It’s Chris’s birthday. We started they day at 4 am…*I* started it by a request for water. I handed child duties back to daddy at 4:30. At 5:15 we had an exhausted contest.

DO NOT challenge me to an exhausted contest as YOU ARE WALKING BACK TO BED and I AM GETTING DRESSED FOR WORK.

Plus…the exhausted contest…even if you win, it’s not a prize you want.

and this is his birthday. I shall probably have to wait to tell him we should not get into exhausted contests in the middle of the night.

Happy freaking birthday.
I need coffee

during my brief stint as a consultant during a merger, I was talking to a director, explaining what needed to happen to keep the department running well.

He said “Maybe we dont want it to run that well.”

I burst into tears.

What had I been working for? What had I been breaking my back for?

Fastforward. In the Project management book of knowledge they define ‘quality’. It’s what is desired by the person/group paying for it.

your opinion doesn’t come into it. Do what your told.

Thats the lot of the modern knowledge worker.

So John Henry went up against the steam engine. That stupid stupid steam engine that plodded along, doing nothing but driving nails into the railroad track.

My project manager mind says, I bet there was a whole new step with this steam engine nail-driving technology. I bet it drove in a lot of crooked nails.

I bet John Henry did not.

but quality was not what was desired.

I wonder. i bet there is the boss-ego in the industrial revolution taht can’t be ignored.

My husband knows so very much about what he knows about.

But he doesn’t know everything.

I wish he did, honestly.

I think, however, that I may need to learn some of this stuff without him, though.

it seems like it’s been a while. And now I’m finding some tools that might actually help me do what I want to do with my ife.

See. I have been feeling as if I have no control. But I think I might.

I think I do.

I am not hiding under a bushel. I don’t have to find under a bushel.

It’s not a secret, this trick to life. But it is possible.

There is a guy going making the rounds in storytelling circles. He had a horrible thing happen to him; he was attacked and stabbed during a gang initiation in New York City.

Thing is, he had just started doing some really cool stuff, he’d been working to start a business, and was making it happen when
BAM
He got jumped. And stabbed. And in a hospital and not gonna live. Then he did live and had all the terrible things happen when you cannot take care of yourself. He had a heaping pile of bad luck, on top of trying to come to terms with living in a world that can unexpectedly try to kill you.

At a very dark moment, he sat in the park and watched a man in a beautiful suit and briefcase walk by. He saw that man, and had to use all his self-control not to run after him, beat the crap out of him and tell him “YOU THINK YOU HAVE ALL YOU HAVE BECAUSE YOU ARE GOOD. YOU ONLY HAVE WHAT YOU HAVE BECAUSE YOU ARE LUCKY!”

I got a chance to volunteer for career day at a south central elementary school. A dynamite woman, a friend of mine, is the principal at this school, and she asked for people to come and tell her students what their jobs are like.

The school is surrounded by steel bars—painted yellow to be more cheery. But they are almost three stories tall, to protect the children.  The children were very cute, so earnest and just like kids everywhere. They asked me questions, and my biggest regret was that I hadn’t prepared better.

We were given snacks in the library, between our sessions. I met the other volunteers. There were people from Caltrans, road workers in hard hats. There was a lot of law enforcement. And a criminal defense attorney.

The principal said to me “They probably have not heard about your kind of work before.”

Really? My super ordinary IT tech work? Graduate from ITT tech and keep computers running?

I overheard her talking with the defense attorney, who said,  “I asked the kids if they knew of anybody who was in a gang. They all raised their hands.”

My friend said, “If I could make all the gangs go away right now I would.” Her face was steely and so ready to defend her students. But she could not. She was already doing what she could.
It’s an unlucky day to be born into that neighborhood. It’s a bit of bad luck to have to go to that school, with the bravely painted concrete walls and carefully swept asphalt yard.

30 miles away, my town prides itself on grassy playgrounds, yawning luxurious trees, SAT scores and college acceptance. My lucky daughter gets her pick.
I told these kids, in the steel barred school that I hadn’t expected to have the career that I did. That I didn’t know about videoconferencing and computer networking when I was their age. What I did know was that I loved reading and finding things out.

So when I had the chance to learn about this technology, I read, and I learned and I am still reading and learning. They listened.

Life is full of good luck and bad luck. It’s full of chances. Lord knows, I didn’t have to end up in my town of trees and PhDs. Plenty of people from my town are on government support.

I don’t know what’s going to happen for those kids. I feel for them. But to be real, I don’t know what’s going to happen for any of us.

Luck doesn’t always come, and it isn’t always good. But I can try to be good. I can try, and keep trying.

And I can fall, feel sorry for myself, and then get up and keep trying again. Because that’s life. I can’t wait for the luck.

The blind alley.

I’m tired.

I used to dream of parkour and climbing the walls. UP! UP AND AWAY

pant pant

I can scale this

Screams non-stop only maybe for sleep and not enough of that

I WILL SCALE IT

but I’m tired.

this corner

starting to feel comfortable.

This corner has  my back.

It’s cold

maybe wet

or hot in other weather

damn, I know this corner really well

like I said, it’s got my back

Watching the mouth of the alley for the monster

they call it a mouth for a reason

Listened to a broadcast the other day. The man was telling a story about how he took a break from college and hitchhiked from New York to Alaska.

He was rhapsodizing “It wasn’t long until I realized that this was the only way to really meet people. I met all kinds of people, and talked to them. They were so interesting and welcoming”

This is such a cliche.

Guess what? Alaska is a place. It is a place among places. And you know what?

IT”S NOT THE ONLY WAY TO DO ANYTHING.

do you know what? You took a break from your life and started talking to all kinds of people.

You HAPPENED to be on your way to Alaska. Alaska had nothing to do with you pulling your head out of your butt and noticing the world around you.

Alaska is magical. You knw what else is magical? The restaurant down the street. And the bus that takes you to the next town. Or the elevator.

ALL THESE LOCATIONS are places that I have spoken to people I wouldn’t get a chance to speak to in my daily life. But wait, that is my daily life.

So. I have long fascinating conversations with all kinds of people on a weekly if not daily basis. People that I might not have conversations with every again. And some of them are people I have come to realize that I see all the time, but only have started to notice them once I had a good long talk.

People yakyakyak about how important it is to be diverse, and not prejudiced. In particular, I hear this from hallowed halls, of management in businesses and from professors of universities.

And sometimes I get to talk to the denizens of those hallowed halls and blow their minds about what diverse means.

It means getting input. It means listening and talking and conversing.

What it does NOT mean is dropping out of your life to sleep on a strangers couch.

And if you have to drop out of your life to remember what life is, you are way out of line.

There is that famous internet story about the fantastic violist that played on the subway, and nobody stopped to listen

I listen.

I always listen to music on the street. There is not much outside music on my street. But I always listen.

I left Alaska to find more people to talk to.

And I’m still talking.

Did everyone else forget how to talk?

Is this skill something that makes me special?

Perhaps.

It’s spring almost summer. June in Los Angeles is the season of not-quite summer. The kind of summer that you wish you had; a little overcast in the morning but usually turning blue sky and warm by afternoon. Not too hot.

But the days are long, like they are every where in the northern hemisphere. The flowers come out.

Trees bloom. I had never imagined such a thing in Alaska. This broad blue flowered tree looked like somehting out of Dr. Suess to me the first time I saw it.

And they are blooming again.

“Mommy! Look!”

“Aren’t the blue trees pretty, Veronica? They are called Jackaranda trees.”

The name is kind of magical too. A unique name.

“That is my Panda Bear tree, Mommy. I live there.”

what? Jackaranda….anda….Panda….

“That looks like a very good place to live.”

“Yeah! Do you want to come live with me in the Panda bear tree, Mommy?”

Ok.

I should have written somehting this week. It would be nice.

But I’ve not done it. I’ve been busy with other things. I’m happy though, I think.

how many kinda of shades of happy are required before I’m sure?
Funny. Maybe it’s like eating. I will never get the exact perfect eating figured out.

But on the whole, with the ups and downs tallied, i can do okay.

So i’m okay.

I am so looking forward to being alone with myself and my own whatever that I want to do this week. I don’t think I will miss chris that much.

aaahhhh…..finish a TV show and a conversation

yay