It has been a great year...

...so far. Many wounds of earlier times seem to be healing. My heart has found love. And, with love, new worries arrived as well, kind of wrapped in the same package. I know it is love as tests of courage I would otherwise fail, I do not fail. Because it is love, meeting the test turns a fearsome dragon into a benevolent benefactor. One need not slay every dragon with the sword.

The traveling teaching work that carried me over the last two years did so only grudgingly. Too many unpaid bills told me that if there were ever a dry spell, such as I had previously seen for a month and a half, bankruptcy might deprive me of many a cherished possession. My savings disappeared into the RV, toward the end of 2003. The RV was a bid to consolidate costs of travel, rental cars, and hotels as well as the rent I was paying at home during the time that I was away training. It worked to correct the cash-flow and kept me in business for a few extra months. Investment-wise I would have done better to put the down payment into rent and begin looking for a real job. Nevertheless, I hoped that former times of wealth for independent trainers might reappear.

They have not. I suspect that they will not. Yet, I enjoyed pursuing the dream and all the adventures, sights, and kind people who I met along the way.

So it is good fortune that I am again employed full-time.

After the RV wreck, I had no temptation to bitterness at such terrible fortune. It was clear, from the moment I extracted myself from the crumpled, smoking pickup that I was fortunate to be alive. Again, I had no doubt that guardian angels had intervened in my life. It came to me, as I spoke to others and learned that there were no injuries, that I needed to do more to similarly incline angelic instincts in the future. Through the months that followed, I ferried all the personal effects in my fifth-wheel motor-home first to my brother Tom's, there in Memphis, and then to my friend Mindy's in Washington, DC.

When work took me to Texas, I would fly back only to Memphis, rent a SUV, then fill it with boxes and make the three-day drive in two: saving a day’s rental. UPS took care of many smaller boxes.

It was good that Mindy had a large house. Arriving boxes stacked up on her porch, got moved into the living room, and eventually carried down into the basement. Her patience with the mess was a major blessing--and a surprise considering the confusion already being inflicted upon her home by a planned renovation. Moreover, I brought with me two cats that added to her three. Kitty drama was the usual subject of discussion at any meeting between us.

Her cats had enough going on to keep her busy. Oliver, a chunky blue-eyed male ruled her roost. Peanut, a brown slender female with an amazing, always-erect, fluffy tail was the class clown--a klutz. Oliver adored Peanut. Once, something had happened to Peanut, Mindy went to help and was attacked by Oliver who also intended to protect Peanut. The bites and scratches took her to the doctor, but Oliver remains: forgiven and well loved. Sheba is a hairy orange cat that would surely have never left the kitty rescue if someone such as Mindy, with an eye for the otherwise unlovable, had not come along at the right moment. Oliver and Peanut detested Sheba; hence the usual drama.

My two cats consisted of Clara, an ever-pleasant, eager-to-greet-you tortie who is clearly part Mainecoon, and Mocha, a black Bengal with gray under-fur you only see when you part it or comb him. Bengals are derived from a wild breed of cats that live in trees in Bangladesh. Mocha is shy and will head for hiding at the first sound of a visitor-- the ring of the door bell or the door opening. This shyness unfortunately did not extend to other male cats--neutered or not.

It seems to me that Mocha has a constant resentment that he did not arrive in my household first. It had been the intention of my friend Sarah that a Bengal would be first, but that is another story. Somehow, Mocha knows he was supposed to be first. It is good for Clara that he was not as she, though less a fighter, holds the supreme alpha-cat position.

Well, mocha took one look at Oliver and decided Oliver was prey. The attacks occurred quickly, anytime Mocha escaped from confinement in the TV room. They came silently, with great force, and were entirely unprovoked. Mocha did not know kitty protocol with the others. Even the stray cats from outdoors--the five that Mindy cared for frequently were invited into the kitchen through the back porch door--seemed to know that Mocha was from another planet. Fortunately, a meeting with the older male never took place.

Mindy's cats lost the run of the TV room, the back sun room, its steps going down to the basement, and the whole basement. Their litter boxes were moved into the kitchen breakfast area. The outdoor cats lost some access to the basement as well. On particularly wet or cold nights, Mindy would crack the door beneath the back porch so they could come inside. If I opened the door to the stairs to go down to the laundry room, a collection of cats gathered at the top of the stairs where it was warmest quickly vacated and scattered.

The run of the basement suited Mocha until he found the door shut. Bengals, it is their nature, do not like closed doors. It was bad enough that doors to the dining room and the kitchen were closed--he knew, however, these were closed due to his own deeds--but when the basement door went closed his complaints could be unceasing. If I was away teaching, and not sleeping on the futon in the TV room to comfort him, he would eliminate any chance of peaceful rest. It puzzled me, when Mindy complained, that she did not let the outdoor cats stay outdoors, but their entitlement to dry, warm shelter was unshakeable, and this I actually admired. Yet I knew the days of Mocha's residence with her were numbered, and therefore my own.

As I recount this, Mocha sits in my lab between me and the laptop. His claws never retract, massage my thigh. I've given up on teaching him that I do not like this. They are truly, as I say, nuclear powered claws--a source of pain I do not enjoy for its own sake. It's clear to me that some pains we do enjoy, as we return to them. Clara sits atop a blanket placed on the window sill to my left, curled into a warm puddle of fur, while snow falls outside.




As construction on Mindy's upstairs got into full-swing, the noise drove the cats batty. Powered saws, sanders, compressors; bangings, footsteps, and loud thuds of lumber dropped on the floor above the ceiling sent all cats into quivering fits: Mocha no less than the others.

The real point of contention would be when the stairs were rebuilt. It seemed that the door to the TV room, and the wall adjoining the stairs would have to come out. There would be no way to keep cats separate. That gave me a deadline to finding another place to live. Craigslist to the rescue!

I searched in Takoma Park. A place near the metro would let me put what funds I might have into computers and bills instead of car payments. I could no longer afford to buy in Adams Morgan.

Craigslist connected me with a group house: "Two rooms $800." I wrote, someone wrote back. It sounded perfect. I called for an appointment. Oops, the place would be shared with two women, they were hoping for a third. Nuts.

"Oh, but we have a basement unit you might want to look at."

It was more money, but I liked it when I saw it. There were no leases to sign, just pay a month's deposit and move in. I told them that this would do, but I was also looking at a job in Binghamton, NY. They were counting on the deposit in order to buy a new furnace for the winter. We agreed that the deposit would be treated as a loan in case I could not move in; somehow I sensed that I was needed and having lived in the cold could not leave them in the lurch.

The job in New York did not work out. Good thing. Knowing what I know, now, the budget would not have worked there. A reliable winter vehicle would have been an impossible fit.

Work came through, here in DC. So, with the new year, there are prospects for a more secure future. I like the people I work with. The work challenges me and will make good use of my skills. Yesterday, the old jobs web page showed a few night classes in a nearby suburb. Perhaps, some teaching can still be done to bring in some extra pay.