Job Update

Quick update for those of you who are either tired of my book and movie reviews or who are wondering what I am doing now and how whatever I am doing is going.  (bad sentence structure, that.)  Some of you have been faithful followers, so I thought I owed you a short update.

Still working Mondays and Tuesdays in Calistoga at the funny Eurospa.  (www.eurospa.com)  It's a fine little place and the regular managers are happy I am there.  Doesn't pay a lot and it's a 10 hour day, almost, which means little Cooper has to be home alone from 7 in the morning to 5:45 in the evening, but he seems to manage.  I like it, it's easy, but if something full time turned  up I would say "adios" in a snap.

Also I am still working at the more upscale b&b in Healdsburg, the Calderwood Inn.  It is not full-time either, especially now in the winter, but it's an easy job and I am good at it.  Margaret, the innkeeper (and friend) whom I replaced because of her broken leg, has decided not to come back full-time so that gives me more work in the future.  I will try to convince the upper tier of management that they should pay part of my health insurance which would be a huge help financially for me.  To the tune of $6000, an outrageous sum to pay each year for someone making around $35,000 a year.    We'll see how that plays out.

Bottom line, things are good.  I am trying to adopt some of the Zen philosophy that everything that happens to us leads us to the state of being happy.  That sounds too simplistic, of course, but I have been reading some Zen stuff along those lines and it certainly beats the alternative, being grouchy all the time and lamenting one's fate and feeling that life isn't fair, and all that.  It isn't fair, it was never supposed to be fair and even and equal.  It just is.  What we make of it is up to us. 

Part of me still wants to go to France or Italy this year (a huge part, truth be told) and I might.  Or to Hawaii to visit my friend Flip.  Or both.  Money issues are less bothersome right now because I feel settled and at ease.  I figure if my money runs out, and it won't for a long time, then it was suppose to run out. (Oddly enough, as I type this, my duplex mate is playing Grateful Dead right now, at a higher volume than usual, and they are singing  "We will get by, we will survive."  Not ever having been a Deadhead, they aren't my first choice in music but everything that has been playing today has sounded perfect.)

OK, time to toss a half chicken in the oven with some veggies: dinner tonight, lunch for the next two days and a final dinner of leftover chicken with veggies in a curry sauce later in the week. Many meals from that little chickie.   Laurel, my duplex mate, is a gardener and our garden abounds with winter greens right now as well as lovely lettuces and onions and shallots and herbs.  She is planting more things this week and the tulips should be in bloom soon. Daffodils already here, crocuses, too. 

It's good to be alive, isn't it?

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