Becki and I had a very positive conversation Sunday, and I crunched some numbers that reveal she can quit basically as soon as I get paid for one of my ghostwriting projects!  YAY!

Xanga Update

This spring and summer has been an interesting time for us, primarily in the job arena.

Becki finished up with Jenks at the beginning of summer, marking one heck of an accomplishment in my book.  NO ONE who hasn't been with severely disabled kids for 7 hours at a time (this includes me) has the faintest clue as to the mental fortitude, patience, endurance, grace, and mercy—not to mention creative smarts and stubbornness—it takes to do one-on-one time with these kids.  She was bitten, peed on, daily dealt with pooh, hit, scratched, and generally run ragged, all to a symphony of constant screaming (at least at the beginning of the semester) and Barney.  I won't even mention the teacher.

Becki considered quitting early on, as the combination of demeaning pay and grueling classroom conditions reduced her to tears the first few weeks and periodically throughout the whole year.  She thought about it again at the mid-semester break, but something—a masochistic streak or just some serious backbone—kept her in the game, and she saw the thing through.  Yeah!

She spent the summer just recovering—a clout to the ear served as a reminder of what she'd left behind by hurting all summer—but has now taken a position at a local high-end retirement center called Montereau.  A little city unto itself, Montereau hunches atop a small hill overlooking a goodly portion of Tulsa, and with its size, the well-healed seniors within have a pretty good view and one dang good activities director.  They call her something more pc, but Becki has left behind the wailing, abusive world of out-of-control severely disabled kids stranded in the academic twilight zone to work with slower, quieter individuals.

She loves it, and that's all I need.  The pay still isn't great, but the benefits are top-notch and she doesn't come home with headaches from screaming or any fresh bruises.  Vast improvement, in my book.

As for me, I had a fun summer.  I've been working various contract jobs doing technical writing—three months here, four there—and in the middle I started getting sick.  After some tests, we learned my gallbladder was pooping out on me—one of the tests, I'm totally convinced, stopped the little bugger in his tracks—so first it was time to haggle with the insurance company and hospital time and then under the knife I went.

Unlike Laurie and Debbie's day of near-butchery, my surgeon made three cute little incisions and then pulled the offending, dysfunctional organ out through my belly button.  The day after was deceptively good and I walked around the block, but a very ill-advised chicken soft taco on the second day exposed the fact I was a little ahead of schedule.  Nothing hurts like throwing up with a belly full of knife holes—nothing except, perhaps, the gas they pump into you when it rises into your shoulder and creates this odd little pocket of agony that makes the incisions feel like pin pricks.

All in all, I missed three days of work, and while I was exhausted that first week back, we made it with me going to bed seemingly shortly after getting home.  As of today, roughly four weeks later, I'm doing great.  The first 75% of my healing came fast, and the remainder is a bit slower, but we're good all-in-all.

On the work side, as I already mentioned I have been doing contract work.  I've also pulled in a few dandy freelance jobs—some more ghost writing and a website copywriting job that I hope sets the tone for the future.  I have spent most of the second, four-month tech writing job thinking they're going to finish the housekeeping they started near the beginning of the project by letting all the contractors go.  But one other tw and I faced down the firing squads and budget cuts and kept pulling money from old MetLife in exchange for editing their phone center scripts and a boatload of other things I could mention at the cost of my own life.

So while expecting the inevitable end of the contract, I started looking for alternatives and ended up interviewing with a guy who is starting three new magazines and needs editors.  An experienced magazine publisher and West Point grad, this guy APPEARS to have it all together.  At this point, though, it could all be smoke and mirrors; I'll hopefully update after Sept 1 when I'm supposed to start full time.  At first he had me pegged for an interesting magazine on college life and culture, but now it appears I might be in for something far greater—executive editor for all three, one step below the chief editor.  Were this to happen, my salary might be considerable after the initial startup period.  For the near future, I'll at least be making the same I have been with my contract work, which, while not mind-blowing, has been enough.

So we shall see. 

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.  You're all in ours!

I got laid off at the end of November.  Not a good time—“merry Christmas, here’s your pink slip.”  They did give me both severance (a month’s pay) and my vacation time (what I had coming plus a few days, actually).  So it wasn’t totally cold-hearted, but they sure could have waited, in my opinion, and started off the New Year with their volley of layoffs.

So that wasn’t good.  All manner of people we trust have said encouraging things like, “The next one will be even better!” or that God was going to use this as a way of blessing us.  While we’re not discounting those things at all, let’s just say that hasn’t happened yet.

December saw me interview and get a technical writing contract with a local oil company, via my neighbor (who incidentally was in the process of leaving the company).  It’s been a horribly awkward time—I feel like I’m dressing out for high school gym every day; that locker room discomfort that has something to do with the smell and the companionship and the circumstances.  Nevertheless, before I complain too much, it pays the bills…sort of …if I work overtime.  It’s supposed to be a three to six month job, but we’ll see.

For some reason, getting laid off was also a signal flare to little money-consuming gremlins that have attacked with rare vigor.  We of course had Christmas presents we wanted to buy for people (and each other).  Some friends of ours wanted us to go skiing with them, and we accepted—but I got dumped about a week after they booked everything.  Becki’s truck suddenly developed not one or even two unrelated problems but a host of them—seemingly all at once.  I hit a massive pothole on my way home from the oil company and ruined one of my car’s brand-new tires, which I of course neglected to insure.  Tulsa also experienced record snow/ice storms, forcing me to miss two days and Becki to miss a slew of them, since the school was closed.

Yet in the midst of all that, God provided.  My vacation pay and some Christmas savings enabled us to get people what we wanted to give them, including each other, and Christmas was a wonderful time of remembering why we celebrate the holiday.  We had enough of my vacation money leftover to pay for this bargain-basement ski trip, and we really need the break.  The dealership’s quote for fixing ONE of Becki’s Pathfinder problems was $550; I followed a friend’s recommendation and took the truck to this junky-looking little shop he uses—they fixed EVERYTHING for $350!  My tire’s radial separated from the inner portion, but I have a full-sized spare in great condition, so I was able to swap my tire with the spare and keep on driving.  And the school decided to pay their people for a week even though they worked three days out of two weeks.

Clear-cut triumphs?  No.  But neither were they wholesale slaughters like they could have been, and somehow the money has been there.

And we got another lesson in God’s faithfulness this Thursday.  I had made a doctor’s appointment for horrible acid in my stomach (an ulcer and some gray hairs all since I turned 29?!?!), but I took some over-the-counter 14-day stuff, and within a week it was doing better.  Yet I didn’t cancel the appointment, and, as it would happen, Becki was able to use it.  We wanted to get her checked out for her asthma before we leave on this perhaps financially ill-advised ski trip.

I don’t want to go into detail, but I felt this compassion and even belatedly acted on it after we were almost to the door as we walked up from the parking lot.  I must admit, my overactive little mind was wondering if I was contemplating my action simply out of an expectation for divine reciprocation—i.e. whether I was doing what I was about to do out of true obedience or formulaic quasi-Christianity.

But I went ahead and did it, partially because of a conversation with Pastor Ed last Sunday in which he brought up an email I had sent expressing some doubts about some other motives I have in another area.  He told me quite simply that it’s really rare for our motives to be purely altruistic, holy, and benign.  We shouldn’t let that stop us, however, from doing good or whatever God would have us do.

So I did what I felt God would want me to do, despite some misgivings. 

And here’s where it gets good—our doctor just left his previous practice to start his own, and we followed him.  He has a neat vision for holistic, faith-based healthcare that bridges the gap between pure medicinal treatment, more natural treatments, and prayer, etc.  He wants to find the middle ground that isn’t purely secular but isn’t wacky, either…and he wants my help in writing some literature for his clinic!

But it gets better.  His nurse found Becki a sample of her super-expensive asthma medication and told her that as soon as she started to run out she should call; the nurse said she would set aside more samples for her!

But it gets even better!  We have no insurance right now, though we’re looking, and our doctor knew that.  He made the whole visit complimentary AND loaded Becki with a few other samples of different asthma meds!  We walked out of there without spending a dime, loaded with a few hundred dollars worth of medication, and energized by his vision and hope for future freelance work!

So the drama evolves.  We continue to have boundary issues with Becki’s family, and it sucks like crazy to have to stand firm on them every two weeks or so.  It doesn’t do their relationship any good, either, but the alternative is worse.  I’ve got some potential leads with a guy I’ve worked with before here in Tulsa; he’s a VP for Thomas Nelson and may have some work for me, either freelance or in his office or both.  I’ve got some other ideas too, but they’re longer-term fixes rather than the short-term solutions I wish they were.  And we’re thinking about moving.  For some reason Boise, Idaho has jumped out at us, and my folks just got a cool deal that will get them two free airline vouchers to get us out there to scout it out.  I’ll keep you posted on that, but it would put us in striking distance of my family in Cali and a bunch of friends we have relocating to Seattle.  And it’s purdy and has mountains.

So keep us in your thoughts and prayers because it’s a challenging time right now.  I get down, and so does Becki, and we wonder how the heck we’re going to make something work during the in-between times.  But somehow, deep down, I’m confident that it will indeed work out.