less than zero

So if I don't write all this down that has happened since Sunday, how can I keep the praise to the Lord alive?

Here's my life: on the edge of financial despair. It financially fragile most of the time and sometimes more than others. I don't have a lot of frills in my life, and I've cut my expenses way down. No credit cards. I live on cash only. If I have even a few dollars in my bank account, I'm okay with that. Once in a while, however, I get a ringer.

This past weekend I knew I had $15 in my account... but I was seriously worried how I was going to be able to feed my animals for the week until payday on Friday. I was waiting on a client's check for $300, but I knew that whenever that arrived, it would be gone instantly to pay bills. But at least I had $15 - I could buy a few cans of food. No food for me, but I can scrape by. So I checked my account on Sunday... it was -$75. How the heck did that happen? Here's how: I had a yearly payment to my web provider which automatically comes out of my account - it was for $56. That put me at -$41. Add on the $34 service fee and I'm at -$75. So now I didn't even have the $15 for pet food. Do you know how frightening it is not to have food for your animals?

I called a sister in Christ, Priscilla, and we prayed. And I sobbed and sobbed, so frustrated. I hadn't had a cookie order except my regular client for weeks. No book sales. I still need to pay $460 on my car, and I have two teeth that probably need to be pulled. Not to mention that if anything happened to one of my animals, I had to way to pay for a vet bill. Priscilla and I talked and prayed for about 45 minutes. She had things in her life she wanted prayer over too. I felt better after we prayed, but I was still -$75.

The next day, Monday April 16, I got a phone call first thing in the morning - could I do 200 photo cookies for delivery on April 22? Of course I could! I sent the client a Paypal invoice, which they paid immediately - which meant I had cash! However, I needed supplies to make this happen since my supplies were almost nil. So, out of the $625 the client paid, $111.00 went to baking supplies, $108 went to packaging supplies, and $121 went to icing sheets, leaving me with $285. Now to start paying some bills... $70 went for a parking ticket (ouch, but I only get them every few years), I paid $60 for the T-mobile bill, and I transferred $100 to my bank account so that I would have that overdraft covered. Oh, and Paypal took their $19 out in fees. So I had left $36. That was it, but at least I could get some cat food. Or... so I thought.

On Tuesday my $300 check arrived and I rushed it to the bank because the Paypal transfer was still in progress, and I pulled the -$75 up to $225. Great. Ah, I was in the black!!! Now to pay more bills. AT&T was $75, and DWP was $100. Only problem with DWP is that their website was acting up and it gave me a javascript error at the last minute and acted like it didn't go through. So I waited a few minutes and tried again... still the same error. Well, it turns out that it DID go through... TWICE! Suddenly I was -$50 again!!!! I called the DWP and they refused to take responsibility. I called my bank on Wednesday morning, and they said to call the DWP again, and I knew this wasn't going anywhere. I was just in the hole again... WITH an auto payment coming out of my account. So, I was looking at having yet another $34 overdraft charge plus an auto payment that would also be an overdraft and incur another overdraft charge. How could I get $900 in 24 hours and still be in the hole? Well, that's how.

I should also add that on Monday I received an email from a repeat client asking if I could do 300 cookies asap... but she wouldn't know until Thursday about whether or not her company would approve the order. That would be an additional $900.. if it came through... and I'd definitely pay off my car... if...

So on Wednesday morning I was reading in Psalms and just praying because you know, it wasn't any surprise to the Lord that all that happened. He knew I was going to be in overdraft again. What could I do but go to work and maybe ask my boss for an advance on the week's pay. On the way, my phone rang and I pulled my bike over to answer it... and it was someone calling for an order of 75 cookies for this weekend... to be delivered to the same area as the 200 on the same day! I said... of course I can do them... and I'm thinking... $225 +$25 for delivery is $250... if I can bill her today and she pays today, I can pull cash out of my Paypal and get it into the bank to cover the overdraft and the autopayment. Well, the client did pay today, I pulled out $200... put it into the bank and I am in the black AGAIN... with $150 in the bank. I won't be paying any over draft fees on the DWP because they haven't actually gone through yet.

All I can say is praise the Lord... He giveth and taketh away... blessed be the name of the Lord.

Me an the Bike or the Bike and I

Just read this post on Facebook:

Have you ever noticed that Rolls Royce and Bentley don't have commercials? REASON: They know the value of their product brings customers to them. LESSON: When you know your value,you don't have to beg people to like you, to be your mate, to spend time with you , or to love you. Be confident in who God made you to be. Everyone can't afford the Luxury of your friendship.

My value at the moment is that I have lost 15-16 lbs since starting to bike on May 5. That may not seem like a lot, and certainly I have a long ways to go, but for me it's a start. Plus I am much stronger. I am now riding my bike at least 50 miles per week and hope to soon bump it to 75 per week. My only real issue is that I ride in the city and can't really get any decent speed up because of stop signs and traffic lights. So my rides take longer than most. I am happy to say that one part of my ride, a one-block uphill section that I've nicknamed "the pipeline" due to it being crammed into a single lane by construction stuff - I got up to 18 mph going through it the other day. I try to go as fast as I can because I don't want the cars behind me to have to wait for me to slog through it. 18 mph is the average speed of the RAAM riders (Race Across America). I only touched it for a few seconds, but I would love to know what it's like to go flat out on an uninterrupted road.

There is someone in my life that I believe to be "the one." That being said, neither of us is really in a place to move forward with each other, perhaps him less so than me because of some past issues he needs to clean up before trying to move forward. I have my issues too, pretty much all financial, but he has old relationship issues that are like a lead weight around his ankle.

He has told me he is not attracted to me - but I think he's not attracted to the weight. Well, I'm not terribly attracted to it either, and it's coming off... in a healthy, althletic way. I'm even starting to figure out longer rides, and I may want to do some century rides before too long.

I've never been terribly athletic, but I've always been at home on a bike, and I want to know how much I can push myself. I carry my weight around my middle, and one thing about biking is that it really only works you from the butt down. The rest is pretty much along for the ride. That's where diet and some initial detoxing are important. I'm not talking about going on a calorie reduced diet per se because when you're biking 200-300 miles per month, your body's needs change. My body isn't tapping the outer layers of fat for fuel.... yet. It's still tackling the inner layers around the organs. My legs are firming up nicely, and I'm starting to see some muscle definition below the knee and can feel definition in my thighs.

The last two days I logged 25 miles on the bike... but each day I was already drained when I started and I slogged through the rides. So today I listened to my body and decided to take a rest day to give my body a chance to recover.

I'm looking forward to riding my bike to Venice beach via Venice Blvd which has a wonderful bike lane. So very excited to do it. Perhaps if I'm lucky my new odometer will be here by then...

Father's Day

Some people are cuddly close with their fathers. Their fathers are encouragers, and they feel loved.

My father is a good man. He always worked hard and supported his family. He put his six children through college, retired at the right age, built his dream house and now at age 81 is in those retirement years of life.

But my father and I are not close. There's no cuddly love, no encouragement. Rather, it is discouragement and the feeling that he has stamped a big "L" on my forehead for "loser." He even said today that he saw me living in a cardboard box under a bridge. That was his vision for me. The job I have isn't good enough to him because it has no benefits. It doesn't matter that it keeps the bills paid and a roof over my head and food on the table. It doesn't matter that I've covered my own medical expenses out of pocket for the last 10 years.

When times were hard for me and my cookie business, he and my mother made several loans to me to keep me afloat, and I haven't been able to pay them back yet. Just asking them for any loan at all was hard on me because it just seemed like that "L" got burned deeper into my skin.

But old wounds go deeper than that. Wounds of years of him being there but also being emotionally absent. The 9-minute phone call today was torturous. Part of me feels like if I never see him again, it really won't matter that much because I just don't measure up to whatever he thinks I should be.

But at age 50, I don't have to measure up to his "standards." I don't live under his roof and I never will again. Part of me doesn't ever even want to visit the state he lives in again.

Nevertheless, he is my dad and I did my duty and sent him a Father's Day card and called him today. But that's as much of a relationship as we have.

When I was about 10 years old, I went through some emotional issues and my school grades plummeted, and he and my mother took me to a psychiatrist to have some tests done to find out if I was just plain stupid. I didn't find out until years later that apparently the tests said that I was a genius.... well, at least according to the shrink's interpretations of the tests. So he held me to this unrealistic standard that I should be a genius and be acing every subject.... when in fact I struggled to concentrate, struggled to read out loud, struggled to see hidden meanings in things or to problem solve. I wasn't stupid by any means... just bored and unengaged by it all. It really wasn't until middle school (then called Jr. High) that some things started to make more sense to me. It wasn't until university, however, that I felt the freedom to actually study things of interest to me. The higher in learning I got, the better I did academically.

Satan would like to whisper in my ear that I really am a loser, but I know my Heavenly Father does not see me that way. Jesus is there for me to heal my wounded heart.

I have followed my interests and feel in some respects I've had a very varied life with lovely experiences. In some ways, a full life.

I'm struggling now to find that self again, to know what my next pursuit is. But in the meantime I will stay with the job that I have and press forward.

Pea in a pod

Next year I'll be 52. I have never been married and have no children. I have never been pregnant, and at this stage of my life, I don't think I'd want a baby anyhow - even if I had any good eggs left, which is doubtful.

But I would like to be married. I'd like to be with a man who is like a pea in a pod with me. Not that we wouldn't have our different likes of various things but that at the core, we were buddies and just cut from the same cloth who delighted in each other's company and shared an abiding, deeply rooted faith in Christ.

If this man were appoximately my age, I would suspect he had been married and divorced at least once (because statistically it wouldn't be likely for him to have never married), and if he had children, they would likely be grown or at least in their teens. If by chance he had no children, then I could be very content to just make a life with him and have it be about the two of us. If he wanted to drive a motorcycle across the USA or Europe, I'd happily sit right behind him the whole way. I have a friend who is married to a film director, and they are both a few years older than I am. They have been married at least 30 years and have never had children, and they are completely delighted to be with each other at a moments notice, even all over the world. They have no children or pets to tie them to a location, although they do have a home here in Los Angeles. They are two peas in a pod.

So where is my mysterious pea in a pod? Sometimes God gives one person of a future twosome a revelation, but the other person doesn't receive the revelation. In the Bible, Mary knew long before Joseph did that she would be the mother of Jesus. It wasn't revealed to Joseph for months later. Why? I suspect because Satan was on the prowl and the timing was wrong.

So, I believe it is also with me. The timing is wrong even though I have the revelation, and despite what I believe, it is not a shared belief. God has shown me that I have issues to work on as well... my own issues of being a woman and finding the femininity of my heart and soul again.

One of my issues is my weight, but not for any assumed reasons, because I wasn't an overweight child, teen or even into my early twenties. In fact, I was so thin I used to wear long sleeves all the time because I was embarrassed at how skinny my arms were, how my elbows stuck out. I was just long and lanky, no particular curves in the waist or hips, just sort of straight. Guys made passes at me all the time. All the time. They weren't interested in the inside of me, just the outside package. I thought for a while of buying an inexpensive wedding band set just to try to get some of it to stop. I was disgusted by the cheap way it made me feel to be advanced on all the time. One time I was walking to work and a guy yelled out the window, "Do you put out?" Now, I didn't know what he meant because I'd never heard that term before, and I said, "Put out what?" When he told me, I laughed him off and said "no!" but inside I wasn't laughing. I didn't dress provocatively then and don't to this day.

It wasn't long after that that the weight started coming on. It was very gradual at first, and over the years it just sort of kept adding up until I am where I am today - at about 263 and steady. Guys don't make those unwanted advances to me anymore, that's for sure, but neither do they also try to get to know me as just a person.

So if I lose the weight, and my future someone suddenly finds me attractive, then I will find that shallow of him and unattractive to me, and even now I am a little ticked off just thinking about it. I think with any weight loss, there is residual, inherent anger on the other end... People who will say, "You look great, you look fantastic, etc.," well, that's going to be very painful... because I look great now. If they can't see and love the person I am now, then they won't see it then either. It's all shallow and vain, and it turns my stomach and brings tears to my eyes.

Regardless, God has gently nudged my heart that I don't need the protection of weight anymore to keep away the unwanted advances because I am at a completely different place and level of maturity than I was 25 years ago when it all began.

I am loveable and worthy of being loved right where I am, just as I am.

Hydraulics

My desk chair just won't stay at a proper seating height anymore, and even when I adjust it, after a while I find myself at a level that makes me feel like I'm in a kiddie chair. So I get up, pull the lever under the seat, and the chair rises back to proper height again... for a little while.

Last night I packaged a giant piece of Lilliput Lane. The thing must have weighed 20 lbs, and it is double boxed and wrapped like a mummy. I just hope it gets there in one piece, even though I will send it insured, of course. Tonight I have to package 8 charger plates from Fitz & Floyd, and then over the weekend I have to package about 35 pieces of English crystal stemware from Stuart - the Beaconsfield pattern. Yikes. When we sell our two big Lladro pieces, I'm going to have a major panic attack because I have no idea how I'll ship those.

And I'm making some cookies on top of all of this. Craziness!

This weekend I hope to photograph at least 100 Lilliput Lane pieces, but it's going to rain all weekend which means really poor lighting, so I'll have to see. Otherwise I'll wait until next week. I've got giant bins of the stuff cramping my living room, and now my bedroom, so I really want to get this stuff moving.

Must find something to do today for the feminine side of me...something to enhance me.

Potpourri

My work situation is odd, but here's how it goes. I help a disabled woman. She pays me from her checking account, but not with her money. I sell things from a doctor's estate, and the doctor is her best friend, and that money pays for my salary plus I get a little commission as well.

So the doctor's home finally sold and the last two weeks have been a scramble to make sure all the cupboards and drawers were empty. We have actually slowly been emptying the house for months. Some of the furniture was sold with the house, and we never had to worry about that, but all the sellable stuff was removed. There is another person involved in selling who is completely separate from my deal, and she has the lion's share of the things. However, my selling has been in massive volume and has far surpassed her totals.

Anyhow, I was busy making trips to the house which is an hour away on the freeway, loading up, and bringing back stuff. At the end, it was truly a potpourri (with actual potpourri included) of stuff!

I never buy potpourri and that wasn't something we would have resold. No, that went into my bathroom... a bathroom that has always been remarkably devoid of scented, feminine things like that. Now, however, it will smell lovely. I even got a square florist's vase from the pantry where there were tons of florist vases, but I left the others. I just liked the square one. Again, not something sell-able.

There was an entire dresser drawer full of candles, some from Party Lite, so you know those spelled good, plus there were many other scented candles.... and I brought those home as well... otherwise they would have been in the garbage. Now my home smells of cinnamon apple and cedar... lovely.

The rest of my apartment... well, it's a mess.... HUGE containers of David Winter and Lilliput Lane cottages to sell. I have 8 containers in my living room, two giant ones in my car and 3 more still coming. These are things I will be selling for the next few months along with fine crystal stemware, fine china and other stuff. I still also have about 130 miniature books (and I do mean MINIATURE), and they sell extremely well - so indeed we have a potpourri of things to sell.

Other items I came home with include a huge lot of classical CDs... that would have been tossed. Be still my heart! I couldn't let that happen. I have a philosphy that one can never have enough good music, even if I don't currently have a place to put them. I also have a few DVDs, and after I've watched them, I will sell them. I got some "new" baking dishes and some other odds and ends...

Life goes on

So, my beloved cat, Rinksie, has been put to sleep. I cried my eyes out afterwards, then came home and took a shower, and I feel a little better, but I will miss her terribly.