Housecarers.com

Sunday 15 February 2015

My weird life....

I'm back in Maz.  It's Carnival - which means lots of ear-drum busting sound stages steps from my apartment, and huge disruptions of normality in getting around for a week.  Oh yes, and parades and fireworks and festivities and costumes.  I'm sure it's all lots of fun.  But I would rather not live in the middle of it all, and so I de-camp to my favourite hotel north of the downtown and use some of my timeshare points to stay for more-or-less free since we had already made the expensive decision years ago to buy the timeshare.  Might as well use it.

I am getting the usual questions from my circle of friends here.  How long are you staying?  How is Mike?  Where is Mike?  When will Mike be down?  Except for where and how Mike is, I can only say I don't know.  My life and my comings and goings are always in flux.  Most of the time, I like it that way.  I like unpredictability and serendipity.  I embrace it.

While I was in Calgary this last time, I actually submitted an application for a job at Canada Post.  I do this kind of thing from time to time - I begin to think sometimes that maybe I should get a job. Our financial life is, and has been, so unpredictable and, at times, downright panic-inducing.  Sometimes I think I should do something more than be chief cat herder, financial manager, personal assistant, head butt-kicker, operations manager, lead life organizer, and concerned worrier.  And I apply for a few jobs.  Usually, I hear nothing back.

This time, after I got back here this week, I did hear from the Post Office.  They wanted me to come in and interview (I guess) and fill in a number of forms.  Think of that.  I could be the 3rd person in my family to become a - postal worker.  Yikes!

Don't get me wrong.  I am not disparaging postal workers or other government union workers - or even union workers who don't work for government.  Many of them are now retired and living in Mazatlan on a nice pension.

But.

I know I am not alone in feeling this way because I have met like-minded people - Mike is one of them.  I have always been extremely allergic to the idea of working at a "job", 9-5, Monday to Friday, with two weeks vacation a year, for 25 years or so, and then retiring.  The very idea makes me shudder.  Even though I know, right now I could be approaching an early retirement with a nice pension - one that would pay all of my living expenses, and then some, if I lived somewhere like Mazatlan.  Not so sure about living in Canada.

Doesn't matter.  I could also have been doing that for the last 30-odd years and be dead or ill by now. What good would that have been? I only have to look as far as my own parents to realize that life offers no guarantees.

So, here I am again in Mazatlan.  My husband is elsewhere.  We work together by internet and phone. I never know where he will be working, or not working.  Maybe he'll have a chance to come down for a few days.  Maybe I will go to where he is for a few days or weeks.  I have something of a life here and getting away from here means getting my dogs looked after while I am gone.

It's complicated.  It's messy.  It's unpredictable.

I don't see how it could be any other way.  People must wonder how Mike feels about me being here on my own while he is somewhere else - working.  It must look like I get to loaf around in paradise, going to parties and the beach while he slaves away in less appealing locations - like winter in Calgary, or in Kuwait.  Maybe they don't realize how much work it is for me to be here.  Believe me, I am always on the job.  Always in touch with what is happening with our businesses, always responding, always thinking.  There is no 9-5, no Monday to Friday - for either of us.  There is no "off".  

And yes, we like it that way. For now.  I could ask Mike to stop working on our software and get a full-time job.  I could suggest that he give up all further ambition about it and join me here for 6 months a year and work in consulting for the other 6 months.  I could even tell him I would move the dogs back to the Calgary and get a full-time job if he did the same for the next 10 years.  All in the interest of some predictability and being together all the time like most couples.

He wouldn't do it.  Would. Not. Do. It.

So, while I make my weird life more interesting by spending time in Mazatlan with my dogs, don't ever assume that I do this in protest, or in selfishness.  This is just my weird life - our weird life.