(Just inserting a bit of levity into an otherwise depressing damn day) LOL~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The overgrown rat in Puxatawny has predicted 6 more weeks of winter. I could get a gun and go shoot him myself. *%@#!#%^ WAIT A MINUTE !!!!!! I think we've been bamboozled here. Isn't 6 weeks only the middle of March? Isn't the 4th week of March spring anyway?
Once again the media has pulled the wool (or the coarse dirty fur, in this case) over our eyes. Here everyone is, bemoaning the fact that we have another 6 weeks of winter ahead of us, when we had another 6 weeks ahead of us all along. We could have all been out celebrating, but no, we've all been behind closed doors crying like babies. And all because one little flea bitten rodent HAD to be on national television. How crazy have we become?
How crazy HAVE we become? I have heard at least 10 people today talk about the final episode of LOST. And talk about it like those people REALLY EXIST SOMEWHERE ON AN ISLAND.... I have a friend (acquaintance, really) who is so hooked on Days of Our Lives, that she talks about these people and what 's happening on the episode like they were her neighbors or family. And the other day after a meeting, someone asked me if I had heard about Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston getting back together. I said "What?" Blinking, like an great horned owl suddenly in the glare of headlights at 3 in the morning. And of course I'm thinking, what in the hell is wrong with people? I want to take out a banner ad in a newspaper and say "LISTEN UP, FOLKS. THESE PEOPLE ON TV ARE NOT REAL!!!!!!" Even the Pitt/Aniston/Jolie triangle isn't REALLY real. In fact, between the 3 of them, there might be part of a real person, but with Hollywood, it's hard to tell. (I know that sounds a little harsh, but today I'm feeling vaguely despondent, so I can say whatever I want here, and it doesn't count.) At any rate, it scares me, the way the lines are blurring more every day between what is real and what is not real. Between Fact and Fiction. Between true and make believe.
I want to shout from the rooftops: Go outside!!!!!! Stick your hands in the dirt! Plant a garden, tend some chickens, nurse a sick animal back to health. Talk to your children! Turn off the idiot box and go lie on the beach somewhere. Bake a freaking cake!!!!! READ A BOOK FOR godssakes !!!!!
But if I did that, they'd carry me off and give me a room in the Happy Hilton somewhere. Because we just don't do these things. We don't go against the status quo, we believe everything we're told, and we get upset because a giant rat refused to lie to us and say that spring will be here any minute, and that we can all celebrate the end of a grey and brutally cold winter.
Sigh..........
Maybe I should get some sleep.
I have been moody and emotional all day and I don't know why. I actually slept almost 8 hours last night, which is HUGE for me. I am eating right and not overdoing it. I am taking minimal pain medication. However...I found myself weeping (???WHAT????) several times today, and now I just want to sleep. Is it SAD? Is it delayed exhaustion/reaction to the chronic pain? Am I just a big crybaby?
Maybe. Or maybe...(omg, this happens every stinking year, and every year I block it from my mind until the final hour) ...maybe... tomorrow would have been my dad's 85th birthday. This August will mark the 25th anniversary of his death, the event that made me an orphan. A rather OLD orphan, but an orphan nonetheless. And even as my conscious memory cannot recall this, my cell memory is alive and well and working overtime. Feelings of loss and of grief like I had never known, visiting me all day.
On his last birthday, as he lay dying slowly of lung cancer, I went to visit him with my yearly batch of his very favorite thing in the world. Peanut Brittle. He was so weak already then, and had lost so much weight that he was a shell of his former self. I had by then moved about 4 hours from where he lived, so my visits were less than I would have liked, and there was always such a big change in him when I would see him again, that I could barely recognize him. My dad was looking so old there at the end, fighting that ultimate fight. His eyes lit up when I came in and the first words out of his mouth were "Did you bring it??" And when I handed him the box, he grinned like a kid. I had started making the brittle myself for him about 6 years before, and was always trying new recipes out on him. He got a lot of extra delight out of the fact that I made it for him. "They don't want me having much sugar anymore. Can you believe it? How stupid is that? I'm dying." and he laughed like a boy, as he shoved another piece in his mouth.
Even after all these years, I miss my dad. He taught me about life and he taught me about death. He taught me integrity and he taught me love and he taught me everything I needed to know about living in this crazy world. He gave me his Indian heart and he gave me his work ethic and he gave me, I hope, some of his courage.
Happy Birthday, daddy.
Namaste.
