it's been a while
Days are a blur of trying to stay away from the greedy hands of debt and working long hours. While the majority of my staff are great people, they take me for granted in glaring ways. After a fashion, I've tried to be the type of boss to my employees that I always wanted. I work with people's schedules, tests, and other frivolities. No one's birthday goes unnoticed (there's usually a treat of some sort, a card, and a little handmade gift). People who practice certain religions get their religious holidays off without ever having to ask. I create educational guides and manuals to help, have endless pep-talks and coaching sessions, and touchbases. Yet, sometimes I feel like I am trying to draw blood from a stone. How is it that intelligent and reasonably rational people can forget the simplest of details? I'm being driven mad by employees who keep testing boundaries and limits, all the while proclaiming how much they respect me. This completely boggles my mind. Respect is shown, not said. I could give a damn about the words of people, especially if the words don't match the deeds. In all of it, being present makes a difference.

There are days when I don't even want to get out of bed to face my commute, but I remain present at all times. My mind calculates how to fill the gaps and accomplish the day's goals. Workhorse that I am, I am not satisfied unless I have done my job outstandingly. I do not accept mediocrity in myself or in the people I know. I'll allow anyone a little silliness or accept any manner of personal quirk, but please don't come to me without ambition or content with being the lowest common denominator. Square or cube me, and I'll surprise you even more. Tear me down to mathematics and geometry, and feed me to the dogs of intellect and reason. I'll grow a new liver and rise from these ashes. I'll make wings of dirty shingles and weave city weeds into my hair. The landscape has shifted, but my ability to accept less has never changed.

I must thrive in absorbing my surroundings because I've started wearing Victorian cuffs and fabric flowers on everything, while the turquoise and silver remains sacred in the bedroom jewelry armoir. The ghosts that haunt this city are not ancient; they are young ones, like lost children, searching for parents. The ghosts of the desert are the spirits of the land that rise at dusk and turn the cacti into dancers and the barren rivers into gushing silver streams. I'm uncertain of how to survive with so much resting on my shoulders and my creature comforts so far away, but I must. I must.

Choice was never a part of this equation, and hope attempts to leave every night, but I tie her to the bed. I need her here with me now. We'll live here a little while longer yet. Shaun has a little over a year to finish his law school task. We tumble into bed at night, exhausted, clutching hands like children, while I whisper secrets and songs and stories into his ears. He takes everything I give him, unconditionally. He gives me everything and also, a great, puppy joy.

city city city jewel