Strutting Around in a Rut

I’m in a rut. I didn’t realize it until this morning when I actually uttered the words. Is this a bad thing? Being in a rut? Well, I certainly don’t think it points out any of my most shining moments to consider myself in a rut.

However, what if I were to say I was not in a rut and I was actually only encountering a series of ugly or stress filled situations? Like I think is actually more to the point.

Work has been like an emergency room lately. Not that I’ve got anything against emergency rooms. They are very helpful to people who are hurt. It’s just that I wouldn’t want to work in one and my work has been like that on occasion lately.

I can’t seem to get my work done for all the phone calls that come in with requests from members of my company who have problems or requests or need to talk about things.

Generally, I am a person who endures things. I last. I stay the course. I put up with a lot of shit. But, it has happened in my lifetime a couple of times when the worm turned; when I said, “enough” and I changed course abruptly.

I did that once when we moved from Maryland to California. My mother actually put the idea in my head. She said to me (I was unhappy at the time) that she had a spare bedroom, there was room in the garage and DeeDude and I were welcome to come live with her. I gave my notice at work the next day. It took me 3 days to work up the courage to call her and ask her if she was serious about the offer. That’s how we came to live in Sunny California.

Another time I did a really abrupt, life changing decision was when I cut off a relationship I had with a friend. For a good long while we’d had a lot of fun, but somehow I had morphed into her servant. I didn’t care for it and stopped it. I’m not actually very good at working out the finer points of discontentment. Endings, abrupt or otherwise, are fine by me. That probably comes from having been an Army Brat where I went to 13 different schools in 12 years.

But, I’m really wondering about my job now. A very large point to take into consideration and regulate my boiling point right now is the fact that DeeDude is not presently employed. He’s working on getting his book done and has a shot at a job with a local paper, but it’s not something that is bringing in any dough right now. So, I gotta figure something else to do besides blowing my top and telling everybody to take a hike.

I do have tomorrow off. That will be nice. I bought some rope yesterday to help me as I try to learn how to do a peyote stitch and if I’m able to begin making something that looks more attractive than what I had been doing which was very similar to a snaggle-toothed pile of somebody’s braces that had been removed from their teeth and jumbled up into a ball. No, it didn’t look nice. The piece I worked on night before last got ripped out 3 times and finally wasn’t taken up again. Last night I didn’t do anything with it except go buy the rope. Should have seen the guy’s face in the hardware store as I offered up what I planned to do with the rope he was cutting off the spool for me. “I’m going to do peyote on it.” He had really long hair tied back into a pony-tail, so I knew he was a hippy at heart. I actually did it on purpose just to see his face. He turned slowly, his eyes widened in shock. I said, “No, no. Peyote with seed beads.” Still the blank look with wide eyes. “Like decorative stitches for jewelry.” Ahhh, the light dawned and his face opened up again. He told me he had friends back in the old days who would do heavy macramé for big pieces, like hanging planters, tables and chairs. I said, “Yes, like that.” I promised that I would return to show him when I had completed a piece. He liked that.