Brain robbed (*)

Twice this week, pounding about the office on this errand or that, I've had a few moments to think about things I had been thinking about.

Pounding about is actually a good thing, because it frees you from your desk and the immediate task at hand. That's why I like to skip email and voicemail and get up, pound about and talk to people.

The problem is, the pounding-about part is so brief, that whatever brilliant thoughts my brain entertains disappear even before I reach my destination, i.e. the person I was pounding about to see.

But never fear, brilliant thoughts.

You are mine.

And here is where (*) comes in.

Next time I am pounding about, brain will return you to me.

However briefly.

Breaking Away

A long time ago, when I was a very young woman and my husband a very young man, we went to a movie called "Breaking Away." It is about four friends in an Indiana college town. The protagonist is a cyclist who has fallen in love with Italian cycling, and there they are, in his town. He learns rudimentary Italian and tries to befriend them, but they have no interest. Slowly he learns this is not a clique worth belonging to.

I had a similar experience in high school, my senior year. Somehow I fell marginally in with a group totally outside my circle. I really wanted to belong. But they had their own web of relationships that I knew nothing about. I got stuck far on the periphery of that web, ignored, while the spiders battled it out in the middle.

Now I am a grown-up, but I am still learning about trying to fit in where I don't belong. I keep trying to be good at skills that I admire and keep coming up short. I keep following the stories of people successful at skills that I admire and come away only with envy and frustration.

Can't do it any more. No more competing. No more dreaming. No more fantasizing about grand success where I have no chance. I don't have room for envy and frustration in my life.

I'm breaking away from the clique of unreachable aspirations.

I don't need you.

Good-bye.

The reason being

Thursday a.m.: Water main break Downtown so we skip the traffic and park on the South Side at Station Square.

Fine.

Thursday p.m.: I come home to something that sounds like a running toilet.

No.

It's the patio faucet, apparently burst from the 10 degree temperatures. And from someone who forgot to shut off the outside water valve in October.

That would be me.

Some people would marvel at the coincidence, proclaiming "Everything Happens for a Reason!"

I picture the 3 fates of mythology, spinning out lives. There's no reason for anything, things just happen. My pipe burst because of bad plumbing, cold weather and fallible memory.

The Fates do not give a rat's ass.

And they do not care about reason.

At  all.