Clutter

There are a few things on my mind lately. Firstly, the thought always in the background of my mind, I’m a bit lonely. It’s been almost five months since I last saw my parents and I miss them; and though visited almost everyone I know in the last few months, I miss them, too.
Also on my mind of late is charity. I finished a series of hands for a charity auction and my fingertips hurt from the effort; but I feel hugely accomplished. I’ve never met Nick, the cousin of my coworker, Tiffany, but I find myself hoping with all my heart that he gets the valve-replacement surgery he needs to be healthy. It’s times like these that I wish I believed in God- mostly so that I could put my faith in that higher power to put things “right” as I see it. However, I have no such faith. Instead I believe in people and the capacity to do the right thing. Therefore, I pray to the people at the auction tomorrow to be generous with their donations. I also pray to the heart-surgeons out there, for one of them to open their hearts [pun intended] and do Nick’s surgery for free since the small company-employed man doesn’t have health insurance. I pray with all my heart. <3
Yesterday I talked on the phone with my brother, Joseph, for the first time in a few months. He gave me the hard news that Jamie’s mother fell and broke her hip and isn’t doing very well. (For those of you that don’t know, Jamie is my dad’s best friend since high school; and his mother is like a second mother to my dad.) Jamie’s mum is in Canada and Jamie is in California. Unfortunately, Jamie’s residency status is a bit rocky, so if he goes to see his mother, he may not be able to return to the states. Also unfortunate is the fact that Jamie still works for Cetec, the software company that my parents (used to) work for that hasn’t been paying for months. This means that Jamie has no funds for a trip back to Canada. My father, apparently, is trying to give Jamie the money and company he would need for the trip; unfortunately, my father doesn’t have a lot of money right now, either. My brother told me that he, personally, lent my dad $2,500 for the trip… but that it probably won’t be enough in the end. He told me to do everything in my power to call in old loans and to settle my own debts. My parents are doing better, he says, but definitely not well enough. Now comes the time in my life where I have to put others before myself, and allocate the majority of my forthcoming paychecks to repaying my parents.
I just realized that my car insurance payment is due in two weeks… and I haven’t set the money aside yet. I’ll be able to pay it, but I won’t be able to give my parents the money I had anticipated to just yet. : (
All things in time, I suppose.
I digress. During the conversation with my brother, he mentioned a few really amazing websites that I am super excited about. The first, www.kiva.org, fits in with the charity theme. It’s a website that allows you to lend out money to entrepreneurial people all over the world who need a hand. The minimum allocation is $25, but they pay it all back over time and you can either donate it to Kiva, or have them put it into an account for you so you can loan it out again. I lent $25 to a fisherman in Cambodia. He is raising money to build a basement for his house to store bamboo and fish for his business. I elected to have the money set aside for me when he pays it back so that I can lend it out again. I feel like, this way, I’m not losing anything, but I’m helping people nonetheless.
The other things on my mind are various and random. At the top of the list is education. I can’t afford to go back to school right now, and I know I couldn’t settle down to do it in a formal manner anyway. Joseph gave me two websites for free education. The first is from MIT and offers a wide variety of free classes (video, assignments, quizzes, etc.) with no need to sign up or pay anything. It’s http://ocw.mit.edu and it has all sorts of goodies including, my favorite, Calculus. X D The second website is equally as exciting. It’s www.livemocha.com and it’s a free language teaching website. You create an account describing which language you speak and which you’d like to learn and, while you take your lessons, you also check and correct the work of people trying to learn your language. It’s amazing. I’m so excited. I feel like I can master French and learn more Italian with this website… as well as any other languages that cross my mind. I’m going to send a link to Justin, the linguist friend of Gwen from Virginia. I think he’d get a lot out of it, too. : ) There goes more charity. : D
As always, music circulates at the foreground of my thoughts pretty much 24/7. One of the guys I work with here, John (who is FANTASTIC by the way) is in a band called The Gromet. He gave me a free copy of his first CD and I bought his recently released second CD. He’s having a CD release party on June 5th which is the day after I return from San Diego for Bushwalla’s second CD release party. Irony? No, probably not, but cool nevertheless. I’ll be leaving Denver on the second, driving all day (18hrs), spending the 3rd at the party and generally just chilling, then driving all day the 4th to be back in time for The Gromet and work on the 5th. Then, in July, I have another musical road trip planned to visit my family band, The Lucky Machetes, at a music festival to perhaps rent a booth and sell some carvings. Hurray for music and road trips! They’re all I need in this world!
My mind seems a bit more organized now. Just as full… but things are in their appropriate places. Now, it being Mother’s Day, I will call my wonderfully fantastic mother to tell her all about how much I love her. : )
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there! One day, I hope to walk in your shoes. Until then I’ll savour the silence and selfishness that having-no-children brings.
Love Joan