I think that in the midst of chaos, we somehow find the things that are important to us.
This week has been slightly hellish. Monday morning, a student was reported as having stolen a gun from home and gone missing. The school went into lockdown for the day(both Alex and I were instructed not to come to work; At least he got paid for it). When nothing happened, they reopened the school for Tuesday classes. Then, the police informed us that he was last seen buying ammo. And that fucked up everything.
Now, there are a lot of sides to this debate; Last month, this same kid had been waving a gun around at a frat party. Since then, he's been the target of "bullying", if one could call a consequence of the general dissatisfaction of having a peer get drunk and whip out a gun on you "bullying" , and now everyone thinks that he... Well... You know. And so sets in the guilt, and regret, and all that.
Whatever happened, I was pretty scared. Not for myself, because I'm at the ass end of our lovely campus, but for those coworkers of mine that are always out and about in the open. Mainly, the muse. I spent all of Monday worrying about him, and later that night I gathered the cojones to text him. He was doing fine, and said that he'd thought of me that day and hoped I was doing well. I was beyond delighted.
So when the call came for all non-essential staff to go home Tuesday, I was above and beyond relieved. And I mean, way more relieved than I had thought I might be. Yet there he was, standing in my office, wanting to know about towing his car. I was brief. I was dismissive. I was a little bitchy. And I told him to get off campus like, three times.
Later, I apologized for it. I couldn't find any way around it, so I flat out told him that I was worried about his safety(which may have come as a surprise; I don't know). And knowing that I was worried, he continued texting me for a bit, dumb jokes just to make me feel better. We made plans to tow his car the next day, and ended up texting well into the evening. It was different, too. When we text, it's usually about dumb things or puns, but we ended up talking about normal, day to day things. It was good change.
When it came to actually towing the car, I was on edge. After all, my tow guy is my dad, so... Hey, meet my dad! And it was alright. We hooked up the cars and he wanted to drive the old car one last time. I played it cool, but I think he sensed my discomfort and let me drive with him in the passenger seat(I would like to point out that I don't advise people to do that on most occasions; I just know I'm good enough at it to keep him safe. Like motorcyclists who know when they're good enough to carry passengers).
The muse is not a lover of things fast and dangerous. Roller coasters? Hell no. Skydiving? Absolutely not. Being dragged behind another van at 60 miles per hour with little to no brakes or steering?
He did not enjoy the ride at all.
There was a slight incident where dad slammed on the brakes for a school bus and we hit the back of him, but comparatively it was a light tap. I like to think that the muse was impressed by my ability to bring a car to a full stop without brakes and on super short notice. After the car was scrapped, he even split the cash with us three ways(It was only $60, but still). On a whim, I asked if he'd like to come to dinner with dad and I, and he accepted. We agreed to go home, get cleaned up, and reconvene at a slightly later hour.
[Insert montage of me, getting called in to work for an hour, making myself look presentable really fast, etc. Montage should be set to "Takin' Care of Business" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive.]
We agreed to meet at the chinese buffet, because let's face it, they're men. We had a lovely dinner and afterwards, dad scooted a bit more quickly than usual(Still not sure if this was intuition or the fact that it was late at night).
It ended up that the muse and I went to the movies(The Martian, 10/10, great movie) in sort-of nearby Middletown. And as this thing grows longer than I usually care for, I'll summarize: We had a good fucking time. He even got out of the car at the end to avoid that awkward car hug we always seem to do and the next day, he stopped by work(he had off, but I was considered "essential personnel" this week) and gave me a candle holder.
It just struck me how in the middle of something that can be called a crisis, may be called a tragedy, and caused a whole lot of stress no matter what it's called, I found a rare and precious memory. In a pile of fertilizer, I found a diamond.
The great poet Rob Thomas once said "Our lives are made in these small hours, these little wonders, there twists and turns of fate". He's right. And cute.
Friday, November 20, 2015
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Jumpin' Ja-Hosephat
When I was younger, my mother and I mostly bonded over television. There were phases; The Golden Girls/Nanny phase, the game show phase, the talk show phase, and the reality television phase.
The reality phase consisted of house flipping shows, makeover shows, and those corny shows that I occasionally still watch for kicks- Bridezillas, Hoarders, Addicted(ironic), and Wife Swap.
One of my biggest life lessons came from Wife Swap. The premise of the show, for those unfamiliar, is to take two wives and mothers from vastly different family units for a week. The first few days, they did things the way the regular wife would, and for the remainder of the time they could instate their own rules. The swapped mother would have $1,000 to give to their temporary family, and got to dictate where it went specifically.
On the episode in question, an uptight woman was traded out to a family of Rastafarians. The husband didn't have any real job, other than playing in his reggae band, and they lived in a community of other Rastafarians that were the same level of laid-back and carefree. She obviously did not take this well. Her husband for the week kept telling her "Ja will provide."
That sort of reliance on the god of your choosing requires a lot of faith, and I remember thinking that it would backfire spectacularly. But lo and behold, every time someone needed food or money, it was there. When someone in the community came into any sort of excess bounty, they spread that wealth among their neighbors. Local non-Rastafarians would swing by the settlement when they needed some temporary labor and hire people as needed, and everyone worked hard and shared what they made out of that. It was fascinating. Ja did, in fact, provide(even if it had more to do with the community ideals of taking care of each other than any sort of reggae-themed deity).
Surprising, the things that stick with us. "Ja will provide" turned into a mantra of mine, called forth in times of distress. And it's been true. When I needed money, extra work would come my way. If I needed food, someone would offer to buy me lunch. Which is not to say that I relied on providence to take care of me; I've always hustled when I needed to. But when I was in a need greater than what I could handle, the universe has always made something work out. Maybe it's because I'm open to it, or because I take the opportunities presented. Who knows?
We've found a new apartment. It's in a building with some great people, owned by someone that works at the college. He's great. The place is great. But... It's a little more expensive than our current place. Still within our range, but with my hours being inconsistent and those two weeks of my unpaid vacation after Christmas, it's a horrible time to move and I was concerned(I've already gotten most of my Christmas shopping done, so no crunch-time shopping). And I took a deep breath and repeated my mantra: Ja will provide.
I ran into my future landlord today at our monthly staff breakfast. We talked a bit about the apartment and he, expecting his second child on Thursday(or thereabouts), expressed that he hadn't gotten the professional cleaning crew in the apartment yet. Which seemed like the perfect time to mention that I had been, at many points past, a professional cleaner. That led to both an offer to deduct a chunk out of our first rent payment for the cleaning of the apartment, and a small job cleaning the stairwell once a month for another monthly rent deduction. So now, the thing I was most worried about is not exactly "taken care of", but looks promising.
The universe is a mystifying place, full of waves of sorrow and pools of joy(as The Beatles liked to say), and we just have to be open to it. Life is better that way.
The reality phase consisted of house flipping shows, makeover shows, and those corny shows that I occasionally still watch for kicks- Bridezillas, Hoarders, Addicted(ironic), and Wife Swap.
One of my biggest life lessons came from Wife Swap. The premise of the show, for those unfamiliar, is to take two wives and mothers from vastly different family units for a week. The first few days, they did things the way the regular wife would, and for the remainder of the time they could instate their own rules. The swapped mother would have $1,000 to give to their temporary family, and got to dictate where it went specifically.
On the episode in question, an uptight woman was traded out to a family of Rastafarians. The husband didn't have any real job, other than playing in his reggae band, and they lived in a community of other Rastafarians that were the same level of laid-back and carefree. She obviously did not take this well. Her husband for the week kept telling her "Ja will provide."
That sort of reliance on the god of your choosing requires a lot of faith, and I remember thinking that it would backfire spectacularly. But lo and behold, every time someone needed food or money, it was there. When someone in the community came into any sort of excess bounty, they spread that wealth among their neighbors. Local non-Rastafarians would swing by the settlement when they needed some temporary labor and hire people as needed, and everyone worked hard and shared what they made out of that. It was fascinating. Ja did, in fact, provide(even if it had more to do with the community ideals of taking care of each other than any sort of reggae-themed deity).
Surprising, the things that stick with us. "Ja will provide" turned into a mantra of mine, called forth in times of distress. And it's been true. When I needed money, extra work would come my way. If I needed food, someone would offer to buy me lunch. Which is not to say that I relied on providence to take care of me; I've always hustled when I needed to. But when I was in a need greater than what I could handle, the universe has always made something work out. Maybe it's because I'm open to it, or because I take the opportunities presented. Who knows?
We've found a new apartment. It's in a building with some great people, owned by someone that works at the college. He's great. The place is great. But... It's a little more expensive than our current place. Still within our range, but with my hours being inconsistent and those two weeks of my unpaid vacation after Christmas, it's a horrible time to move and I was concerned(I've already gotten most of my Christmas shopping done, so no crunch-time shopping). And I took a deep breath and repeated my mantra: Ja will provide.
I ran into my future landlord today at our monthly staff breakfast. We talked a bit about the apartment and he, expecting his second child on Thursday(or thereabouts), expressed that he hadn't gotten the professional cleaning crew in the apartment yet. Which seemed like the perfect time to mention that I had been, at many points past, a professional cleaner. That led to both an offer to deduct a chunk out of our first rent payment for the cleaning of the apartment, and a small job cleaning the stairwell once a month for another monthly rent deduction. So now, the thing I was most worried about is not exactly "taken care of", but looks promising.
The universe is a mystifying place, full of waves of sorrow and pools of joy(as The Beatles liked to say), and we just have to be open to it. Life is better that way.
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