Too close for comfort

Today's beauty, flower bouquet for Thanksgiving 2023

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Two of my three sons have jobs funded through or for government agencies.

One of them was looking for other options as his present job was funded by a grant through education avenues, and it looked pretty shaky for extending another year. He started looking at other options a few months ago.

And a few days ago he texted that he just lost his job, as of the end of June. That gives him a bit of a respite to find something else. But it did take him by surprise...and me too.

I feel so bad for him. He is obviously depressed by this situation. 

In the meantime, I'm feeling the shakiness of not only my own medical issues, but for those I love as they face the unknowns. 

On another note, I'm frustrated with one of my friends. I offered to take her to lunch on her birthday this week. I also invited another friend to come too, at a favorite restaurant. I get there early, and have received a text that the second friend can't come. Then I sit and wait. At 15 minutes past the time we were to meet, I think, this is really late even for her. I'm now in a crowded restaurant and have no one sitting with me...trying to play with my phone. Another person I know comes in and waves at me as he goes and sits at the bar for his lunch. I figure my friend will be there soon. I text her, and I leave her a voice mail saying happy birthday. Another 15 minutes goes by, and I call again and say I'm worried. I order my lunch "to-go". 

Then I call the friend who couldn't make it because of stomach flu, and she hasn't heard from our birthday friend either. She suggests I drive up the gravel mountain road to see if her truck is there. I say I'm ordering my lunch to go...and then wait outside with one of those beeping things till it's done. I then go home, eat my lunch, and imagine all the problems my birthday friend might be in. It's now 40 minutes since we were to eat together, and I take my first bite of lunch and she texts that she was on the phone. I share that info with the sick friend by text. Then birthday friend calls and says she forgot about it. She never had written the time down, and thought I would have called again to give her the time.

I had actually said the time when I started arranging the lunch date. I just "lost it." I was so stressed from sitting waiting for her all that time worrying that I said I couldn't talk about it now, and just hung up.

These days I'm so near tears all the time. It's like my nerves are stretched thin. I skip the news as much as possible. This resistance is hard work!

May all our anxieties be released in knowing that there can be joy and satisfaction right around the corner from unexpected challenges.

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From Katharine Hayhoe:

A new study puts a dollar amount on some of the climate damage the world’s biggest corporations have caused: $28 trillion. Scientists looked at emissions for 111 companies, finding that just 10 fossil fuel providers — Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil Co., Pemex, Coal India and the British Coal Corporation — caused half the total amount of damages. 
 
And those are the damages only from extreme heat. The number doesn’t include the devastation from massive floods like the ones in Spain last year or the damages from stronger hurricanes like Helene and Milton. It doesn’t account for crop and water losses during droughts; or the infrastructure destroyed by wildfires such as those that swept through Los Angeles earlier this year; or the smoke from Canadian wildfires, a single week of which was estimated to have cost the province of Ontario alone “over $1.2 billion in health impacts such as premature deaths, increased hospital visits, and health emergencies,” the Canadian Climate Institute reports.

Today's quote:

I recently learned this simple prayer in my Paganism Class. 

Yes, three views of the same pitcher. I used to use three overlapping glazes for many of my pieces of functional ceramics.

 Note: I'm not posting my pottery for admiration from readers...but as a documentation of this part of my life. I don't want to sound like I'm fishing for complements. Can I just share it? I share my shaky fingers, and know that nobody out there has answers. I share my word finding problems, and figure there might be something neurological going on, but also think this might just be another aging inevitability.  Thanks for reading.