Poison

"What there is in this world, I think, is a tendency for human errors to level themselves like water throughout their sphere of influence. That's pretty much the whole of what I can say looking back. There's the possibility of balance. Unbearable burdens that the world somehow does bear with a certain grace." The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver, page 522.

I was pissed last night. I still have a little bitter taste in my mouth. And the sad part is I had a really good day. I worked (and have had a job every day of this month). I went to LAUSD (who believes that they paid me too much in 2007 if you can believe that!!!) and they realized their computations were way wrong....always always always ask for proof from bureaucracy when they try to pull one over on you. The good thing about them is they are afraid of unions! I went to my sisters house and we walked to Trader Joe's with backpacks to get groceries and ended up finding ourselves in the middle of a farmers market. Amazing. And we cooked a fabulous dinner. Then while I was driving home I got a phone call from my hubby telling my we were cited for the dirt pile in my front yard and the dirt on the sidewalk.

I immediately knew who called that in. Because the citation was at 4:55pm and I know the city of Carson errs on the side of finishing early, not being out late writing up citations. And they gave us 36 hours, in the middle of a workweek, to move the dirt. I can still see her beady little eyes as she hides behind her potted plants smoking cigarettes watching me.

All we are trying to do is make this place look like the rest of the houses on the street. NICER. Sorry we cant take a week off to move a pile of dirt back. We have pipes and sprinklers being installed on Friday and our new retaining wall will be up on Saturday. And the dirt will be level. And the weeds that have always been here will be replaced by pretty green grass.

I wish I could let stuff like that go but when people wrong me, especially behind my back, I want to make sure they know that they don't have that power over me. But the truth is we all have the incredible power to hurt each other. Poisonous we are. Toxic even.

And as my mom and I talked about yesterday, the truth is that we often times don't do our best and, while we learn from it and hopefully adapt, we leave a wake behind us of destruction and catastrophe. We were in the wake yesterday, the faraway waves lapping at the other shore. Nothing to steer us off course but to splash us and see us rolling concrete across the lawn and shoveling/sweeping dirt at 9 pm. Pissed.

I'm going to try to make my wake small today. Try to not pour out to much evil.

Oh, and we called the city. Got a week extension for the dirt. I want to say "eat your heart out" to her, but I wont. So I will say it to you.