Breaking It Down

Good Morning -

It's been a quiet Saturday morning so far, which is nice. We have ourselves a three-day weekend and while I don't like that I'm in a place right now where I trudge through the week while looking forward to Friday and weekends, it's where I am and so I do (acceptance is the first step to change).

So, how about this Virgen? The image is from a coupon book from the local Kroger-style grocery and depicts a woman composting. Clearly the ad was made by people who don't live in Tucson because piles of green leafy matter, rich dark soil, and a woman in jeans pushing a wheelbarrow is not anything like what composting looks like in the desert (more like things dehydrate - the sun sucks all the moisture and they become ghostly shells of their former selves. That and things take a long, long time to break down.)

Still, it's what composting looks like where I'd like to be, so it worked for the tile.

There's been a lot of crap to break down this week. We talked yesterday about the first "no thanks" letter I had received and how that had me thinking about paths with heart and the difficulty in having a nonconforming career path. I built a bridge with most of it, but the rest went on my mental and emotional compost pile.

Yesterday, I got my second "no thanks", which I didn't even bother to print because that felt like a fine waste of paper. Instead, I've gathered it up in my head, dripping with questions about inadequacy and the ability to get what I need to go where I want and threw the whole sloppy mess on the compost pile.

It'll break down in time. I could do a painfully direct and simplistic metaphor mapping now in which I talk about the water (tears) and turning over (self-reflection) necessary to turn this crap into something useful, but that might be awkward and obvious.

There is some hope, but it's complicated. One of the three attempts I've made so far asked to talk with me and then asked to talk with me more. That feels good. We'll talk and hopefully dialogue with both of us leaving the experience with a deeper understanding and some changed perspective.

We'll see. There are more opportunities to pursue this weekend, and so I will.

Here's to that. Here's to opportunities. Here's to opportunities bearing fruit. Here's to that fruit being exactly what you need in the moment, even if you aren't sure about it.

Owen. He's rolling around because the demons of guilt are writhing inside. Max, our outdoor half cat, has been missing for a few days. I've been worried about him and hoping that he had found a family that wanted a full cat and not that he had met a grim end.

As I was on the back porch photographing the Virgen this morning, I heard him and then, through the fence and 15' weeds saw him in the neighbors back yard. Based on his actions and Owen's response, I feel comfortable saying that Owen had been keeping him out of the yard.

We don't have a key to the back gate, so I threw on clothes (meaning I added a bra to my ensemble of t-shirt and shorts) and walked up my street, down the cross street, and down the alley to get to the other side of our back gate (makes me feel a bit like an explorer who had to go all sorts of crazy paths to get around mountains or such). There's a small hole at the base of our gate, so Owen had slipped through it and met me in the alley.

I was holding Max at the time, who looked indignant but okay. Much hissing ensued and then I decided that I'd walk back around and try to get Max to come back into the yard so he could eat. Owen followed me down the alley, but limping a bit because he's scraped one of his toe pads. I didn't want him on the streets with me but he wouldn't stay on our side of the fence, so I finally picked him up and carried him down the alley, down the cross street, down our street, and back to our house where I dumped him inside.

I put food out for Max and hopefully he'll come eat with Owen inside. I love him, but Owen can be a real jerk sometimes.