puzzle before supper

What a week. I am trying to understand my place in the world.  I am trying to figure out what piece I fit into and I feel all corners.  It's like having a blue piece of a puzzle of the sky that doesn't fit anywhere at all.  It almost does and it is enough to drive one crazy because the urge to snick it into place is almost physical.

I'd talk more about it and vent but of course everything is so darned confidential when it comes to employment and business.  I am turning 40 and feeling needed (and kneaded) in all ways and in all directions.  Suffice it to say that everywhere I look there are things to do, urgently, and all of them go off in contrary lines of sight and many are completely mutually exclusive.  I'd love to spend my life writing, at times like this.  Once you put words on paper they begin to sort themselves out into some sort of order.  But actions just go on rippling in the universe with consequences and counter-consequences and cross-consequences.  Life in theory is so much simpler.

I just heard from my hairdresser today that we are probably entering another 7 year drought, supposedly drier than the '30's.  She heard that by the end of it the entire Nesbit forest (which surrounds where we live for miles in all directions) is most likely going to be completely burnt by more forest fires.  This is unfortunately the only way to clean it up after a succession of smaller fires and drought or flood or tornado-killed trees have fallen over and are carpeting miles of dry forest tinder.  The new trees only start after enough heat bursts the cones, as most people know.  They need a good fire.  That's not a comforting thought.  Especially after last night I dreamt an extremely vivid dream where we lost our home to a forest fire, although we were all safe.  That was before my hair appointment!

Probably this is all on account of the weather, which is extremely unsettled for spring even, swinging wildly from 20 above to windy and cold and 3 below with freezing rain (as in this morning).  Two of my kids are home sick and I'm being pretty cautious with them given there are now two non-Mexico related cases of swine flu in the health region.  None of this makes me feel wildly optimistic and adventurous.  I don't even feel like going to a theatre and escaping.  I just need to sit still and think.  But thinking requires some sequential logic or more preferably intuitive wisdom which for me requires writing.  Thus here I am.  Unable to write about details but venting all the same.  

I know what I love to do and I know what Dan loves to do.  We both know our capabilities and limitations much better than 10 years ago.  We have a clearer idea that our kids will continue to need us in different but no less intensive ways.  It is hard to come up with a plan to make payments that covers all these bases.  Maybe we should just admit defeat and do what makes us tired but which brings in enough money.  However that approach is so dispiriting that everything in me rebels.  I can't believe that God does not want us to be ourselves or to dream, even after 40 when we know so much more.  So I keep sliding the puzzle piece around and around, trying every different way to snick it into place.  And that's all the time I have now, because I need to make supper!