Serendipity

I deserve my blog's moniker today. I feel everything in every bit of me, and it's wonderful: the smell of rain and woodsmoke, the bright orange leaves, the humor in life, the possibilities. I'm positively saturated with potential. For the first time in a long time, that Pulitzer isn't so impossibly far away, that screenplay incubating in my head could soon storm Sundance, those ink-on-napkin sketches may spring to highly acclaimed, digitally animated life; and if anybody has a chance, I do.

The funny thing about life is that I can't seem to harness this high-as-a-kite feeling to be at my beck and call 24-7. Too bad, in a way, but then again it's like the principle of Tir-na-nog, if you know your Gaelic history. In Tir-na-nog ('Land of the Young,' or the afterlife) there is no sadness, and because there is no sadness there is no joy. Obviously, they go together; you appreciate happy times since you've known misery.

I'm fully prepared to stay happy today, despite the workmen tromping around on the roof of City Hall, pounding and scraping. Despite the fact that September is ending, and it's one of my favorite months. (I'd like to get married in September, outdoors. Something really small and content, with pale lilies and an ivory dress.) I've already diverted multiple work disasters this morning and quickly charted the chords to Fools' Garden's Lemon Tree for a friend. I've been called a sounding board, a lifesaver, and a free spirit and it's not even noon. Nice.

I have oodles to blog. I've started on dozens of great topics but that's the fabulous thing about a blog: it's the place to organize your thoughts. Strangely, when I go back to clean my random little beginnings up, I usually find some way to sensibly combine them. Maybe there is a method to my madness after all. Anyhow, I owe you a major literary effort, but we'll just have to make do with fun links for the weekend. (The internet is such a fun place.) Tomorrow is waterbill day at City Hall, and if you can't imagine what a monumental effort that is for a municipality that's too small to afford shiny, reliable equipment but is quickly outgrowing its outdated jalopies, you're not very creative. Specifically, it involves a folding machine that looks like Darth Vader mated with a toaster, and a centipede-like row of connected plastic boxes with idiotic clear plastic chutes, the stuffer, which is supposed to fill envelopes with bills, various mailers, and return envelopes, but the damned thing thinks it's a garbage disposal. It destroys important documents more completely and efficiently than the office shredder. That, of course, is what makes working at City Hall so fun. Sometime I'll blog about exactly what it is I do, when I'm not doing "other duties as assigned," like beating the stuffer into submission.

My sister, who is as famous for saying funny things unintentally as I am for saying them on purpose, was telling me she was going to take euthanasia to see if she could prevent the cold she felt coming on. I wanted to say yeah, that'll stop it for sure, but first I had to laugh until I drooled. I dried my tears and wiped my chin and told her I was sure she meant echinacea. For the record, she is not dumb. She's as smart as me in many ways, moreso than I in others. She's just way busier, and she is not a grammar nazi.