Decisions of My Life

    
       I have made my decision, it is back to school for me. I am tired of my minimum wage-lucky-to-get-a-raise jobs. I have had a series of them in the past thirteen years. None of them ever could or will amount to much. At present I am a janitress, have been for going on three years this past summer. Last Christmas I watched with envy as everyone at work took turns going off on paid vacations all seeming to forget that I would not get one. Nor will I ever. I really was happy for them but I wanted to go too. At about the same time one of my coworkers said something offhand that really struck a nerve in me and started the old thinker to thinking. I realized that no one was ever going to think of me on their level because I was not as educated as they were. The last straw was the fact that even my own family not only thought nothing of the fact that I had not gone to college, but they were planning on following in my footsteps!
     A janitor's job is the care and maintenance of the BUILDING that they are hired to take care of. I was working last winter as a janitor, filling in for my boss who was away on vacation and although I do not remember the beginning of the conversation, one of my coworkers, who has a habit of not throwing away her drinking cups or soda cans with the assumption that I must throw them away for her, made a comment that really irked me. Not so much that it was hateful, far from it. It was a comment made in that offhand manner that implied that she really did believe what she said. She made the comment, "That I had to throw away her bottles, cans, and empty drinking cups because she did not have time to walk in the next room and empty them out to throw them away herself." That statement, once I stopped seeing red things everywhere, made me realize that she thought of herself on a different level than I. Her time is important and apparently mine isn't. She does important work while I only do manual labor. I am in a lower class than she is apparently.
     My boss, bless his little heart, had spoiled her to the point that she thought that I was there as a servant, to be commanded at her whim and pleasure, then he took off on a paid vacation. That is what made me realize that I wanted my own paid vacation. If I stay here in this job I will never, ever get one. Listening to everyone as they came back from one only made it that much worse for me; it started me thinking about what it would take for me to get one. Option A was to have everyone at work chip in twenty bucks and then take a few days off, although I have had to take charity in the past, I do not like it. That plan was out. That left plan B, which was to get a better job. To get a better job, that would take at least a little education. If I was going to do that I decided I had better hurry up since I am already almost fifty I do not have all the time in the world left to complete my education, find a job, then work for at least two years to earn one.
     The final straw that broke the camel's back and got me into the financial aid person to see if this could even be done, was another comment my daughter made, "That if I could bring up three kids with a high school diploma, she could too." Boy didn't that spin my head around! Did she not see the struggle I'd had to endure for the last 15 years? I could finally see the example that I set by going back to school could and would be very far reaching indeed, affecting not only myself but my daughter, my sons, and even my grandchildren.
    I have always believed that when a decision is right for you then everything in your life comes together to help it along. This held true for my decision to go back to school. Within a week I had picked out my career, which was a lot easier for me now than it was in high school. I had filed for and received my funding. Work, well, they gave me their complete support. I have tutors, research assistants and professionals of all sorts that I can ask for help. They even donated a used but working computer to my dream. I have to pay for the internet, of course. When life hands you that many blessings for something then you can rest assured that it is something that you are supposed to be doing. It is a little weird though to have my sons laughingly ask me if I have my homework done and then tell me, "You can't go to Bingo until it is done Mom".

Reactions of an Isearch

   I have read several examples of this thing called an Isearch paper that I must do and I am really impressed. The writers obviously did quite a lot of work and put together some interesting and informative papers. I could see on a couple of them how they went back to the drawing board and reworked their papers. At first they were disorganized and then when we saw the later version it had been worked to show definitive direction. I felt like I was watching a kid grow up. I saw the excitement that one person had for the paper he was writing and the complete puzzlement and self-doubt of a mother as to why her little girl didn't want to potty train. They all let their passion and their interest in the topic they were writing shine through.  As for reading the picky stuff, I gleaned from it an order for my own paper that I have to write and a few questions for the professor of the pen himself about the order and the technical words at the end. But other than that I can only hope that with time work and effort I could create a paper just as good. Although honestly I like doing grafs and prompts better, not because they are shorter but because I can wrap it all up in a nice neat little package and if I have done my job there will be a bow on it. The Isearches look so large that, quite frankly, I am going to need a whole lot more ribbon.

My Best Friend

    

  My best friend in the entire world has always been a wonderful friend to have around. The whole time I am with her we laugh, mostly. It seems like I have known her forever as I can't really think of a time when I didn't know her. When we were small we had our disagreements I am sure, although I don't really remember them now, somehow we must have worked through them, and as we grew up we developed different interests and lifestyles, which took us in different directions, down different paths in our lives to experience different things. We have grown incredibly much in our time apart and although I look forward to knowing my friend again, now that we have reconnected, I still see my childhood friend peeking out at me through the eyes of her older self, laughing.

My Family Scrapbooks

     Scrapbooks are the history of a family. There is laughter, sometimes tears, and quite often a quiet yearning for the lost innocence of our youth or even your parents' youth if you feel yours is not that interesting. Through the years I had amassed a veritable maelstorm of pictures. They were everywhere in my house. They were in drawers, boxes, letters, some were being used as bookmarks. They were behind my bed, under my couch, in the cupboards, and a few were even in the glove box of my car. I had pictures laying around everywhere but in my purse to show people when I talked about my family. I decided one quiet, rainy weekend, to gather them all together and organize them somehow. There were pictures of me and my brother, my father and mother, pictures of my greatgrandparents, my grandparents, pictures of my children's father and his mother when he was young. There were pictures of my children, my stepchildren, and a very few of my husband's mother and father. All told there were five generations between three families. It took almost that whole weekend to find, gather, sort, and then, very painstakingly go through them one by one and put them in chronological order. It took two large scrapbooks to store them all but I finally did it. The end result was quite the family history. I am so proud that I took the time and did this, not only is my house cleaner but when my grandchildren come over one of their favorite books to look at is The Parents Books. Why did you have the fish Nanna? Where was this?  How old was you here?  The questions go and on all afternoon if I am lucky. Because of those books I have a little piece of my families' (all of them) history, right there, for all my world to see, learn, and remember.

Uniquely Me

     I am an almost fiftyish woman with all the dents, dings, and scars of a woman who has lived and loved and is still wondering where her niche in life is. Kind of. I am basically healthy, almost happy, and mostly sane in an insane time of human history, I know that I am going to witness changes that my grandparents are glad to be missing. I reeeaaally like food. I like the outdoors and have a passion for all things natural. I have a deep faith in my God, my country and my family and in that order. I have a sense of humor as big as my behind, although not as dented, most of the time. I am kind to strangers and as honest as any normal human being can be. I work hard, like to play harder and love completely. I love a good book, a good movie, or a good puzzle of any variety. I love to learn and wish that I could remember a fraction of what teachers have tried to teach me over the course of my lifetime. I have done a fair amount of traveling, and hope to do more. I am pretty comfortable with who I am, enough so that I do not have a problem fitting in where ever I go. I love to dance. I want to learn how to play the piano, ride a train, and sail on a yacht for a month or so, in the Carribbean. I have to have my towels folded a certain way or it irritates me. I am determined to do well in school this time around because I want my PAID freaking VACATION, someday. I am so laid back that half the time I am prone. I like taking pictures and have a couple of ones that I really like and will someday frame.I have a deep respect for my elders, and hope to be one someday. I love crabby old cats, warm fuzzy puppies, and  most other furred animals. I have made a lot of mistakes and been very lucky at times and thank the guardian angel that comes around occasionally to check on me, that none of my mistakes cost me more than I was able to pay. I like my spelling to be correct as I do remember one teacher telling me that misspelled words were a sign of being uneducated. My children call me a walking dictionary. My son actually called from half a world away once to ask me how to spell "truely". I told him, "How should I know"?I have a passion for yard saling, Bingo, and walking along the coast to see what treasures the ocean threw up on the shores just for me because I am so special. I hate hot weather, and think that becoming a snow bird is about the best idea in the world, and I am trying to make that happen so give me my A and watch me go! My grammer stinks so I will take a B and waddle off into the sunrise as I like those better than sunsets. They are both beautiful but the sunrise has an air of mystery, a promise of adventures to come, while a sunset has an air of finality to it, you have done everything you can do and can do no more. This is the beginning of me but this alone I think is enough to make me quite unique.

Inventory & Inventory

The Inventory of My Square-Shaped Coffee Table

• Oval shaped green luncheon plate with the of a tomatoey sauce and a tarnished silver fork on it
• Green xbox hand control device, unplugged
• 5 inch piece of silver wire
• folded up note writtten to my son at his school
• 8"x6" black photo album with letter "C" on the front cover, containing 180 ofr so family photos all slots filled
• In the center of the table is a painted terracotta flowerpot with a candle in it smells like apples, it has been lit at least once
• 2"x3" old gold picture frame with a picture of my husband and I getting married it is frayed and worn and no longer stands on its own
• folded receipt from the grocery store
• light blue spiral notebook with a butterfly on the front cover
• well worn science fiction paperback book titled, "The Ghatti's Tale " It is the first in a series
• folded piece of paper revealed to be a form had to have me sign which he was supposed to take back to school and apparently didn't
• TV remote
• a few crumbs of something white (toast perhaps)

I assume that these things all speak of a very busy person who has at least one son that doesn't pick up after himself a whole lot. This person likes to read and watches tv while they eat. They do like their home to look nice and smell nice but have too much going on to oversee every little thing. Here they eat when they can and clean up when there is time, but mostly things slide around between done and undone

The Worst Teacher

     The worst teacher I ever had was not necessarily a bad teacher, it is just that she also taught my mother and my aunts. It never failed that at some point during the day, I would hear how cute my mother was or what I stinker my auntie was. Having just moved to Maine from Connecticut, and being new to the third grade, the end result was that I was not as cute as my mother and I was as much a stinker as my Auntie, whom I had never met. I finally did meet her many years later and I didn't think that she smelled all that bad, a little like moth balls and lavender. Looking back, I have come to realize that the woman was just trying to put me at ease with the other kids. All she really ended up doing was making me the center of attention, which every new student knows is not a good thing to be when your the new girl in town. I survived it though and now as I look back from another point of view I realize that I have something not many people get to have, which is a little piece of my mother's history as part of my own and I am grateful.
     

Hands...

    As I write my assignment for class, my hand dancing across the pages of my notebook,  I am distracted by the sight of the pen in my fingers, pirouetting across my notebook, forming the letters which make up the words that trickle from my mind. The fingers of my hand as they clasp the pen, and direct it in its unknown ballet, show the age that is beginning to be noticeable to the eyes that view them. With all of their wrinkles on the backs and the calluses on the palms, they speak of a life that has been full of hard work and little time for the niceties like moisturizers or creams that would keep them, for a few more years anyway, smooth and soft. The nails, which are clean and kept short, are ridged curving under for some unknown reason, preventing them from being grown out long. They dance and they dance, my fingers do moving with grace and style, here a dip, there a pirouette and very soon an essay written by my fingers with their wrinkles and their calluses, assisting in the birthing of something that is me.