Random Musings With a Sprinkling of Redneck

I was at the post office last week, and there was an older lady there. I'll call her Ruby. Now Ruby is a sweet woman, she is, but she's known for being a little off-kilter. On this particular day, Ruby was freaking out because she thought someone had stolen her sweater from her at the post office. Now this is a small town, and our post office is VERY small. Everyone is pretty much elbow-to-elbow, and no one had seen a sweater or a thief. At first people were trying to help her but as she became more and more hysterical, they began to back off. Now during all this, I was actually the one at the counter struggling to make a decision about whether to send book rate or first class, but all the while taking this situation in. By the time I finished, she'd taken off down the sidewalk still hollering about life's injustices.

People began to chuckle and shake their heads, like you do with a child who overreacts to something, but the situation really struck me because what I saw in that woman's eyes was fear. She was truly afraid. Her reality at that moment was that someone was out to get her (and her sweater), and that we were all in on it. And as ridiculously untrue as it was, it felt so real to her. It made me so sad because it reminds me of the way so many people go through their lives. Lots of people live in fear, not just due to mental health problems, but just due to ignorance. People are freaking out about their taxes because they don't understand them, and it's just so sad. Now I'm not normally a gloom and doom gal, but as the election looms closer and closer, I see fewer people educating themselves about the issues yet learning more and more about the swirling rumors of Britney's diagnosis. Why is that?

So as I'm pondering these issues like a pompous ass, I began to read this book BLUE LIKE JAZZ. It's amazing, really. You should know that it's a Christian memoir, kind of the male version of GIRL MEETS GOD (and fabulous book about the meshing of Judaism and Christianity and graduate student lifestyle). Anyway, the first part of the book talks about personal responsibility. This quote on page 23 really struck me between the eyes, "Nothing is going to change in the Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror." I felt like it was such a message to me about that situation that had weighed so heavily on my mind. I wanted to dwell on other people, people who don't take their responsibilities as a voting citizen seriously, etc., but what I really need to do is work on my own darn self. Hmmm.

So now it's time for something redneck. I can't even remember what it was going to be. So I'm going to tell you a big redneck secret. Tonight I fed the kids dinner early, so I could take my son to baseball practice. My husband wasn't even home from work when we ate a salad, green peas, pasta and sausage and peppers. I took all the remaining food and made a big beautiful plate for my husband and left it on the table for him with his drink and the mail and so on, so maybe he wouldn't feel so lonely when he came home to an empty house. Anyway, I returned from baseball practice much later to find my husband with a nearly empty plate. "Great dinner, sweetie, but are we vegetarians now?" Apparently he'd had pasta, salad, peppers and peas. I had left him a ton of Italian sausage, but I shrugged it off and called the boys for their bath. My ES came in and said, "Max (the dog) must have gotten into something because he has terrible gas." And I realized, Max must have neatly eaten every little sausage off my husband's plate before my husband came home. I saw no need to mention it to anyone but you. Have a great night! xoxox