Bean Trees

My favorite paragraph in the whole book, is this one, on page 209:

It's also interesting how it's hard to be depressed around a three-year-old, if you're paying attention. After a while, whatever you're mooning about begins to seem like some elaborate adult invention.

That's The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, a book I picked up for a quarter at Half Price Books some time last summer and just now got around to reading. The reviews on the cover say it's a breath of fresh air. That is corny, but it's actually 100% true. I read this book in less than a week, and also managed to ride my bicycle at least four times, work full time, do laundry and chores and packing for moving, go for a few walks, go to the grocery store, etc.

The point is I was really into the book. Because sometimes it takes me months to read a book. (Great Expectations, anyone?) But not this one.

In other news, Mike and I are going to make a road trip as soon as time permits. Mike has been doing really well making aquarium scenes and butterfly garden scenes in glass, and his latest is jellyfish. Those things are so popular. We are going to drive up the coast and sell them as we go. Once you show the art galleries Mike's stuff they call you for more. He just needed someone business savvy like myself (compared to Mike Warren, the artist, I am business savvy, y'all) to push his product. It's starting to take off again. He just wants to be able to always focus on his work/art and let me do the promoting. All I really have to do is show it to people, it promotes the hell out of itself. It's really amazing stuff. This man has talent. And I love all the fun jewelry I get to wear and pick out the best of, since I'm his model and his muse (and slightly full of it).

Speaking of my job, I have been working full time at the non-profit that provides grant moneys for other non-profits in the area. It has been one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging jobs I've ever had to learn. I nearly walked out about five hundred times, I cried about half that much. But now I'm starting to really get the hang of it. And I'm finding myself to be really enjoying my work. Most of the time. It is still a job, after all.

But anyway, all of that just to find myself in a state of dire indecision once again. The reason is because my Festival job, which was supposed to be only temporary through July, and then I would potentially be hired back on in November, but then before we ever got that far, the Foundation job (that's the non-profit at which I'm currently working) came along and it was permanent, long-term, great benefits, blah blah blah, all the things a responsible adult would snap up in a second if offered to her. Well, I apparently did such a great job at the Festival office, and also loved it to pieces, let's just be honest here, that they are interested in making me a permanent fixture of the company. They are working towards budgeting to be able to afford me. It would still be a pay-cut from the Foundation job, and the Foundation job is a pay-cut from what I made in Wisconsin, but I'm not making enough money to be working for the money anyway. Also, the Festival job (which is a non-profit as well, just to make this more confusing) would allow for me to work on Mike's and my business, as the goal is to open our own store one day. There is really no flexibility for that at the Foundation job.

Well anyway, both jobs are fantastically amazing and challenging in their own special way and the answer of which to choose has not yet come to me. I am hoping it will come to me sooner or later, as I will have to make a choice around that time. In the moment I'm just biding my time doing the best that I can working the job that I am. And that's all anybody can really expect of a person, anyway, right, including that person.

I read an article in the North Coast Journal that states most news articles that start with an "I" are "drivel." I think that means most of what I write is drivel, news article or not.

Happy Trails, ye faithful readers, I am off to ride my bicycle again. And then it's back to moving. We are paid up for this month at both places which allows us to move at our leisure, which is really an oxymoronic phrase, but you get the point. Even after having gotten rid of so much stuff when I moved out here, I still seem to have too much. So we are going to work on getting rid of more unnecessary things. (Every time I write the word "unnecessary" I have to look it up because I can never remember which letter is not doubled. I write it with two n's, two c's, two s's, and then decide that doesn't look right and take out one n, then one s, then look it up, and 'oh yeah, it's the c, one c'. EVERY TIME!)

I will email my new address out to folks shortly. Oh yeah, and the Wisconsin phone number is no more. I've canceled it. There is no way to service it out here unless I can wait until 2008 for Cingular Wireless to become AT&T and buy out Edge Wireless, or some such nonsense. Frankly, paying $70 a month for a number I can't use until next year seems foolish. So alas, after 7+ years with the same phone number, it has been retired. I've emailed people my new number, which is Mike's number, and I believe we may get a house phone eventually, but if you need my phone number, please contact me for it, THANK YOU!

Cheers.