to the side of the building to tell his employee that I was in a hurry. I tried to get him to go back inside and sit down, but he ignored me. I was very uncomfortable that he was walking on a sore knee--although maybe that's what he needed to do. I'm not sure. I did tell him about a friend of mine who needed knee surgery. She had put on a lot of weight because it hurt her to walk, but after her knee surgery, she dropped off the excess weight and had the same figure she had in high school. I reassured him that once he healed, he was going to love his "new knees."
One of my co-workers told us this past week that her pap test came back with a high grade something or other--I can't remember the term now. It meant that there was some abnormality in her cells. She is very worried about this and, of course, she has to wait two weeks for further tests and then another two weeks for some other tests and somewhere in there a biopsy. I asked my chiropractor about this high grade thing (I remembered the other word when I asked her) and she told me the term applied to any kind of abnormality in the cells and that it didn't mean my friend has cancer. It could be a lot of things, most of them benign. I'm praying for my friend that it's nothing and that she'll be fine.
The fragility of human life is scary at times. In the last few weeks, two people in my church have passed away. Deaths come in threes and I'm dreading who the third person will be. I have family and friends in the 80-92 year range and I dread that I could lose one of them. I know it's going to happen at some point unless I die first. It's inevitable. Even though I know they'll be in a better place, loss is still loss and very painful to those of us left behind. I still miss pets that I had when I was a child. I miss both my maternal grandparents that I knew as a child. (I don't remember my paternal grandparents.) I miss my brother who died in 2008--him perhaps most of all. I'm depressing myself! Quit that!
Speaking of family, my cousin Jeff has been trying to research our surname for over thirty years and he's come up against an immovable brick wall. I've joined the search in the last several years and am equally frustrated at our lack of results. Then, last week, I was talking to a man who had the same surname. I had talked to him before and I'm sure I had asked him where his family came from and he'd said Georgia. For whatever reason, I asked him again and he told me that his daughter had traced their family to the first two brothers who came here from Ireland. Their ship crashed on the rocks and they decided to swim for shore. Only one of them made it--to Boston. That's the same story my Great Uncle Edgar had told me!!!! The family tree that my great uncle had has been lost since his death and I'm ecstatic that I've found someone who is related to us and has done the research. They were able to track it from Georgia, but we weren't able to track it from New York. I realize it may not give us the exact information that we need, but I'm hopeful that it will give us enough to finally crack that frustrating brick wall!
I haven't stuck my nose outside yet, but the thermometer says 70-degrees and it's quite windy. I'm guessing we'll have rain later today, but for now, it's beautiful outside even with an overcast sky. The weather has been wonderful and I'm reveling that I haven't had to turn my furnace on much at all so far this autumn (just twice so I could shower in the morning before work).
I hope everyone has a wonderful week!
