Waiting on a Phone Call, Yet Again, and it's Starting to Take its Toll

I've been laboring in the Halloween Workshop, surfing the Internet, and flying around to warm places in the world trying to get someone to give me a job that will carry me away from winter. Monday I flew to San Diego (third time this year! Although the first two times I drove, so...) to get more carne asada burritos and interview for a job that is a lot like the last one I flew to California to interview for, only broader and a lot more organized.

I have so much to say about this process, about attempting to make a major and positive life change (because so many life changes just come to us without our seeking them, changes good and bad), that I have no idea where to start. It's all about the job: the right, rewarding job, in the right place for both Brent and I, making the right amount of money. But in general, life does not operate on such lovely and polite and distinct terms, obeying such definitives. And we may have to settle a little, on someplace that doesn't seem exactly ideal at first but could be made to work if we tried hard enough. Someplace unexpected and totally compelling to me in a way I would not have expected. (What redundancy?) Someplace that meets maybe nine out of ten of our highest-priority criteria, but the one it's missing is rather a doozy (it's not exactly the best place for Brent to get on with his career, unless we quickly work some magic), which is a shame because it meets about five of them really well (warm, western [and there were exceptions to that rule], recreational, cultural, affordable) and the other four quite well enough, if not perfectly (metropolitan [it has 60k people, roughly], proximal [yeah, it's a little... remote], entertaining, and stable.

That's too much math to load you down with and this is all too jumbled and vague, because they may call this Monday and tell me I didn't get the job after all (I always have a feeling I will, because I'm an optimist, and out of perhaps 20 interviews I've had in my life, I've gotten about 16 jobs, and those are good odds, but I could be wrong; I've been wrong before), and it will be back to the drawing board and the computer screen and the airport terminals with the vinyl seats and hateful automatic faucets.

Which reminds me: I hate turbulence.

And I wonder, and feel empty because I can't ask him, not ever, what Dad would say to me living in Palm Springs. (That's what bereavement is: lost potential. Answers, time. I miss asking him questions just to see what he'd say. I want his answers. I want to mull them over and add them in. I should just pepper Mom with question after question until she insists that I stop, because I can still get answers from her, and I want them, too.)

Yes, I said Palm Springs. Really.

I think it would be a positive reaction.

Just a hunch.

Sunday Hike

A week ago Mom, Morgan and I hiked up the mountain behind where the White Pine ski area is now. Mom spent several childhood summers here where her parents ran a sawmill. The mill and other structures (cabins, bunkhouse) had to be moved according to forestry regulations, but we went in search of a specific site and found it after just a few hours. She remembered things being bigger.

One hike, three cameras, White Pine ski runs in the background.

In case of bears!

Elk tracks.

Fremont Lake.

Mom begins to recognize things, and soon we know we've found the homesite she left over 51 years ago when logging operations in the area shut down, shortly before her father died. Gram shot a bear across this meadow when it got to close to Mom and her brother, Jerry, who were playing in the creek.

This is the spring they got their water from; planks were still there from the box Mom's dad built to hold milk, butter, etc. in the ice-cold water.

A pile of rocks Mom remembered behind the cabin.

Spring from up the hill.

Lodgepole pines.

White Pine Lodge.