Going Back to Work or School


Lately I find myself looking at the job opportunities that I see listed in the local paper and The Globe and Mail. A pointless exercise because I am still waiting on my permanent residency application to be approved, but I do it anyway. There was a job at the local museum listed last week that sounded like fun. The director needed a temporary assistant to help coordinate school visits, plan activities and lead tours. A love of history and an education background were the two biggest requirements. Aside from the fact that the hours wouldn’t work for me until Katy is in school full-time, it sounded like a great job. Note that I did not say “career”. I am not interested in a career. I have one and that’s writing. Being a writer is where my heart and soul lies and I am not going to forget that again. However, I do miss the day to day that goes along with a “real” job sometimes and it would be nice to bring in a little extra cash to off-set expenses since we are talking again about building a house. And when I am not looking at want ads, I think about taking classes. I grabbed the Continuing Education Guide for MacEwan College today as I was leaving the Safeway. They have a professional writing degree program there that has a few classes that would help me out with my writing career – copyediting, magazine writing, creative non-fiction and web designing. Valuable skills all.

 

So why don’t I just work on my writing and not worry about getting a job or going back to school? Partly because I am in a rut again. I have a lot of work currently out and haven’t heard back on anything yet. While this is frustrating, the other side of the coin is my fear that by having work out I am breaking some sort of rule. I don’t think I am because no one is going to pay me money even if they do want to use my work. The magazines I have targeted tend to pay you in subscriptions or copies of the edition you are published in. It is one of those resume-building things that writers do. Trade pay for writing credits that you can use to get more serious publications, agents and publishers to take you seriously. And there is the fact that at ten months I am well over past the longest stint I have gone without working since I was 14 years old. One would think that after thirty years of working for someone else, being self-employed would be a nice change, but that just goes to show you how ingrained work ethic and self-sufficiency can be. I am a product of my generation – the Joneses (1954 -1964) not Boomers or GenXer’s, we are the stable middle that keeps those two groups from exploding on each other. I learned my lessons too well, as my generation is wont to do and know I feel a bit untethered. Not that I am not nearly always busy. I have much to do and the days fly by. But I miss beng around people who are not my family on a my regular basis than writing group or yoga class.

 

Despite my dilemma, teaching is not calling loudly in my ear. I should be able to obtain an Alberta license sometime this spring and knowing what I do about education, I could easily sub next year. I don’t find that as interesting however as working in a museum. Or maybe studying to become a yogini. Yes, there is a yoga studio that I am going to switch to that offers training and certification for yoga instruction. How cool would that be?

 

“So what do you do?”

 

“I’m a writer and I teach yoga.”

 

Or.

“I write primarily but I also work part-time at the local museum designing educational programs for elementary and secondary students.”

 

Yeah, substitute teacher just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

 

Of course there is also Rob’s dream of building green houses.

 

“I write and I maintain the website for my husband’s company. He designs and builds green homes.”

 

Maybe I just want to be trendy? Not like most SAHM who venture back into employment by getting their realtor’s license or open up dayhomes. I don’t want to be anymore of a cliché than I am – teacher turn writer. Though in my case, it has always been writer with teaching being my side tracking.

 

I think that both employment and school probably represent nothing more than my frustration. I am hemmed in by a child who isn’t in full day school yet, a lack of status that keeps me from trying out jobs or classes and the interminable waiting that goes along with submitting writing pieces. The last is just a matter of finding that elusive audience for the things I like to write.

 

Probably what I really need is just a vacation.

 

 

Writing and Marriage


Rob discovered another blogger for me to add to my blogroll for you – my sporadic audience – because I don’t maintain the blogroll for me people. I surf blogs when Rob clues me to new ones that are interesting or funny or really out there in the zone of WTF and then if they seem worth the effort, I link them. But I seldom go back unless I have some sort of personal connection and even that won’t hold me if the blogger is one of those who only writes when they have something to say. The point of blogging is to say something regularly. Even if it is dumb and poorly written (okay, I don’t mean the last part really – try to be well-written). The blogger is a woman who makes a real living blogging and is now inches away from being a published author. Her name is Heather and the blog is called Dooce. If you think of me as being embarrassingly TMI, then you will be truly appalled by her. Personally, I am in awe of such fearless writing and self-exposure. You can’t be a blogger of note and not be willing and able to do this, which is why I am not a blogger of note. That and the fact that I don’t think I am as left of center as she is. Again, total awe of people who can live their lives in such a manner, but my Chinese astrological sign rules me in regards to such things. It will simply not allow my Greek nature to get out of control. Water rabbits absolutely trump Archers every day of the week. Besides even when my life was most like a soap opera, I was still more “normal” by white people suburban standards than Heather seems to have been. But go and read about her for yourself.

 

The post I have linked to is about her publishing – of which I am in envy and her analogy for her marriage. I don’t know that I have given my marriage enough thought as of yet to find some cultural analogy that epitomizes it. I am pretty sure that it would not be an MTV reality show about a too rich kid and his bodyguard, but that is just how I don’t roll. Though I often compare myself to Scarlet O’Hara the truth is that while I can completely empathize with her exasperation at the silly morays of society when it comes to women’s behaviour in particular and I get her abhorrence of those who would rather wallow than help themselves, I am not as swallow or blinkered about myself. Her lack of depth is the whim of her creator. Margaret Mitchell cleverly made Scarlet the persona of the Southerner of her times. But for me it is her feelings of imprisonment and constraint that ring most true. Rhett is my Rob and when I told him this he was a bit surprised “Why? He walks out on her in the end.” Which is true but not what I see in the character that reminds me of my husband. Rhett is the realist. He is amused by Scarlet’s impatience and her lack of understanding that while society can have all the rules it likes when it comes to personal choices and behaviors, the bottom line is that they are personal. We are in control of ourselves – reactions and decisions. We can’t be caged without our consent. Furthermore, it is pointless to rant about things we can’t control. There is do or do not. Accept or decline. In the end we sleep with ourselves and the ones we love most and best. My Rob has is moments but for the most part he is not worried about what others think or about societal rules that exist for the many and are indifferent to the few. He is unflappable and has an acerbic take on much of passes for civilization. Not that I think that one literary couple can serve as an analogy for a real flesh and bones relationship. There are too many aspects of a person and that multiples when you join with another. The ways we complement each other. Our love. Our lust. Our friendship. I don’t even know where to begin. How to find tangibles that could explain “us” to us let alone to people who know us only through me and my writing.

 

Rob and I were talking about the puzzle that is marriage as we walked earlier this evening. How some people grow and learn the give and take and others just don’t seem to get it. It can’t just be love. Can it? There has to be more to the fact that some people can see to the heart of who they are individually and as a team while it escapes so many of the rest. Maybe it is as easy as being able to see yourself and your mate in the antics of a TV characters or the lovers in the pages of a novel written before either of you was born. 

 

My Husband Gives Hickeys


To me by the way. He is not in the business of hickey placement on anyone other than me. Just wanted to clear that up from the get-go.

 

When first we met, in person, and things got heated (okay, burst into flames), I made mention of the fact that I bruise pretty easily. Being a high school teacher at the time, I didn’t need to show up at work with hickeys.  Correction. I didn’t want to show up at work with noticeable love bites on my neck. (An aside here, I love when Olympia Dukakis’s character rags on her grown daughter, played by Cher, for having “love bites” on her neck the morning after she has been shagging mightily with her fiancé’s younger brother ( You… you got a love bite on your neck. He’s coming back this morning, what’s the matter with you? You’re life’s going down the toilet! Cover up that damn thing! Come on, put some make-up on it!). It is an awesome mother/daughter exchange and my favorite movie by far, which is weird given the fact that it came out nearly two decades before I became a widow myself -Cher’s character is a widow – FYI). Okay, back to topic. I didn’t want my students to see aggressive kissing evidence on my neck. Not because I was not entitled, as grown woman, to engage in consensual lovemaking with my boyfriend, and then fiancé, but because I wasn’t married and the kids knew it. No matter what you say to kids about the difference between adults who can take care of themselves engaging in sex and teenagers – who are still trying to either pull their heads out of their asses or wipe the shit from the eyes  –  it still pays to claim the moral high ground literally with them. This applies even when you aren’t, in fact, being all that moral. Teens will do what you do only because everything that comes out of your mouth sounds like, “Blah, blah, blah and blah.” That’s why I had colleagues who had miserable times with their students. They were rude and bossy and couldn’t figure out why they got that back in kind. And it’s simple. They do as you do. So fake it, even if you aren’t doing what you are telling them they should be.  The second reason I didn’t want love bites, is that I didn’t want to be teased by any of the adults that I knew. Co-workers mostly. Not that I didn’t get a little ribbing about the whirl-wind romance and the whole Internet meet-up thing, but there are just some things I considered too much information. Really?! You ask. You?! To which I reply – don’t mock. On the screen I am fearless, but in person I am so shy and introverted you might wonder if I write this stuff or someone is just pretending to be me. (You might also ask why anyone would want to pretend to be me but that isn’t today’s topic.)

 

I noticed the bruises last night when I got up to pee. Damned middle-aged thing but also, I don’t find UTI’s fun. I hoped that they were just the result of the recentness and would fade by morning, but alas – no. Of course by morning, I had forgotten and in my rush to get my workout done, I took off for the gym without even combing my bed head out. I must have looked the sight dropping off my little girl at the child minding. Disheveled and sporting love bites. Left no doubt as to what I had been up to the night before (or even that morning for all they knew). Rob redirected my attention to them at lunch. And being reminded, I scolded him. I also recalled for him the fact that he once told me that he didn’t give hickeys because they were crass and immature. That was in response to my original warning about the ease with which I bruise. He was sheepish but ultimately unrepentant and tried to conveniently weasel out of the, now, numerous instances of hickyage he has bestowed on me since I retired from teaching last June. You might wonder if I have been able to leave my mark on him, but sadly, I have not. His swarthy Hungarian heritage protects him and I, apparently, haven’t the bite to match my bark. (By the way, I do not bark at any time during sex. It was just a metaphor).

 

Since I had errands to run in Sherwood Park after dropping Katy at school, I needed to camouflage said love bites. I don’t own much by way of make-up. I don’t use foundation because it just accentuates wrinkles. So, I took my hair out of its workout bun and hoped it would hide the “evidence” or at the very least shadow it a bit. Later as I chatted with Rob, he reminded me again that he has never given me a single hickey and that any love marks were probably the work of an incubus. You know that you are a fortunate woman indeed when your husband can come up with a cover story like that one.

 

I guess that I shouldn’t mind. After all, I could be one of those women whose husbands prefer porn to the real thing or don’t take the time to do a thorough even job to even leave a mark. It could be one of those 15 or 20 minute once a week jobs that even have an assigned day of the week  like lawn mowing or putting out the trash. Hickeys are a sign of heat and being lost in flames. I should wear my hair up on purpose on days like today. Flaunt them like a new tattoo.