Don't cry over spilt quiche

The interview went very well, very very well. And when I come back from overseas I have less than a week before I start my new job. I will make much less money than I do now. But I will be working for two people who I think will inspire me. I will be challenged. I will probably be scared quite a bit. I will have a lot of diversity in my work, and an exponential learning curve. I don't even have a computer, instead I will dictophone. I won't die wondering what if....

It does mean leaving Wellington. Last time that didn't go so well for me. but I feel my reasons for moving this time are a lot more sound.

The boy and I are together again. Some things just can't be solved with sense. And considering I am only here for six more weeks, it may just run it's course in any event.....

So, this should all be classified as good exciting news. But I think it's taking its toll, I'm feeling pretty raw right now and went bush for a few hours today. Well as bush as you can get in the city, at the wildlife sanctuary. I hiked all the way to the wind turbine with just fat-breasted little robins as my company. Anyway, The bears saw the worst of my rawness the other night, when I had a kitchen disaster that had me flexing my tonsils and expletive vocab quite violently, with the two of them scuttering round the kitchen trying to fix things before I threw the dish through the window. Mrs Bear: Don't just stand there, help her! Mr Bear: What do you want me to do? Give her a massage? Afterwards I felt ashamed. But I also wondered what is up with me?

Still, I have been building up to all of this change for quite some time. And as much as human beings are habitual creatures adverse to change, I don't want to get stagnant. That's the best way to get miserable. And I still have so much to learn.....

Mum

My mother died three years ago tomorrow. It seems as if I have lived a whole lifetime since that day. I feel almost a new person, like I have been laundered. Or I am like my palm that got too wet one winter, and rotted away completely, but then grew back good as new. I dread tomorrow a little less than I did last year, and a whole lot less than I did the year before. I miss her, sometimes with a physical lurch of pain or nausea, but I always recover pretty quickly. It is like she is sitting up there, watching me, and whenever I get a bit self-indulgent or melodramatic she gives me a sharp prod in the ribs, sort of like the way things were when she was alive. Or as if her memory, everything good that she instilled in me, settles over me like a nice warm blanket.

I have a job interview tomorrow, I've decided I'm going to be a lawyer, after being undecided through 5 years at uni, the million-dollar practical component that led to admission, and the last couple of years I've spent faffing around in a non-descript but yet identity shaping role, I've finally decided I want to give it a go. So i dug around and pulled out my notes from Profs, not to study them, just to have them sitting where I can see them so I can soak up the vibe for tomorrow. And I stumbled across a whole galaxy of sentiment, photos, cards, enough memorabilia of her that i could open a museum. And I feel sadness. I feel her presence as tangibly as I hit this keyboard. And it takes my breath away that she isn't here, that person that was the most defining figure in my life until the day I touched her and she was warm, but without breath. And I feel relief, that now she is safe, and with me always. For I worried about her. I'd forgotten, but I could see it there in those physical memories. I suppose I continue to worry to some extent. About her estate and her evasive sister that manages it. About her babies, especially the boy, so even now I hear her words to me under the washing line. "He needs a mother, just until he is ten". I worry that to only live until you're 44, well that leaves me with 18 increasingly rapid years. But I no longer worry about her. I think about her, and I feel an earth-core peace, and the corners of my lips involuntarily turn upwards.