Universe, I Need A Raise

Please know, dear blogosphere, that I've had a really strong cup of coffee.

I told my husband this morning that last night I gave up. I was up with our son for about an hour in the middle of the night helping him settle down after a nightmare. Drew (The Husband) thought when I said "I gave up" that I had somehow lost my parenting marbles at 3 in the morning and plunged Will (The Son)'s head into a hot fudge sundae and then built a ball pit in our bathroom.

"It's OK that you gave up. It was late and whatever you needed to do to get him to sleep, I support you."

"Oh, no," I said, "That was fine. I meant I gave up on all my hopes and dreams last night."

Short pause as he pours coffee, then "Ah. Way to go, Job."

And I did by the way actually lie in bed last night (after having helped my son rank the twenty-five different angles at which his feet could possibly be tucked under his blanket) and say, out loud, "Universe, I give up. I give up. I give up."

I'm not sad or depressed or despondent. I think life is pretty awesome. The people in my life are exceptional. Drew and I are happy. My son floats around on a tiny little motor-powered cloud and emits sunshine and I have to keep my mouth shut about how fabulous he is 90 percent of the time I'm thinking it so I don't sound nuts and so the women (or men, whatever works) in his life in the future have half a chance.

However, there's a lot of half-fixed stuff in my life that I thought I was going to complete through sheer willpower, or chutzpah, or by singing a song from Mary Poppins (and I do the most awesome Julie Andrews accent, which is all the better when it comes out of a Jewish-Puerto Rican person like myself). My apartment is half-nice, but then you open the door to our bedroom and the zombies fall out. Our kitchen cabinets are about to FALL OFF THE WALL (it's kooky) and we don't have the money to fix them. We're halfway out of an enormous debt. My current job is cool, but I'm still really broke, and it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I don't blog enough and I haven't finshed a big project for my dad's business that I promised him I would do. I got all the plants in on our deck but the deck itself looks like the opening credits of "Sanford and Son". My husband is sick right now, and just lost a big client, and I feel like we're blankly staring into the future, blinking occassionally, not really knowing how to pull it off.

I'm out of optimism. I need it all to come together already. I've spent ten years saying it will, and some of it plain hasn't and just might not. I need a clean, completed house, I need a rollicking career. I need, it seems like, a hundred thousand dollars to politely climb up my yoga pants leg and into my pocket. And Universe, you know me, I'll pay this jazz back tenfold, but really, I give up.

Help, please. You know where to find me. Still love you, Universe.

Jen

A Yawp For PB

In response for my open call to get on the bullhorn, my friend PB asked me to give the Universe a yawp for her.

PB is an awesome chick, a cool girl in the grrrrrl sense, a deep thinker, a friend to broken animals and a Dharma Punk. She has been a good friend to me and my husband, and particularly to my three year old son, who she calls The Dude.

PB followed Love and Her Heart down the Right Coast to from New York to Florida early this year but, so far, Money hasn't gotten on board for the ride.

As she put it to me: "Please ask the universe to help me find work, so I can help others and myself .. . Everything has been so wonderful in my world for the last few months that maybe its not fair for me to ask for more, but I need a job. It's starting to mess with my self worth and confidence."

And let me note that it's absolutely fair to ask for more. It's fair to be whole and well and working and living. When one person gets to the top, they can help the other people making the climb. (PB, I hope that imagery appeals to your Macchu Pichu climbing self and doesn't register too high on the schmalz-ometer).

So, Universe, please give PB what she wants and what will benefit so many other people -- a job. A job as a yoga instructor would be ideal, but any job that she will be served by and will allow her to serve others would be fine. She'll know it when she sees it, but as you know, circumstances are getting more dire as the days go on. Please untie her from the train tracks and get her new life moving forward, especially she has taken such a big and brave leap to get said new life in the first place.