Hey, Folks.
Welcome to November. It is currently 71 degrees in Boston, and I'm wearing long shorts and sandals.
There is no such thing as global warming, evidently. *rolls eyes*
I'm currently listening to Arcade Fire's Everything Now album. "Creature Comforts" cuts a little close to the bone, but it's a beautiful song.
So it's National Novel Writing Month, and I have no clue what to work on. I have a novel in progress (co-writing with my best friend), an editing project in process (when don't I?), and, oh, yeah, we have to move.
*headdesk*
Life is one great, big, all might clusterfuck at the moment, and I'm pretty much ready to curl up in a ball and not exist.
So... what have I been up to?
Dealing with being a grownup in a relationship. We've been together for six and a half years, and honestly, while I can't imagine life without Himself, I also would love to run away and be a hermit. This is normal for writers.
We have been through a hard, hard fucking year. His daughter, whom I loved as my own, moved out at the end of January, and hasn't spoken to me since. Why? I expected her to take responsibility for her actions and her behavior, and that made me a Very, Very Bad Person.
Yeah.
There's more to it (involving his evil she-bitch troll of a fuckup ex-wife, may she die alone and screaming for mercy in a gutter, ignored--yeah, she's a lovely, lovely person. Until you get to know her. Can you tell what great friends we are? Liars just don't fare well with me). Watching the man you love having his heart broken over and over and over by the child he raised and never turned his back on... Yeah.
Her loss.
Grief continues to haunt me. I avoided catastrophic grief, but I am still mourning my mother. I am still fighting the nightmares from the past. All of these ugly revelations of sexual harassment from the Hollyweird elite have triggered me deeply--too many reminders of how deeply and badly women are treated, too many reminders of my own upbringing and being told I was nothing next to the men in my family. My eternal rage is very, very close to the surface, and the need to strike out is serious.
I continue working with the community gardens--it's work that I love, although these days, my physical health has deteriorated to the point where the only real tool I have left is my voice (and the brain and the education and the knowledge, when my brain works and I can focus). My hands... the arthritis and carpal tunnel, deQuervane's, radial tunnel, tennis elbow, and bursitis, with the added sauce of rheumatoid arthritis and the accompanying swelling and fatigue, make writing painful. It makes everything I love doing painful--cooking, knitting, any of the half a million handcraft hobbies I have, designing, even reading... Holding a book is agony, finding a comfortable position where I can prop a book is impossible... The osteoarthritis is also spreading; my knees need desperately to be replaced, and my back and hips are getting into the equation.
Yet, I am fighting for disability because working full-time is beyond my ability these days. I have a good job--doesn't pay much, but I like the work (love some of it), and love the people I work for and with. I could be full-time, but when we tried to increase my hours... yeah. Spirit was willing, but the body pretty much told me to go fuck myself.
I have worked since I was 15 1/2. I fixed my papers (you could do that back in the 80's--copiers sucked back then) to get my first job because I wanted money of my own, and I needed to get away from the abuse I was dealing with at home. I have worked for 35 years, and I would give damned near anything to work full-time again. I have seven doctors who have stated that these disabilities (multiple--if only it was one, easily treatable ailment) are real, but a doctor who never examined me said I was fine.
Welcome to America, the country that hates its people.
More on the Era of Hatred later because that is also killing me.
The judge, in the first hearing, said that because I have a garden and could knit, I wasn't disabled. He disregarded the fact that the knitting was occupational therapy, and the garden... I do the planning, Himself does the work. I know all about how to make great soil, what to plant where and when, what to feed them, when to harvest, and how to cook it. I can't bend to plant, weed, any kind of sustained activity... but I can teach others how to.
I was raised to work, and that even if you can't do, you can help others to. This is why I volunteer--I sit in roughly three meetings a month, a total of maybe six hours of my life. I listen, I speak up, I offer suggestions, and I try to motivate others.
This makes me not disabled.
My hands shake... my handwriting is illegible most days when it used to be elegant. I lose my grip and drop things, spill things... but I could be an eyeglass fitter!
My employers changed my job so that, instead of prepping product for sale (I work for an amazing tea and spice company that also has a small organic flower and herb farm--I work in heaven), I am doing administrivia--the crap I have been doing for so long, I can do a lot of it in my sleep.
I would rather be out in the fields, planting and weeding, and watching things grow, but my body cannot do it.
So this is my life right now. It is not what I intended it to be at this point, but... it could be so much worse.
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