I’ve stared at my coffee cup for 13 minutes. I watched the little cream swirl swirl. Until it stopped. Which is when I gave myself permission to drink my coffee.
I haven’t googled anyone. I thought my son having a life I know nothing of would trigger me to want to google the heck out of him. Then I would just google others. Old boyfriends. People from high school. People from grade school. People from other people’s high schools. My ex. My friend. Then their friends. Then maybe all the people who are in the world. Maybe even if there are people in other worlds ….But I didn’t google. I stared at my coffee. With my free time. My few minutes to just sit and have coffee with myself. I also didn’t tell myself not to google. I was telling myself not to drink my coffee until the cream stopped swirling.
I don’t have free time. What I have is time that I am doing something when I sometimes try to do something else. Like drive. That’s enough for me. I don’t need more. If you add texting or eating or messing with the radio I will not drive well. If you even just add driving I don’t drive well. I’m an easily distracted driver. It’s boring and extremely dangerous. It gets me places. That’s it’s only perk. If I had my way I wouldn’t drive. When I have my way I walk. It makes me have to leave for work 2.5 hours early and I’m home by bedtime but then I wasn’t bored or in a car crash.
It sounds like I fear driving. I don’t. People crash. I’ve been in crashes and crashed into. I know some people who died in one. They were very important someones to me. It happens every minute or hour or so. I don’t know the statistics but once someone said I was more likely to die driving to work than in a plane crash. I took this personal. Because it’s true. Many people are multi tasking when I’m on the road. In the air it is just a few other planes and a pilot in charge. And a crash is likely certain death. In a car it’s twisted metal and things to be cut from then they have to put you back together so people can look at you before you are buried or worse you might never walk again. So yes, it’s a little fear. Not fear of driving. Not fear of dying. Fear of living. It takes work. Hard work. Concentration.
The main thing is I didn’t google other people’s lives to measure them up to mine or to see where I failed or to see other people’s happy. I did however google that there is a word for people who eat bugs. I’m not one, but I needed to know if there was one. Entomophage is the act of someone who eats just bugs. I haven’t gone any further to see why or where these people are in the world. I imagine it’s an island that just doesn’t have a lot of protein sources. Or underprivileged societies that eat just bugs. It seems it would take a lot of bugs to eat them to gain anything. So it seems a strange act. However, eating anything that was alive seems strange.
But I didn’t google, I had coffee with myself. I needed coffee with myself. I’m busy all day. I’m busy all night. I am busy all morning. I don’t have time to do anything else while I’m doing everything else.
I don’t want to eat lunch and also work. I don’t want to wash dishes and also text people. I don’t want to walk into stores right now with confusing signs. They say one thing and practice another. I don’t want to comfort others when I’m the one who needs comforted.
My bizarre desire to be held is getting bizarrer. I can’t listen to anyone talk to me because I’m too concerned with being held by them. Doesn’t matter who it is. I was offered a hug. I hadn’t caught up with the town horticulturist since this all happened. I can tell he is working less during this virus because his plant beds show it. He has thistle everywhere. Hé came in to see us. He asked, I said he died. He pulled his memory of his father dying and I could see tears. He said, I don’t care about the rules you need a hug. I did. He did. I cried again.
My son gave me his beats to try this morning, because he is up again. In my time. Thèse are his ear buds. This is what he gets for being up now. He connected them and everything for me. I have music playing while I’m writing. It’s weird. He is playing with the turtle and I can’t hear him. Because we are the kind of people who play with turtles and not want to hear anything else going on. It’s weird. I can feel him walking around. I can feel the music but I can not listen to it. Or I can’t write. Or both. I can usually listen to music in two ways. When cooking and when in my grower greenhouses. Not when I drive, not when others talk. Not when I hike. Those are times to listen to others or myself times.
My greenhouse is when everything comes naturally to me. I can grow plants with my eyes closed. I’ve tried. I can close my eyes and keep watering. I can not sleep while watering. I have tried. I have been that tired. That sure I could keep working with little thought. I have thousands of plants waiting for me today. I am behind. The coronavirus made everyone come out of the woodwork to want plants. It’s all they seem to have. I’m their hope. I kept growing when things shut down in hopes of it reopening. It did. I was out of plants in a single weekend. My suppliers were also shut down. It’s hard to decide to grow plants to an uncertain. Anyone who is a grower keeps growing. We can’t help it. We are growers because we look for growth. We look past all the other steps and look for the opportunity to grow. Steps 1-11 of grief. No thanks. I need to grow. I’ll take step 12 please. The others can wait. I don’t have time to google people.
Aspenleaf 