Sherman Makes My Head Hurt

Odd title, I know, but that really is what I'm thinking about. I have a paper to write on Sherman's March to the Sea and at this moment, I wish he had kept right on going into the sea... but that's another topic that will probably never happen.

While sitting on the swing, I watched as our cat pawed desperately at the front door wanting to get out. He's a house cat, by the way, so it's not a bathroom-thing, it's just a cat-wanting-to-get-outside-and-watch-the-birds-thing. I'm not opposed to him coming out, but I am opposed at this moment to getting up. After giving up on the front door, he decided to try our opened bedroom window and in the process, apparently got his head stuck in the blinds. That particular window is right by the swing and you can only imagine what a sight that was... poor cat. He wiggled out of his predicament and has since moved on. I know just how that cat feels.

I felt a little bit stuck myself today. I spent the morning watching the clock and going over in my head the preparations that were probably taking place back home. It has been a long week. After hearing the news about my grandma on Monday and then wrestling with to go-or-not-go dilemma while nursing a bad cold, it just seemed like the days crawled by. Finally today, Friday, is the day she has been laid to rest. I had to make peace with the fact that we wouldn't be there and just figured once today was over, things would get back to normal (whatever that might be).

At any rate, in the middle of that feeling of "stuckness," I turned on the tv to have a little noise while I puttered through the house. "The Bold and the Beautiful" was coming on and some announcement about "the people you will see today are not actors" caught my attention. Sure enough, the entire thirty-minute episode was dedicated to stories of "real-life" people in a Los Angeles homeless shelter and how they came to be there. What struck me most was that they looked just like my family: a mom and dad, kids, stuffed animals in the background. Stories of jobs lost, homes foreclosed on, and a general feeling of "What comes next?" When the show was over, I was left with that all too familiar feeling of a what-am-I-whining-about-type thing.

What am I whining about anyway? Yes, I'm not exactly thrilled at our current situation, but my husband did have a job to go to this morning. Sure, I miss my mom and dad, but through techno-gadgets like the webcam we can talk just like we're sitting across the table from each other. I'll bet Caroline Ingalls would have been thankful for that when Charles got the urge to move her away from her family.

I feel like I repeat myself a lot. Those little reminders, though, serve me well. Just like my cat can get un-stuck from the caught-in-the-blinds situation, I can get un-stuck from the attitude I tend to find myself in when things aren't going the way I would like.

Now as for Sherman, well, I guess getting stuck in the Atlantic Ocean would not have been a good thing for him or the Union, but this southern girl could not help but wish he would have kept going straight in Savannah instead of making a left.

Did I just call myself southern? No wonder my head hurts.