Crickets and Tumbleweeds

It’s been awhile since I’ve spent any real time here.  I know.  I’ve tossed up a couple of poems just for the right to lie to myself and say I’ve done something with it.  But I haven’t.  On your side of my computer it’s been little more than crickets and tumbleweeds and from over there it probably seems as if all has been quiet in my little corner of the world.  I can assure you, that assumption is flat out wrong.  

About five months ago LIFE staggered up my front steps (kinda like some punch-drunk boxer who mistook hallucinogens for steroids), rang the bell and began swinging at about 90 miles an hour from 12 different directions as soon as I opened the door. From then on it’s been a whole-lotta “NOT FUN”.

If I wanted to be perceived as sensitive human being and not taint anyone's bubble with my “not very positive” experiences of the past few months (which tend to rub up against their delusion that LIFE is WONDERFUL) I’m supposed to say LIFE has been more good then bad of late.  (Don’t believe it.  What it’s been is varying degrees of “are you freaking kidding me!? Is it ever going to stop!?”.)

Some hits landed what I will call ‘easy’ because, all in all, life happens.  Cars broke down ($4000.00 way down), cats got sick (way sick - nothing like cat yak at 3am, right?  Try it nearly every day for a month - we’re talking around a $800.00 worth of vet bills), appliances went into the Great Beyond forcing us to pay for their more expensive, less reliable replacements (because in this country we build things with an eye towards forced financial returns instead of quality), this year's allotment of Christmas love set us back another $1500.00 dollars (trust me, we have A LOT of grandchildren), emotional storms of self-doubt, depression, and worry have either been circumnavigated with something other than grace and nobility or have managed to send everything into a nosedive for days at a time.  Disappointments have flared, died and flared again. Like I said - the easy punches...

Other strikes were more than a tad beyond hard.  The lingering embers of family friction started several, nasty little fires (and one whopping, big one that had everyone in tears.)  Ghosts stirred in the shadows, refusing to go lay down and allow themselves to be buried in the cemetery of distant memories.  Friendships died (this went VERY NOT-WELL).  Various tribal members ran into their own nasty versions of LIFE-ness and called seeking support, love, or just a place to cry.  Death even breezed through (the Bastard), stopping long enough to pick up a dear friend on His way out (which really, really rocketed things to a whole ‘nother level of THIS SUCKS.)  And to top it all off the “Nightmare Neanderthal Carnival” of the “Who-Can-Ride-The-Hate-Train-To-The-White House” election season spiraled things straight down into the 9th circle of Hell.

And so here we are - the bell has rung yet again and we, tired, staggered and more than a little bloody, are wobbling back towards the middle of the ring.  Why?  Well, it’s 7 degrees outside and the furnace has died.  It is no more.  It has passed on, moved behind the veil, crossed over, tripped to the Otherside, chosen to return to the ranks of those seeking reincarnation and joined the Choir Invisible.  (My tribute to Monty Python there.) Now, at this point I should be done.  I should be screaming curses at the ceiling.  I should be sobbing, scrambling on my hands and knees searching for any stray bullets that might have rolled under my bed in a bid to opt out of this particular, prolonged visit from LIFE.  But I’m not.  

I’m hanging sheets in my living room to create a fort around the single space heater we have because the repairman can’t come until sometime tomorrow (maybe).  I’m counting furry noses and courting my menagerie of pets to see how many I can squeeze into my bed to help us all stay warm.   I’m joking about Eskimos, arctic date nights and ice cream.  I’m bouncing around pointing out the newly discovered benefits of hot flashes and thanking the Gods that be that I am not living a thousand years ago when all that would stand between me and a frozen death was a cave and a wooly mammoth pelt.

To most people this may seem nuts - like certifiable, padded room, lithium kool-aid kinda crazy.  But for me it’s the only alternative.  It’s either scramble for a different perspective, find a way to take it in stride and laugh or start digging a grave.  Because, let’s face it, life is wonderful, but LIFE SUCKS as well.

But then, it’s supposed to.  I really believe that.  It has to.  Otherwise, being here is pointless.  I mean, who grows, reaches higher, pushes deeper and changes when everything is flat, even and on course?  No one. Least of all me.  Complacency is a coma-inducing drug.  It lulls us into doing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, challenging nothing. Certainly not ourselves. It’s the blue screen of death, the red ring of doom.  There is no life in it. And there certainly isn’t any security to be found there.  Just look at what happens when something goes out of sync.  People freak.  They turn panicked, nasty, demanding, hateful, fearful, selfish…

On my side of the screen successful existence is all about learning adaptability.  It’s figuring out how to ride that board until the waves stop or crawling down the cliff with my fingers and toes when I run out of rope.  It’s about finding a way to be better, braver and stronger than anything LIFE can throw at me and mine.  Not that I always manage to do it well.  I don't.  In fact, there have been several times when I very nearly gave up when I got knocked down.  But I didn't. And I don't.  I always, always found a way to take it in and get back up.

Of course, sometimes to do that I have to scrape a few other things off my plate and make room to focus.  Such as avoiding certain folks who need more than I can give at the time (this is called making myself a priority).  Maybe canceling plans with a friend because I need every ounce of strength to get through some Dark Night of the Soul (because, let's face it - I'd be miserable company anyway). Or spending the two days it takes to write and edit pieces for this blog that would center around the latest disaster that I am trying to recover from (kinda like this one did).  

So, there you have it.  "Why I've been gone" mingled with a bit of "how I'm working my way through it" fashioned into a sort of half-assed apology for not being here lately sans the lie that I will do better in the future.  Because that's not going to happen.  I try really hard to be realistic.  Which dictates this is inevitable.  All hell will break loose, the creek will dry up, the dust will blow over the foot prints, the shutters will swing in a dry, hot wind, and the crickets will be wrangling the tumbleweeds across the screen once more.  And when that happens, try to ride it out and laugh...