The Good Guys Won!

It just happens that I had a really good day today.

And it ends with the health care reform bill passing.

Thank you, Mister President.

Thank you, House and Senate.

Thank you all.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Remember the good days. They will help carry you through the bad days."\\

Census Work

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week, my mother is going to training as a census worker, so I am looking after my father the whole day, those days.

Tuesday, I took him into Philomath to the gym for his usual workout.

Wednesday, I took him into Corvallis to spend some time with his sister Ann and her husband. Also present was my wife Kathe and Kathe's former husband Jim (who by sheer coincidence lives in Ann's neighborhood).

Thursday, Dad didn't feel up to going out, so we wound up staying home all day. He doesn't have a lot of energy these days, but he does benefit from mental stimulation.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Do what you can and leave the rest."\\

So What Next?

I am at loose ends right now. I haven't exactly been laid off from my caregiver job, but I have been assigned no clients. They say at work that they haven't taken a dislike to me, it's just that there are fewer clients, and none who are willing to have a man in the house.

I believe them. And I don't even resent the injustice of being rejected for being a man. Justice is not guaranteed in this life.

But it does leave me wondering what to do next.

I'm still promoting myself as a massage therapist, but it's not bringing in a sufficient income by itself.

I failed at the end of my first year of nursing school. That still hurts. I still feel a powerful desire to go back and prove myself, and to get the degree and the job that I feel called to do. But it's expensive, and a major challenge, and.... I just don't know whether I should climb into that particular meatgrinder again. I don't know.

I trained as a phlebotomist, in hope of getting more pay and more humane hours than I had as a caregiver. I keep on applying for jobs, but I haven't been hired yet.

I wrote a story and had it published almost twenty years ago. I finally sold another one. I'll have another story finished soon. I could make at least some money writing, if I could write more and faster. There was a time when I would have said that being a writer was the life I wanted. Now that I have had a taste, is it still what I want? I'm not sure.

Kathe said recently that I had always put her in mind of a history teacher. I was surprised -- it seemed like something totally out of left field. Until I remembered that I had, in fact, taught a history class a few years ago, while Kathe was on the board of a small private school. And I'd enjoyed it, too. But is that how I want to spend my fifties? I don't know.

It feels strange and wrong to be at such loose ends at my age. Here I am, forty-nine years old, married 25 years, my kids grown, and I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. But I am what I am, and my life has brought me to this place, and no other.

So what next?

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "You must, yourself, decide your duty -- and do it well."\\

Wake Up And Smell the Coffee*

*[Because I can't think of a better header for this post than the one used on all eleventy-twelve other posts about the Coffee Party]

Kathe and I attended a Coffee Party at the Dutch Brothers on Monroe.

I doubt if we will regret it.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "This is your country -- if you can keep it."\\