my 54th year

Clare,

Husband beat you to the first birthday wish thing…
I heard this sweet "Happy birthday, dear…by the way we have no heat" this morning in my ear.
This happens about once a year….
usually it's the oil burner…
but I think we may be out of oil.
That's never happened before…
we're on an automatic delivery system and they've never let us run out in 20 years. Oh well, they'll be in the office in an hour. In the meantime I have a space heater and the propane fireplace going.

It is snowing. I love to watch it snow. Most of my day will be in an office with no windows, but I will take a break mid-day to watch.

My oldest daughter convinced me to go to a step-aerobic class with her last evening. I had so much fun.
Unfortunately my lungs started to wheeze and I pulled a ligament or something in my left heel. I am limping around unable to bear full weight on the left. It's funny, I don't remember having these problems 16 years ago when I did this everyday.

So, today is my 53 birthday…I enter my 54th year.
Any advice?
I'm going to try to move into a new work place.
I've submitted my CV for two new positions with nonprofits this week. They are both executive directors' positions. I love the counseling, but am getting no where professionally. I can't accrue the 3000 hours that I need to earn my LCSW and then my hourly pay increases and I can see all insurance types. I can only see Medicaid right now.
It's a stupid system if you ask me…
I can't begin to accrue hours until I am consistently seeing 15 clients per week…
in over a year I haven't seen more than 12 clients in a week.

My Meeting has someone deliver a message prior to the beginning of silence. It's a semi-programed approach. Each committee takes a month, and January is the responsibility of Environmental concerns. So I need to find some reading or songs, etc that place our attention on stewardship concerns. I have a "green bible"- all of the passages about care of the earth are typed in green ink. Maybe I'll start there.

Thanks for the birthday wish.
I'm going to try to get warm here.
Love and Light beautiful, gentle sister,
Maggie