If Hillary Clinton Were a Roman...
May. 11th, 2008 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraStill reading Mystic River.
I'm usually a very fast reader so this is further evidence – if any was needed – of how short my attention span has become. Overwork, exhaustion and worry will do that to you.
I've gotten to that point where I've stopped trying to do anything well, I'm just trying to motivate myself to keep doing it. The To Do list gets longer and more unmanageable every day because honestly, working three jobs, doing the bare minimum of maintenance and upkeep on the store (accounting, purchase orders, receiving vouchers, Internet orders) taking the dogs to the beach, feeding Robin, making sure Robin goes to karate (junior blackbelt test next week,) washing dishes, doing laundry – that's all I can manage.
There are holes in the night! I tell myself. You could file bills and work on a budget when you wake up in the middle of the night instead of watching bad movies on AMC!
I suppose I could. But I won't – those late-at-nights with my own strange thoughts and freefall associations filtering through my brain feel like the only time I belong to myself. Maybe that's the reason I have insomnia.
Things should get better when B returns this week. At least my time will be freed up.
What I really want to do is disappear, start a new life thousands of miles away, never look back.
The very thing my crazy grandmother did sixty years ago.
Maybe it's in the blood.
Annie came back from school one day to find the dining room table missing. The wallpaper seemed to be different too, brightly colored patches intermittently spackled the old fading design. Took Annie a couple of seconds to realize that no, the wallpaper hadn't changed, it was merely the furniture that used to lean in front of it that had disappeared. Cut her some slack: she was only ten years old.
Later she and my grandfather discovered that exactly half the furniture was gone. The great escape was no impulsive act. My grandmother had planned it down to the last detail.
She left no forwarding address.
Decades later she was reunited with her family after she was picked up roaming the streets of Miami Beach, Florida, dressed in shit-stained rags, muttering to herself. I don't know whether she got to push a shopping cart or not.
My grandmother's disappearance took place a year before I was born so I never had the pleasure of meeting the woman. But it became the great defining myth of my childhood.
Women who leave…
I won't leave. I'm not that crazy and besides, I'm too old to reinvent myself.
Running away is like suicide. There are situations where it's not cowardice – terminal illness comes to mind – but for the most part I think it's the coward's way out. You're here now – deal with it.
Of course I'm aware that a great deal of cultural relativity surrounds the suicide option. The Romans, for example, considered it the honorable way out when you were on the losing side of a political challenge. How convenient it would be for Barack Obama if Hillary Clinton was a Roman! She's not, though. Neither am I.
I'm usually a very fast reader so this is further evidence – if any was needed – of how short my attention span has become. Overwork, exhaustion and worry will do that to you.
I've gotten to that point where I've stopped trying to do anything well, I'm just trying to motivate myself to keep doing it. The To Do list gets longer and more unmanageable every day because honestly, working three jobs, doing the bare minimum of maintenance and upkeep on the store (accounting, purchase orders, receiving vouchers, Internet orders) taking the dogs to the beach, feeding Robin, making sure Robin goes to karate (junior blackbelt test next week,) washing dishes, doing laundry – that's all I can manage.
There are holes in the night! I tell myself. You could file bills and work on a budget when you wake up in the middle of the night instead of watching bad movies on AMC!
I suppose I could. But I won't – those late-at-nights with my own strange thoughts and freefall associations filtering through my brain feel like the only time I belong to myself. Maybe that's the reason I have insomnia.
Things should get better when B returns this week. At least my time will be freed up.
What I really want to do is disappear, start a new life thousands of miles away, never look back.
The very thing my crazy grandmother did sixty years ago.
Maybe it's in the blood.
Annie came back from school one day to find the dining room table missing. The wallpaper seemed to be different too, brightly colored patches intermittently spackled the old fading design. Took Annie a couple of seconds to realize that no, the wallpaper hadn't changed, it was merely the furniture that used to lean in front of it that had disappeared. Cut her some slack: she was only ten years old.
Later she and my grandfather discovered that exactly half the furniture was gone. The great escape was no impulsive act. My grandmother had planned it down to the last detail.
She left no forwarding address.
Decades later she was reunited with her family after she was picked up roaming the streets of Miami Beach, Florida, dressed in shit-stained rags, muttering to herself. I don't know whether she got to push a shopping cart or not.
My grandmother's disappearance took place a year before I was born so I never had the pleasure of meeting the woman. But it became the great defining myth of my childhood.
Women who leave…
I won't leave. I'm not that crazy and besides, I'm too old to reinvent myself.
Running away is like suicide. There are situations where it's not cowardice – terminal illness comes to mind – but for the most part I think it's the coward's way out. You're here now – deal with it.
Of course I'm aware that a great deal of cultural relativity surrounds the suicide option. The Romans, for example, considered it the honorable way out when you were on the losing side of a political challenge. How convenient it would be for Barack Obama if Hillary Clinton was a Roman! She's not, though. Neither am I.
