Some Days

SomeDays1010

You know it’s going to be one of those days when the first thing that happens when you wake up is you step into the shower and there’s no hot water because the wind blew the pilot light out. It’s too late to go light it because its way down in the basement and you’re already wet, and late besides, so you freeze your cojones off and just tough it out.

Then your tea bag explodes in the microwave and you get a mouthful of tiny, little, gritty, microscopic tea particles that take you an hour to finally spit out and it was your last tea bag, so you wind up trying to strain the tea clean using a day old paper towel that had bacon grease on it. Luckily it was on the top of the stuff in the garbage bag and you didn’t have to root through the egg shells and ramen wrappers to find it. But you persevere because the hot tea raises your core temperature a half degree after your cold shower.

Then the zipper sticks on your jeans and it takes 20 minutes to find the pliers which are laying outside by the truck where you left them when you were trying to get the ball off the trailer hitch, and you almost took a header off the stairs trying to get down to them so you could fix your pants.

And of course you forgot to get milk and there’s only enough in the jug to slightly dampen your cereal and you hate to eat dry cereal but you can’t just throw it out because you don’t waste food and besides you’re really hungry, so you add a little water to the glutinous mess and you look out the window while you’re forcing it down and think of brighter days.

To top it off and bring your morning to its absolute perfect conclusion, the phone rings and it’s the ranger giving you hell because it’s your day to sit on the fence near Old Faithful so the tourists can take pictures and if you’re not there immediately you’ll be reassigned to sitting on the wet rocks up at Lewis falls, where the sun never shines and the cold drizzle mats your feathers together and you never, never get transferred back once you’re sent there. So forgive me if I’m not the picture of the bluebird of happiness today. Thanks for asking.

Bluebird of Happiness?

Bluebirdof Happiness2583click to enlarge

It is one of the unwritten laws of the jungle that bluebirds are supposed to represent happiness. If you remember back to a time when you were younger and you saw the Disney movie with Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit and all the rest you’ll remember that Mr. Bluebird and we presume Mrs. bluebird occasionally, were always sitting on Uncle Remus’s shoulder. Whistling and singing, bringing good cheer. What could be happier than a bluebird?

Well I’m sad to say that there is a dark side to this myth. Bluebirds are not always happy. Much of the time they have  the same problems we all have. They just hide it better. I for one was shocked by this revelation and I’m sure you are too. Unhappy bluebirds, say it isn’t so. Underneath those deep blue colors they wear so confidently it turns out that much of the time bluebirds have the blues. Things don’t always go right for them and when they believe no one is looking it shows. The body language says it all, kind of like those pictures of Lady Di when things were heading down the old porcelain commode.

Just for conversations sake lets say that these two bluebirds are Maurice and Edna. They’ve been together for eons. On the surface they’re the happiest couple in the neighborhood, but no one sees the real story lurking just under those iridescent colors. The stints of bingeing at the feeder, the fights over spending too much time catching worms instead of sharing nest time with the little ones, the lack of chirping together like they did in the beginning, it’s a sad tale for sure. One can only conclude that there is no place where everyone is happy or even content anymore. Looks like it will be a sunny day though and that should help just because it will be too pretty out to stay unhappy.