Saturday, the sun was saying, “I’m still up here.” The breeze blew, not from Alaska, but from somewhere south of Yreka. My feet and calves and shins and every part (except my knees) itched to climb.

One problem. I was on my own. Husband and daughter helping St. John’s Orthodox with all sorts of workday projects. Son busy being twenty. Two dear friends who love to walk do not savor the feel of steep inclines, no matter how the view beckons.

It was beckoning me. So I decided to go out there, to Mt. Pisgah, by my lonesome. Nothing new to spend solitary time, and yet I thought how nice conversation with a real, other person might be.

Enter Facebook, of all things. I posited telling the little (big) world there that I was planning a hike and would like someone to call, to come. I almost didn’t. Here’s why:

I have tried many things over a few recent, reinventing-myself years. A lot of them haven’t worked. Life is like that, I know. But for many previous seasons my main concerns had been two little people under my feet and wings. The project was fairly singular, the scope long-term. I felt secure. These years since my daughter moved away (the first time), I have faced many wobbly days. Even though I’ve come to not fear death any longer, I have often feared living.

That was the problem last Saturday. Self-conscious and what-iffy, I imagined no one responding to my hiking request. Simply meaning nobody could or wanted to come. But looking like I wear the label “Loser.”

As I stirred eggs for an omelet breakfast, I grimaced. But then I grinned. Sometimes, once in a while, things work out. I would go for it.

Right before I put on my hiking clothes, as I tucked my camera in its bag, Ann called. She was glad I put up the notice. We made a plan.

And then it was sun and sweet air (and sore knees, later, but who cares). We conversed about life while joining ranks of vitamin-D-deprived people walking, shuffling, leaping up and down that hill.

The second job I didn’t get. The second time someone said they would have loved to work with me, but another candidate was just that much more qualified.

A tragedy it’s not. I did my best. Times are challenging for everyone.

The saddest moments, also the ones where I nearly hug myself for happiness: I remember I get to keep writing.

We were enjoying KLSR-TV’s annual Christmas dinner, and the traditional gift steal game began. The first opened gift, promptly snatched by newslady Natasha Chughtai, was a leopard-patterned snuggie.

Those blankets with arms looked kind of nifty on the infomercials. I whispered to Tim I wouldn’t mind having it. He winked and gave me total discretion when our gift number came up.

I suppose it was my annual free-Margarita glow. Wobbling over in high heels, I held out my hand to poor Natasha, who had stashed the snuggie under her table. But the gift was still up for grabs by the game rules. It could be stolen once more. I got it.

Later I felt badly and told Natasha with all sincerity she could have it back, but she laughed and said keep it. She was happy with her glowing wall stickers or whatever gift she finally got (my brain was still fuzzy at the time).

Now of an evening I am saved in the recliner from cold and our cat Westley’s heavy shedding. I can scratch beneath his purring chin while under cover. In fact, he sees me grabbing the snuggie from the closet and he’s in position to pounce and commence kneading my chest. I sigh, deflect claws carefully, and reflect on the one time in my life crime paid.

As I worked the knife into the stubborn winter squash’s hull, my wrist weakening with my resolve for baked dinner vegetable, a vision of horror rose up involving a tragic slip and the loss of one hand. How stupid to go on trying, when surely this scenario could take place?

Worse, my thoughts whispered, now my children are maturing into people who wish to get back to the land and live like their ancestors. What risks they’ll be taking, with animals, weather, and sharp implements! Didn’t people die all the time back in those days from food poisonings and at the claws of wild beasts?

For a second or two I couldn’t take it. Then I imagined my son on his bike, riding this minute through cross-town traffic. My daughter, alone in her home some weekends while her housemates are out of town. The people in a fender-bender on Coburg Road as I passed them last week.

Ugh. The dangers of living have flowed around me every breath. My narrow escapes from disaster can’t be numbered. But of course there’ve been losses, too. Every day the potential looms. The more I have, the more I’ve seen, the more chance there is I will only have memories, and as I age I could lose even those.

I went on hacking at the squash. Rarely has recklessness been my way, especially not when imagination churns. And yet risk is the essence of living. Losing hangs on the other side of finding, of receiving. Along my road I’ve passed signposts leading to brighter things, that I now contain, that contain me, and that I believe I will always keep. No one, however, is handing out certainty.

We ate our squash. It was baked, buttered, pumpkiny-flavored. Like a grace in the middle of traffic, I got to use both my hands.

Not that seeking a purpose is inherently bad. The word has to do with reasons, and reasoning is significant. But, unlike Rick Warren, I disagree about what ought to drive a life. Warren appears to be a nice guy, an honorable pastor and so on. I’m glad President Obama asked him to pray at the inauguration ceremony. But I don’t get his foundational push for purpose, because anything I purpose to do can end up deflated as my leaky front driver’s side tire when I forget to have it pumped at Les Schwab.

Apparently Warren believes our purposing is all about practicing in this life for eternity. Doing my best now for God, so the doors of heaven will gape wider on my behalf. Sorry. If that’s the case, let me out here and you go on ahead. An infinite number of days with this broken self and the futility inherent in my being and yours is not my ideal. If I’m practicing now, getting righter and righter at my free throw baskets, well, there’d be evidence somewhere for that, yes? My points would start adding up on this side of the veil. But dang if in all honesty I can’t see that happening.

I don’t think I’m alone. Ecclesiastes is a book I’ve loved for years. Solomon likely wrote it, and it’s all about the endless cycles under the sun where nothing really changes. Every fresh generation carries the same flaws. Each new deal harbors unforeseeable consequences. Depressing, indeed, and yet it’s comforting as well. “Drink your wine with a merry heart…enjoy life…remember your Creator.” These are Solomon’s admonishments for navigating the days given. In his words, crazily enough you may think, I find meaning.

As long as there is meaning to grasp, every sunrise brings a thrill of hope. Dreams may lie in ruin, but a sad piece of this life’s puzzle can teach me, and it will pass. Like an unborn babe, I’m not privy to the full view of purposes waiting in the next phase of existence. But I find meaning and beauty believing that this moment and the ones to come beyond breath will be very different, because I, while still myself, will be given a different existence. The broken aspects of life now will be fixed, or else I’ve read Solomon and Jesus wrong.

Once upon a day of miracles Jesus muttered, “How long must I suffer you?”, meaning me and everybody in the centuries since. I’m waiting with wonder for the day past his suffering and mine. In the meantime, I’ll fill tires, watch a few sunrises, and imagine.

Driving through town this afternoon I imagined hanging my head out the window, you know, nonchalantly, just sayin’ to folks in passing, “Sold an article.” I practiced it, several times, window up. Police car – “Hey, Officer, sold an article.” Teenagers hanging at a corner store – “‘Sup? Sold an article.” Fruit stand vendor – “How’s organics? Sold an article.”

Actually, I forgot my line at the fruit stand, because I was busy pouring out quarters, dimes, and nickels left over from our garage sale. I wanted a small cantaloupe (heavenly scent), a yellow-centered honeydew, and a palm-sized watermelon. $6.50 total. “No credit cards, right?” Of course not. My change came to $4.50 and some pennies. The guy with the wonderful dreads tied back over his shoulder said, “This’ll be good,” and took my money. No need, even, to promise him some of my check when it arrives from the magazine.

I also imagine, in glimmers of sophistication, that one of these days I’ll go about my business, doing whatever writing somebody wants, without needing to share, “Sold an article.” Possibly by the time New York gets interested, I’ll be hummin’ cool.

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.” ~ Pearl S. Buck

Now I wonder, however, if the fancy page is what’s making my Label and Archive features fail to work. (Sorry, people who never obsess over organizing your email; you’re listening in on a writer dweeb who must. maintain. order.) Half the time now, when I click on Label and try to put something under Writer Group or Friends or Stuff to Read, it just hiccups and pastes on Business or Blog Folk, so I immediately must click Undo and sit here trying it again five times. Urg.

I suppose I should see if reverting to a plain old Gmail page would solve the glitchiness. But that would mean changing something. In the middle of the week. Some weeks I can do things like that. Hey, sometimes I eat chicken for lunch instead of tortilla chips. But, I mean, it might not even work, and I don’t think I could deal with that kind of rejection. (Sorry again, just randomly quoting a time-travel movie.)

So’s you know, I did venture forth under the real sky late this afternoon and pulled out weeds that had poked up in the back flower bed and stuck in a couple of primroses someone gave us and it is possible they will even live under my care.

Now, most likely, it is time to switch off email for today.

Yes, we had guys in tight pants back then. Looong hair, too. Just a little twang. And they repented, maybe too late, but they did. Sigh.

I want to know why nothing’s sacred anymore. Rejections keep hitting me on Sundays; three the past month. Oh, right. Email makes the difference. Wtf?

Sorry. Just cursing amiably at my computer, trying to wait to eat anything till lunch (though my stomach says, Starving here).

Tim has acquired a 32-inch screen TV set. Not anything digital or plasmatized, but if you come over for a movie or Dr. Who it’ll be larger (and the free price was right). It’s huge.

I’ve truly come around to my husband’s way of gleefully using the stuff other people discard. I like this sense that we fit in a world where many folks change technology every few months or years. We’ll do our part keeping landfills emptier, recycling places less overwhelmed, by finding our cars, computers, and other do-hickies at friends’ homes or off of Craigslist.

Not that I needed a ginormous TV, barely fitting our stand, commanding attention when My Name is Earl comes on. But the guy I’m sweet on is this moment working his buns off so I can be here, rising early and joyfully writing whether I ever make money or not. He likes what he’s doing, it’s TV all the way, but he needs to unwind and enjoy the other side of the screen once in a while.

So I don’t begrudge his owning our “new” behemoth.