Just a lovely gown

            On Saturday our mailman, Deloy, brought Chaz a package.  Sadly, G and I were not there when it came; we were out at the pasture messing with fences.  We’re always messing with fences.  Even when G has something else to do, he’s stuck out at the pasture messing with me messing with fences.  This is his life. 

            We were actually just moving furniture, and ended up making this kind of cool little outside holding stall, grass bottomed with a trailer in the middle of it.  Both of which things were problematic.  Grass inside of a fenced off area just keeps growing till you get arrested for not having a goat.  A horse inside of a fenced area (put there to eat down the grass) that has a trailer in it (the stall, not the horse) can create havoc (the horse, not the trailer).  Which the colt did.  Got his foot tangled up in the brakes lines and pulled out all of the connections.  This was not a good thing.  It is also why nobody should ever buy either a colt or a trailer, and if they do, they should not put them together in a grass stall.  Not what you need when you already have a bunch of medical bills that you thought you’d paid, but you evidently hadn’t. (And vet bills – if Piper’s old-man meds are any indication of our human future, it doth not bode well.)

            But the point was the package, which Deloy took away again, leaving in its place a slip of rusty colored paper announcing the fact that Chaz was now going to have to go to the post office and fetch the package herself.  Which she did.  This morning.  There was some confusion—Deloy had packed the thing up again, meaning to deliver it to us again today, which he had NOT indicated on the rusty paper. But he had not yet ridden out, so they caught him and retrieved it and she got it and opened it in the car (on the way to her work at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures, but not while she was driving).  Then she called me.

            “I got a LOVELY GOWN,” she announced.  “It’s BEE-U-ti-Ful.”

            This was not the place where my day fell apart.  Long before that moment, there was this dream that I was trying to make some kind of meat dinner, and decided to take a slice of it to Pam Schow on a Styrofoam plate, which would have been fine, except there was evidently gravy on it, and then rice, and finally black beans which kept falling off when the people, the million people on the sidewalk (now I’m living in a city?) kept bumping me, and the plate kept sagging and spilling the beans . . .

            You’d think awaking from such a l-o-n-g and s-t-u-p-i-d dream—anything after it would have to look up, right?  But no.  I had spilled black beans in my soul and I couldn’t shake ’em.  And a job I had to do for a software font company that I didn’t know how to approach, and besides, I’m always disoriented after a fun weekend during which I did nothing particularly spectacular.

            So the second she told me about the lovely gown, I knew I needed one too.  I NEEDED A LOVELY GOWN. 

            And why??  You cannot wear a lovely gown when you are going to a dusty, oily, horse-sweaty barn to feed horses.  You cannot wear one when you are moving fence (yes, I did more of that today, thank you).  Or when you work out on a treadmill, and then go back out to bring the horses in off the grass.  Or when you wrestle a dog down to the ground so you can drop fake tears in his eyes.   All of which I do every dang morning before breakfast, which I do not eat till after lunch.

            And beyond that, a Lovely Gown would seem like over-kill if all you did all afternoon was sit on an oversized exercise ball and color-correct twenty-two year old family snap shots.  Which is the rest of my life.  Until I go out to feed the horses for the night.

            So what would I do with a LOVELY GOWN?????  But still, I desire it.  I YEARN for it.  Especially if it makes me NOT LOOK FAT.  I have spent the day disgruntled and disappointed.  I am trying to figure out why, why, why  or what, what, what is fueling all this?  Is it just the surprise I needed?  Because all the cool little packages that come, come for Chaz  because she nickels and dimes herself away on tiny ebay things like Disney pins for trade and lots of beads for projects we haven’t decided to do yet.  (Where did she learn this, I wonder?)  Or maybe it’s a moment’s fancy, care-free elegance I crave?  Or a fairytale day, springing out of the head of spring fully planned and funded by somebody else?  Somebody who knows what would absolutely DELIGHT me better than I KNOW MYSELF???

            Maybe it’s something like the end of a dreaded final in a class I’ll never have to take again.  Or the IRS sending me a letter thanking me for all my years of contribution, but  that they really don’t need any more of my money, thank you.  Some kind of freedom or confidence.  Like, I need to magically ride the colt and have him fly like an angel, me cupped carefully and safely on his sentient and loyal back.

            Something like that.  Not a cupcake.  They are too small and the consequences are too big.  It’s something else I want.  Something wonderful.  Something I actually probably already have.  Which would be fine, except if I DO already have it, I have to pay taxes on it and keep it clean.

            So this was my day.  Do you ever feel this way?  Just suddenly yearn to break free and fly up with your arms out and your face in the wind and not have even one stinking worry about anything?

            I was out at the barn, putting my Zion away after our boring (for him, not for me), quiet little ride, when Chaz called.  My cel ring for her is her voice saying, “Hello Mommy – something terrible just happened to me, Mommy – “  Every time I answer it, I hope that this silliness never comes true.  Today I answered saying, “What terrible thing happened to you?”

            “It’s my gown,” she said sadly.  She was finally home, finally able to try it on.  “It doesn’t fit over my hips.”

              Well – yep.