Complex Numbers

Some Mother Time

The prompt is running late again, and I can't stay up this time; I have a dentist appointment at some ungodly cow-milking hour tomorrow morning. I'll edit this at some point later today when the 30DBC prompt shows up, but I don't know when; the appointment could take all morning. Nothing major, just a time-consuming procedure.

Just to be clear, I'm not upset about this. It's just I've been sticking to this just-after-midnight schedule for so long that I feel like I should explain when things don't go according to schedule.

So instead, can I just say how damn relieved I am that Mother's Day is finally behind us for another year? Well, 11 months. Mother's Day creep is getting almost as bad as Christmas creep, starting as it does around late March, these days. Not to mention the crass consumerism the days share.

Look, I get it; everyone has a mother, and most of us want to do something to show our appreciation for her labor (of both kinds). Mine died 22 years ago, though, and I really don't appreciate the reminders every goddamn year. No, I'm not trying to make the observance go away for everyone; I'm just trying to minimize my own exposure to it. I keep thinking I should make a filter on my offsite email to send any email containing any variation of "mom" or "mother" straight to the trash, but I can't even be arsed to put that much effort into it. Besides, chances are, I'd end up trashing something relevant among all the pleas to buy this or that product.

Anyway, it's over, and that's probably the last I have to say about it until next year, absent its inclusion in some prompt or other. No promises about not bitching about Father's Day next month, though.

Edit:

PROMPT May 10th

Think back to a time when you felt completely calm. What made you feel that way?

Beer.

No, really. And I don't even have to think back very far. Just about two hours or so.

As I said above, I had dental work done this morning. It took three hours, after which I went home and slept until the local wore off, at which point I felt just fine. So I did my regular weekly pilgrimage to the local taphouse, a bit later than normal so there weren't a lot of other people around.

I sat on the patio, as has been my tradition since this whole bullshit started. The accursed daystar burned in the sky, but it warmed the air enough so the covered patio felt perfectly comfortable. I ordered a beer and a steak salad.

Now, I know that I've described before that feeling that I get when the weather is perfect, I'm drinking beer, and there's good music playing. I call it beerenity. It is, quite simply, the only time when I can pretend that there is nothing wrong in the world, that everything is okay, things are exactly as they should be.

It's a fragile state, so I nurture it while it lasts. There on the patio - I was the only one at the tables - I felt no pain, had no worries, made no plans. It's the closest I ever come to accepting the idea of "living in the present," because everything in that particular moment conspires to make me feel... good.

Calm.

And there's always one moment that triggers it. At some point, some song will play on the sound system and I'll remember, at least in part, all the other moments of beerenity that I've experienced, as if time has no meaning and it all blends together.

In this case, it was this song.

I've been crazy, couldn't you tell?
I threw stones at the stars, but the whole sky fell
Now I'm covered up in straw, belly up on the table
And I drank and sang and passed in the stable on, on