I don't know how I'm going to do all of this, but it's just really nice to see her so happy, and somehow it all just keeps working out...so :-)

"Your mom wants to get her hair braided this week."
"Okay, I will schedule it for Friday."
"She told me she's getting it done tomorrow."
"Well..okay! Ask her if she wants to miss bridge Thursday or Friday."
"She said Thursday."
"Okay, I'll schedule an appointment and call Access-A-Ride and change it."
"She said she wants to get her nails done too."
"Geesh. Okay."
"She can go to this place on 8th for her nails. It doesn't cost as much."
"Okay. How long does it take?"
"To be safe, say hour and half."
"I'll set up the rides now."
"Okay."
"I got the rides. So first pick up is at 12 noon. From there next pick up at 2 PM. From there last pick up at 6 PM."
"Sounds good. Oh, she wants to play bridge on Saturday."
"Oh boy. Geesh. What time? I'll schedule the rides. Oh, are you available Saturday?"
"10:30 to 4. Yeah, I can come Saturday." 
"Thank you. I have a class on Saturday."

When I got home last night, after two jobs, one audition, and one class, she was in such a super duper good mood. She was so happy. She knew she was getting her hair and nails done, and that she was going to bridge on Saturday. So for the hair and nails, that's about another $200, and another day of day care too. This week is expensive, but she was so super duper happy. I guess I just have to do it. I have to do it. It gets tight financially every single third week of the month. But, prayerfully and thankfully this is the first month in a long time that I have had consistent work with my second job. And, I have made up my mind too, crazy as it may sound, to keep on my journey as an actress as fiercely as possible. I am paying for classes too and a voice over demo. I had a class last night that followed an audition and a class the previous day, with three auditions on Monday, a first rehearsal tonight for a reading, shoot a student film tomorrow evening, and a class on Saturday. What I notice is that the more I keep practicing my art, even in the midst of all this, then the more I am able to become fully apart of the creative building and process, and the more things seem to get done and even miraculously come together. 

"Take what you told me and Bless the struggle, Bless the process. Keep moving forward knowing it's the birthing. The struggle is tremendous in the birth canal, during the birth." Well, that's not exactly how it was said, but that was what was mirrored back to me. I had felt inspired to uplift a friend, then she turn around and said my same words back to me, Bless the struggle. I see that now. The lesson I've been taught goes even further. It's to give Glory in the struggle. That if you really want to see what God can do, watch Him take you through this struggle. That our struggles are a time to hold on and watch God do what God does.  To do not worry, do not fret. Watch.

Taking care of my mom right now has made me leap into my shoes of responsibility. She is with me and will be with me until her health changes significantly and she absolutely must be in a hospital or facility, or until she makes her final journey from this life onto the next.

So, last night when I came home to someone so very happy, I realized that I don't know how, but it will all work. My journey and hers will work. She has an absolutely beautiful caretaker. I love her and how she loves my mom. And while she takes care of my mom, I get to take care of her, my caretaker. I know that like me she needs a Blessing too, and I hope that we are a Blessing her.

All of this and its connection to my acting career reminds me of how I used to want my acting career to blossom when my stepfather was alive. I wanted him to enjoy bragging about me. Gosh, did he do that. A million years ago I once directed a children's choir for a bit, and when I got home to visit my folks, I heard from all of these people from all over the place talking about I was directing the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir!!!! Uhhhhhh no. Oh my gosh. 

But he passed away 22 years ago now. And truth be told for those 22 years and those years prior I lived the life of one who absolutely believed she did not deserve this or that. I preferred to be invisible, to be unseen, yet the artist was still within me. For maybe a decade or more, I would wake up, go to work, come home between shifts, sleep, get up, go back to work, come back home, eat fried this or fried that, watch TV, sleep, then repeat. I used to pray to be invisible, seriously. I was embarrassed by any attention, compliment, anything. I wanted to be invisible. I was embarrassed by my life, my past, my present (I weighed nearly 200 pounds...and I am there now at nearly 200 pounds...but, thankfully, on the down slope). I was perpetually broke, which matched my spirit that was perpetually broken. I just gave up on everything. I just functioned enough. But somehow I kept taking acting classes and playing volleyball. In other words, I engaged a bit. But seriously, I slept a lot during those years. I just came home, ate and slept, ate and slept. I was successfully invisible.

Yesterday, I successfully had an audition time changed to between jobs, but I was a half hour late for job number two that I will have to make up tomorrow (oops), but I felt (as teachers do) a bit of a breakthrough with my student--not a mountain or anything like that but a little scooch forward. For my class, I sat there applying lessons (in my head) I had learned from my other acting classes and an agent I met with, in other words a shift happened within me, a shift happened in the artist within me, and when it was my turn to go front and center of the class I recognized that the shift is more than just within the artist within me. I entered a home last night, my home, with a person as giddy as a happy little child. I readied $225 in cash for her next day, I let go of the thought or worry that I now had an additional day to pay the caretaker, and all I felt on the inside was that ​I don't know how, but it's all going to work out.

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