Seems like when I sit somewhere lately, my wondering eyes catch a glimpse of something extraordinarily normal. This object must be an everyday noun nature places within the very scope she gave me to notice, register in my brain, and process over … and over … until I decide I’ve enough information to share.
So, I sat for a few moments while considering one specific thing. Never mind where I sat, or, why it was necessary for me to be where I was at the time (instincts provide me with enough information to know the specific details are completely unnecessary and unbefitting a gentleman). The hour came. The moments arrived.
It was, by all measures, an early moment – 12:36 a.m. to be precise – and my overly tired, Coca-Cola dilated eyes weren’t available for proper sleep. Slurping that bubbly drink to take my twice-daily pills ten minutes before retiring the night before wasn’t my best decision of the day. They recommended plenty of water. I chose Coca-Cola. It isn’t an often choice, but after working close to twelve hours and eating a tuna salad sandwich, I took the advice of my counsel … it was soooo good. Still, not my best ruling from the bench.
No amount of rubbing, tweaking, pinky finger-flicking, or body bending at that hour can make even the moments themselves bestir. One sits and muses over the most mundane of whatsits sitting around because there’s nothing else to do. Magazines could not be read yet again through eyes unfocused, tired, and honestly unwilling to re-read the same Reader’s Digest jokes over again, anyway.
Once my eyes began to sharpen, the object same into focus: A bucket. A double-bucket to be correct. The kind of double-pail with a spinner in one side. To be even more unambiguous, the bucket I’ve never used. It wasn’t so much the blue bucket that caught my drained out attention span as it was the orange handle hugging the sides and extending across the middle. Twenty-two wee little slats molded into the handle’s center section spanning across an open, deep double-bucket. Most likely it would be half an oblong shape if continued to its complete form around, by my best guess. Lil’ Bo Pip would be proud of her two little pips on either end who hold the whole operation together.
Coca-cola decision aside, better to focus on the handle.
Why the handle and not the bucket? “Certainly the bucket’s use without a handle is a finer philosophical foray than the handle’s use with out a bucket?”, you may ask. To which I answer, “Yes, toting a handle alone about town would seem quite odd and useless; whereas, a bucket alone without its handle is still useful for many a tasks. For purposes of deeper meaning in life, and satisfying this writer’s need for tying the extraordinarily normal to same, a double-bucket handle is more important. Besides, lack of sleep, combined with 39g of sugar in a can of Coca-Cola and over four months of Covid Crazy all call for extraordinary efforts to remain calm through words.”
…And the words I choose to use today are simple. We all find ways to handle what we need to deal with during our day-to-days. I pick out things, ideas, people and think about them … a lot. These are very broad categories. I recognize this fact and also deal with too many zings and zips in my brain because of it. Focusing on considerable amounts of those above while accomplishing many things has been … and continues to be … my life’s motto to some finish line as of yet determined. Type A? Probably. I handle it in ways I need to by writing, working, and wresting my way through problems.
What do you do? How do you handle your day-to-days?
The sight and sound experiences in a public food space every day give me some idea. I see scrap haulers, trash folks, tire sellers, educators, retirees, politicians, garage mechanics, retailers of all products, dentists, martial artists, security workers, police, doctors, hospital maintenance workers, RNs, etc … who shuffle up to my street cart. They have buckets full of issues, I’m sure, but are handling their lives quite well. Sure, I bet their issues are equal to any others and not one is better or worse than another. Every so often, my cart is a bartender’s elbow rest … and I don’t mind if I’m not busy. I’m Doug, … and I’m listening.
We’re handling all this pretty darn good. The news may suggest otherwise … however, I believe that’s the bigger bucket of worms we can’t do much about. Right now is the right now. Here is our space. How we handle where we are – even if we sit and ponder the moment – can change who we are if what we are is in need of change. For now though, I think we’re all doing quitely fantastical.
This bucket, however, isn’t in its right mind and is in need of change. This I’ve determined. Double-buckets, especially, are a nuisance, … a persistent pestilence upon Doug-drowsy peepers.
Ironically, I’ve a problem. Without the bucket, I have no handle. With no handle, no subject about which to write. Well, that’s not entirely true. I could start a bucket list. Hey … a Double-Bucket List!! Nah. I’d never get around to doing anything on it. Too busy sitting around looking at extraordinarily normal things all the time – especially during these early morning hours when I should be sleeping. Too much Coca-Cola. I knew better but gulped it down anyway. Geesh.
DougHugs 