Monday, Monday

Remember Mandalas?  Well, I was part of the Janaury class. I am on lesson number 22 (of 30 and one bonus) TRANSFORMATION I will share that lesson image and those that follow in this space. For yes,  I intend to finish. Perhaps not during the month of September along with the September class, but certainly during the current calendar year.

Want to know what Microblog Mondays is all about? Click the image.

Ta ta for now. :-)

MoJo-less

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Some days I feel like I can be the star of "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl" while on others, I feel like a totally in control "Wonder Woman." Mostly, middle-aged, mother of two (adults) with two cats and a dog, working for a living.

I wrote the above passage some months ago as part of an introduction for entry into another meet-up group. I got in the group but have not participated in any meet-ups. There haven't been many and the few, so far, have been during the workweek, lunch-time, networking meetings. Which I would do if not for the pesky "day" job. 

Which may not be an issue in a couple of weeks. Before I could tender my resignation, I was let go. Officially, laid off, downsized. Wednesday was to have been my last day. Except NOW the owner / boss terminated the person who was going to assume many of my duties. I've been asked to and am expected to "hang around" to "help out" until . . .  

However, all of exploits of the last couple of weeks aren't even the point of this post. The point of THIS post: my feelings of inadequacy, my lack of confidence, my overall sense that I have absolutely no idea how best to fashion my résumé prepare myself for interviews, position myself to compete against the twenty and thirty-somethings out there looking for work. 

I'm trying to affect a positive attitude, a high-energy approach to the research, writing, and building toward the next life. But, it is taking everything I have and then some. The "Awkward Black Girl" is hanging about my shoulders much more than "Wonder Woman" these days. 

In totally unrelated news, I've decided to go to the family picnic in spite of the tent revival meeting atmosphere alluded to in the invitation / fee request. 

**I think I missed the opportunity to officially join the challenge (yet another example of being "off" my game) but I will produce 75 sketches within 75 days. I'm behind a few so some will be double, triple up days.  

Corner of the Sky

**Everything has its season
Everything has its time
Show me a reason and I'll soon show you a rhyme
Cats fit on the windowsill Children fit in the snow
Why do I feel I don't fit in anywhere I go?

I could fly, without a plane, without personal wings. I flew.

Not just flew, I soared higher and higher with each trip, the beginning and ending points the same each time with the middle parts of the forays varying mightily.

For most of my growing up I shared a bedroom with my brothers. The earliest part of that sharing had us in bunk beds with me on the bottom and them up top. I think I was 4 or so when I took my first flight.

To say it scared the barrettes out of my tightly wound hair would be putting it mildly. Luckily our room was right off the bathroom. After tip-toeing to and from the bathroom, I detoured to the living room. Mom often found me curled up on the sofa.

These middle of the night flights lasted for several years. Through the divorce, through our descent into poverty, through my brothers’ affiliations with gangs and drugs, through living with relatives, through me moving to my own bedrooms, always with a curtain, never a door. Through it all, the trips became less and less frightening and though I remained afraid of heights I began to welcome the flights. I’d perch atop some spire, sit and peer down into that which was my life and try to figure out how to make being down there less scary, less foreign.

I began to feel at home in the sky. I remember wishing that the winds would just carry me away, far away. But of course, they never did and the realization struck that I'd have to find my corner of the sky, on the ground.

I don't remember when the flights ended, but I do remember soaring at seventeen. I walked out of that last curtained bedroom, loading everything my brothers hadn't stolen from me into my piece of shit car and driving away from what masqueraded as home and to a place that turned out to be the first of a few corners cozy enough to be called home and my own.

**Rivers belong where they can ramble
Eagles belong where they can fly
I've got to be where my spirit can run free
Got to find my corner of the sky

**Corner of the Sky from "Pippen"

No Sun, No Problem

The sun did not shine it was too wet to play, so we sat in the house all that cold cold wet day.*

Well, it was cloudy and it was wet, really wet, but never ever too wet to play. We weren’t going to be put off by a little lot of rain. There was a conference to attend, ribs to eat, a mansion to visit, and a quest for yarn.

A spot on Beale Street served up some pretty fantastic ribs. I don’t remember the name, but I know what spot it wasn’t, rumor had it that spot didn’t have the finest ribs. Michael would enjoy the block of blues and food, I remember saying to my hosts. I stopped in a shop to pick up shot glasses for Dani’s collection and I didn’t spill any food, this night.

Saturday morning dawned dreary and rainy, but daunted we were not. Off in search of a fabulous, maybe famous local eatery. No such luck, no funky little spot was to be found. Equally, missing any people sighting. Daytime Memphis seemed eerily empty of shoppers, diners, walkers and talkers. Very odd. Yet, there was still food to eat, a conference to attend, a mansion to visit, and a quest for yarn.

Breakfast for me was an egg white frittata. I made a promise to be good with regard to food choices, rib platter dinner Friday night not-with-standing, I did fairly well. I’d not had an egg white frittata before so I have no comparisons to make. It was edible and I ate it. And then, the mansion. Graceland was a treat. I’d not expected to enjoy the experience, but I very much did. The company may have much to do with that, still, the mansion and the grounds are interesting history lessons.

The yarn quest, alas, ended before it could really start in earnest. Names of stores secured, addresses obtained. Yet calls to clerks for directions yielded no positive results. Apparently, clerks who work in these yarn stores do not know how to get around Memphis. I was disappointed. I was really looking forward to learning the ways of yarn.

I arrived in Memphis, into the open arms and spirits of two lovely ladies from Texas. With humor, warmth and wine Elizabeth and Maxine welcomed me, made me feel at ease, at home. I rode back to Illinois with that feeling fueling the journey, even the ticket I got on the way didn’t dampen my spirits. I was going home knowing I’d taken an important step in my journey and with the knowledge that I’d found two friends, in living color, having materialized from cyber-space before my very bespectacled eyes.

The sun may have boy-cotted the weekend in Memphis, but it made no difference to me. I was feeling sunny the entire time.
*Dr. Suess The Cat in the Hat