Lines on My Forehead…

So I was showering my day away last night, and I realized that I couldn’t seem to unfreeze the stress-clench from around my forehead and neck. I would try, I would think about something pleasant and it would ease up and then suddenly I would think about the mixed messages I’ve been receiving from the Universe and then my forehead would get all scrunchy again…

Mixed messages you say?

Well, yeah… let’s look at the following thing:

Work. I always thought that teaching was a calling, a vocation, a holy benediction from the forces that be, which has made my recent crisis of faith that much more depressing. And the Great Karmic Female Dog has been giving me definitive signs of…I don’t have a clue, but they’re very very big signs, trust me.

Example? Getting here on time–I’ve left early every day for a week in order to get here soon enough to have a prep period. Every day for a week traffic has been more snarled than swift-split-skein w/a broken yarn-winder, and I’ve barely made it in time for my 2nd period class, much less to take advantage of my 1st period prep. @#$%ing traffic rookies–nobody knows how to deal with the Sacto Corridors of death. But anyway, to paraphrase Mathew Broderick from LadyHawke, “I left early, Lord! How am I supposed to know what you want if you keep confusing me like this!!”

Or how about my visitors–I’ve had an almost continuous stream of some of my absolute favorite kids from previous years wandering in my door. The give me hugs, they tell me thank you for what I did for them when they were students, they bring tears to my eyes because I don’t think anyone from this graduating class will ever love me the way that these kids do, and I don’t know how else to give my students what I have to give if they don’t take it with the love too. But it’s a very definitive sign…of? Are they here to help me keep the faith? Are they here to tell me I’ve been here too long? Are they here because a big cosmic anvil is about to fall on my head and this is THEIR unfinished business and not mine?

And how about the books? I can tell I need to do something to spread ‘product awareness’ and I’m thinking about the web-site (well, I need two uninterrupted hours–I’ve mostly already signed up) but you’d think if my sales were falling I could (as I’ve often done before) just kick back, say “It’s an interesting hobby.” And let the numbers fall where they will. And just about the time I was ready to completely do that, I got another 5 star review, which included a plea to the universe at large for a publisher to pick me up and help me out. I mean, C’mon, Oh Holy and Fickle Darlin’, what are Ya trying to tell me here!!!!

And knitting? Okay–the signs about the knitting are the only glacially pellucid things about the world at large, and I’m going to quote Coach Susan just a little bit here…”I fucking hate fucking intarsia like the fucking wool plague of itchiness and moths!!!!” (Well, most of that was me…but she did contribute the swear words…) So I’m doing stars, right, and I’m getting to be not quite so young with not quite so young eyesight and the little tiny fucking squares are like smaller than the points on your double otts, and so I do a little bit of guesswork as I complete the stars and it’s not until I get about midway through the second one that I realize that the goddamned motherfucking stars are NOT symmetrical…there IS no “well, if I go in one here I go in one here…” NOOOOOOOO because that would make too much sense and HEAVEN FORBID I’m reading an intarsia pattern written for a fighter pilot (with the 10/10 vision, right?) and the pattern of little tiny fly-shit squares makes some fucking sense!!!!

So I stop thinking about the fucking blanket in the shower, and suddenly, half my forehead wrinkles disappear. And I may be terminally confused in every other big thing in my life–including childcare which I’ll bitch about tomorrow–but on this one fiber-related thing I have absolutely no doubt.

I’ll be damned if I’m ripping that fucker back.