Busy? No, TG, Not at All

And so life goes on.

Dad always said the old 'hole in the water' - If you ever think you matter, stick your hand in the water and pull it out. The hole that is left is how much you matter.

Which is totally what I expected - no matter what my friends said - and said that they wanted.

When one of my new friends asked what we were doing for the Fourth, I said, "the potluck picnic in the park and then the fireworks."

"So you don't have plans?"

I spent the last 20 years of my life having plans. Being at everyone else's beck and call. Going to their parties and having meetings, not being able to just sit back and enjoy food and desultory conversation. Not having many real friends, but only business acquaintances who wanted something. Being treated like I was "Special" even though they and I both knew I was not - they just wanted something. Or working to make sure everything went as planned, all of the people and things in the right places, all of the plans and meetings going off as scheduled and desired.

Unhappy? Desperately. I'd much rather sit around with some friends new and old and talk about plants and weather and places we've been and why we don't want to be there any more. Some new friends - a brand inspector and a cowboy - sat with us and told us about their adventures in Wyoming, Kansas, and Colorado - and why they came here and didn't ever want to leave. All of us at the table agreed it was the people that made the difference. Sure, scenery was nice, but the political crap and liberal garbage was draining and boring and ever-present. Better here where everyone thinks the same way, feels the same way, and appreciates the same things. Good food, honesty, and hard work. Quiet fun, not forced smiles and forced activities that no one really wants to do. NOT having to smile indulgently over other peoples' rude, ugly, and stupid whiny children and listen to their just as rude, ugly, stupid and whiny parents gush about them. Here, children are seen and not heard - they go play and don't bother the grownups. You can appreciate them and their parents' parenting skills even more, when the kids all say, "Yes, mam" and "No, mam" and "Excuse me, mam". Had my kids been raised here, they would have fit right in, not been considered freaks like they were back east, polite and honest and never intrusive.

So, yeah, as I fade into the sunset and other peoples' memories, no longer a "threat" to their insecurities, I fade quickly out of their lives and mutual and shared hysterias and fanaticisms. I disappear off of their minds and Facebook pages and forums and blogs. And I am content to do so. Now I'm just "the lady with the white fence with roses on it". The lady who does ceramics in her basement. The lady with the wild garden and the strangely painted boxes that scoot between the rows of her garden, where the chickens cluck and scratch. Or even just the school secretary. I am no one, and no one needs or demands anything from me any more. Thank God.

Glad to be that hole in the water, glad to be that empty space so quickly filled in with the gush and roll of nonentity. Glad to be with people who really do think and act and behave and believe as I, who don't need to be cosseted and cared for and handed their lives on a silver platter, because they have no idea what to do with them and never did. Glad to be very far away from those miserable, angry, and pathetic people who can only feel empowered when they lie and cheat and steal and grind others underneath them and their sick and sickening desires.