With many behind-the-scenes crises and negotiations, it's finally official. I'm moving back to Toronto, where I expect to be welcomed by quibbling but supportive family and a whole group of beautiful friends. I plan to fly out of Vancouver on Monday, with my dog and cat in tow. I have nowhere to stay, and will have to rely on the kindness of friends for the first bit (my family can't help, my brothers live in a no-dogs condo and my mother is in her 80s and couldn't handle me & my pets)...

I'm gonna miss you all! I am working this week, and packing like a halycon now that it is actually going to happen, and don't know when I'll be on-line again, it could be a day, a week, a month...

I'd like to thank all of you for your supportive, encouraging, warm and sometimes humorous comments as I struggled through my uncertainties. You've all made it an easier journey, and my last post, Sky Songs in the Park, was particularly inspired by our connections to each other. I'd especially like to thank a fellow blogger who has been most kind to me throughout the ongoing crises and practically hand-held me through the worst and most unsettling parts, Ira, thenarrator. And Pru, ydurp, for your support behind-the-scenes too. And Laurieglynn, for your long and encouraging magical emails. And dear Bonnie, Literature_Chick, I hope to squeeze some time out of this busy weekend of packing and moving to go to the Slough to meet you, the Japanese fishing village in Richmond, where a most amazing woman lives in a little house on stilts. And Stephen, Voxcat, it sure was wonderful meeting another blogger and hitting the town to dance last Saturday night, and how you took me to that magical house in the Slough last night, ahh; we'll keep in touch with each other through the blogosphere...

Until we meet again, my beautiful writers, friends, confidants... big hugs, lots of kisses, and tons of delightful laughter... & keep on posting! xoxo

"Marriage Mandala" ©1985 by Brenda Clews

Uncertainty continues only because the coordinates are not coordinating. Desires and their fulfillment are slightly off. And that variation sends the compass spinning into chaos.

I'm attempting to plan a move back East because I have not been able to find permanent work. My children are presently in Ontario and their plane tickets back to Vancouver have been cancelled. Everything is nearly in place, but not quite.

Late yesterday afternoon I received a call asking that I stay on as a temp receptionist at my favourite company in Vancouver for a month; and I have been asked to do a maternity leave for a year beginning in late November too. Had the offer of a month's work occured even a few days ago, it would have changed everything.

I've been doing well living in uncertainty. Making plans based on the lack of work here, yet with no certainty when I arrive back in Toronto either. That's equally up in the air. But this call yesterday threw me into chaos, a sleepless night, the sense of inner explosions imploding...

Then it turns out that the mover I discussed my move with has booked nothing, not checked into the cost of shipping by rail, and so it's like I'm not leaving at all. Although I am leaving a house I haven't been very happy in; at least that's definite and certain. Or is it?

So, for a week's work, and hopefully growing clarity in the confusion, I wasn't going to say anything about my uncertainty. But I did. HR, who I adore, truly, wasn't too happy with me. But, hey guys, I could have lied, said yes, I can do a month, then sped out of here when everything else was in place, if in fact it did fall into place. They decided to give me another week of work here, a week I can definitely commit to.

At this rate, though, I may be out of a good job that gives me parameters I'm comfortable with, with great people, and a good move back home, and with the coordinates swinging wildly and without connection in the starry sky, end up on the street...

Now those universal co-ordinates where desire and event meet in action, why aren't they matching up? They're slightly askew, just off key, and all it's serving to do is make me feel badly about lost opportunities. You can only push the event continuum so far in a direction, and then it takes off, like an avalanche, and there's no stopping what you've started. I'm almost at that point, or have I jiggled it enough so that a move back is already immanent in the Great Ledger of Life? A move back into the uncertainty of no job, no house, and having to start all over again from scratch? When I suddenly, and at long last, have work here now, or at least a real offer of it?

Or, why do I get offered exactly what I was looking for after I've given up and decided to leave?

I mean, I'm only talking interim; I was also going to tutor at an agency in the evenings for more money than a temp agency pays, and, hopefully, return to university in the Fall of 2006. This, merely a bridging strategy. So why is the bridge suddenly offered when I've given up and almost gone the other way?

What does it mean? Or am I to listen to the sardonic laughter of the Gods of Fate as they watch me squirm? Giving me what I asked for after I given up the thought of getting it and had begun to make other tenuous plans...?

I still have an enormous amount of packing to do this weekend. I feel like collapsing in a heap of tears and resignation. Arghhh.....