I met Paul the Wood Guy today.

Paul is your quintessential red-cheeked, cheery old man. He’s a few inches taller than I am, he’s sturdily built, salt and pepper hair balding on the top (more salt than pepper), twinkly blue eyes and the most contagious smile I have ever seen. He knocked politely at my front door about 2pm this afternoon. And I am not one of those people who regularly qualify emotionless actions such as knocking too often. But just the way he knocked sounded very polite. He didn’t ring the doorbell as most people would, he knocked – three times, softly enough that it wouldn’t startle me yet loud enough that I would have heard anywhere in the house so long as I wasn’t playing loud music. It was polite.

I had called Paul yesterday when I realized that it was getting colder and that 2 bundles of firewood a day was not going to cut it – especially if I needed to go get those 2 bundles everyday. I googled for firewood near where I live and ended up with Paul’s number from the recording of another guy. You see, the guy I called had stopped doing residential wood but he recommended to other guys who still did.

Paul was the second number he suggested. Oddly I didn’t take note of the number for the first guy. Just Paul.

I called Paul and he was all “Gosh! So nice of you to call! What can I do for you?”

He put an instant smile on my face. I said, “Well, I got your number from…” and I could hear the smile in his voice when he said “Oooh! You need firewood! Golly!”

I swear. Paul is all about “Gosh!” and “Golly!” and “Geez!” Jolly is a real understatement.

Paul patiently explained to this Caribbean newbie all about burning wood. He explained wood sizes, shapes, age. He explained why we call it cord and what a cord is. He explained different types of wood and what they meant. Told me the type of wood they provided. We discussed fir trees for a while because in Jamaica, we have pine trees, which is a kind of fir tree. Here in the Evergreen state, they have a ton of different kinds of fir trees. He explained that he would deliver the wood already chopped and help me stack it and explain why we stack how we stack and explain to me how to get it ready to burn.

Paul and I talked about me being from Jamaica, and hubby being from Michigan. We talked about how we met, how long we had been married, the fact that we were military and asked where we had been assigned before Fort Lewis. He talked about being in the military himself and that he and his wife still shop at the post commissary. And then he would extend a discount to us because we’re military.

And this was just the “introductory” call. Paul draws you out.

Paul said he would get my wood out to me as soon as he could. Probably in the afternoons because they use the daylight hours to chop and stack. He said he’d call when he was coming and could I give him directions to where I was. I warned him that my directions have been known to suck royally and end up causing people to get lost more often than not. He laughed and said that I couldn’t be all that bad because I sounded like I could give him perfectly good directions. He said to give it a shot and he’d do the rest. And I did.

So when Paul knocked politely at my door today I was surprised that he had arrived here without any issues. When I asked him how my directions turned out, he said they were perfect.

While Paul was here, he chatted to me. We talked about hubby and the course he is doing. What it implied about how his superiors felt about him. And he invited us out to his place to “commune with nature”. He described it to me and it sounds like a real woodsy heaven. And Paul asked me whether we were interested in finding a church to go to. He explained what his church was all about and I talked about the Methodists and that they were an offshoot of the Anglican church.

And when Paul was done stacking my wood for me, he asked to pray with me. He asked if I would be offended. I said that I wasn’t Christian but that I wasn’t ant-Christian either and that I sure wouldn’t mind if he prayed with me. And Paul did. An impassioned prayer for my health, hubby’s health, our success and our happiness. And he thanked the Lord for bringing us into his life.

When Paul left, I was smiling like I don’t think I had smiled for 24 hours. He lifted my spirits like I can’t begin to explain to you. He is a blessing. He is a glorious and angelic soul. And I thank the Goddess for bringing him into my life today … just at the point when I was feeling down and alone and in despair.

Who says miracles don’t happen?

Edit to say that when I told my Mom this story, she said I’d been touched by an angel.

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It’s election time in Jamaica.

Everyone I spoke to just after the announcement was irritated that the politicians had chosen to announce elections at Christmastime – as was I. Elections in Jamaica are traditionally tense with activities such as avoiding wearing certain colours, being excessively careful not to mention any political affiliations (or lack of) and staying away from certain parts of the cities and towns.

I won’t go much into the why behind the tension and violence that has been known to surround Jamaican elections. Suffice it to say, the politicians themselves in the early days were the ones specifically responsible for introducing violence into the process. That it has perpetuated over the years is the result of ignorance, and a most unhealthy glee at besting political opponents.

Early on too, colors and symbols became very closely related to the political process – green for “Laborites” and red for the “Socialists”; the “bell” for the Jamaica Labour Party and the “head” for the People’s National Party.

Which brings me to the point of my post today. A friend stated on Twitter that he had put two of his favourite shirts away for the season earlier in the process. Another friend claimed, this morning, that she found herself signing along with one of the election jingles. I responded by saying I hoped no one in “red” had heard her. And it hit me: red and green! Those are traditional Christmas colours, aren’t they? And if they work together at Christmas to help add to the cheer of the season, then why couldn’t the work together in the political arena to help demonstrate harmony? You would have thought those two colours could do nothing for each other – and normally you wouldn’t be caught dead in an outfit that had both prominently featured. Yet at Christmas, everyone is adorned in one or the other and sometimes both!

I wonder how much influence that symbolism had on the decision to schedule elections at this time of year?

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I think I finally know what I want to do.

I have always loved writing. As an avid reader, I have dreamed on and off all my life about writing thrillers along the lines of Stephen King and Dean Koontz.

My first Stephen King was “It”. I read it the weekend before my high school examinations were to start – examinations that made the determination whether I was going on to “sixth form” (pre-university level studies) or not.

My mother bought it for me in the hotel gift store where we were staying for one of Dad’s annual meetings. She bought it on the agreement that I would promise to only read it once all my studying was done.

Now that I look back, I realize that my mother was no fool. She knew exams had only just begun. If I was to wait until all my studying was done, I would have waited at least 3 months to start reading. She knew that once I had the book in my hand, I wouldn’t be able to resist reading it. And read I did. The book was bought on Wednesday evening. By that Sunday, I was done. When I say I was an avid reader, I wasn’t kidding.

I used to write a great deal too – in my journals. I wrote tons and tons and tons of words in my journals. A lot of it was stream of consciousness – just random thoughts jammed onto the paper as they occurred to me. A lot of it was repetitive anger and frustration. A lot of it was obsessive musings on situations that I had no control over. Ranting to myself gave me a sense of peace.

I even tried writing poetry and short stories. There is one story that I am holding onto because deep down I believe it’ll make for a wonderful story. But for some reason, I can’t get started on expanding 1400 words to a full fledged story.

I write articles – when I get the motivation and the subject matter to write about – but I feel blocked most of the time. In fact, the state of my blog demonstrates just how blocked I am. I haven’t been able to really write for a long, long time. I tell myself that it’s for this reason or the other … but I really have no idea why I am so blocked. And I spend a lot of time agonizing over why I am blocked.

Then I stumbled on a career description today that just sort of … “spoke” to me. It’s the description for the copy editor; an editor that edits for spelling, grammar and factual integrity.

It is the career that goes with my never decreasing need to correct every single grammatical and spelling error I see or hear. It’s the career that goes with my need to know the meaning of and usage of each and every English word ever created. It’s the career that goes with my love of researching random facts and always knowing what it is someone is talking about so that I can determine whether they are full of shit or not. It’s home.

And, as luck would have it, I am in the perfect program at the University of Phoenix to help me attain such a career.

Whether it’s too late in my life now or not to make a change like this remains to be seen – hell maybe I’ll set up my own service. We’ll see. All I know is that I want to help people put out their best when they write. I want to help writers sound like they know what they’re talking about and to actually write English with some accuracy. It might even help me eventually write for myself – someday.

But … I think I finally found what I want to do when I grow up.

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When we heard we were going to be moving here to Washington state, my friend who has lived here for years warned me about S.A.D. I was never sure I would be affected because I have always been a fan of the rain and the darkness it brings.

As it turns out, the rain and the overcast days are actually the least of the problems. The real problem has started to emerge within the last few weeks as fall settles in for the long haul. Now underlined and bold-faced as we switch over to standard time from daylight savings.

The number of daylight hours is restricted even more when it is overcast and rainy. We have lived here for just about 3 months now, and I can tell you that on an average week, we get maybe 2 days of full sunshine – if we are lucky. Now that the days are shorter, it’s dark by 4pm or thereabouts. And I see it getting worse as we near the silly season.

And while I don’t know that I will suffer from S.A.D., I can see how the light (or lack, thereof) is going to play havoc with my internal clock. It already does. I find myself panicking at 4:30 because it looks and feels like much later. And I am finding that I am not a fan of the dark at all. I might like the rain and the overcast and the opportunity to build a fire and wrap up blankets … but I do not like the dark.

Yep – I am still adjusting to life out here. I never dreamed it would be this different, but nevertheless, I am liking it – a lot! I don’t know that I can live anywhere else after this. Dreary, rainy days or not!

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“Hey Mom? I finally understand why you don’t read, or crochet or garden anymore.”

With the advent of school and this new commitment to eating right, I’ve found I have less time to play as I once had. School and work has me in front of the computer almost all day, and when I am done working, it’s 5 ‘o’ clock and time to cook. If I get any time at all to play it’s for an hour or two before bedtime. And when I say play, I don’t mean World of Warcraft – which by the way, I am playing again.

We got turned off RIFT when 2 of our guild mates got into some drama that eventually affected the rest of our up and coming guild. Everybody left because everybody was either a friend of one or the other of those 2. Then when I asked a technical question of their support team, citing a bootcamped Windows installation, they told me “We don’t support RIFT on anything but Windows” and closed the ticket. That just annoyed me because if you are support, you need to know some basic technical facts, not the least of which is that a “bootcamped Windows installation is a perfectly legitimate windows installation”. That was the final straw for me – I am done with them. You can’t be serious about providing a service or product and not know enough about it to support it.

So anyway, to get back to “playtime” – I don’t have much time to indulge my hobbies – whether it be World of Warcraft, reading or watching TV. Of course, I make time for TVD, TSC, SVU or House episodes during the week – but it’s not the same. It’s rushed and I feel guilty that I am not doing something I ought to be doing.

I used to think my mother just wouldn’t make time for her hobbies. I understood that she had responsibilities, but it seemed to me that she was getting extremely anal about those responsibilities and not making time to relax and unwind. It is only now that I find myself with so many responsibilities of my own that I realize just how difficult it is to take time out and relax. And I don’t even have children! No matter how hard you work at stuff, there’s always something else that needs doing – another load of clothes, that batch of dishes, the dusting because of the wood stove…

All this even when I insist I need play time and steal time away from responsibilities, I still don’t get anything worthwhile done. Reading a book a week is a thing of the past. I had set a GoodReads.com goal to read 50 books this year – I don’t see that happening unless I get laid up in a hospital bed with nothing to do (knock on wood that I don’t). And even then, I think I would need to have something else to do other than reading. These days, I get tired if I read for more than few hours at a time, horror of horrors.

But life is coming at me full speed ahead now – it just isn’t the way it used to be. I am remembering with fond memories weekends that started at 6pm on a Friday afternoon, Saturday afternoons when one meal from Jade Garden in Sovereign Center (back in Jamaica) would feed me for 2 days and I could literally spend all weekend playing WoW – and most of the week’s evenings too. Those days are gone, methinks.

/sigh

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