I'm still among the living; it's been a long time. Funny how work and life in general get in the way of the pure fun of journaling. I've often thought, well, if I didn't work so much, I'd have more time to compose and add to my journal. The reality is, however, that if this were so, I probably wouldn't have nearly enough interesting things to write about. My working brain tells me this but I know, in truth, that this is a crock. If I could devote several hours each day to this journal, I could write volumes. I still harbor a fervent wish for the stay at home life.

Of late, I've discovered that I am very fond of paddling along in a kayak built for one. Just this last weekend I tried my hand at it for the second time and enjoyed it as much, if not more, than the first. The date appearing on this picture is incorrect. This picture was taken on July 18, 2009. This just proves how unsaavy I am at dealing with such minor details as dates on my digital camera! This lady has far more interesting things to attend to in life. On this day, I was happy to join my brother, two sisters and much of our extended family (mostly meaning those we went forth and created by fuitfully multiplying). It was a grand day. I treasure the rare days when I can bask in the company of my siblings and my adult children, nieces and nephews. Life it sweet; life is good. I am such a lucky woman.

My brother and sister-in-law retired and relocated to a home that surrounds a lagoon. This lagoon connects with the Pacific ocean and if one chose to do so, one could kayak through the lock at one end and kayak away all the way to Japan. Ha!

One would think my life came to a sudden standstill once a new president was elected. It's as if I dropped off the planet. Not so! I'm still very much here, treading water, trying to stay afloat in the current economic state of affairs. I am not as fortunate as some but more so than many. Not having a great deal of money to begin with, nor a fine, fat nest egg in which I was planning to curl up in upon retirement has spared me much worry and grief over the current state of economic affairs. What does worry me is the fact that I very much fear I will never reach that holy grail of high-end middle age; that being the luxury to retire but will instead have to carry on until I drop dead. This really worries me.



Recent history tells me that we were going though much the same sort of thing back in the early eighties but I don't remember it being quite this severe. I was living an entirely different life back then and I don't recall that I was affected much by it. In fact, I was staying at home with my little girl in those days doing those things that I wanted to do: namely, all the things that were all I ever wanted to do in my life. Stay home, be a homemaker, make dinner, tend to my home, be home when my child returned from school, etc. My, doesn't that sound terribly unambitious and lame and boring. However, there's a lot more to being a woman who stays home to run the household and manage family affairs than you might think. But, as usual, I digress.



Work has been alternately difficult, challenging and rewarding. My hours have been cut by a half hour each day. This works out to two and a half hours a week but my net paycheck reflects the pinch bimonthly. The work has become more difficult, more demanding with less time to get it done. There is a freeze on all raises this year. As in so many other companies across the land, our dictum has become "at least we still have a job". While this is quite true at this point in time, I take little comfort in it. This is certainly not what I expected at my age and I have never put so much mental effort and pushed myself so hard in any job before this as I have over the past year and a half.