Sorry!

Yeah, I know I haven't exactly been high-profile in the blogosphere lately. Work has been consuming most of my waking moments. But my dear Hattie/Laura has been prodding me (very politely of course) for a new blog for quite some time.

So, I decided to post about...The Vast and Unbridgeable Chasm Between Reality and Wishful Thinking (aka Fantasy). It's really self-explanatory. All it means is that my having a job that requires that I be really friendly and chatty and bright and cheerful and smiley makes me long for a life up in the mountains or out in the bush or just somewhere in the country where all I'd have to do is make preserves, clean house, experiment with new receipts (cooking over a wood fire as a matter of course), read, work with the horses, learn how to shoot (bow and gun), hang laundry out to dry on a line, write whenever I feel like it, learn how to make and use natural plant medicines (i.e., tinctures, essential oils, &c.), spend long lazy afternoons doing nothing but...*adopts ultra-Southern accent*..."diggin' in the dirt and sangin' songs Ah love," making my own tanned leather -- yeah, you get the picture, I think.

WOW, that was a long sentence.

Um, OK. So anyway. That's been my fantasy lately. Whenever I hear bluegrass on the satellite radio at work, my mind immediately drifts to things like, oh, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman or Christy or Gillian Welch's music or my unfinished and languishing cabin in the backyard or... *sigh*. Anything that involves getting away from all this...this...I don't even know what to call it. Pressure and hectic rushing and having no money/time to do what one needs/wants to do and endless repeated days like recurring nightmares; yes, that about sums it up.

See, out in the mountains or somewhere in the country, the only pressure I'd have is what would be building up in the pressure cooker as I'd seal my 18th jar of homemade applesauce. The only time I'd be in a rush would be to get all the potatoes dug before the frost hit 'em. Out there, I wouldn't need money, and time would be free for the askin'. Endless repeated days...of washin' and ironin' and cookin'...right about now that doesn't sound so horrible.

We've been deprived, I tell you! Deprived of what we used to have in excess. In short, work and the time in which to do it.

Maybe the Amish do have the right idea after all.

...

In other news, I got a new ring yesterday. It is sterling silver and marcasite, with a blue stone in the center that is almost exactly the colour of the Williamsburg, VA Colonial Campgrounds' pool at 9 p.m. every night with the sidewalk lights shining into it -- right before the pseudo-lifeguards would say, "Everybody out! It's the frogs' turn!" All the people would slowly vacate the water, and then hundreds of little chirping tree frogs would hop joyfully in. This was the same pool in which my sister caught and drowned for me what my mother thought was a bat and what I thought was a Luna moth -- and what actually turned out to be a huge, beautiful green silk moth.

...

And in still other news, the other day my oldies and I were visiting someone in the hospital. As we got out of the car, walked through the parking garage, and headed for the elevator, my mother admonished my father and me to pay attention to where we were parked so we could come back to the exact same spot and not wander round looking for our car. I burst into laughter as I read the indicators painted on the concrete wall of that floor of the parking garage: "Stair No. C." Do you see anything amiss?

Ha, ha.

Much love to all. More to follow. I had more I wanted to write, but as usual the thoughts have fled my brain. They will return at some point, and thus, so shall I.