The glorious end to Summer

Summer is coming to an end and I hate to see it go. It means more than a change in the weather this time around. It means how far have I gotten in my job search, have I persuaded my mom to move to a better home environment, have I got all the things done around the house/yard that I intended to, and just what is important, anyway?!

This year our youngest (Sarah) graduated from HS and is now working PT at a preschool and loves it. Our oldest, Daniel, is going back to school for another round of studying film/video. He has great talents for writing, and needs to get a job.

I have been unemployed for over 9 months and trying to find the "Zen" in all of this. Trying to enjoy the time I have, while using the time I have to it's best potential. This makes for quite a bit of wasted time. But wasted is relative, right?

I need to get healthier. I have been enduring lots of aches and pains, and probably drinking too much wine as a reaction to that. I have achey joints, a chronic ache in my back , and occasional sore knees. But, over time, I have found that yoga really helps to ease those ailments. I am also a big fan of walking a couple miles per day.

Well, the other night we watched the director's cut of the Woodstock Movie, and even tho' I was only 11 in 1969, it took me back, and reminded me of how good it is to acknowledge the sychronicity of life when it happens. We spend so much time multi-tasking and "not" taking vacation, that we miss out completely on what is really happening around us. As Neil Young so eloquently said, "To give a love, you've gotta live a love; to live a love, you've gotta be part of." To be part of you've gotta be present and in the moment. That is what this time has allowed me to barely grasp after so long. After so many years of working, raising kids, worrying, and scrambling around trying to keep up. I need to be in that moment. The rest is nothing important.

Happiness is a Tidy Linen Closet

I am done with classes for this quarter and it feels good. I took Flash and a Dreamweaver class, back to back, on Saturdays for Winter Quarter. They were both taught by the same instructor at Seattle Central, and they were good. I now have good books with CDs to follow up on so I can keep learning.

And I have filed for unemployment, though I won't be getting a check for a few weeks apparently. They are so backed up at the Employment Security Office it takes them 4 to 5 weeks to process claims, though when I called once last week I was only on hold for 10 minutes.

Spring is slowly peeking it's head out of the dark, cold, frosty burm that was winter. We still could get snow, of course. But the croccus in my yard are glorious, and when the sun shines and the sky is blue in Seattle, there is nothing quite like it.

Being unemployed means I am using my time differently. And that means I can get things done around the house that I have not had a chance to get to for awhile. Like the linen closet. Our linen closet, being small, and the only linen closet, with exception of the inprovised one across the hall in a recessed alcove that used to be for the stereo, has to be perfectly organized for everything to fit in, and if it gets messed up, it is a disaster. Because once it is messed up, we tend to just open the door, shove something in, and close it quickly before anything can fall out. It becomes a mess gradually, and then builds, so that whoever has the task of folding up towels and putting them away starts to dred opening the linen closet door. So the linen closet is tidy, and neat, and I love it.