Maybe I have lived here for too long.
Yesterday, for four hours I was jumped by a throng of strangers, all so uninterested and needy, or interested yet plainly unaware of what is going on around them.
Vacationers, O I despise you.

You crowd my counter with your elbows and eyeballs, you dance from foot to foot as you impatiently wait for the string of five orders you bark at me, you glare at and judge the people in line with you, you feel entitled to more baristas in the room so that you don't have to live in the same sense of time as the "locals" here do.
You lean in close to my face as if I have any reason to give a good goddamn and say to me, enchanted with the sound of your own voice, make me a cappuccino, a little on the dry side.

The first wound comes when they frown at me and ask where Lenane is. Well, DitchWitch, she went home when my shift started. FOOOCK. Didn't their mothers or the bear whom they were raised by ever tell them how RUDE that is?

Anyway, yesterday I discovered that I genuinely hate people in general.
And sorry, but lofty pregnant bellies, or those mothers with squealers strapped to their bodies, always acting like I should greet the gremlin too, or comment on how cute it is are my absolute least favorite.
Well, no, I do not think it is cute- I think it is a mini you, entitled to all the consumption and pollution the world has to offer. Good for you, you got knocked up. I swear breeding has taken on a feel of fadishness now that we have so many fancy methods of contraception. Like it's some blessing in the eyes of anyone but the overproud mother when another child is pooped out... come on, we can be honest, its 2011.

Creeps.
My paycheck sucks whether I make more coffee or less coffee. You can shove your dirty mean tip money in your rear.
My boss loves them all like they are her children.
She told me how to educate and barrate them as they order, telling them a double americano is too weak for a 16 oz cup. Really yndy? You don't think these helpless morons have ever ordered coffee before? You don't think that they know what they like? Even if they don't know what they are doing, you really think they want to be pushed around like that?
Maybe there is some kind of upper hand to be had, and I have to be pushy, obnoxious and entertaining. Outgoing, I think they call it.
Ah fuck.
I make good espresso.
I am not Steve Martin, or Big Bird- I do not sing and dance, I do not want to know your favorite movie or your child's favorite color.
Just tell me how you like your coffee, if you like it where the sun don't shine, I'd be happy to make that happen for you.

I dreamed that Bones was being chased by a child on a four wheeler, cornered into tight places to be ran over. I tried to keep him inside. Fred doesn't seem to care that these aliens don't understand the concept of a loved, indoor-out door pet cat. They probably stole Tibbs, or ran him over, thinking these streets are paved just for their SUV.
My dogs don't listen to me, so I have to chase them down and drag them back home by their collars, forced to chit chat and fake smile at the part time neighbors. I hate that.
I would rather forage the beach approach for washed up seal ass than share a grocery store with these folk.

So here we are, it's almost six am.
If you know me, you know that the only reason I am ever alive this early lay in some form of emotional tempest. Now I get to spend an extra three hours dreading the noon hour, which will be the first time I have ever dreaded going to my new job. hmmm.

Writing it all down is perhaps therapeutic to me, I am sure it is lame and negative to anyone happening upon it.
But this is not one of the situations when I feel fire is necessary. (Times when I need to write secret or very personal things, I light a big fire and burn the writing, also therapeutic for moi.)
This is one of those times, I hope the wiser ones can look back on their past and laugh a little, and relate.
I also really really really hope that somebody stranger to me reads this and is offended, hurt and compelled by this, as would complete the cycle of feeling and saying and doing mean things. What?

Mean things are part of the balance. Some damn things are mean without ever suppose-to being mean in the first place... if you follow.
Variety is the spice, my loves.
When I am in the proximity and sort of relationship with a person, when I like a person, and they are honestly just good and pissed off- spewing negative vibes and all this- I am interested, I show that I care.
I'm not saying that it is something I can keep up with if someone I care about is always good and angry, but with a good mix of other such emotions, anger can draw from yourself- or the folks around you all sorts of reactions, gestures, an over all expansion of awareness and understanding.
I have to focus on keeping my mean within the bounds of a cycle, and not one of those slinky coil thinga-ma-bobs. A person has to be creative sometimes, in order to keep the variety of things well balanced.

It's kind of a big deal, for a person to hate their job, so I am going to really try to think about just how much energy I can put into it. If I can't do a really good job of hating my job, I have no business hating my job, and shall cease pouring energy down the toilet doing so.  and  I will need to learn how to leave my hating behind me when I come home, which is becoming more difficult to do as I begin to feel like I am growing younger by the years, instead of older.

There is room for all.
If my destiny is to be the uncivilized, socially awkward, baby hating shy ass-hole in the corner, so be it.
I will start my degree to become a teacher just as soon as I get fired.

Randomnesses

Themes of Life as of late:

Wake up slowly.
Wear soft, thick socks, or slippers when you go to pour your coffee and start the fire. Stare into the flames well after it has taken off, or at wall for a good ten minutes before you pay attention to the train cars of thought beginning to zoom through your waking brain.

Slow down, always, slow down.
Allow for slow processing time, the result will less stressful and more direct.

Take time off.
First day of the weekend, tell everyone you've made plans. Wear disguises in public if needed to keep people from distracting you from your meandering day. Stay in pajamas, or shower and dress elaborately in evening wear- spend as much time as you want doing what ever it is that you want. However, knowing yourself, you should do something.

Don't let old hippie guys flatter you, they just want to cop a feel.

Don't let it bother you when people tell you that you should go to college, have three jobs and contribute regularly to an IRA, most likely, they are barfing up sentimental hooey and understand that they like you just like you are, and they hate admitting to themselves that you, at your lowly post, can get along just frickin fine.

If happiness is something that is important to you, sort it out for yourself before you go looking for it in other people. People put this off into the wee hours of their years, for when they cash in the 401K and tend to become madly, madly cranky.

TV is greedy entertainment, books are active, mind expanding tools and they are entertaining. When you can't read, listen to the written word. Watch how your imagination grows and edits the archetypal stories for your own psyche.

You must water the garden, not just sow the seeds, in order for it to give you delicious and sustaining food.

Though so terribly often misunderstood, quiet, too is a virtue.

Laying down in a bed of manure

Mycelium running is a book in the store that i've been flipping through when I'm so bored, I willingly read books about how mushrooms save the world. Bradley's garden is as full of different kinds of mushrooms in the fall and winter as it is of flowers and herbs in the spring and summer: all thanks to the constant applications of horse shit his beds receive all year.
Over the past thirty some-days, I've gone from feeling confident and excited about my job to viewing it as a temporary gig as the shop is bleeding funds, and something that I feel bad for having, as I do more knitting on the clock than coffee girl stuff. I've gone from feeling grateful and blessed by new enthusiasm and understanding about my romantical relationship to wanting to run fast away from it, far enough to be gone by the time I come to my senses. I felt so content with my relationships with my family, so uplifted after seeing them all for mother's day, but now, I feel heart broken at the distance between us, the time between encounters.
To be honest, I don't know what it is, or was, that dumped a pile of poop on my parade.
I ducked out of the friday 13th open mic night, saying that my uterus was cramping my style- but really, I'm feeling like I Hate the sound of my own voice, and while the encouragement from lovelies all over was lovely- is lovely, I do not enjoy singing or pretending to want to be a musician as much as I just wanted to have a thing.
I just wanted to stick it in the earth like a compliment lightning rod, like a premade box so that I could be categorized by people more easily.

I feel a fight with 'red coming up. Its been building for a while as it tends to when I feel crampy and do not keep up on the dishes and entertaining him with compliments and attention. < a note here, how the eff do you people stay married for so long when everyone is constantly feeling either un appreciated, or like the work horse or like the maid?> He found my covert internet research on narcissistic emotional vampires, and how to love them. I think it hurt his feelings because he brought them back onto the browser and left them there for me to find.
My beautiful parents remember my remorse upon getting caught. I feel like hiding, but I don't know when he'll be home, so I could be in for a long, ridiculous crouch in the closet or car on the beach.
I don't even know how to have this conversation.
So I think you're in love with yourself. Maybe I'm inlove with Myself- and I'm just deflecting because I have nothing better to talk about and the sound of your voice all the time talking about your kickassness makes me feel threatened?
What do I look like, the goddamn wizard of Oz?

I listen to Cracker play Get Off This, and I have to say, what I just wrote about music is cranky and incomplete. I want to crawl into the fibers of music and live there. The world of sound is more real to me than the bed of manure I'm choosing to lie in now.

This too shall pass.
Even when it feels so familiar, and we get flashes of past failure in our intuition, this is a new moment.
I believe we live in many dimensions always weaving them together. I believe the work is made from the stuff of nature, which heals it's self, and which does not interfere with things like the freedom to choose. Our choices make dropped stitches, different patterns, new and unimaginable shapes. But the stuff of nature facilitates and inspires. Nature comes at you on it's own terms, and doesn't mind if you do not agree with it, but it will mend the work, and continue to keep the fabric alive even when you are not able to.
My cappuccino friend likes to speak of these things as one river, any time we start to get into the big ideas about life and all that shit, he grunts and huffs something about me being on a completely different parta' tha' river. "Yeeah". He gets my fiber analogy though.

Maybe Fred will someday look back and say, that chick had a point. And I now know how to better communicate my loving feelings toward my ladyfriend.
Maybe he will always refer to me as That crazy you-know-what, which I am sure is how most of my use to be's do.
Maybe we can shed our egos tonight and just be around each other like the old days.
I'm sure he will be tired and cranky as I am, as he was shoveling horse poo all day in the humid breeze-lessness.

Maggie has been ever so neglected lately, and staying home while we all leave to play. Maybe I will take advantage of our seasonally lingering afternoon glare, and take her for a little walk to the beach!

What would Larry do?

My kitten buddy, mouse/snake/bird-er (Big Mighty Hunter), cuddle toy, smile maker, bad day better-er, you get the point- my Cat, is GONE!

Of course I've been sobbing, and casting my stubborn, un-realistic terrible mood over my whole life and the whole world.
I've actually burned out sort of early. There is another thing to be said about getting older.
My patterns don't hold my interest for as long anymore.

Now, I am getting ready for the next part, what ever that is.

And tomorrow is my Saturday, and I got paid today.
So, life goes on and it is time yet again to create a masterpiece of a grocery list, one so strategic, Grandma will be proud.
Last time, I fed us with two hundred dollars worth of groceries for two weeks!

I have become obsessed with re purposing meals, or elements of them.
The last weeks have been full of revelations. I have always read that you should stock up on things like pasta and canned goods and dried beans when they are on sale or in bulk even if you don't think you need them, but this is just a darn inescapable truth on the way to thrifty home eating.

I made sure to budget in a whole chicken, a large beef roast, and a ham last time, which was a bulk of the bill, but those critter pieces and a chance tube of ground beef was the only meat I needed to buy, so I focused on the other elements of limitless possibilities.

We had a beef, mushroom and pea pie with a creamy gravy mixed in from that roast and little fried meat pies.
We had spaghetti and left over spaghetti fritatta for breakfast one day from on sale five lb ground beef, as well as hamburgers, and meatballs which I added sausage to. Also, tamale pie, a first time dish for me. So that's four meals from the five lbs.
The chicken was gone fast the day I roasted it, but I made stock from it for chicken and dumplings, and split pea soup which I made with the left over ham.
I made hash with the left overs from the ham and the last of the potatoes with our freaking awesome caste iron grinder.

Of all of my favorite things to cook, I think the weird ones I make up when I have lots of left overs at hand are IT!

Alas, where would I be without bulk pasta for lazy days of instant gratification when all you want is pasta covered in bacon fat,egg and cheese?
Or the can of condensed cream-of-something soup, generic brand is fine with me-?
And, we shan't forget the on sale bags of frozen peas- of which, I have a stock that would make Costco blush.

Tiberious