her able hands

I’m reevaluating everything. All of the assumptions I had made about what direction my life should take this year are just vaporizing in the heat of uncertainty. Or maybe it’s the fact that I suddenly have too many possibilities. Or maybe it’s that when it comes down to it, I’m just afraid to commit to anything new. I really don’t know how to operate outside of the paradigm we’ve set up here with the two mortgages and the need for a second steady paycheck.

Plus, I don’t really know what I want to be when I grow up anymore. There was a brief time in my youth when I thought figure skater and I’d brave the early morning cold at Sturdevant’s Pond so I could fall on my ass without the whole neighborhood watching. Then ballet, but dudes, I’m way too tall for that and I’ve been told by more than one person that my dancing style leans more towards the White Snake and a chrome pole than toe shoes and severe hairdos.

For forever I thought writer. And then I thought farmer. And then I tried both (sort of) and was no longer so sure. Or at least not so sure I wanted to do either of those things full-time. And then I developed the motto: when in doubt, bake cupcakes. Oh, how I love to bake cupcakes. To watch delight dance across someone’s face as they take a bite into a towering swirl of fresh buttercream atop a dense, moist, buttery cake.

Here’s something silly and completely without transition. Remember how I decided to build big garden beds down along the driveway because the yard there gets good sun? Well, that idea seemed a whole lot more practical back in the winter when I was gazing at the yard through a window from the comfort of my couch, than it does now that I’ve had a half ton of rotted horse manure dumped in a pile and the grass has grown up a foot tall through the layer of sheet mulch leaves from the fall (that we clearly did not pile on deeply enough). And guess what? It’s a lot of work to drag lasagna bed materials down there. I know I said I wasn’t going to go that route — that I would buy top soil, but guess what else? My four year-old G4 tower died. Like ten minutes after I crowed to someone about how I haven’t had any real issues with it at all besides the fan noise (which turned out to be my fault for never once opening it up and cleaning it with canned air).

So yeah, the computer went kaput. No power. A new power supply costs 3x what ebay tells me the computer itself is worth. So I bought a laptop and will just use that G4 hard drive in an enclosure for backup. So laptop, yay! No topsoil, boo. Where the hell are my priorities anyway?

And now I’m thinking it’s too bloody complicated having the gardens so far away from the house without real irrigation set up. The hoses, oh, the hoses. Do I really want to have to wrangle that many hoses all summer? So I’m going to use that manure to work into the soil I rototill along the crest of the grade on the northeast side of the house, in front of the big perennial bed. Then I’ll do the same on the south side. I don’t know what the hell to do with the mess I made down by the driveway, though. I could still make that the orchard. What else can I plant in shallow lasagna beds that won’t need constant watering? Besides my body after I hang myself in frustration?

Bleh. The act of spending 8 hours a day, 5 days a week sitting at the same desk, staring into the same computer screen, listening to (and contributing to) the same old story, is making me physically, psychically, and spiritually ill. My neck has been out for about two months, but particularly bad the past couple of weeks. I feel like I’m turning into an old woman all of a sudden. And frankly, I have no desire to go from this desk job to another one just for a change of scenery. But I don’t know if I want to spend my time in a restaurant either. So it’s a good thing that’s moving very slowly right now. I have a couple of cupcake gigs lined up — one in June, one in July. Cupcakes aren’t exactly going to pay the second mortgage though.

All day I curse the clock and the rules that say I must keep my fanny warming that chair whether my work is completed or not. Lately it’s been non-stop busy, but I can think of many times when my work was done and I itched to get home and take care of the other things that are just as pressing (if not more so). I get it that I’m going to have to walk away and that I may have to do it into something risky and uncertain. But I have to because staying is making me sick.

I was home all day yesterday with Lila who has some whackadoo springtime virus that’s taking the whole bloody school down with fever, aches and sore throat and diarrhea. Yes. That. But the Lilac bushes are all in bloom, so opened windows are keeping the house smelling like an English garden. Thanks be to the Maude. During the day I fielded many emails from work copyediting several projects, proofed PDFs — basically did my job. I also washed and hung out to dry two loads of laundry, kept the sick girl company, wrote for a bit, sorted papers, tidied some cluttered areas, talked to my sister on a day not the weekend, planted some lettuce starts and felt accomplished.

Hells yes, I could get used to that.

So, you know…back to the drawing board.