It is becoming harder and harder to keep my job. My hours have been switched from 5 hours, 3 days a week to 4 hours, 3 days a week and now is changing to 3 hours, 4 days a week. The cost of gas to travel to and from work will eat up at least half of paycheck- that is only to and from work, not driving anywhere else. Worse, working 4 days a week will mean that I have to come to work immediately after my therapy, trauma therapy. I could try to reschedule the therapy, but there is the added problem of losing on of the two vital days on which I attend to various medical, therapy and other appointments for the children and myself. Frankly, those two days aren't quite enough but I attempt to confine appointments to them. Yes, there are a lot of appointments. Welcome to the world of early intervention, getting your kids the services they need, and basic parenting.

More than that, there is a male co-worker who seems to be of the women-are-chattel mentality. He treats me as if I'm his own personal bitch, to order around, criticize, and demean. I haven't survived a lifetime of that sort of thing to put with it from him and I'm not taking it. He walks around like a Neanderthal, hulking and glowering at me. He never asks anything nicely, doesn't say thank you, he's just so rude! If it weren't for that single patch of blue, in a sky full of dark clouds, shimmering in my mind like a mirage...he is so awful that he triggers all the old stuff and almost makes me forget that not all men are knuckle dragging bullies.

I don't think he realizes, don't know if anyone there sees, that I'm like a stick of dynamite, pent up with pain, outrage, hurt and anger...and this guy is flinging matches at me constantly. It takes all the self control I have and the MP3 player, not to blow up on him. It is so hard to remember that he didn't inflict all that stuff on me, because he feels like exactly the sort of man who would. I wish he would leave me alone and just attempt to be civil. Oh, wait: they don't teach men that in northern Idaho. Ugh!

I feel like such a poor representative of what a Quaker is supposed to be, non-Theist or not.

How, how am I supposed to live without the thought of you in my mind?