I'm really struggling for balance. When there are no stressful, or emotional, or disturbing, or painful, or difficult circumstances, I can maintain my balance like a professional high-wire act. I'm great! I'm sweet, kind, gentle, fun, a tad lazy but I'll perform small tasks when requested, and I'm thoughtful.
Then the tea kettle boils dry, the dog barfs, the cat bites me, the car gets a flat, work doubles my workload and then, just for a chuckle, switches my responsibilities.
I've been on pain meds for a couple of years now, I'm wearing a (hot and scratchy but very helpful) tens vest, and I've performed my daily ritual of laying in my traction device.
I just want to ride my bike. And swim. I'd like to be able to think that should I ever be able to afford a trip again, that I could take a flight and not end up crippled for weeks afterwards.
I'm on an emotional rollercoaster. Commercials, even on fast forward, make me cry, rage, laugh, and despair (sometimes all at once). I can't concentrate on my work with the razor sharp mind I know I have because my emotional jet stream is passing over alien territory.
One deep breath, two... three...
Onward and upward.

The edge is frayed lace ruffled by a breeze
And my face betrays my wonder
I waited for you through the winter
Into the spring
At the height of summer you came
And brought me here
To the edge of the world
Where the sky meets the firmament
For a moment, up seems down and down seems sideways
I wrap my arms around you but my gaze does not stray
From the ripple of eternity between

wow.. I can't think of a freaking thing to write about dibs.
I've been poking at it and poking at it.
Dibs... calling dibs, calling shotgun, come on, think!
Me first!! Me first!!
Mine!!
Nope. Nothing comes.
G'night Gracie.

My mother loved jazz, which may not seem directly connected to the word jive, but she also loved to dance and I remember watching her jive with some guy at a jazz club. I am a clumsy dancer, I'm not very comfortable in my body and if I have to think about where to move and when, I'm late and I go in the wrong direction. Get my mind out of the equation and I do well.
My mother, who was tiny and ferocious, jived with a joy I never saw in her at other times. Watching her dance made me love her. It gave me a flutter. She abandoned herself to the dance but did it with precision and grace.
I could sit for hours, sober amongst the drunks and managing to breathe in spite of the cigarette smog (I have asthma), watching my mother dance. She wore the men out. She could go without cigarettes and booze for duration of her dancing. Otherwise she was permanently hobbled, a cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other.
Thinking about this, I understand how demoralized she felt as her body began to fail her. There, on the dance floor, was where she was happy. I think she wanted that to be translated to other parts of her life, but I never saw it off the dance floor. There she was, fully in her body, joyous, skillful, the envy of the other women, wanted by the men, admired, and right. She was beautiful.

I'm going to try an experiment, each day, I'll take the word of the day from http://wordsmith.org/words/today.html and write something. Some days it may be fiction, some days a contemplation, other days it might be a reminiscence. No rule about the content or the genre. The effort doesn't have to *use* the word, Just be inspired by it.
- - - - - - -
I didn't mean to lie, but I did want the money. The story just came out of me and it was like a manicured lawn, perfect. I even managed to admit, somehow, that I did want the money. The truth was that I had no idea from breath to breath what I was going to say. The idea blossomed in my mind and poured out of my mouth.
My mother was dead, I declared, and my father was missing and had been missing since I was a child. It was rumored, I went on, that my father was also dead and had been killed by gangsters. I wiped my siblings from the map without hesitation; I was not going to share any wealth that I acquired through this opportunity.
The wiry, old man across the table from me was soaking in my heartbreaking story with all the appropriate expressions of condolences and avarice. I had stumbled upon the old guy sitting alone in a cafe and I had asked for his company. When I had swept into the cafe looking for a respite from the winter cold, I had heard the waitress call him Mr. Ed, not the horse, of course, but the store owner: Honest Ed's was famous throughout the province, I was sure. He was pleasant and he offered to buy my coffee, or a meal. I demurred.
I looked at him, thinking only of his great wealth, and I started telling him the saddest tale I'd ever heard.

Last year the youngest of our old cats kicked the bucket. It was a rather sudden and disturbing death, and one that left us without cats for the first time in a couple of decades.
We postponed the arrival of new cats until tax season was over and we could settle down and meet the cats. Oh, and we decided that two cats was the way to go.
Tax season ended with me in the emergency ward of our local hospital and so I got to join the annual deluge of health crises that plague my beloved during the most stressful time of her year.
Shortly before I was recovered enough to go back to work, we visited a local cat clinic that maintains a cat shelter. There were two cats that made themselves known to us and who not only seemed interested in us but they were quite affectionate.



The older cat, Gracie, had come from the home of a hoarder. She was, essentially, feral. During her time at the cat clinic shelter, she'd warmed up a bit to the people and when we were visiting, she came out and head butted me before heading off to twine herself around the delicate ankles of my precious love.


The younger cat, formerly known as Dante and now known as Sparky the Wonder Cat, was adventurous and affectionate.
We visited again to be sure and then we brought them home.
Gracie has, sadly, reverted to a more feral state and comes out of our basement closets only in the dark of night. She scarfs down the food we leave out and spreads the litter across the laundry room floor. Our plans now are to borrow a big cage, catch her, and keep her in the living room (caged) while we slowly work her out of her state of frenzy and into a state in which we can care for her.
Sparky is offering no such challenges and provides us with endless amusement. He likes to know what we're doing, and if he can help he's in there like a dirty shirt; he checks in with us and is very polite when asking for favors (such as the opening of doors and cat food containers).

I officially designate this as my annus horribilis... even though I didn't offer any such designation to 1999, the year my father and nephew died in a crash. I'm just overreacting.
April 15th I ended up in the emergency ward with serotonin toxicity. The result of drugs used to manage the pain from my cervical disc degeneration.
I'm going back to work next week, thankfully.
Please don't give me any more advice about pain management and disc degeneration. I've heard it all. More than once.
After six months without a cat, M & I decided it was time for cats. We went to a shelter and chatted up several candidates. A couple of days later, after our interviews, we took home Gracie and Dante. Dante used to be an outdoor cat and drove us nuts within a couple of days with his constant, convincing explanations of his outdoorsyness. We've come to an accommodation, all the way around. Gracie, who was essentially feral, disappeared into our basement. I, in a brilliant maneuver, one that would seem like a trope in a movie, decided that Gracie needed to live in our quiet room. I ended up at the doctor with five infected cat bites. Gracie is in the basement.
The dog looks at me with the expression that quietly tells me I am crazy, a dog is more than enough companionship for a block of houses.
Last week all the electronics in our house went on strike (all except M's computer which continues to operate well, so I'm keeping my metaphorical fingers crossed). My computer crashed and burned during an update from MS. My virus software thought that part of the update was a trojan so it blocked it. The update choked. My computer died and would not restart. I ended up waiting a week for the discs that would "repair" it. Turns out I would have been just as well off to simply install the XP I have on hand. The repair wiped out my data, which I was trying to avoid. Yes, I have back-ups, but they're from before April 15th.
I then installed the game I've been playing (World of Warcraft) and after wading through a couple of hours of updates, I got the strangest error message (Failed to find suitable display device. Exiting program.) and I can't play. I can't escape into that fantasy.
My beloved asked that I finish setting up the digital cable before I return to work next week. I'd been trying for most of the month of May to no avail. Each troubleshooting call with the cable or DVR provider ended up with me visiting another store for another piece of hardware or wiring. Finally, today, the cable company informed me that I may have a bad box. They're coming Saturday. Until then, I have enough cabling behind the tv to choke the proverbial horse.
Oh, and we're not watching tv at all, no "live" tv, no recorded shows, and no DVDs because the speakers on the monster have died. The tv is just over 3 years old. The service guy is coming tomorrow for that.
I can't think of where to move my in-progress stories. I have terrible dreams of my life falling apart. I'm worried about money, health, work, and everything except love.
I was sitting upstairs working through this evening's crisis involving our internet connectivity and I was thinking I understand why people walk away or get violent. There is a limit to our capacity. I took a few moments up on our roof deck, I watched the sky change as the sun set, and then I knew I have a lot more capacity.

The first element of finishing, is starting.
I have begun to return to starting. After a month of bizarre illness, I had enough mental capacity today to read and understand (well, sort of understand) the instructions for adding the digital cable capacity to my life. We'll see. I at least have a series of connections made and two remote controls that do, indeed, turn the televisions on and off.
I've been ruminating on Cat Rambo's repeated mantra of getting your butt in the seat to complete. Today, my but is out and my butt is down. I'm working on a short story that has an actual submission deadline (August 1st ... of this year). I think it will be interesting as August 1 is also the 7 year anniversary for my currently employment (those people who pay for the guest worker visa that lets me live with my wife). Seven years is a personal something-or-other for me, but I haven't figured out what yet.
So, on that note, I leave you, my figurative audience, to follow the instructions of Cat Rambo and work.

Here it is, the end of another week. The politics in both Canada and the US are heating up. The mechanism of capitalism in the US is balancing on the edge of a blade. And I finished something.

We've been trying to finish a project at work for the past week. Between the frenetic pace of work, problems with our toolset, and working in new technology (at least new to us), we're a week behind. But, we got it done.

Mona's brother is coming to town so while work has been insane, home has also been insane. We're trying to make our adequate home appear to be something out of better homes and gardens. Nah. We did get the quiet room fixed up; we took the fax machine out, we cleaned up the snake pit of wires, and covered the 300 blinking lights. We've had the new wall-bed down to air out and Miss Spooky has been so happy that we've finally have recognized her royal status and created a room for her.

As for politics and the economy, I realized I should be paying more attention. Lately, I've just curled up into a sullen ball of exhaustion. I was listening to a podcast on break-ups and I realized that this is life, this is it. I was acting like I'd lost something, I was grieving, and it is time to wake up, smell the coffee, and get myself together.

So, I guess I finished more than one thing this week. A banner week.

Aside from not being able to believe that it's September and that September is almost over, I'm not being able to tote up the number of unfinished projects I have.
I haven't sewn anything. I haven't even started those projects and based on how long it took me to get a sewing machine, I'm going to die first.
I haven't finished my novel from two NaNos ago. And NaNo is right around the corner. I'm already getting emails about this year. I can't read them. Apparently, I don't have time. To encourage the completion of my novel, I sent the first half to my niece who is awaiting the publication. I'm hoping that her enjoyment, and desire for an end to the story, would encourage me to get to work. I did write a scene, one that happens very close to the end of the story. So, it's sort of working.
When I got into work this morning, I found a list of things to do from last week. The only thing scratched of is something that Mona did.
I have to finish what I'm doing at work, the deadlines mean my job. It's one of the reasons I enjoy my job. It's not up to me, in a way. I've handed it off to another authority, the one that prints my pay cheque every other week. It's a twelve step program for procrastinators.
But, here I am, writing this because I got stuck on something and I needed to distract myself so the part of my brain that still works could figure it out. And it has, so I return to work.

In response to a Nanoljers challenge:
Dog days my ass. Dogs laying about in the shade, panting and sleeping while I'm out here ripping the stalks and vines of this year's crop out of the ground. Dogs curled up on comfy beds dreaming of ball chasing and swimming while I totter on a ladder getting the summer crap traded out with the winter crap in the spider-invested shed. If they were dog days, I'd be swinging on a hammock drinking ice cold lemonade and listening to the lake lap up the shore.
Sweat pours off me from the moment I crawl out of bed. There are always a thousand chores to do at the hottest, wettest times. Dog days. I don't get dog days. I get oxen days. I get days like those poor beasts glimpsed in the background of some nature show special on villages in the back of beyond. Round and round and round creating a rut so deep they die in there and are never even missed.
That's me. I have concentric circles. The daily stuff like feeding the animals, milking the cows, getting the eggs, and fixing the chicken pen. The regular stuff like the roof, the gutters, the porch, the garden, the fence, and the barn. The seasonal stuff like plant the garden, weed the garden, thin the garden, reap the garden, and then clean up the garden. The unusual stuff: hunting down foxes, hunting for deer, chasing down raccoons, and hunting bear. Round and round I go.

That's right, I'm not a good corporate citizen. I'm not dedicated to the goals of the corporation; I consider my effort to be a fair exchange for the money and benefits they provide. If they paid me more, I'd give them more.
The inane politics of getting by in the workplace leave me cold. I have to sit in a dark room for long periods just to make it possible for me to smile and nod when bizarre requests filter down from the chair on high. Chair or chairs, where does it begin?
Here's what I think happens:
People put their investments into funds and portfolios.
The people managing those investments make money when the investments make money.
The investments make money when the corporations included in them make profits, not just money, but profits.
So, to make profits, you have to sell more and spend less.
Upper management get a bonus based on how big the profits are. Upper management sets outrageous goals: reduced workforce produces more product, outsourced development and manufacturing means they can negotiate for the cheapest labor and parts, and they set extreme goals for increased productivity for the senior managers for bigger bonuses.
Senior management then passes the stress down the line and demand plans for expanding market, reduced research and development costs, and cheaper production.
The middle managers, under them, are then pressed into longer hours setting up and justifying every action. Is your team reducing cost? If not, get your ass in gear.
Corporations you bargain their employees into the smallest salaries they can and hold out the promise of more if the individual contributors can do extra-ordinary things. People think they're being paid for 40 hours a week, but somehow that stretches into longer hours. It creeps up on you, if you're an employee.
There are more rules than a country and they're vague, in places where latitude for the manager (to pressure an employee) is needed and explicit where the corporation wants everyone lockstep.
Truly a fantastic experience and one you pay for each and every day.
No wonder I wake up some days and wish my work was not tied to my job. I love what I do, I don't enjoy the yoga needed to have a place to do it.
I have an attitude problem. I don't like the confusion of rules for rules sake. Conformity is not my strong suite. And if I produce better in short spurts, I want to work that way. I don't work well at a treadmill. I get bored. I'm bored right now, which is why I'm writing this.

Last night MonaB and I were talking about being ready for death. I had figured out that I was no longer afraid of death, or at least that I am not currently afraid of death.
We talked about how various beliefs structure things so that the unknown becomes knowable and you get a nice handbook of rules to ensure you know how to get to the good knowable and avoid the bad knowable. But, really, we don't know.
I used to be so certain I was going to die, that death was near, and then I didn't die and didn't die and I finally decided that it wasn't happening any time soon. At that point, I decided to get busy and live life. Up to then, I'd been wrapped in the cotton batting of disassociation. I cleaned up, went back to school, and so on.
Now, I feel like I've sipped the best of life and my biggest concern about dying is ensuring that those that I leave behind are cared for.

I have a story idea for NaNo (National Novel Writing Month - November). It developed from a dream I had last year. The lingering dream stayed with me because of a visual it had - ghosts writing and if you tuned your eyes and mind, you could read it and it looked something like an art project we had in grade school where we colored abstracts on a page, then coated it with a black paint, and, finally, scraped away the black in shapes to create a sort of tie-died artwork. Anyway, that is what ghost writing looked like. You also had to understand the symbols, somewhat akin to the symbols used in pictographic writing, say like what hobos used/use.
In the intervening months, the story line has developed far beyond that dream. I have a landscape, a history, characters, and a mystery. Wonderful.
Meanwhile, I hammer slowly on the novel I started 1.5 years ago. I have several short stories queued up; they're getting restless.
Time is one of the features of life that is so tasty. Sometimes I gulp it down like cool, clear water on a hot, dry summer day. Other times, I tease it and savour it like a rich desert. Right now, I seem to be hungry for it.
Work is full of things to do and I finally am feeling like I have a handle on the whole DITA thing (at least to the extent we're using it). I'm not burning to develop my work skills, I want to go home, sit by my tomatos, and write.

So, here we are. The dog is 11 today. My neck is recovering. Mona has a new interest. Life is good.
I'm deep in it at work. My job is like doing a series of word puzzles. I have to find the connection between products using descriptions written by marketing, engineers, and other writers. Have we written about this before? Is the behaviour the same? Is this this under another name? Can I ask them to synchronize the naming?
Why do the developers insist on writing the on-screen help? I've begged them to stop. I've promised to do it for them. The translators come to me asking what these oddly phrased non-sentences mean. I spend nearly as much time supporting the translation of the interface as I do translating the system specifications into user information.
Before I'm done with one product, I'm starting on another. That leads to a kind of echo in my head: did I just read that about this product or that product? I stare at control panels wondering where the button went, it was here yesterday, but, oh, right that's the *other* system.
Even when I'm deep in it and screaming in my head, feeling overwhelmed and anxious, and running like a madwoman trying to keep up with the work of hundreds of engineers and designers, I LOVE my job. Rather, I LOVE my work. My *job* is something that I've been learning to balance.
It took me nearly 20 years in the industry to wake up and say: Wait! My *job* isn't about how good I am at the work! It's about how good I am at being an employee!
Gosh.
I can do both. It's good to have a plan. It's also good to have a wonderful roof garden to go home to. It's pleasant to unwind up in the sun and wind, chatting up the tomatos, munching on green beans, and kissing the sun flowers.
Now, I'm back to fitting the pieces of one jigsaw into the picture I made from another package!

Today is a perfect day. Sunny, warm, we slept in, we had French Toast for breakfast (and wondered what French Toast is called in France), we drank tea... I wrote, I played WoW, and now I'm reading for an assignment. Well, not *right* now.
My neck hurts, my back hurts, my chest aches, but it all seems minor compared to spending a day relaxing with my wife.
The dog is curled up on the couch between us and the cat is stretched out on the bed upstairs.
I dreamt last night of cruise ship accidents and babies, of strange lakes and coffee houses, of travel and rest.
I'm working on finishing the mystery that I started 1.5 years ago. I'm encouraged to finish it so I can start on two other big stories that are banging around in the attic.

Indeed. I do. Particularly if I'm going to continue scaring myself and my friends with the same sad frequency I've been managing.
I've been having chest pains. I thought, one night, that I was having a heart attack. It was horrible. My mother died last year, a heart attack in the middle of the night. My brother, my younger brother, is on his second heart attack.
I went, finally, to a cardiologist. The stress test and my symptoms led him to suggest an angiogram, the next day. Whew. So, I'm freaking, we're all freaking, and I get a clean bill of health. Better than clean. I have an excellent heart with no sign of obstruction. Bewildering.
I'm ecstatic, but wondering, so why do I have chest pains?
And why do I have to learn to hug like a straight girl? Because all my friends want to hug me and I don't know how to safely hug straight people. There's a whole shoulder hug that they have down. Nothing but your arms and shoulders touch. Not in my repertoire, but I'm working on it.

I have, apparently, been spamming myself. I appear to be concerned that my non-existent sexual organs are not satisfying the women around me. I can get stamina and cheap prescriptions from myself. I can send myself money and earn money in a strange transaction that requires no effort and is fool proof, unless, of course, you're the fool sending money. I appreciate my concern and my urging from the net-sphere to make my love life, health, and bank account troubles to away, magically.
I long, sometimes, for the days of postage. Early spam distributors had to pay out, up front, to convince you of their boondoggle. A conference room at a hotel or at least some kind of presentation in a friend's living room where you'd be pressed to contribute so your friend could get the prize for the most fish hooked.
I wish I could get in touch with me and let me know that everything is fine here and I don't need enlargement, vigor, or hardness; I would let me know that the women in my life are happy with my size, vigor, and softness. I would politely decline the wonderful watches, jewelry, and bank account requests from banks I don't have accounts with. I'd ask me to spread the word to my friends over there in the land of spam.

The other day, my wife asked me if I were, possibly, manic depressive.
I assured her that my range of emotions were more about life than the chemical soup making changes that bore no relationship to what was going on in my life. Yes, I'm damned perky right now and, so, a bit of a pain because I am like the bridegroom in the movie The Holy Grail, I just want to sing (sometimes). It's summer, the sun is shining brightly and my natural effervescence is, well, efferevencing. It's been a year since my mother died and that cloud of anguish was lifted. I have much less pain in my neck as the docs manage to negotiate the inner workings of my anatomy and bring relief. Two pains in the neck, gone, who wouldn't be bubbly?
I have an idea for a new novel, I think I know how the fix the broken novel, and I am learning new things in World of Warcraft. (Very cool place to hang out if you can handle the infantile babbling of the teen-aged boys and the ridiculous wrangling of the socially inept.)
As is usual, in these times of cheerfulness, I want to restart all my projects. Sometimes, there is just too much to handle in life and the fun things end up put away in drawers and left half finished. I think I'm so normal, at least emotionally, that I could be boring, except I'm not.
What's hard for my beloved, right now, is that she is not having a jim-dandy time. She's struggling with uncertainty about her work, money, and future. Not a combo that encourages dancing in the aisles. I'm giddy from the freedom from pain; I was like this after the first procedure that successfully relieved my nerve pain (well, technically, *all* pain is nerve pain).

I work with a great bunch of people. We have a good balance of skills and talents and we are, in general, a congenial bunch.
I had a strange moment this morning during a meeting. There was an agenda item to provide a summary of our processes and tools to a new employee. After waiting a few moments for someone to jump in and get the ball rolling, I decided that nobody was going to do it. I think we're all so chuffed that we have someone in the tool support role that we just want to gush over him.
So, I started. I spent about 20 speaking extemporaneously and ran through the whole philosophical, historical, and conceptual features of our process. I actually didn't know I could do that. I think that everyone else, except the new guy, knew I could do it and they had been waiting for me to get started.
The very cool part for me was this: it was okay with me to be good at something, not just good, but the best choice in the room. It didn't freak me out, for once. And it didn't make me feel like everything was up to me. Just this thing. I can take a situation and describe it concisely and fairly completely; I'm the cliff notes of speakers.
And, according to a coworker, I can dream in SQL. LOL.