Long Pause...much has happened...migrating to website

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Hi. It's been ages - more than a year - since I've published an entry in this blog. Much has happened since I went to Africa. OH - and so much happened there. Did I ever share photos of Table Mountain? The penguin colony? The baboons? Giraffes? Some day I'll try to fill in the pieces.

While still in Africa, I got word that my dad didn't seem to be doing too well, so I planned to get back to states and to head to NYC before too long. By the time I was stateside, he seemed ok and I did a quick trip up to Niagara Falls. Sherry, the Falls, a little tub scrubbing, then down to NYC.

What I thought would be a week or two visit in NYC turned into 3 months of sleeping on the living room floor and sharing a 1 bedroom apartment with my dad and after a bit, Sherry. Rosh Hashana was almost nice. Still have to laugh when I think about Sherry telling the border patrol she was crossing into the states for the Jewish Holidays! Somehow Sherry and my father even got me to temple - and as if that wasn't enough, when the Rabbi asked everyone who'd been Bar or Bat Mitzvahed to come to the pulpit, I caved to encouragement. I suppose she and I both thought it might give my dad a little thrill to see me up there. Of course, he'd slipped out to the rest room, and despite being up on the pulpit long enough for an allyyah (sp?), my dad missed it. Do you get points even if the thing you do thinking someone else might like it isn't seen by the person you thought would appreciate it...and even if you hated it the whole time? Oh well...good thing I'm not counting.

Rosh Hashanah turned into Yom Kippor, Yom Kippor to Halloween, and before Halloween could turn into Thanksgiving, Sherry and I made our exit. Feeling somewhat desperate for work (by this time I hadn't actually earned any money since the consulting gig at Becker College - the work that basically paid for my trip to South Africa - along with my sister's generous donation toward my flight - and that reminded me that I really didn't want to do that work anymore, even at that pay). Craigslist finally provided the answer.

Can you see me wearing a santa hat, covered head to toe in pine sap, and weilding a chain saw? Here..let me help you out...(see photo)

Before I go any futher, I would like to make clear for anyone reading this who doesn't already know, it is NOT the case that EVERYONE knows who's who in the manger scene! A cruel joke asking me to take the figures out of the box and set it up!

Well, gotta say, I never cared too much from Christmas. Never loved all the hype, feeling so different from everyone else with it not being 'my' holiday - or maybe more so, feeling agitated at the assumption that it IS EVERYONE'S holiday. And after Albert died, well...

Albert, my stepfather of 25 years, died after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, and you know what that meant...the soundtrack to this most painful experience in my life - this incredible loss - seeing my mother implode - was Jingle Bells and the like. UGH. I'll never forget trying on black things for the cemetary with the endless drone of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas," "May all your Christmas' Be Bright," and having the sales girl say "Merry Christmas" on our exit. Geesh. I've been in tears and sleep deprived for days. Could she not tell? Did she have reindeer blinders on, or what?!?!

So...hadn't been loving Christmas for almost as long as I could remember, and there I was...sleeping in an office trailer in the parking lot of Cunningham Park in Queens New York, 24/7 Christmas Carols, saying "Good Night Frosty" at the end of each 18 hour day, and waking to grab toothbrush and Santa Hat to call myself 'ready for work.' Pretty incredible 6 weeks! Oh - and as it should be, this chapter ended with the Polar Bear swim at Coney Island on New Year's Day. Yes, it was an interesting year...2011.

Between January and April, I was back and forth between NYC and Cape Cod..oh...execept for a nice little weeklong stint in Atlantic City (gotta get in tough Gabbi...hotel staff extrordinaire!). I'll have to write about that some other time.

Februrary brought selling flowers on the streets of New York for Valentines Day, March brought a sad departure as Sherry headed to San Francisco then back to Melbourne. After that parting, I headed back up to the Cape(by way of the Pez Museum) where I'd put some 'frame ready, blank inside' photo cards out for sale (on consignment) at a coffee shop in Woods Hole.

When I got back there and saw the cards in the rack looking 'oh so real,' I felt inspired and brought them to a couple of other shops. Low and behold, while taking care of Skeffy (uh oh...never told you about finally giving Skeffy up for adoption...about how he traded up - about how he now lives in a lovely house on a cranberry bog with two people who adore him and who let him rule the roost...okay, not the roost..the rooster does that (can you believe he has a rooster, 60 chicks, a goat, and his own coy pond?!)...

where was I?

Oh - while taking care of Skeffy I made a couple of out right sales ("they" said cards are always only done on consignment?!), and so began JustJillToday Photo Prints, Cards, and More. As of this writing, you can find my photo products in 7 stores and 3 galleries on Cape Cod. As soon as I wrap up here, and get back to the website I started (www.justjilltoday.com), you'll also be able to purchase cards, magnets, matted prints, and who knows what else online. Sort of exciting, eh?!

In fact, I'm going to end this here. I started building the website a few days ago. As is my custom, I'm jumping right in. The site includes a photo gallery, description of photo services for hire, other services for hire (from research, assessment, and evaluation to house and farm sitting), a blog and what I think is the very beginnings of the book I've been talking about for years "Shellfishing on Yom Kippor" AND the coffee table book (but maybe also a line of greeting cards) - "Witchy's World." Yikes! A bit overwhelming when I put it all down this way. But so it is. I've had enough 'separating,' 'parceling' out, feeling 'a part of me...' and a 'part of me...' - in this next chapter, it's all me. All JustJillToday.

Two years have gone by since I started this journey - and this blog.

I rolled away from the Cape, things in storage faded out of sight, I drove around the country, left the country, made peace with Christmas, put Skeffy's needs above my own and let him go, suffered through the pain of time after time not having the answers to the two most frequently asked questions of people you don't know: what do you do? where do you live? For all the years I studied issues of identity - read this literature, the theory, ethnographies...I'm not sure I ever learned as much about what it means to 'have one' - to 'live one' - to 'make one' as I do now. Or maybe that's not even so. In some way, maybe I know less now what it IS and more what it 'tries to be' - what we're taught it is - what others try to use it for.

What I do know now is that I have shedded many layers, let go of a great deal.

I got down to Just Jill. Well...maybe as close to pure 'justjill' as I can right now.

Repeatedly, I brought Just Jill back to "today" and wrestled the beasts that try to force us to keep chewing the cud of yesterday or choking on anxiety over tomorrow. I can't say I mastered any of it, but i do feel I did an awful lot of shedding.

It feels right to now be on to the next stage - onto reinvention.

JustJillToday was born sometime during 2012.

She's a little broken at this moment (did I mention I spent 10 grueling weeks in Houston, unable to fly back to Massachusetts, often unable to sit upright without incredible pain, and typically unable to leave my mom's house as it was June and July and rarely did temperatures in that city fall below 100?)

The saga of my back is not over. I did get out of Houston, and made it back to the Cape. I had business to attend to. I had lost most of my first season 'in business' and I so wanted to salvagewhat I could. So I made it back, but...

I'm finishing this entry flat on my back in the home of my dear friend Chris who, despite spending 6 weeks herself trapped in her house - 1 fracture in one foot and 3 in the other after a mishap on the stairs at work - has been gracious enough to let me pause here (moan and cry here, is more descriptive) for a couple of weeks.

I'll be moving on in the next day or two, although I'm not yet sure to where. I've had two epidural steriod injections, 3 rounds of oral steroids, PT, Chiropractic. I've lived on oxycodone, hydrocodone, flexeril, and who knows what else. A 3 times per week, 8 week long treatment on some decompression machine has been suggested (to the tune of $2400 - none of which is covered by insurance), as has surgery. Not loving either prospect. Only thing I like less is the idea of continuing to feel this unbelievable pain, to feel so vulnerable, so compromised physically and in terms of working and earning any bits of money (farmer's markets are great, but surely aren't helping my back any). So...stay tuned.

Oh - and some day remind me to tell you about working in the Gallery (I LOVE the galleries!)

Not sure whether picking this up on my new website makes more sense or less than leaving it here. Drop by my website and let me know.

www.justjilltoday.com

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