Life Is Not Orderly

When I was a little girl, my mama said to me, “Valerie, you run everything into the ground."
I belly laugh when I think of how wise she was and how true this is, even today.
Especially today because whether I’m telling a joke that HAS to be told 5 times or whether I am on that infamous soapbox spewing, like a dragon spews fire ribbons, my opinions (which of course are factual) always keep on keeping on over and over and over again.
Each of us has to dig deep and with an honest shovel to discover the answers
to these to things:
1. Am I a walking talking overstatement?
2. Was I this fucking OCD back ‘in the day?’

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right
in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce.
In summer, we work hard to make a tidy garden, bordered by pansies with rows
or clumps of columbine, petunias, bleeding hearts. Then we find ourselves
longing for the forest, where everything has the appearance of disorder; yet,
we feel peaceful there.
Natalie Goldberg said it perfectly, wouldn’t you agree?

My OCD ran rampant while managing the trailer park.
And then of course, my trait of choice, “running everything into the ground,” kicked in big time, which led to my own personal fireworks detonating under my skin daily.
I found myself in a sea of driven direction and organization; Children At Play signs angled perfectly for drivers’ clear visibility, correct font size on monthly newsletters
to residents, repetitive painting and repainting of the red fire lane lines when sun faded, a secret obsession to text the maintenance worker repeatedly to ensure he was actually on- site working, continual sermons on why we will NOT use Round-Up for the brown moths and so forth.
Life is not orderly; you are so right-on about that, Natalie.

It’s not orderly and it doesn’t revolve around me or anyone for cryin out loud!
A soapbox is simply a crate of wood that conveniently provides the spewer’s perch and the gushing of “factnions,” which are a fact/opinion combo, that this girl, or any girl for that matter, can run into the ground is simply meaningless libretto from a brain which is made of 100 billion nerve cells and looks like a lump of pinkish-gray jelly.

So, where do we go from here, folks?
Well, before anything else, I need to refold and straighten the dishtowel that is crookedly hanging from the kitchen counter, and then of course, there’s this little piece of what looks to be wire or perhaps a baggie tie on the floor in the entryway…

Then it’s off to work where I am certain one of two things will manifest:
The soapbox will come out or the front desk will be spit-shined all in the first 10 minutes upon arrival.

Seize the day, countrymen and women, no matter how orderly or disorderly yours unfolds.

~tpg