Eat Your Heart Out, Kim Kardashian

Today, I will live my life and treasure it as mine.

--From The Language of Letting Go.

Day 49

So Kim Kardashian is getting a divorce. Who didn’t see that coming? I know this is usually fodder that I reserve for Saturday’s Neighbor Kary May’s Radio Show but just stay with me, I have a point to make. I think.

I wonder if she’s sad or if she feels a loss. Does she feel anything at all? Did her ratings go down after she got married? You know marriage is a big ratings dump for TV shows, look at what it did to “Rhoda.” Am I the only one that remembers that show? After her and Joe got hitched, it was down the old boob tube tubes for them.

I’m having a hard time finding the caboose to my train of thoughts this morning, probably because cabooses are down the old tubes, too. Speaking of cabooses, I hear Chris Humphries is really devastated about Kim filing for divorce, he says he really hates to leave her “behind.” LOL! I crack me up.

Okay, back on track. The apartments we are staying in while the cap’n works here in beautiful Carlsbad are not low income, but they’re only one or two tiers up. There seems to be a large percentage of single mothers and I regularly spot a tow truck in the parking lot hauling off repossessed cars. Yesterday I made popcorn balls for all of the kids in the neighboring units that have befriended Stanley, the blind killer bichon. Stanley is their friend, I’m just his requisite human accessory. At 5:30 pm I hauled my folding chair and my popcorn balls out to the sidewalk and set-up where the kids could see me before they piled into their parents cars to head to the hills where the more fortunate live, where the candy and the life must be inconceivably better. Stanley’s friends stop to pet him and grab a treat before they go. Tonight those kids will get a glimpse of everything they don’t have, all the candy they could want, neat grassy yards of their own, both parents standing at the door handing out treats and then they’ll come home to the reality of their own life and think they are missing something. They will think that their life isn’t worth as much as those lives up in the hills. They won’t realize that they have enough, that they are enough. I know better.

My folding chair’s cupholder was empty last night and that cavity was bothersome to me. Like a hole in your tooth, that you keep worrying and poking at until it turns into a throbbing, impossible to ignore ache. That empty spot in the arm of my chair kept trying to trick me into thinking that I, too, could escape into a richer world, if I just filled it up. A nice red wine? Cold beer, sure sounds good doesn't it?  Oh man, how about some Jack Daniels?  It's been a long time, don't you miss it?  Just one? But I know better. I know that I, too, would have to come back to the reality of my own life, a little more defeated a little more hopeless. So I quit worrying that hole, I ignored that cunning voice and the twinge faded away.

This morning I arrived early to the river walk and I was halfway across the walkway over the river before the bells of San Jose’s church pealed the early morning hour. I was the only one there and the ducks quacked their joy at seeing me and my pocketful of popcorn. A muscle bound chocolate lab bounded toward me as if I was his long lost friend and he jauntily joined me on my hike, trusting me enough to let me pick stickers out of his paw along the way. The air off the water was cold on my cheeks but my old jacket and the layers of soft fleece and cotton underneath kept me warm. My thoughts were crisp and buoyant. I have enough. I am enough. I am rich.

My friend, the lab, chased along my car for a short bit when I left and then sat down in the middle of the road to watch me turn the corner. "I’ll be back tomorrow, "I tell him as I wave at him in my rearview mirror.

So today I’m just out there doing my best to keep up with of all my riches and not keep up with the Kardashians. Does that make sense? (private joke)