Build-A-Bear ~ the complexities of survival

i got the job at Build-A-Bear. seasonal for now. i hope i can prove myself, that they see i would be valuable to stay on after February.

after they called yesterday afternoon late, i cried. my daughter was still with me {her day off} so i was not alone to weather the storm of emotions that followed. i sobbed. i smiled. i was terrified. again with the "what ifs." i need this job to last. i need it to be at the very least 20 hours a week just to keep my head under the surface of disaster. i know how to breath through a straw.

i am alone.

my son has said he can help me, but in truth, i need to bear {no pun intended} the brunt of this burden on my own. i need to earn enough to squeak by. i start this afternoon and only get 3 hours. Saturday i am at work for only a 2.5 hour day. it may still be training, or work while being overseen so that i am proficient and prepared for Black Friday. and then i need hours. hours and hours. and then i will come home and sew on the commissions.

i got up this morning shaking, trembling. crying and relieved and terrified. i am tired. i keep saying that and i do not know how to explain it. i could but i do not think anyone would understand. it is something i am saving for the Matriarch of Grief and Joy who has given me the gift of her time in trade for the gift of a quilt i am going to make for her.

i wish he were here.

i have this fantasy that i go off to Build-A-Bear and he goes off to Loew's or something macho but not "out of town" job and we have our little apartment and food and our few bills are not a problem. we are not rich., but we do get by. and that we have each other to hold onto and laugh with and love and touch.

i miss kissing him.

i am tired and i do not know if it will get better. i hope it will. i am willing to work long hours and come home and work long hours. i know i will be more tired but maybe it will be enough. maybe being tired is the best i should hope for. maybe it is all i should expect and i am being greedy.
i have this other fantasy. someone with a lot of money comes along and loves my artwork. all of it. photographs. writing. stained glass. embroidery work. quilting. sewing. oil paintings. and they want to be my Patron. they want to sponsor me. pay my bills so that i do not have to worry about anything other than creating. they believe that my artwork is powerful and they are arrogant enough to want to be the one to "find" me and then be my sponsor. big feather in their cap.

foolish dream. foolish old woman. i think it is the fantasy of a love-starved woman who was not approved of during her life. and then when her Dragon finally found her, he was taken from her and she is slipping back into her old sorrows and believing the flashbacks that hit her like a Mac Truck.

i cut off my hair. the man who did it loved the picture i picked out. he fluffed and trimmed. he cut off about 2 inches. he called me a pixie. yeah, because when i look in the mirror at the dark circles under my eyes, at the silent terror in my eyes, and at the hollowed out soul that i know exists inside, i think "pixie!"

i wish my Dragon could be here with me. i wish his voice and touch and smell and the taste of his skin were still available to me. i miss him. i want to talk to him. i am so very grateful for the Build-A-Bear job and i feel greedy praying for enough hours so i can live. i got the job and now i am asking for more. my hand always seems to be out to God, but then, i have no one else to turn to.

i wish my Dragon could be with me here. life is so complex. simple things and yet complex as well. job. enough hours. transportation. not having a car and no bus route to get there.

{the woman at the Charlotte Transit Authority ~ the Bus Lady ~ thought it was strange, too, that she could not get me a bus route that does not have me walking 3/4 of a mile to a bus stop to have me sit on the bus for 40 minutes to make a less than 10 minute drive by car to the Mall where Build-A-Bear is located.}

i am tired of life and i wish he were here with me. but i sit with my quilt of his clothes wrapped around me and i pretend it still smells like him. i dream he is with me. i dream he is coming home soon.
but i got the job at Build-A-Bear. however terrified i am about how many hours and how long will they keep me, i am sobbingly, humbly grateful i got the job.

meat and embroidery

Bunny has meat! 4 chicken boobs. 4 big hamburger patties. 4 sirloin steaks. 4 huge hot dogs. 4 gourmet baked potatoes. did Bunny say gourmet? yes, she did. see one of them up there sitting in her lap? Bunny keeps putting on her Dragon's watch cap to sit in the freezer to talk to her food. she wants each little individually wrapped piece of meat to know that she will get to each of them in turn. they will all be cooked and eaten with gratitude and enthusiasm.

steak! Bunny has not had a steak since her Dragon died, in over 19 months. steak is so upper crusty high class. Bunny had stopped looking at steak. but now she has 4 of them. 4 meals in which a steak is going to be on her plate.

i want to thank C. for the gift of the Omaha meat. she and her husband, who is Army but that's okay {little Marine joke} are together gathering things from his life in the Army for a "Hero Quilt" they want me to make.

i have a steak correctly thawed as per the the Omaha Meat People's instructions ~ frig thaw only to preserve the juiciness of it ~ and it is marinating right now. tonight Bunny will light candles and take an official break from work. she will eat a steak and a potato for supper tonight while sitting down and watching television. she won't balance the plate on her lap while she works on her photography. she is going to chew slowly, savoring each morsel. tonight, Bunny will be well fed.

thank you, C., from the bottom of my heart.

and this afternoon, Bunny finished the back of a quilt. after supper she will begin the embroidery work on the front. she is so excited. so many beautiful words. so many great ideas for drawings to embroider on the quilt.

if you cannot tell from the photo up there, Bunny is smiling.

Gratitude to you and photos of the new stuff

First, I want to say here, publicly, how much I appreciate what Ann, Supa Dupa, and Widow in the Middle wrote to me on my last blog, Writing in the Sand. I was feeling more melancholy than actually horrible, but in writing it, I have to be honest in saying that I sort of stayed off the computer out of trepidation that no one had gotten on, or they wouldn't leave a comment. There seems to be so many grieving, so many sites that can be read. Mine is just another voice out there in the fog of those of us trying to find our way.

I write to get all the pain out. I write to talk about him and what he was and what he did for me, how great he was, and how very much we loved each other. There's no one else for me to really talk to, to monopolize the conversation and have it be all about him so I write.

But I do other things, too. The first photo you saw was the new Memory Quilt I'm still piecing together. It's for a little boy who is now 7 years old. His dad died 2 1/2 years ago. The big gray Henley is the shirt his dad wore the last time they took a photo of him and his dad together, I think the weekend before he died. I think about you guys and your stories when I make the quilts. This time I thought about this little boy's dad and how they would have been together. So I sewed the shirt as a whole. I am leaving the sleeves open and the bottom hem open so that as the little boy grows, he can slip into the shirt, wear it in a way, to see how big he's getting compared to the size his father was.

As soon as it's off the wall and in the frame, I'll be piecing together chillinwithlemonade's final quilt. And I'll have her in my thoughts, her relationship with her husband, and I'll try to make her something that I would want to be handed to me. Always you and your stories do I keep in my heart when I sew the quilts.

The second and third photos are the ring pillow for my daughter's wedding. I know. It's not white satin. She's not like that. She has a beautiful white satin and lace dress but she's also had me take off the white ribbon and bow around the waist and replace it with a purple one, and put an antique dragonfly pin in the middle of the bow.

My daughter is my wild gypsy girl, a true bohemian in how she perceives things visually. She loves earth colors, dragonflies, fairies, and butterflies. Her friend's 4 year-old daughter is the flower girl and she'll be handing out clothespin butterflies that have the happy couple's names and wedding date on the clothespin. We are getting together next week to sit and make them together. And while her flower girl is handing out butterflies, she'll be wearing tulle gypsy moth wings.

The last photo is the burlap aisle runner I'm embroidering. It will have flowers all over it. 8 feet of flowers. lol. 8 long feet of flowers, bees, dragonflies, their names, their wedding date, and more flowers. One type of flower is the daisy, for my husband, who sang that song I wrote about a few weeks ago, "A Daisy a Day."

In his honor the first chair, front row, will have standing in it a Teddy Bear wearing his Marine Corps dress blues with my husband's medals pinned to him. he has so many so we're picking the top four. My husband had a long career serving his country and my son and daughter and I are so proud of him. We wish he were here to walk her down the aisle but her brother will do that and the Teddy Bear in his dress blues with medals will have a place of honor. I'll post a picture of him from the wedding photos after her wedding in September.

I just want to say thank you for writing comments to me, for thinking of me, and most of all, for remembering me. I think of all of you I've gotten to 'know' and read. You all mean something to me, a very bittersweet and good something to me.

Peace to us all.