love it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free

Got home to a broken water main outside my house and my water shut off until 10 while they do emergency services. I was angry, because I had been looking forward to cooking tonight, and then I remembered that I--yes, me, this foolish, helpless girl--am the same girl who has made a white wine reduction and roasted butternut squash soup on a campfire, the same girl who has assembled and cooked kabobs in the pouring rain on a literal lake rising around. No running water is hardly a setback, and it won't kill me to have an unwashed dish in the sink for 4 hours.

I have been in a strange place the last two weeks or so. I had been living in the kind of delusional optimism that can only end in crash or let down. Optimism is my natural state; I had almost forgotten that over the last year. (Maybe that's why Josh always says I handle disappointment so catastrophically.)

I'm tired this week. I'm not sad, I'm not angry, I'm just so tired. At work today, a woman from another department was having her last day. She and I had been part of the big hiring push that came in last year all together and went through training together. While I was saying goodbye to her, one of her coworkers commented that he'd been watching the staff list, and now I was the last person of the 30 or so I was hired with to remain in my company. I'm always that person, aren't I? The one still hanging in, still caring about a thing, when everyone else has moved on.

I lay on a leafless poison ivy vine over the weekend, and now my back and sides are wrapped and lashed in strange designs. All told so far, I'm thinking my Elkhorn scars will be less impressive than last years, but perhaps more symmetrical.