Snow shoveling and alpha male-ing.

The house was freezing and once again I hibernated, this time until two in the afternoon. (Actually one o’clock, but it’s DST now.)  Yeah, I’m going to be soooo ready for class tomorrow morning.  The surface temperature of the house must be drawing heat from the air because it felt like an icebox inside, but it felt warmer when I went outside to shovel the driveway.

While I was shoveling a car cut through the parking lot across the street, but she misjudged the slight snowbank in front of the exit and got stuck.  I came to her aid and shoveled out the passenger side and then started on the driver side, pushed from the back, but with no luck.

I started to shovel out more of the driver side again, but when I paused a guy came up and said, “Here, let me see the shovel.”  He dug farther underneath the car and made quick work of it too.  It turned out that the front driver side wheel was elevated and he began instructing the woman which way she should turn the steering wheel and asked the kid he was with to help him push the car.

Uh, hello, I’m standing here!  Me, the first guy on the scene with the shovel! 

The kid didn’t want to push.  He was only nine or ten.  He was content just to stand by and hold my shovel; but the guy told him to help push.  I told the kid he could just drop my shovel off to the side.  For some reason it felt good to give someone some instruction, even if it was just a casual suggestion. 

It took a few pushes but soon the car was over the hump and back on the street.  The guy and the kid immediately ran across the street in her direction.  Maybe thinking she might possibly stop and tip them, but she didn’t.  I went back to shoveling my driveway.

I don’t know why the situation irked me, but it did.  And also I’m a little irked that I can get so irked.  I wasn’t trying to impress the woman or planned to ask her for her phone number.  I was just being a good samaritan, but then again maybe I was expecting to be the sole samaritan, the alpha samaritan.

Yeah, he dug the car out sooner.  But it was my shovel.   And he needed my help pushing the car. 

So nyahh!

The day cannot be seized after 11 am.

The house was so chilly when I woke up at eight that I made the mistake of getting back under the warm bed covers, and as a result drifted back to sleep for three more hours. I shouldn’t have let that happen.  Not only because I’ll have to start getting up at six o’clock when the school term starts on Monday and I’m going to lose a hour this weekend due to Daylight Savings Time, but because yesterday was so productive. 

This whole week had been good, with me building more on the accomplishments of the day before it.  And yesterday I was in the zone.  After a month of troubleshooting frustration I’ve finally found a video capture device that won’t randomly drop frames and began transfering selected analog scenes and shows to digitial.  And while I started getting rid of space-wasting stacks of VCR tapes I got some other things done such as installing a hanging lamp and reading a novel.

In fact, I numbered the lefthand margin of a piece of notebook paper and wrote: BOOKS READ IN 2008.  For the next two years I have a great opportunity to learn and accomplish and pursue more than just a school curriculum.  Yeah, I’m free of that third-shift-plus-overtime time warp.  It’s time to seize the day!  Capture the hour!  Utilize the minute!

And what do I do?  I oversleep.  I didn’t need to hibernate.

Yeah, maybe if I’d turned the thermostat up the house would’ve been cozy, wake-ably warm this morning.  But then again the total for both checks I wrote today for gas and electricity was half what I paid last year.  The gas bill itself was a fourth of what I paid.  I want to seize the day, but I also must hold onto my savings. 

Why did Old Man Winter choose today to be such a dipweed?  The snow was falling steadily and the streets were already thick with slush when I had gotten out of bed, so I decided to catch up on episodes of Dexter and write checks and wait to see if there would be a break in the snowfall.  After awhile it became clear that I wouldn’t be able to stop by the Dayton Visual Arts Center and that gallery in Kettering, but I had to mail my bills and buy groceries despite the weather, which was horrible.  Not as much the snow as it was the wind, which crawled inside my coat and stung my face no matter how much I huddled up while I trudged through parking lots or filled my car with gas.

By evening the snow had begun falling again and it didn’t seem as though it would stop anytime soon.  The day was shot, but I needed more than finishing a few errands to give this day some semblance of forward momentum.  Before I returned home I knew that before too much snow accumulated on the roads that I had to put the groceries away, get my laptop, find a bookstore and treat myself to a chai latte reboot. Unfortunately, the Barnes and Noble I drove to had closed early due to the weather, but I found a Starbucks near Wright State, and that’s where I copied some quickly scrawled out journal entries from 2004 onto file.  Occasionally I’d look up and watch the snowplows with their flickering yellow lights pass by. However, the store had to close two hours early because of the weather, so I did the 20 mph crawl back home.   This time when I returned home I had to back my car up a second time to get into my driveway.  But I actually feel better.

And, yes, the irony that I didn’t have the will to get out of bed but found the determination to drive through a snowstorm for a latte doesn’t escape me.  Maybe I need to invest in a latte machine for next winter.

Got it.

Whoa.

Not only did I get the government funding which will allow me to attend school for the next two years, but the government will also pay me eight dollars for every day I attend class (which adds up to sixteen dollars a week) for gas money so I can afford to drive to school.  And then when I graduate I’ll get a fifty dollar reward for finding a job and then another reward for keeping that job for six months and then another one for staying on that job for a year. 

The gas money reimbursement I can understand and appreciate, but the employment reward is just too odd.  I asked my case worker, “Shouldn’t a paycheck be enough insentive to find and keep a job?”  She agreed but said the government is willing to pay it so why should I argue.

I thanked her for all her help.  She and my other case worker really fought hard to get my funding approved.  It seems there were people on the board who noted my English degree and thought my only training option should be teaching.

I will miss seeing my case worker though because she was seriously cute and spoke with just a hint of a lisp, which I found appealing, and helped me pay attention to what she was saying.

Just accept the blessings, stupid.

I spent Saturday and Sunday at Mom’s, finishing painting the rooms of her newly expanded business.  Mom has enjoyed me being there.  Since the layoff I’ve travelled back to Indiana five times so far, which is already one visit more than I normally make all year.

She was so pleased as she walked though the rooms, which are so much brighter now.  Gone from the walls is any evidence of pea soup green, dark navy blue and the aged newspaper yellow.  Now most of the rooms are a shade called toasted almond and the kitchen is a brighter, softer green like pistachio ice cream.  She still hasn’t decided what she wants done with the bathroom, so for now the walls and ceiling remain Minnesota Vikings purple.  Seriously, it’s a shade that would make Prince hate purple.

I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to help her.  That house had been neglected for too long, and I knew after looking at the sloppy priming job the handyman did in one room before I took over that it would take more than a few weekends to get done right.  I washed the walls, patched, scaped and sanded.  Then I painted.  And I did a great job.  A careful job.  A meticulous-around-the-edges job.

And yet I know she’s been more than generous paying me for the work.  When she wrote the first check I was startled.

“It’s an advance,” she assured me. “I know you’re laid off, and I know you’ll finish the job without me having to come over there all the time making sure it’s getting done right, so I’ll just pay it all up front.  I won’t write another check.”

The next visit, she handed me another check.

“You said you weren’t going to write me another check,” I said.

“Well, I lied,” she said, holding it out. “I’m your mother.  Take it.  Take it!”

Honestly, the home cooked meals were payment enough.  And then there are all the leftovers I’m sent home with.  This trip I’ve returned with two canning jars of vegetable stew, roast pork and gravy, oatmeal cookies and bagels.

I also came home with a Dell laptop as well.   The week before Mom had told me she had a new one that had never been used before and since I would be returning to school I might need a portable computer.  And anyway, she’d seen another one on QVC that she liked better and this way she’d have a reason to buy it.  Oh, I’d have to pay a thousand for this one, but only after I get out of school.  

I made such a big deal out of only accepting the laptop if and only if the state funding was approved that she seemed surprised when I asked for it this last visit.  True, the funding for the associates degree program hasn’t been officially approved yet, but it seems it will.  And even if those funds aren’t approved, then I’ll just apply for the one year certificate program at the other school in town.  One way or another I’m going to get whatever state paid schooling I can. 

I realized how convenient having a laptop will be, and not just with school work.   There have been days, especially in late summer, when it would’ve been great to take a computer with me to the air conditioned comfort of a coffee shop or a Barnes and Noble and worked on projects there.

These last couple months have been odd.  Sure, there have been frustrating days, but for the most part I suddenly find my life changing.  For the better.  I’m not used to this. 

The last ten or so years have been about getting by, pulling myself out of the emotional and financial quicksand of a doomed relationship.  Surviving, really.  And maybe there’s some stubborn male pride mixed somewhere in all of this, but in the end I should just let good things happen to me.  I think I remember what that’s like. 

It just might take awhile to get used to.