The last seven days strung together have been near the top of the "reasons to stress" ranking. I gave my two week notice on a Tuesday, and then on Wednesday received a call from my job-to-be asking if I could start a week earlier, the next Monday, in fact. Well, Monday was D-Day, and I was in no way going to start a new job after that. I was completely apprehensive just at the thought of telling my bosses about the call. They were under tension themselves, having transformed from the team who offered me more money to coax me to stay and who told me I would always have a position waiting for me with their company should I ever need it. You see, after I gave my notice, two others in our 11-person office gave theirs.

But I rolled my shoulders back and approached them...I was frustrated with the new company for causing me to renege on a responsible course of action. "But where do your allegiances lie now?" my coworkers counseled. I knew they were right...I just hated to do it, I hated to leave the place hurting. Needless to say, the last three days of my employment there were difficult, but my friends rallied by my side and kept me smiling.

I've been bored out of my mind at the new "job"...I throw it in quotes because I'm not really doing anything at present...puny online courses, familiarizing myself with the company website, et cetera, et cetera, so on and so forth. I feel very belittled that they felt I needed a week to get an "inside look" at the company. Then I remember my aunts telling me that I would be bored out of my mind for the first month...and I remind myself that I've just transitioned down from a very traumatic segment of my life and that everything seems to be moving at a snail's pace comparatively.

But I text messaged my frustration to Brenda yesterday, that I screwed my old company out of a week for such an exercise in monotony. She replied that I shouldn't murder anybody, but that if I did at least we know where the courthouse is. Ah, good ol' Brenda. She messaged me later in the afternoon that presents were waiting for me when I got home. I reverted to five years old again as my eyebrows perked into hairline ticklers and I remembered manners. "You didn't have to get me anything!" I messaged, all the while humming to the song in my head, Presents! Presents! I got presents! Yaaaaay! Presents! Pres....

A pretty new dress, a tennis racket and carrier, tennis balls, and a practice mechanism...oh and hygiene wipes. I'm addicted to moistened towelettes...you never can be too clean, an obsession I picked up from my first roommate in North Carolina, Janice. It's addicting once you start, and plain old toilette paper just feels so base after you've given pampers a shot.

I was just charmed out of my mind at such unexpected generosity...and tripped over my tongue as I sought to most accurately express my gratitude. It strikes me over and over again how fortunate I am...I have the most loving people in my life, and I've been blessed with the ability to see them and appreciate them as such, a gift bestowed on me by none other than the big C. Up until the last moment of her complete lucidity, my mother professed to me that Cancer was the best thing that ever happened to her...that she was finally able to set her priorities right and show her loved ones how much they meant to her so that they'd never question their places in her life.

It's a common phrase, one you may have heard before, but when someone in your family has Cancer, the whole family has Cancer. There were many moments of depression in the first quarter of this year, many moments wherein I cried that "it" didn't take me instead. I've begun truly loving life in the months since, perhaps more profoundly than I ever have in days past. I was in my car after receipt of my gifts, on the way to Nick's to see what I could do to help him feel better, and I was struck by Brenda's likeness to my mother. I seem to be pulling parts of her from everyone, and I am wide-eyed and trembling in her memory's wake. She was singularly the most caring and generous person that I will ever know.



I find it strange, and as the title suggests, weird, that so much upheaval should exist, and still my heart mourns her and her alone. Perhaps it is the one upsetting stream that I cannot divert. I have been laying the brickwork for a brighter tomorrow for several months now, and yet when the rains come in and the day feels heavy, yesterday looks brighter than tomorrow could ever hope to be. I'm hoping for a lull to come my way...a period of boredom and inactivity. I am weary.