It's always something

One of my favorite movie lines is from a movie called Elizabethtown:  "If it's not this, it would be something else." That pretty much sums up my malcontented life these days. Just when I think I've cleaned up every scrap of paper on my big plank of a desk, made every phone call, responded to every email, washed every dish, the temperature drops and it snows.

It's not enough snow to cause a problem for me, living in the city, but my feet are constantly cold. I can't get warm, not even with socks rated for forty below. I hate being cold, especially my feet. I'd rather be drenched in warm rain than be dry and freezing. Right now, of course, we get the worst possible combination: wet and cold. It's (almost) spring in Oregon.

People sometimes accuse me of dragging around my own little gray raincloud. I can't help it. On cold, wet days, I am genetically predisposed to avoid seeing the bright side of life. If the sun comes out even for a brief moment, my head shoots up like a dog scenting a squirrel.

I have a lot to be grateful for, but I'm not feeling it right now, because my feet are so cold. I should be thanking the internet gods that I'm back online. (I guess those infant sacrifices finally worked). I should be heaving heavy sighs of relief that I finished revising the second draft of my concept paper (truthfully, it was 95% new material) and got it successfully uploaded to the course room, where it becomes my Chair's problem. Speaking of my Chair, I should be praising fate that she came back from her week to god knows where and actually responded to my email. I should be prancing around singing, "She's alive, alive!"

There is a theory about malcontentedness. Picture two tanks of water. In one there is a floating island. In the other, there is not. Picture two sets of mice, swimming for their lives in these two tanks of water. The mice in the tank with the island find the island and can rest there. Whew. The mice in the tank without the island swim until they are exhausted. As they are going down for the third time, they are rescued by the scientists. This process takes place over and over again. Finally, in the last experiment, the scientists take away the island, and set all the mice a-swimming together in one big tank. You may not be surprised to hear that the mice who were trained to find the island swam longer than the mice who never found an island.

Think about your family? Did you grow up in a family in which there was an island? In my family, there was no island. Thus, my malcontentedness. No hope. I'm always swimming, always drowning... even if you put an island in front of me, I won't believe my eyes. I will walk around it, stumble past it, tell you I can't see it.

It's hard to think. I'd write more, but my feet are cold.