Every Stone a Story

After a week of her new thyroid meds, Gabriel is already showing signs of improvement. Her coat looks glossier, she’s acting more like Gabriel, and last night she let me work at my desk for several hours before she decided it was time for me to stop. And when she reached that point, she didn’t attack my hands—she merely strolled across the keyboard a few times. That’s perfectly acceptable behavior, especially since it was time for me to cuddle her and go to bed.

I haven’t needed body armor or barbecue gloves to pill her, either. I break open a hairball-preventing cat treat (crunchy on the outside, petroleum jelly in the middle) and insert the tiny half-pill. Then I offer her the treat and she snarfs it up.

As for me. My temp job makes me very happy. I’m doing useful work and doing it well. I even get to listen to others’ iTunes libraries—something I really enjoyed at Crazymagnet, Inc. To me, making books is a sacred calling. I love the people, culture, and mission of publishing companies. This company has an excellent list and admirable HR policies. I am hoping to take this job beyond temporary and into permanent.

I’m getting out into the sunshine every day, and since I BART in to work, I’m also getting much more exercise than usual. (Car to BART, BART to SF, walk to work.) I’m getting in about 5000 steps a day—easily three times my usual number just staying at home. I’ve also found myself detouring to take extra steps, and going out at lunchtime to stretch my legs. Over the past few months, I’ve been walking more anyway; I’ve been taking my digital camera out, and that helps. But this is a daily reinforcement.

Between the joy of work and the pleasure of walking, I’m feeling better, sleeping better, eating better. I have more energy. I feel more playful and more excited about projects. My romantic relationships are in great shape, too, although both Alan and Michele are away for the next week or so. That’s OK—I have things I want to do at home.

Then there’s my family. All this good news, this joy, is giving me ballast and armor against the painful problems with my family. What happened did trigger me, but I’m better prepared to meet the triggering; does that make sense? I’m probably going to post about those later, in some detail. Part of my mission in life is to write honestly about the shaming, painful things others keep hidden so that people won’t feel so isolated in their suffering.

Another mission in life is to share the joy, too—the things I see and hear that delight me. And San Francisco (yes! I go to San Francisco every day now!) is a constant delight. Just walking down Market Street makes me happy. Rainbow flags flutter from every light pole, the variety of people is amazing, and there are plenty of architecturally interesting buildings for me to admire.

What I feel in San Francisco or Oakland or high in the forested hills is this: I belong here. That’s also what I feel when I’m working in publishing. I belong here.