the thin line between optimism and delusion…

I am happy to inform y’all that I am making a conscious effort to act
like a grown up today.  I got to work before 9 am, and I am just
now putting my socks on, I am making a conscious effort not to sit on my feet,
and I am drinking decaf coffee. 

I have already order the gift for the wedding I am attending this
weekend, and I have no pressing obligations that I am failing to do by
writing this post. 

After sending a sob email from yesterday (I apologize to those of you who received it, I have basketcase tendencies sometimes, but just a little EDD), I went to run in the rain,
where I ran into bambi and a bunch of other deer.  Bambi was on
the wrong side of the path from the adult deer, and I was on the
path.  I respectfully backed up, having heard it is a bad idea to
get in between a wild animal mother and child, and even though bambi was
too afraid to cross the path (even after I gave him some space), mama deer was not, and they were reunited
on the wrong side of the path in the trees that were planted all neatly
in a row and looked very pretty with the sun shining down and the rain
dripping off the branches.  Because, yes, it was raining.
The devil was beating his wife the whole of my run, or at least two
minutes into it, and stopping two minutes before I did.  There is something I enjoy about the oppression of humidity and heat, I know, it is sick, and I can promise 95% of the general population would have deemed the conditions under which I ran yesterday as  MISERABLE, but I have to say, as a whole, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The upside to running in the rain is that at the end of my run I got to
see an entire half of a rainbow, from one side of the sky to the other,
stretched across the horizon.  Then I walked
around and picked a big magnolia flower for my adoptive summer mom,
stretched out my calf muscle that I pulled while I was running, and
drove home. 

And I watch The Empire Strikes Back last night, and Yoda made me want to cry because I miss Jim Henson and it is painfully obviously what is missing from the new Muppets now that he is gone, and obviously, what is missing from the computerized Yoda.

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My mom called me with some sad news the other day.  One of the enormous hackberry trees in our backyard finally fell down.  According to the tree people, hackberry trees are not suppose to grow as large as ours have, and this is dangerous because hackberrys do not have deep roots, and having a large tree with shallow roots leads to trouble.  We have (or had) 4 or 5 enormous hackberrys all in a bunch inthe far back part of our yard, and they are the focal point of the entire yard, and very pretty.  Mama has been meaning to have them taken down for years. 

This particular tree is on the edge of the bunch, on the left side if you have your back to the house. It had been leaning for years, and in recent months had started to sink.  The sinking was easy to measure, due to the remenants of an old swing still hanging from one of the branches.  All that is left of the old swing is a thick rope, with a loop at the bottom, and a knot about a foot above the top of the loop.  In the past six months the loop has settled into the leaves on the ground. 

Mama is always worried that one of the trees is going to fall on one of us, or even worse, fall on one of the dogs – particularly Bella. 

But in the end it didn’t fall on any of the members of the family.  It fell on a piece of our past.  It fell on the tree house.  Our tree house has actually outlived the other treehouses I grew up in, the Allen’s amazing treehouse fell years ago, and the Nalley’s treehouse also collapsed a while back (although, I think they have both been repaired).  And our treehouse wasn’t suspended in a tree, it was basically a treehouse built from the ground up with a tree growing in the middle of it.  It was actually converted into a dog house/tree house about ten years ago, but the dogs never liked it much and it wasn’t used for that purpose for very long.  Our treehouse was built around a carolina cherry tree, and I have always loved the way carolina cherry trees smell when you break a branch and smell the wood. 

I haven’t been out there very often in the past ten years, but it still made me happy that I could go back there if I wanted.  I’m not at home, so I don’t know the extent of the damage, and maybe it is easier that way.  The last time I did go up there I laughed at the spray paint graffii and the carvings of initials into the wood. 

Oh well, things change.  But that doesn’t mean I have to like it when they do. 

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