I know this is last sundays but I just wasn't sure if I wanted to post it.

What’s your sign? Well mine is Taurus. Bull headed is what my mother always called me and now agents opposite me call me a bulldog. Not sure if that is meant to be a compliment. I never want to give up on a deal and have saved a couple from extinction. I’ve also hung on to one that cost me over $1,100. Ow! So I’m working on it. (Need to learn when to let go.)

Lately I’ve been contemplative about my life, leading to much uncertainty. I suppose (hope) everyone looks back at some point and wonders what it all means and “where am I going”. I never had any doubts about my direction; I’d just check for the wind and fly where it took me. My path has always seemed to be right in front of me.

At 17, when I moved to Connecticut, it was to a job as a nanny and some distance from my family (mother). My move home to Salem was to my fiancé and another adventure. Together we moved to Portland and Portland State was my next challenge. Then kids and back to Salem following his educational needs. Now we’re here in Springfield. The kids are a little older and we have a little more freedom. I’m back to school hoping to finish what I started 19 years ago. My mind is in a much more receptive state than it was all those years ago and I would guess, has something to do with this contemplative place I’m in.

I was telling a friend about my first car. It was a very “beautiful” Brown Ford Pinto. I was 16 and working full time as a dishwasher at a nursing home in Dallas, OR; about 10 miles west of Salem where I lived. I convinced a family friend and car lot owner that I was a good risk and he sold me the car after a friend over 18 signed the contract too. (Needed to cover himself and all) What prompted the purchase was the job. My mother had been taking me to work everyday that my boss and neighbor didn’t. When my boss was fired, my mother refused to take me to work anymore. I didn’t care much for her logic, this was just her pattern. Do what she wanted until she was tired of doing it. She gave me no reasons, she was just tired of having to get up in the morning and drive me in. Now rather than give in to higher powers, (the authority of my mother which seemed arbitrary and unfair) I decided that I just needed to get a car, never mind that I didn’t have a license. (I didn’t drive by the way. My 18 year old friend drove me to and from in exchange for use of the car until I got my license.)

This just patterns out my look at life; full of choices, obstacles, and paths…I don’t see walls or barriers, just something to work on.

So what does it mean to be a Taurus? To charge through life with your head down and then when you lift up to see how far you’ve gone, you get dizzy and fall down. Still waiting to see how long it takes me to get back up again.