Okay.

So I currently work as a move assistant in helping seniors pack up their homes and we then unpack them the next day in their new homes.  You see a thing or two when you pack for people.  The occasional DVD tucked into an underwear drawer, food with a 12-year-old expiration date,  skin lightener lotions from the 50's.  Two days ago I start to pack up a book shelf that housed three labeled, ceramic jars behind glass doors.  I look closer at the labels to see first name's and the last name of the couple I was packing up.  The client was watching me as I eye-balled these jars.  She said, "Be very careful with those."  I ask, "Family members?"  She says, "Our dogs...they will be mixed together with us when we go."  This was definitely a first, first, first.

Now I think I get it...

For the longest time, I have found such admiration for a certain type of woman and now I think I kinda know a little bit more of why.
  I have long referenced two women in my life that have done 180's (or variations of it) in their career paths.  I lived with a family here in San Diego for almost 3 years when I was in my early 20's.  The wife was a nurse practitioner at UCSD's medical center.  She worked oncology.  It was a tough job and I knew this because of how many funerals she would attend.  I had heard one time that she must have been a great nurse and meant a lot to each family because it was slightly unusual for a nurse to attend their patient's funerals.  She had this job forever and she was paid well.  She left it though eventually to go be a school nurse  at a high school in a low-income community near the border.  I was kinda shocked.  While, yes, she was still in the field of nursing, she definitely took a step down in pay and in rank if you will.  One most likely doesn't need to be a nurse practitioner to work as a school nurse.
  The other person I reference is a good friend of mine who went to school for biology.  She became a microbiologist.  And she was one for many years.  She left that occupation to become a Minister at the church she and I attended.  She stayed there many years to then go back to school for her master's and she now is a career counselor at Duke University.  She has had many lives in one.
   I grew up seeing people around me work in one job and they stayed in that job until they retired.  I never knew why that never resonated with me.  Until now.
  I have done private-duty caregiving for basically a total of 15 years.  It hasn't always been with the elderly, but in the past 10 years it had been.  I moved back to San Diego one year ago this month after being away and I needed a job.  I knew I should look back into this field.  I get paid well and I have experience.  About a month and a half ago, I interviewed for a part-time position to be a companion to a woman who lives 4 miles from my house, the job had good hours and would pay me the best I've ever been paid in this kind of work.  I got an email about a week later saying that the job was mine.  I read this and cried.  I sobbed like a baby.  I didn't want it.  I had known for awhile that I wanted to get out of this line of work and my response was conclusive.  I couldn't go back.  I spoke with my husband about it and he agreed that if I responded like that I needed to pay attention to it.  It was scary saying no to something that seemed so good on paper AND by doing so, in turn I would be saying yes to something I still have no clue as what will be.

     I will tell you this though, I sent that family a three sentence email telling them I wouldn't be taking the job and haven't looked back since.  My spirit, my body, my mind allllll respond in a positive way when I think of what I have done.  My mom said to me, "Just because you are good at something doesn't mean you should do it."  The women I so often reference were really brave because it's hard to make a change when you invest so much of your time, knowledge, energy, experience into something, but they gave me something to turn to when I was scared to do this for myself.

Shoe in...or so I thought.

     My husband and I moved to California (back to CA for me) in March of this year.  He started his new job about a week after we arrived.  I on the other hand had not been in hot pursuit for a new j-o-b because our apartment had become a small hotel with plenty of guests soon after we arrived here AND I was also the right hand gal to my best friend's wedding planning, her wedding in June.  I had to hand write placecards and help choose flowers and change out linen and let San Diego do a lot of the work of entertaining as I was simply the Vanna White of showing off the vowels of the city.  A delightful job indeed.  But after the wedding and into July, my job search had to get real.
     I had, for many, many years, been a private duty caregiver for elderly and/or disabled persons.  Now back in San Diego, I preferred not to go that route.  I wanted to mix it up.  I applied with AmeriCorps as a Disaster Preparedness Facilitator for Native American's on their reservations.  I was interviewed for the job to help various tribes prepare their homes for wild fires, ie., clear their property of debris, put in smoke detectors and make sure there's a fire extinguisher in reach.  There would be some public speaking with groups of what could be 50 people (!) and one would have to work every other weekend.  While I loved the thought of working with the Native American population (there are quite a few tribes here in the county), Ess Gee and I FINALLY got out of his past (at least for 7 years!) work schedule of being on-call every third weekend at his previous job and I was not about to muck up our ability go places on weekend's cuz' of my part-time job.  Nope and nope.  So while grateful to be interviewed, I turned it down.  The search continued.  I interviewed as a Froster at a cake shop...they had days called Black Out days where one could not take off vacations around holidays because that was their busiest season.  I apologized for wasting their time, I have never worked Food Service, so I was unfamiliar with the pressure cooker of retail holiday work.  I also knew I was in a pretty luxurious spot...I could say no to jobs.  I wasn't in such need for a job that I had to say yes to weekend's and holidays.  I was completely aware of this blessing.  But after looking, applying, looking, applying, it all became a bit long in the tooth and I went back to the route I was SURE to get a job in...caregiving for the elderly.
     The particular job I was looking at was good paying.  I would be working for an agency (so I didn't have to take out my own social security).  It was super close to our apartment and the gentleman was a 95-year-old retired Army Colonel.  I'm like, "WHAT?! It's so mine!  I am married to a man who in in the Army, has been for 22+ years, I am made for this job!"  The Colonel was said to be a tough cookie, but I am like the Elderly Whisperer, so I didn't think twice.  I applied.  I interviewed once...I interviewed again.  I waited one day.  I was telling friend's that I wouldn't be able to see 'em Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday evenings cuz I was going to be working til 7pm.  I was counting up my contribution of a paycheck to help pay down Ess Gee's school debt, getting pumped at the idea.  I thought I had it.  Until I got a call from the gentleman who owned the agency and he said, "I'm sorry, but he didn't go with you."  I held it all loosely for about an hour.  "It wasn't meant to be, etc., etc." And then it hit me, that this thing that I had ALL THE CONFIDENCE IN THE WORLD about (I've got experience, I love old people, I do good work, I got great references) did not get me through the door.  And I know it's going to sound nutty, but I really liked getting schooled in humility.  I shook my head at my own ego.  I didn't want this lesson to go unnoticed.  I wanna learn it.  Because the greater part about any of this is---it    ain't    about     me.
     I could try to shove my way through doors with my own shining, gold-star report card with all the Look At Me's---how smart am I, how clever am I, how funny am I, but even that may not win me the position.  And it's going to sound contradictory, but I am glad that this is not the case.  It takes the pressure off.  Now granted, I don't always look at things in this way, but at this juncture, it's working:-).
     It's this mixed bag of "Don't get too cocky, It's not solely about your strength's, It's about leaning into God, learning to trust in His work and not just your own" and "Thank goodness it's not up to me to be the most intelligent, most beautiful, most successful" because we all know that that's too much work and pressure and it doesn't always equal happiness;-).
   I will say this, I did finally get a job---helping elderly move from one home to another.  I am not the moving company, I only work alongside the movers to pack boxes and unpack boxes once the move is done.  And I love it!!!!  It's part-time/as needed, so I can say no or yes to a job depending on the week.  It's BUSY work and concentrated work and just enough...just enough interaction, just enough responsibility, just enough actual work.  I am so spoiled and happy to be.
    Things did work out after all, and hopefully, because of this experience I am a little more reticent in letting my big head go first...(said with a smirk;-)!)

Making a comeback

The last person I worked for had a book on their shelf called "Better Homes and Gardens, New Decorating Book".  I picked it up and fell in love and bought one for myself.  But the funny thing about it is that this book is from 1981.  34 years old home decor, and I love it, and as I looked through the book I had to question, just what is it about this book that made me want to buy it and reference it and keep it on my own shelf?  I promise I will answer that.
  I have been reading books lately about women who have in one way or the other changed the way we see things...Jane Goodall, Sister Helen Prejean, a local San Diegan Miriam Polster and how when these women were little girls what they gravitated towards then propelled them fairly steadily into their future selves.  Like when Jane Goodall as a young child sat  and watched for four hours to observe how chickens laid their eggs.  Or when Sister Helen Prejean says for as long as she can remember she has always loved the mystery of mass, stained-glass windows, silence and music.  She can't remember ever not believing in God.
   I watch my 12 year old and 8 year old nieces...one stays in the guest bedroom and draws at the desk while her whole family is in the other room dancing and playing music and taking pictures.  The other niece, in the center of the living room, busting out moves in well-placed rhythm and rhyme. One knows she wants to be a veterinarian and has traveled up to UC Davis (known for it's veterinarian prowess) to get a tour of the campus, the other struggles with academics, but shows such love towards old people you'd think she was secretly one of them.
  The stuff we have inside of us will come out.  And that is what I saw when I bought that book.
For as long as I can remember I have been creating spaces, making homes.  Growing up in Michigan we had a long dirt driveway and with every rain we'd get huge mud puddles in the potholes of the drive.  I'd make that mud puddle my "house" and the girl I grew up with, she'd have the mud puddle "next door" and we'd visit each other's mud puddles.  We would put large stones in the mud puddle to act as a table or a seat.  We'd be filthy, but happy.  We had a lilac bush, a few of 'em, that grew close to each other in the yard.  I'd make the space under the lilac bush my "home", one room a lot bigger than another.  There were trees everywhere in our yard and some with such large, heavy branches they would droop to the ground.  Where they lay, along with the trunk of the tree would become the outline for my kitchen, bedroom, living room.  My dad made a raised, small room a few feet off the ground, with a slanted tin roof and ladder...home.
 Now in re: to 1981 and specifically the New Decorating Book.  I was 6 years old in 1981.  I visited my mom in San Diego, California. My mom has a great eye and has been decorator in some form or fashion all her life.  This book I have is a complete guide to my mom's sense of decor when I visited California (a far off land from a farm in Michigan) in the first years of my young travelling life.  It's wicker and ferns and textures and light.  I'd seriously copy some of what I see in that book now in my own home.
I bring any of this up because I saw an oak shelf headboard on Craigslist that I really liked.  And I had to laugh because no one does oak any more.   My mom's house in the 80's was oak to the fullest...coffee table, gossip bench, dining room table.  Today it's either black or white or mahogany (which I love btw).  So maybe in Ess Gee and I's life, oak will be making a comeback:-).
While I am a far cry from a Jane Goodall, I must say I do find it fun and fascinating to think about the things you did when you were little and how they magnify themselves in your life now.  And if they are not magnified, and it matters to you, then find out why and bring them back to life.

A transition in praying.

I used to pray, "Lord, Lord, please, please help me do this right."
I now pray, "Lord, Lord, please, please help me do this good."
And I know it's not proper English, I should say, help me do this well, but I want "good".  I want to go down in life having lived it well/good, having loved well and good, not if I lived/loved right.  If I follow "good", then all else falls into place.

Is your dog your kid?

There's a little girl about 4 years old that occasionally rides around our complex on her scooter.  She asks a lot of questions to anyone around.  She asked me one day, "Is your dog your kid?"  To which I soundly and specifically responded, "No, he's our dog, we love him, but he's our dog".
   The other day though, I step outside with my hands full of recyclables, keys, library books and Riley's leash was not quite yet wrapped around my hand and he decides to go running after something and everything I have goes flyin' everywhere and I find myself yelling at the top of my lungs, "RILEY JAMES!!!!!!!!", I had to laugh at myself and be a bit embarrassed.  I can honestly say that I have never heard anyone yelling at their dog to include their middle name...only parents do this...with their children:-).  

Too cute!

I was working on a yard project about a week ago for Bill who turns 90 this year.
  He got a new neighbor.  She came over to see what we were working on.  He introduced me to her like this,
  "I'd like you to meet Ericka.  She is my best friend."  And the rest is history.