I'm the moss

If you read my blog at all, you might have noticed that things have been kind of bad lately.  It’s me not dealing with stuff going on.  I can only put myself out for so long, then I have to crawl back and have some time to recoup.  I’m not the person I have to pretend to be – the expectation of somebody who is a go-getter, articulate, master of all things, drive for results, etc.  I’m really a silent jelly sloth.  It takes a lot of energy to be a rose bush, all thorny and vibrant, when really you are a bit of moss under the rocks. 

So I sat through a meeting today, invited as a subject matter expert (SME).  I was asked to give opinions on various crap.  I articulated as expected, used the right technical words as expected, the correct tone of authority as expected.  Inside, I’m thinking what the hell is he talking about?  How the hell should I know that?  What WILL we do about that issue?  Is this for real?  Some great SME I am.  With the meeting over, whew!  I felt like I was just pressed through the wringer of an old fashioned washing machine. 

My great grandmother actually had an old fashioned washing machine with a wringer.  It was sort of a giant white rusted tub on legs with wheels.  My great aunts and grandmother did laundry on the back porch and let the used water empty through the hose out into the yard and into the garden where it made a muddy mess.  They filled the tub with water from the cistern using buckets.  It really didn’t take much water to do laundry, but they did small loads in comparison to the super capacity washing machine I have now.  My job was to take the washed clothes and hang them up on the clothesline outside to dry, and also take them down when they were dry.  I hung dark colors in the shade and light colors in the sun, and was given explicit instructions about clothes pin placement on various items.  God forbid I should get it wrong.  They didn’t use fabric softener and the clothes always seemed stiff when they were dry.  In the wintertime, they took dirty clothes to the laundry mat in Vanceburg for washing.  Good old days?  Nope.  Modern conveniences are wonderful.