Opportunity

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work." Thomas Edison

You know what else it usually looks like for me? An "opportunity" (groan ...) to face an old and deeply embedded fear. A paranoia. The kind of thing that carries the learning of prior experiences, and they're all bad. The kind of thing like driving. Driving. Oh, man. This is probably my last chance to get over this, but I break out in a wild combination of hot flash and cold sweat just thinking about it. I have to start imagining myself as joyfully successful and wildly competent to make the palpitations stop. I don't even drive cars other than the one I drive all the time, and now there is this "opportunity" for a whole lot of work at overcoming my issues, learning to drive the Bookmobile! The library's Bookmobile!
Our district is huge, but this bookmobile is only used here, in Skamania and Klickitat counties. That's all. Just here, in the Columbia River Gorge, where every street is either up or down a hill, the ice and the snow and the rain make driving anything at all into an "opportunity" to do something spectacularly horrible, and the winding roads that cling to the sides of the rock faces are perfectly wonderful ... for a fearless motorcyclist or some other daredevil.

(Just a minute. I need a hyperventilation break.)

(That's me ... in the size of paper bag I need for breathing into ...)

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Okay. Okay. Okay ... "soft belly" breathing technique ... change the channel ... get off the "Disasters on the Road" video loop ... move to the mental image of Bookmobile happiness. Turn away from the pedestrian on the freeway who ran into my car about 20 years ago (yes, really - yes, she ran into me), and mute the sound of shattering windows and suddenly crushing metal as I spun in the road when the prom princess plowed into my Volvo with her boyfriend's huge, black pickup truck about 5 years ago (yes, really). Remember that my glasses make depth perception possible, even though I'm near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other (yes, dammit! really!).

Envision Bookmobile success. Remember the reality of two important facts: first, I love working on the Bookmobile, once the thing is parked and the sat link is up, and the kids are in there; and second, I am only being asked to train as a substitute, and at a level of subbing which includes story hours, and story hours are a much more likely scenario than Bookmobile anything. Think about those kids, and the delicious stuff overheard every time the Bookmobile is full of them. Realize that the addition of this training makes a resume look better and better for the day permanent part time comes available again. Focus ... breathe ... wake up to the opportunity.

(whimper)

Third Lobby

I just found out about these people. Because they make me happy ... goofy happy ... Here y' go!

I Am A Stone from Third Lobby on Vimeo.

How many stories?

I saw a snippet (God bless TiVo! No more watching the boring bits of things!) of Sewing With Nancy last weekend, and she had a quilting guest who explained her Hobo Quilt, which was made of blocks portraying symbols such as these: What could be more intriguing? The stories behind such symbols, left in chalk or charcoal, marked on fenceposts and power poles ... I thought of the men who traveled on trains, looking for water, or food, or alcohol to numb their lives ... looking for kindness.

I thought about that scene of widest generosity and compassion in Fried Green Tomatoes - you know the one, right? When Miss Idgie take Smokey Lonesome out into the back yard so she can give him some booze ... because his hands shake too much for him to get his soup to his mouth without spilling ... and he's so ashamed. So deeply ashamed. Never one to wallow in sentimentality, Miss Idgie breaks the tension by telling him Buddy's tall tale about the geese that flew off with the frozen pond. It doesn't talk about it in the movie, but in the book they find the body of this man ... and the only thing he's got in his pocket is a picture of Ruth, the woman he loved all his life. Idgie took care of Smokey at least in part because they both loved Ruth.

Every time I see or read Fried Green Tomatoes, I think about The Journey of Natty Gann (and wonder how much of that haunting movie got into the blood of my tough and tender daughter). Men looking for work. Men headed into the woods here, where I live now. Desperate men who only wanted to keep body and soul together for their kids, at least. (And now I see that John Cusack was the other star of that movie, and I'd completely forgotten that! Man alive, that guy's had an incredible career!)
So, anyway, I looked at that quilt on Saturday, and I thought about the stories. Today I put the book into my Interlibrary Loan queue, and when I looked it up, I clicked on the link to look inside. This is more than a quilt book. A lot more. Go to Amazon. Check inside. Turn the pages. See that family?

How many stories?

Armored coping skill

From this morning's post at Write to Done:

5) Perfectionism Isn’t a Personality Trait Seriously. It’s not. Perfectionism is a coping mechanism for unpredictability. It introduces all kind of comforting control. You are not changing yourself by renouncing perfectionism, you’re taking the first step to discovering who you are without armor.

Beans!

If it's Holy Week,

and it's also the first week of the spring academic quarter,

and you're also scheduled to work as a sub at the library on a couple of days (which means your schedule never settles down to a rhythm for which days are work days),

and you grind your coffee fresh every morning ...

well, it's just a bad idea to reverse where the coffee maker and the coffee grinder sit on the counter. (And while coffee makers have water reservoirs that can be dumped out, the water that comes with the errant coffee beans is not as easily removed from the coffee grinder.)

Just so you know.