So, did I mention after I stayed at mom's for a few months (omg, could it have been six!?) I moved into a cute house in town and got a little job at the paper. So, yah, and I just got promoted to District Manager. We'll see how that goes! It came with a good raise and a solid bonus, so I'm pleased, I guess. It's nothing I ever imagined I'd be doing--being that I hate management and I'm now a manager... But, under the circumstances, it feels like the right thing to do. Actually, it came rather abruptly, just yesterday...
Interestingly, I had grown very tired of two of my kniving co-workers' nasty attitudes and rude responses when I asked for help, or even when I needed to refer things that were their responsibilities over to them at all. I had spoken with our supervisor about it, and he didn't seem like he was going to be able to resolve it, though he was solidly aware of the problem. It was making me have too many bad days for too little pay, so... I applied for another job somewhere else a couple weeks ago. I had an interview over my lunch hour yesterday, and it went really well.
When I got back to work, I got called into a meeting where I was informed that one of my unpleasant co-workers had just been fired. The other will be changing departments soon. I was offered the promotion right then. I accepted--because I do adore my boss! I just couldn't stand the back-stabbishness and bad attitudes of some of the other members of our team. So I am pretty excited. My promotion won't be announced for 2 weeks, so it will look like a solid search for the best employee for the job has been conducted--and so it won't look like he fired her to put me in her position. I'm looking forward to the change of pace, and already the environment at work has lightened up because she's gone.
My ex was here for the last few days. He had to go home tonight to take care of his mom, who has another chemo treatment tomorrow. He's going through some really dark and rough times. She's going to die, and has been sick for over a year. He's got all the classic symptoms of anyone who's been in his position. He's pissed off and lonely, and frustrated, and sad, feels it's unfair, and feels guilty for not wanting to deal with it--although he is doing more than many a child has done for a dying parent. He's been living there to help her through this for just over a year now--and he's certainly feeling trapped there, and really, he is. I doubt his mom will live out another year, and she definitely could not go back to living on her own. I'm trying to just be the best friend I can be and stay as involved as he'll have me, without us getting too involved and it degenerating to arguing or going over all the things we could have done differently... It's really rough for him, and I am one of the three friends he has. I'm trying to stay by his side as much as I can, for now. This would be an awful time to try to make anything permanent, you know. So yah, we do still share a checking account, and no paper work has yet been filed, though it's been more than three years that we've been split up. Honestly, it still could be years before we'll be ready to actually sever that legal bond, still. Maybe when the kiddo graduates or something. I don't know. We don't have a friendship that goes deeper than platonic anymore, and haven't for so many years, but we feel like family regardless; and I don't think that will ever go away for us. We ARE family...failed marriage and all romanticism entirely aside.
Well, maybe not entirely aside--did I say that?... So my neighbor is a cute college prof and we hang out together a lot. He is gone for 6 more weeks in Alaska, crabbing. I totally miss him dreadfully huge gobs much. That's alot. I hadn't realized how much I'd come to rely on the stress relief that comes with stopping over at his place after work. (His house is actually a mother-in-law-apartment that at one time used to be the dining room and third bedroom of my house...so yah, we share walls.) He's really easy to talk to, listens, cares, understands, and has generally good advice. He's very active, always building or doing something, walking or riding his bike to work--of course we just live a few blocks away from the school, but still, it counts! He hunts and fishes and all sorts of other stuff. He takes care of our yards, shovels up all the dog poop and mows, hangs planter posts for me to hang potted plants from, fixes stuff, builds me a new fence when the one I had was too short and Orion could jump it, plants grass seed where there are bare spots, rakes leaves, pulls weeds, waters the yards and gardens, lets my dog out when I'm not home and throws the ball for him, buys dinner for all three of us and surprises us with it, takes me out on dates, sometimes to nice dinners, sometimes for Saturday morning fishing trips, and is generally just good natured and friendly. He doesn't want kids, (anytime soon, he says) and has never been married. But he does envision getting married someday, and has opinions about when the wedding will be (in May)and what types of flowers will be everywhere (lilacs, of course.) He loves my homemade soap, and my meatloaf and cheesy taters drive him wild. (He told me once when he reheated that meatloaf it brought a tear to his eye...hehehe). So wow. I guess I kinda like him a little. *grin*
I'm taking this camping trip to the Oregon coast at the end of this week, family reunion down in Southern Oregon. My mom and stepdad, and their 4 dogs, my brother and his woofer, my aunt & uncle, & cousin and his wife and their dog, and me and my pooch are all going to meet there. I don't know how my mom convinced all the rest of us to share in her delusion that we could be a "happy family" and have a "good old time family reunion." This was a ridiculous idea to begin with. One cousin already bailed out and I promptly jumped her case because yah--yer damn right, if I have to go damnit she should too!--and of course that didn't win me any awards. We fought email wars for a few weeks before I realized I'd rather gouge an eye out or sever a limb than have to write one more reply...and so I simply didn't. Here's the thing. My mom and her sister have never gotten along well. This is one of the first times they'll be hanging out together since the grandparents passed 7 & 9 years ago. Top it off, my brother paid my uncle a large (5-6 digits) salary last year to do a specific amount of work--of which about half got done by my uncle. The rest was done by my brother, who was ultimately responsible for the completion of the contracted work. He couldn't come home for Christmas due to the vastly missed deadlines and my uncle's failure to produce. Meanwhile, my uncle was out shopping and visiting family with my aunt. If flaming wads of burning marshmellos fly across campsites and cause tent fires, it will be light.
To top it off, I have decided (against what I wanted to do, which was drag him along) to leave my kiddo at home because he failed both pre-algebra and biology and has to go to summer school and can't miss the several days we'd be gone. This all comes when my department at work has just gone from 4 to two, and so I leave my boss, who is a great guy, to bear the load for nearly a week on his own. His wife is preggers. I hope he's still sane when I return. I hope I am!
I'll probably see Jaden while I'm down there because I'll be just about an hour from his house. We have made plans, but somehow I feel vague about them--as if it may not come to pass the way we've established. He's working at the humane society there, and he just got promoted to kennel manager. He likes it, though it's hard work. He feels like he is doing something worthwhile and meaningful. Hell, that's impressive... and too often hard or impossible to come by. My only concern for this encounter is that he is always so concerned with how I've spent my time away from him, and with whom, and doing what. I think it's of little matter or consequence. The reality is that he lives 8 hours drive away, gas prices are insane, I haven't seen him since Christmas, and I am a social sort of girl. I like to be paired up, when I am with him--or when I am not. I don't like him any less because I do like other people. He wouldn't see it that way though. I worry that he will ruin what could be a happy get-away for us both by turning it into a discussion of all the ways we are unhappy and distant.
I haven't heard anything from DelSol for a couple months. I don't think I will ever be able to believe it when he tells me things that I need to be able to believe. (Things like he's going to be at his mom's for the weekend...) I wish we didn't have to have the history we do, he sure is fun to be around, and he consistently makes me feel good about who I am, and how I am. That's amazing--something so precious to find from any other human being. I really could just wear my own skin with him, and it seemed to suit him best when I did so. I could have made a serious thing with him, maybe, once upon a time, but he was just never going to let me. I'm not sure why. Maybe he was just scared to open up enough to get hurt. Easier to be alone by choice than to be vulnerable to someone who might not love back enough or for long enough. Isn't that what we are all always afraid of? That we will give too much away, be too wide open, share so much--and that it won't be returned in proportion? Then is it better to be alone? I can't honestly answer. Sometimes heartbreak is so acutely painful, it might indeed have been better left intact.
As for my poet, he is quiet, a slowed thumping pulse, consistently--if quietly--beating away in the background in the forests of my mind. I hear him whisper through the trees affably, but I cannot catch hold of him nor even sight him for long enough to be certain of him. Fleetingly he calls to me, but as soon as he's got my attention it's as if he's realized he was in error, and he vanishes with no trace. He too, is having dark times. Questioning, perhaps regretting, trying to keep control of depression, yet paralyzed by its very nature. Can I help him? His arms are not long enough to reach me he says--so will mine be able to reach him? I wonder. Could it possibly be enough? Do I have anything of value to offer? Or is the syrup of me too thin to satiate?
Am I a light? A beacon to the lost? I seem to find them, if not the other way around. Yet when my staggered misplaced souls flutter in close and make their way to me, perhaps they fear they've been misled? Am I meant to be constantly wanting to do more than I can? To be more than I am to more people than I ought? It is such a pattern for me--as I have always been accused of spreading myself too thin. I don't feel thin, or shallow though, and I don't feel like my friendship is the stuff of fluff. I mean what I say when I say it--at least in the moment that it's said...I feel...right. I treat people kindly, and I try very hard to consider their needs as important as my own. I feel solid. ...As though I am who I am supposed to be, and often as though I am connected with the threads of others lives that are meant to make up my tapestry.
Anyway, wow... So now ya know the current down and dirty up front straight up spoon fed core of me today. I've just spewed forth everything I could possibly know--and now you are more up to date than my diary. My diary will be jealous...
