Oh January. January, January, what are you doing to me?
I think January 2009 will go down as one of the most stressful of my adult life. It’s winter, too, which doesn’t freaking help matters. I need a distraction. Free entertainment is hard to come by in 30 some degree weather.
What to do, what to do? What is a parent to do? Job this and economy that and bills and do we or don’t we? Everyone is edgier. At work, political head butting, with strident me in the middle of it. I am not politically savvy. I am too passionate. I want people to do the right thing, and I don’t want to trick them into it. I want to MAKE them do it. I am the HR Manager, I am smart, my way is CLEARLY the way to go, why the hell isn’t anyone listening to me??????
A little girl, shouting into a pack of jackals, all out for themselves. Today I throw up my hands. I wish I could leave them up, but I’m always me, no matter what I try. I will not make the world a better place today. Maybe the best I can hope for is not to make it a worse place.
I find a blog, about a woman my age who drove through Wyoming on her way to New York and just stopped. She raised a coyote from pup-hood, and now they are friends, and she takes pictures of him cavorting in prairie grass, chewing on her spurs. She wears dusty blue jeans. She is beautiful like a movie. I don’t know if I believe. Remote Wyoming ranch for sale, complete with cavorting coyote and wifi.
How attractive, to stop and do over. Stumble on a dusty empty building and create comfort. Swiss Family Robinson, Dances with Wolves. I’ve always secretly thought I’d be very good after an apocalypse. I have camped, gone days without a shower, or a pillow, or a couch. I like to sew, re-use, I crochet. I build fires from nothing, I tend coals when the matches run out. There are things I could make to survive.
Suddenly I am important. Sometimes my daydreams are so obvious.
In life I am always chameleon. Solid inside but outside, no message of my own. An actress in dozens of costumes. If left with no background, I fall back to this – simple. Dust. Grass. Unwashed hair. No more competition. My status symbols are the baby’s blankets I made myself.