In Which Our Heroine Lets Off Steam

If I had blinked, I would have missed out on May entirely. It flew by in a haze of puppy watching, working too much, sleeping too little and next to no art making. I'm worn out, like 'stick a fork in me and then leave me alone and don't ever talk to me again' tired. There have been good things and bad, but mostly it's been a blur of monotonous puttering about with the occasional ache to write or draw something, which inevitably leads to me staring at a blinking cursor or blank page for an hour before giving up.

Does that happen to anyone else? When you've been ground down, emptied out or are just so sapped that you end up in an unresponsive funk? It's frustrating. No, let me rephrase. It's extremely frustrating to want so badly to do the things you enjoy and that make you tick only to discover that you only have just enough energy to eat, pet the fur babies and kiss your lover before you pass out for the night. I don't know how people live with this sort of schedule and feel fulfilled in any way shape or form. How in the seven hells do you work full time (which I'm not supposed to since I'm a 20 hr employee, but seem to do all the fucking time), take care of your home, your garden, your family, your very needy baby (fur or human), sleep enough and still find time for yourself and the things that make your soul sing? HOW? It seems impossible to do all of those things and still maintain a legitimately happy quality of life, unless you're immune to needing sleep.

Then again, I could just be extra curmudgeonly because I typically get that way when I'm cut off from my spiritual avenues and spend too much time in this ridiculous society of ours, where everyone wants everything to have happened yesterday. Before they even knew they wanted it. I find that among my peers, I'm sort of a whack job oddball in the way I view life, the universe and everything. For instance, and please hold on to your seats, I'm not a huge fan of technology. I often feel like instead of bringing us closer together, more often than not technology drives us apart. How often have you found out about important stuff via text message or worse, Facebook, rather than someone calling you? How many times have you dealt with the rude jackass who's on their cell phone in line, in a museum, anywhere where it will annoy the people around them? That's not to say I hate all of it. Do I enjoy blogging and meeting people? Having information at my fingertips? Yes, I do. But do I see a need to carry the internet around in my pocket so I can check Facebook or my email a million times a day, or so I can constantly be on top of every breaking news piece? No, I have the ability to unplug and walk away and in fact I hate that my cell phone provider is moving into the land of smart phones only. I don't want one and I'm not paying for one. And please, don't get me started on my views on television and couch potatoes, or television as a baby sitter, or television as the only thing you do with your significant other because I will rant and rave for hours and possibly days on how fucked up and lazy people have gotten in the past 20 years. But day in and day out, I meet these people and am forced to listen to them complain about how they didn't overdraft their accounts, someone else did it... yet when asked if they paid a $300 cell phone bill or spent $200 at a restaurant they say 'yes.'

I go to a job twice as often as I signed up to be there because we are perpetually understaffed and I like the two ladies I work with and hate that they're being screwed over too, to be told by managers and their managers and their manager's managers that we need to 'step up our game' and talk these people who are too busy talking on their phones and being rude or are hundreds of dollars in the red into getting new accounts. How about, thanks for coming in and not quitting despite the fact that we've been screwing you for over a year? No? Then this bitch isn't selling a damn thing. This bitch wants time to get into the woods, to spend with her gods, family and friends, to get into the garden so she can grow her own food and not rely on others, to scribble and read and get a full night's sleep.

Some will ask, why not just quit? Theoretically, I could. We could scrape by on one income and I could be home 24/7. However, we own a home where things sometimes break, we own a car that will require maintenance and repairs and we have the devil that plagues seemingly every 20 something I know looming over us; student debt. My income is digging us out of the hole and going into savings to maintain our home and vehicle. We don't live lavishly or above our means, yet two incomes is a necessity right now if we want to reduce our bills. And so, I stick it out while looking in this ridiculously glum job market for something that I might actually enjoy and where I'll be treated like a person and not a fucking automaton.

On the bright and shiny side, I have the next 11 days off. I had scheduled a vacation to go home to New Jersey, but Luna is a bit too young to make the trip and I'm not about to kennel the poor thing right now so I'm having a stay-cation. My new manager said not leaving town on vacation means I'm 'on call' this week... I told him if he calls me I'll quit then and there; I'm a bank teller not emergency personnel. I plan to soak up some sun, snooze in my hammock with a book of some sort next to me, go hiking, weed and prune my poor gardens, try to revive my poor roses, make art and recharge my batteries. I plan to use these 11 days to get back to myself.

P.S. If you made it through this, thank you. It's been building for a while with no real outlet save general grumpiness.

P.P.S. Roses. Anyone have them? Anyone good at keeping them? I have these two roses that bloomed beautifully last year, all giant deep red flowers and luscious green leaves. This year, the roses came out, got nailed by heavy rains and then stark hot sun and died within a week. The bushes themselves looks like sad sticks and the leaves are sort of dry with spots that signify, as far as I can tell, black spot. I plan to treat the black spot but is there anything else I can do to revive and help the poor things? I feel like the worst plant momma ever this year, with so little time to spend caring for everyone. *sigh*