April 4, 2011 - Courage My Love

It's April. Who said that April is the cruelest month? T.S. Eliott comes to mind. I feel like checking my armpits for moss, it is so sadly wet and dreary here, I am feeling something akin to practicing Hari Kari with a dull kitchen implement, like a wooden spoon. OMG where in fucking hell is the sun. Is this some perverse ecological fallout from the earthquake? Can't be, it has been cloudy and raining since last September I am sure.

On a more positive note, it did not rain on Saturday, so I managed to work on the garden a bit. It's a tiny garden but looks promising, as any garden does in spring. I dug it all up, got rid of all the weedy things. Then I had a surprise, Cindy dropped over with a truck load of stuff she pulled out of her garden for us. Stuff that had mulitplied. I got a bunch of iris's, a peony, some shasta daisies, bluebells, hosta and even a lilac bush. Not so much for the garden but for the yard. Great stuff. In the house I have started the little peat pots with peppers, tomatoes, zuchinni and egg plant. I also have spinach, garlic, onions and carrots ready to plant, I think it is a tad too early. I have never successfully started tomatoes from seed, but I have no great garden ego to satisy, I'm quite willing to go buy fully formed bedding plants if these little fuckers don't grow.

On Sunday I went and picked up a friend of Andrea's to come and visit for the day. That was a load. This woman is about 68 and acts and giggles like a 10 year old. Taxes my patience a lot. I am trying to not over react, just because I am not the huggy join a club type does not mean Andrea has to be punished for my lack of willingness to interact with most of the human race.

Mostly I spent the weekend reading, I have "discovered" a new author. Well, he isn't new but he is fabulous. I hadn't read him before so I went and got all of his books that were in the library and read them. John Shannon. He writes mystery/detective type books, not the ones all caught up in police procedures and CSI, just a guy solving a puzzle. His lead character is Jack Liffey (yes I caught the reference to the rivers of Ireland right away as well as the Jack-John relationship). Jack is as imperfect a human being as they make, he can't maintain a relationship (except with his daughter), he has been known to abuse substances and he often misjudges situations. All that aside, he is strong, even when he isn't, and noble, even when he thinks he isn't and best of all, he grows and changes from book to book.

The books are gritty and real, set in LA and not always in the nicest parts of LA. I did something I have never done in my entire life. I was looking him up on the web and found his website, it said "send a message" and so I did. I must have sounded like the biggest wannabe loser fan, but I just really wanted this guy to know his books were really really good and that someone appreciated them.

Well, fuck me gently, if he doesn't email me back! I was gobsmacked to say the least. How nice a gesture.

So now I am at work, and it is deadly quiet. The crew is out in the yard, moving crap from point A to point B and there is FA for me to do. I could go watch them, but it would only make them uncomfortable and bore me even further.

I am seeing the pipeline from the far east drying up, the vehicles from Japan are still arriving, but very few in number, and the calendar is looking empty. The Koreans are still shipping in healthy numbers, I think we will see a big impact on North American markets before long. It is shocking how much we buy from Japan and China. It used to be a sign that something was cheap if it said "Made in Japan" but now it means luxury cars with big price tags on them, and not just that, but all the electronics, most of the appliances, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Everyone rode the gravey train to offshore for producing goods (we all wanted everything cheaper) and it has come to the point where we produce nothing, or very little. I probably won't know in my lifetime whether this was a good thing or a bad thing to do, we will have lost the ability to "make" things here, at least at a price anyone would pay. In return, we have cheaper goods, long supply lines and this vulnerability in our economy if something happens "offshore". Have our expectations for a good lifestyle grown out of all proportion to our ability to create it here?

Look back at what our parents had, and then look at our generation, and then our children's and then their children's. My parents were major blue collar, we had nothing luxurious in our house. Our car lasted forever, we had hardwood floors instead of wall to wall, we had a fridge with a little freezer up top. Kids shared bedrooms and there was ONE tv in the house.

My generation went way over board, we bought everything, a big house, big cars, fancy everything and strangely enough, our children do not value it. My kids would be as happy living in a tent. They do however have a love affair with electronic gadgets and take everything I grew up without, as a given. They make less money than we do, do not care that they make less money and do not find having money as an admirable goal. What will their children be like?

Do you ever dream of being able to live your life over (with the adage of knowing what you know now?). Yes we would all buy microsoft stock, or better yet, apple stock. Seriously I wonder what decisions I would make that would be different from the ones I did make. I certainly don't regret any thing I did, or I wouldn't have ended up as the same person (then again I might have ended up a better person).

There should be a Do-Over lottery, where you buy a ticket and you win a chance to do it all over again. A Back to the Future ticket, back to 1957 and hula hoops and skorts and being 5 again. I think living in the past tense or the future imperfect takes courage my love...