I mean to tell you, I am just poutin' fit to die.

I used to be friends with a guy who was a family therapist, psychologist type of person and I say "used to" not because we "broke up" as friends or anything like that but because the sumbitch had the audacity to up and DIE on me, not only rendering our perfectly good friendship to be more cumbersome, but also leaving me terrified of having a heart attack in my 50's, especially since my daddy died of one when he was 51. That's right, people, 51.  Mama died at 60 of a system infection that came from having her stomach lining cauterized repeatedly due to it being eroded away from the 87,000 or so different kinds of prescription medications she took in her life, so I'm not only an orphan, but I'm an orphan with one of those "dying early" legacies; one I have no intention of carrying out.  So Ken (that was my friend's name) used to say, "Are you enjoying your depression or do you want to do something about it?"

Now Ken had the capacity to be a smart ass, but he wasn't employing it when he asked that question of his patients and once, of me.  He truly wanted to know because he was wise enough of a man not only to have me as a friend (good move on anyone's part, let me tell you), but also to know that every so often when you are having a bad streak, you need to just put on your prettiest dress and your party panties and go fling yourself down in a mud puddle had have a good, wailing cry, the "I'm gonna eat some worms" routine.

After my second marriage to the same guy ended early on in 1996, I worked like mad to get my life to a good place and keep it there.  It wasn't so much a "living well is the best revenge" thing, but more of a "living well is, well, living well" thing.  I'd been miserable and broke and had a bad case of the "can't help it's" for a long time and I just decided that no matter what it took, I was going to work up the life I really wanted for myself...and I did it.  Of course, there were things that went wrong, but there's always gonna be and when a person resigns themselves to the fact that bumps and potholes are a normal part of the human existence, you can endure them better.  That helps you to be good with that whole idea of life being a wheel and sometimes you're on top of the wheel, looking down, King of all you survey and sometimes, you're on the bottom of the wheel, getting splattered with the mud and looking up at the jackals on top and wishing you were up there with them and sometimes, more rarely, you're under the wheel and the whole weight of it is bearing down on you and you're face is in the mud and your back is being crushed and you just want to die.

The good news is that the ol' wheel just keeps turning and pretty soon, you're on top again if you just brace yourself and wait it out.   The best you can hope for is to not do any damage when you're under the wheel that you're going to regret when you're on top again.

That all being the case, sometimes, when you're waiting, you just have to have a little tantrum to let off some steam and that's about where I am these days.

There are lots of things in particular and everything in general that has me blue.  Yes, I got myself to a good place and enjoyed my life thoroughly, but due to some choices I made that I don't really regret overall, it's not where I am right now. 

Ken also taught me about the Laws of Existentialism, only three of which I can remember (there were 5) and I think he might have actually made them up because I can't find anything about the specific ones he mentioned online:

1) You can't have everything you want all at once.   No matter how happy you are at any given point in your life, there will always be something missing, whether it's something you actively want or something your spirit wants and you have resigned yourself to not having because you think you can't.

2)  You can't have everything you want sequentially.  Even if you get what you want one thing after another after another, because your life changes when you get things you want, you might find that you no longer want the things you thought you wanted or else you develop new things you want as a result/outcropping of the things you wanted and got.

3)  Every choice is bittersweet.   We make choices, big and small, all through the day and every single time we do, we give up a lot of other things as a result.  If we go into Coldstone (mmmm, Coldstone...) and choose the caramel turtle surprise, we don't get the other flavors of ice cream available.  It doesn't mean that we aren't full; just that sometimes, we're thinking some strawberry might have been nice as well.  If we choose to marry the love of our lives, there are distinct benefits to being single that we surrender.  If we move to Grizzly Flats, it's wonderful and healing, but we also have to drive 20+ minutes to get a gallon of milk. 

I have often thought about those principles and applied them in my life.  If we are constantly lusting after the things we can't have, no matter what they are, we live a life that is unfulfilled because by the basic nature of life, there will always be things we do not have, therefore, we are never really satisfied. 

On the other hand, if we become too complacent with how our lives are and what we have, we can become stagnated and never grow or aspire to have more or be more or different.  There's such a fine line in becoming peaceful with our place in the world and what we are able to accomplish versus becoming dim-eyed and lackluster, unwilling to learn more or be more or do more in this world.

Rarely is anything acquired without a sacrifice of some kind; it is just to us to decide whether the purchase is worth the payment required.  The biggest problem is that sometimes situations are wrapped up and marketed nicely, but you get them home and open them up and find out they're not what you expected.

So I'm sitting in my mud puddle, having a little snit, mostly because I'm running my ass all over the place all the time and never have alone time or time to write any more and I miss both of those things dreadfully.  I have no me time, no non-kid time and no quiet time whatsoever and as I have gotten older, my little spirit just shrivels up and dies without those. 

I love my kiddies to death and one of the best things I did was to raise people I like to talk to and spend time with, but I also like my time alone and that just isn't happening. 

Like yesterday:  I had to be at the post office at 7:45am to begin a training day (one of many).  At 11am, after sorting many thousands of pieces of mail, I started sorting and pulling down from the casement the mail for my mail route.  Then I delivered the top part of Grizzly Flat Road and left the remainder for Eric to deliver because he drives right past those houses doing the Somerset route. I raced home and hit the computer and spent the next two hours pasting little black dots onto tiny bingo cards to create the list of 10 games we were going to play at Bingo that night.  They look like this:

And yes, every one of those little frickin dots have to be pasted onto the blank card one at a time.  Not to mention that I have to try and figure out Bingo configurations that use all letters:

Because if I don't and there are rows that aren't used (like the B&O Railroad pattern where you only do the B row and the O road), then the callers have to remember not to call any numbers that are in the I, N or G rows and if they forget, the players fuss at them and then the callers get upset and all kinds of Bingo Melee breaks out.  I'm seriously running out of patterns here.  There are only so many things you can do with 25 dots.

Got the dots done and hurried over to the school to meet Robin there and get things set up for Bingo.  An hour and a half later, I still wasn't done, but I had to go take one of Delena's friends down to the Somerset store to meet up with her mother so she could go home after staying the night with us.  I got her delivered somewhat on time and then ran out to Holiday to pick up some essentials.  Got home, snipped up some rotisserie chicken and dumped out some cole slaw, French rolls and jojo potatoes for the family to eat and then hurried back to the school by 5pm to finish setting up before people arrived at 5:30.

I got done just a breath of an instant before arrivals, then came the actual Bingo event, which is always great fun and I left there at 9:30, came home, sat in the spa with Eric unable to aptly (to the male mind, anyway) articulate my frustration, cried a bit, then went to bed. 

That is exactly how my days have been lately...every day.

There is no time to exercise unless I wake up even earlier to do it and if I do that, I am going to ripen and rot on the vine.

There is no time to write, except today, which is a lovely oasis in the Land of Busy, for which I am truly grateful.

Tomorrow looks very similar to yesterday, except that I work in the afternoon, then hurry off to Burger Night to help set up and work the bake sale and the serving line. 

In addition to all of that going on, my cat, one of my favorites, has been missing for about 4 days, which all of you can figure out is not good at all.  He's young and healthy, but so are mountain lines, skunks and dogs around here.  The biggest concern would not likely be any injuries he sustained in a fight, but probably dehydration if he can't get to water.

If you have seen a largish blue-grey, very handsome neutered mail cat, his mama misses him.  Nah, I don't hold out hope, but I sure do miss that fella.

The happiest thing that has happened this week, other than the obvious things of my kids being healthy and happy and no life or limb injuries occurring, is that my friend, Jackie, left some really whorey looking shoes for me and Lord (and Jackie) knows I love me some good whore shoes, especially ones like these that are comfortable.  I must speak to her about getting a pair in every single color of the rainbow.

You just can't have too many pairs of whore shoes and that, my friends, is a full on natural fact.

I am looking out onto next week, which is another sea of activity, as is the next one, and trying not to be overly depressed.  No, it is not the quiet, sedate life I chose and manufactured for myself, but it's what I've been called to do for the time being and I am working to make my peace with it.  July is just a monster of a month as far as things going on and it is my hope that August 1st will bring the beginning of the quiet for me.

Yes, my GFORCE girlfriends and I will be planning Founders Day (Sept 22, mark your calendars), but we are experts at such things now, plus we have the Queen Mothers to help us out and that is just a Godsend of astronomical proportions, so I know it will be tons easier (and more fun) than last year.

Other than that and my birthday coming up (and Dylan's and Nathan's), I am seriously looking toward some life mellowing.

I was thinking today about all of this in connection with the Summer Solstice, which is today if you happen to live under a rock and are not aware of such things.

The Moon is considered to be a feminine element and the Sun is considered to be a masculine element, so if we look at the energy that is around this time when the Sun is at its strongest and the masculine energy of the year is peaking, it would make sense that what we would be called to do is to reflect that masculine energy in some way.  Historically, men are the hunter/gatherers, so going out there in the world and being busy is I guess, historically, a man thing. 

It then stands to reason that the Winter Solstice, when the Sun is at its time of the year when it is most hidden, would be the strongest female energy when we stay inside with hearth and home, healing, eating good food, sharing stories and company and nurturing one another while the snow falls and the roads are impassable. 

I have to say, it never fails to impress me how the hand of God guides us through the seasons and cycles that have been laid out before us, worn into the fabric of time like wagon ruts by those who experienced them for decades and even centuries before us.  I have long believed that there are currents of behaviors natural to humans that follow the agricultural seasons, even if we do not literally farm.  It's a collective, genetic knowledge that has been made indigenous to humans and when we find that flow and follow it through our lives, it puts us more in tune with Nature and The Universe and as a result, more in touch with our own human spirits and with God.   

My instinct, given that knowledge, is to step up to the plate and "take it like a man," since this is the time of the High Sun, the longest day of the year when masculine energy is at its strongest.  I should stop whining and just do what needs to be done with a joyful heart and willing hands, grateful for the opportunity to serve and be a part of our world.

Maybe tomorrow.  Right now, I'm going to fight the urge to drive myself over to Liz Lawless' house and beg her for a frozen Neiman Marcus bar that I know for a fact she has in her freezer for Burger Night tomorrow.  She'd give it to me too, I know, but I still can't understand how that 2-3 ounce bar turns to 2-3 pounds once it gets to my ass.

So I'd better not.

I'll eat worms instead.

Be particular,