Ok, I was in a snarky mood yesterday. I mowed and it was hot and humid and I completely soaked my clothes with perspiration. Then I went to Kroger’s – well, I showered first – and came home to see some annoying political headlines on CNN.

I can be here and probably not get my feelings hurt. Nobody has to feel they have to write back the courteous sentiments that they are glad to hear from me and say they are sorry to here any bad news and quickly wish me a take care. In other words, the brush off.

Is it my personality? Maybe. But didn’t they spend much time with me and share things? Is it my politics? Well, we Deplorables don’t have the same attraction as the “world peace” beauty contestants. Saying, “Let’s take a look at this situation” doesn’t stir the same camaraderie as “Let’s March” or “Let’s tear down statues” or “Let’s be lemmings.”

If I were beautiful and  younger and absolutely irresistible, I would do everything to get Colin Firth to think I was the greatest thing since sliced bread with peanut butter. He is so refined and proper and handsome and gentlemanly. So when I see a movie with him in it, I really anticipate the daydreams (impossible as they may be) that accompany watching it.

Today, I stumbled on a movie in which he was a lead and he turned out to be a crazy bad guy. Is nothing sacred for me in life? Does nothing work out right? Sigh.

FLARES ARE POSTED HERE AS A WARNING TO READERS:

I really don’t want to wish my life away, especially now that I am on the far side of the middle of my life span. However, today has been just a day of a miasma of doom. I am upset about the government; I am aggravated by the speed of which internet twitter remarks and news opinion pieces can zoom around the world and are manipulative and seem to threaten bad things if one were to simply ask, “Well, has this been considered?” I am disappointed by people who just want to be angry at everyone all the time and throw away all their opportunities. I am disappointed by myself. My head aches; it’s hot and humid; I cannot make myself do anything productive today – psychically lifting myself to my feet is not working. Okay, I made a meatloaf. All these hours awake and I made a meatloaf. Wow.

I am going to throw myself into a cryptic crossword, which may or may not give me the slap I need.

Perhaps the spelling in the title should be ‘the eggman’ as in ‘the mailman’. However, because it is a word one no longer hears frequently, if at all in some quarters, I am making it clear: this is about the Egg Man, a figure from my childhood.

It has taken me a long time to realize that I grew up in a Grant Wood and small town Norman Rockwell bubble. Being born in the rural Midwest a few years after the end of WWII, I grew up as part of a continuation of over 200 years of pre-United States colonists who just moved slowly a little bit west and stayed pastoral.

One tiny part of that experience is The Egg Man. When I was little, just at the point of forming memories, going out to the chicken house with my grandma to gather eggs was a treat. We would walk up the path to the barn, past the rhubarb, which looked like an ugly plant to me, and go through a fence and then open a primitive door and smell hay and chickens. Grandma had a basket and the activity was to pick up eggs from the nests, and sometimes even stick your hand under a warm chicken and get warm eggs. This was a privilege to me; it was routine to Grandma.

Now, in that time period, Grandma had a lot of eggs and she would load them into partitioned crates for the Egg Man to pick up. I vaguely remember helping to do this and the crates seemed big, but I suppose my size had something to do with that perception.

I know the Egg Man had a truck that looked like a delivery van, one he could just step out of. The money my grandmother received for selling her extra eggs was her “egg money” and was saved up for use at special times.

I also remember people saying that the Egg Man often said how much he appreciated Grandma not putting the big eggs on top and sneaking littler ones on the lower tiers. I gleaned from overheard conversations that this was a great compliment.

Another activity I took pride in was being allowed to prime the pump. We had one right in the kitchen along with a sink with running water. That’s another story for another day.

This might seem like an abrupt ending to this post, and I suppose it is, but it is only the beginning of all those things that make me seem like a hick to those who grew up in cities.

Tuesday I went into a cleaning mode, taking out discarded clutter and forgotten things that had, let us say, passed their expiration date. And I went to bed making plans of what I was going to do on Wednesday. Making plans, wise but there is always a caveat: things aren’t certain. I awoke with an over-strained neck. I added the “over” to strained not to be redundant, but to distinguish between neck strain that causes one to walk with a crooked stance and some pain vs. the kind that results in neck muscles in such tight spasm that they cause dizziness and misery. That was a long sentence. It matches this paragraph. And it was a long day, sitting with my head propped against the sofa back, arms in a totally relaxed position and making all sorts of promises to powers that be that I would be more careful and virtuous and all sorts of good things if I could just feel better.

It took a day and a half and already I am struggling with reneging on my promises. I’m incorrigible, absolutely incorrigible.

So why didn’t I at least write. Wellllll…. at the end of Tuesday I felt my neck stiffening as I held my head in an awkward position to use my laptop. I knew it and I chose to ignore it. So no computering, Just keeping my neck muscles straight and relaxed and, as Der Bingle suggested, heat.

I hope to be back tomorrow.

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