Another dream

I wrote this this morning, and debated about posting it. After reading it again, I figured why not. I told my sister about my dream, and she suggested maybe this is some form of closure for me. Maybe she's right.

I had a very weird dream last night. And now I'm thinking, why in the heck am I dreaming about my ex-husband again?!? Go away already!

Truthfully, y'all, unlike the last dream I had, this was not my ex husband. This guy just looked like him and my dream said it was. This man had character...and remorse.

In this completely improbable scenario he looked well, although unhappy. He was holding down a job in some kind of small factory, where he had been secretly working for a number of years before we split up. We were talking and it was completely unemotional...just two people who used to know each other. I wasn't afraid. Nor was I angry.

I must have hung around for quite a while, because we moved from his workplace to his apartment. It turns out he'd been living a secret life for many years. He had had this nice apartment for a year and a half before we split and for the years since. So this is what happened to the money that we should have had but didn't, I asked, and he nodded. The run down places we'd lived in ran through my mind in succession. The rotting singlewide with the trash heap behind it. The 100-year-old house with poor heat and no hot water. The rotting doublewide in the middle of nowhere with the siding peeling off, but the gorgeous view of Horse Creek Valley. We could have done better.

He'd had "plans," he told me. Said he'd been planning all that time to leave me, but I left before he could. I asked if it was for another woman. It was. He currently had two girlfriends, both alcoholic, neither good women, and he talked as though he regretted the choices he made. As though he regretted what he gave up. But it didn't matter anymore.

I looked through his bookcases filled with my old Danille Steel novels and found my old yearbooks. I was so happy to see them again! I asked if I could have them back, and he said I could. I started asking for the family heirlooms he kept, like the bedspread my grandmother made for my parents' wedding, and the Georgia flag that had hung over my dad's bunker in Vietnam. He began looking for them, and promised to look in earnest after I left. For once, I believed he would.

It was all just so weird. But at least for the duration of the dream, everything about our life together made sense. There was a logic behind it all. The reality is...there wasn't. The beauty is...it doesn't matter anymore. Where ever he is, whatever he's doing, he has to live with the choices he's made. But the kids and I are happy now...and that is all that matters.

I'm gonna write!

I am a happy girl! I get to write again!

I have been working at finding a job. Some jobs I'm applying for make me want to cry, just because well...it's not writing, and I am a writer. I have to pay the bills, though, so I'm willing to look other places.

If I've discovered anything through all of this, it's that I really do want to write. It's not even just something I want to do. It's who I am. It's what makes me happy. (Is this a surprise to anyone? LOL) I think my unhappiness at my former job rose in direct proportion to the amount of non-writing related responsibilites I was given.

So guess what? They're going to let me write again! Not as an employee, but as a freelancer. And I'm really excited about it. There was a point shortly after the layoff that the idea of writing made me break out in hives. Now I feel "important" again. LOL

I can't tell you how great it feels to sit down and plan out a story again, the kinds of stories I want to write. It's like....maybe it feels like a fish who's been out of water a little too long and just jumped back in. Maybe. I don't really know how a fish out of water feels. But I do know this feels pretty darned good.

And ya'll...I'm back in the Today's Home rotation!! And I get to do Your Life fronts! It has been too long since I've gotten to do a Your Life front. I just didn't have time. I'm going to check into other freelance opportunities around town, too. In a tough job market, it just may make more sense to get paid by the job. Provided I can find enough jobs.

So on that note, know anybody who needs a writer? No, seriously...and I don't just mean newspapers or magazines. I'll happily write anything from a business letter to resumes to ... well, what do you need written?   :)

The dating thing

I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but there are two teenagers and one single woman living in our house.

Do you know what this means? It means we have new and rather interesting dynamic.

See, at this very moment, my son is taking a walk around the neighborhood with his girlfriend. My daughter is on the phone with her possibly-soon-to-be-boyfriend. And I'm heating up leftovers for dinner because I have a date tonight.

Should I try to describe how weird this all feels?

Let me see if I can put it into words for you. It's like we used to be this tiny little unit...me and my kids. My focus has been on them, and I was their world. We are a very close family. We've been coccooned, perhaps. Now, there's all these other people involved. I mean...not really yet, not in a serious sort of way. But I mean, there are still all these other people involved.

And now we're coordinating when Christopher can see his girlfriend around when I have a date, around when school stuff is happening, around church, around...you get the picture. (The extent of Catie's dating experience is the telephone and Facebook. We have pretty strict rules on this at her age.)

I'm clearly not new to this dating thing. Catie isn't either, really. She's had a few little "boyfriends". Maybe it's the addition of Christopher's girlfriend that makes it suddenly feel so odd. I'm not the center of his life anymore. He's branching out and expanding his world. It's great! All I'm saying is....it feels weird.

Unemployment Chronicles, Pt. 3

The longer this unemployment thing wears on, the more I remember why I didn't enjoy being a stay-at-home mom.

Not that I don't enjoy having time to spend with my kids, and Heaven knows I adore having more time to spend with family and friends. But y'all....not knowing what came on at 10 p.m. Monday nights or who really sucked on American Idol this week was a point of pride with me. Now I'm thanking the gods of OnDemand, for they let me sample all the shows Facebook has been talking about. And it never fails, somewhere around Tuesday afternoon I smack myself in the forehead and think I missed Rizzoli and Isles last week!! So thank you, Xfinity, for allowing me to play catch up...two weeks later over breakfast.

I'm seeing the end of my severance, too, and it's starting to make me uncomfortable. There's still unemployment...they won't let me draw it just yet, but it's comforting to know it's in my future. And food stamps came through. We might not be able to do much else, but we will be eating good! (Side note: I'm thinking seriously about...just for fun and because I'll have the time and money to do it, picking several new recipes out of my stacks of cookbooks...all the things I've wanted to try but didn't have the time or money to do it. Don't be surprised if I invite you to dinner!)

Really, though, the worst part of all of this is feeling unproductive. I haven't been...at least that's what my mom and my career counselor tell me. I have uploaded my resume to several job banks. I have searched for jobs to apply for. I have resurrected and polished my LinkedIn profile. I have taken personality and career assessment tests. I try to do at least a little something every day. But mostly, I still feel like I'm just sitting around on my duff.

Last week, I found my dream job as an associate editor for a home magazine in Atlanta. It was the first job I've seen that I actually wanted to apply for. (I only considered the fact that I'd have to relocate for about a half a minute. I don't want to uproot the kids, but if the job's right, I'll do it in a heartbeat.) I was so excited!! I spent three days tailoring my resume, drafting a cover letter, creating a blog as a portfolio of my home stories, and meeting with my career counselor to perfect all of them....only to find the job had closed when I went to apply for it.

The upside is that I have now done all of that, my resume is suitably polished and I have figured out how to showcase my work. And I realized that, deep down and no matter what I say in the heat of the moment, I really do want to write for a living. Now to find another dream job to apply for. If you hear of any openings in which I can write about homes, please let me know!!