Reading harold_maude's journal

This morning one more of life's little ordinary occurances took place.
A flat tire. One more expense on a very long list of things that I don't make enough money to even begin to try to figure out how I'm going to spread what is already thin even thinner so that things still work.

I know from the recient events that there is no way that asking any of them to take a few minuets out of their lives to give me a lift to a gas station to get some temporary fix for this tire until I can get it fixed is likely, so I call work and let my boss know what's up.
I can hear in his voice that tone of frustration because of the endless list of people who before me have given excuses why they can't come in or just don't call and don't show up.

I make my way down the driveway that is sheet ice with the occasional streak of sand or cat litter and some salt to the flat on the drive way and make my way up the hill to where the road is.
It's biting cold and I didn't think to find my gloves or hat.
All I could think about was what I needed to do.
Walk to the nearest gas station, roughly a mile a way so I could get what I need and get to work as soon as possible.

All that walking and running my ass off at work is paying off.
I realize that I could probably have walked the 10 or so miles to work and have been tired but would have been able to work a full shift in shoes that are falling apart.
Another thing on the list.
It's waiting for a while with the hopes that they hold together long enough to make it.
I've got boots, but after a couple of hours they make my feet feel like I have steel rods with spiked ends boring into my feet.
so wearing them for any length of time is really not a good idea.

I get about half way to the first light and a van pulls up and the guy sitting behind the wheel looks likes Santa clause.
I'm not kidding.
This guy is a dead ringer for the jolly old elf.
(who says that elves arn't real)
And he asks if I need a ride.

I think about this for a minuet and the possiblity that I could end up in some really nasty circumstances by taking a ride with someone I don't know.
But with the way things have been lately, I figured that if it was my time to go and this was the door well ok.

So I say yes, and he opens the back door, moves a sack (yeah, a big one, but it's a garbage sack, but other than the color it looks like it had boxes in it,*smiling* this guy is looking more like santa than just in the face and body)

And we talk abit on the way to the gas station. I tell him why I'm on my way there and about my flat tire, and he asks if I work there, and I tell him no, but at another place.
And he drops me off.

I get my stuff and make my way back here to fix the flat and then take off.
I get to work and the boss has gone on a delivery and the people I work with durring the day smile and greet me, and one of my favorite people there says to me "How are you sunshine?"
And both she and I just bust up laughing.

This woman has been through everything from a crazy bad marriage to her house burning down, and she is one of thoes people that are so down to earth about life that they are really cool to be around.

When I came back to work the following monday after I tried to vacate the earth, she treated me normal. It made me feel so good that there was one person who wasn't holding a microscope to every move I was making ready and willing to call the guys in the white coats to come and take me a way.
This woman is amazing.
And I'm glad I get to work with her.
My life would be less if I had never met her.

This morning, when I was on my way to the gas station, my ears freezing in the breeze, and this guy, who I am convinced is santa shows up in a white van to help me when I needed it.
Pretty cool.

....I do believe there is a santa clause...for many years I thought of him as an idea of what people should be like to other people and not just for a few weeks out of the year, but all the time.
We are fragile creatures, and we as a race do such stupid cruel shit to the earth we live on and to each other.

People hurt other people, often for no other reason than they are scared of the people they hurt, or want to control them, or are jealous of what someone else has or are just plain cruel because they can be.

And to me the idea of christmas and santa and every other symbol that we celebrate should be a reminder that we are capable of really good things, honorable things things that show our fellow memebers of the same species that we understand that we need to be there for each other and not spend so much time shitting on each other.
There is enough shit that happens with out humans being dick heads to each other.

so I figure it this way, my life has been a real war zone for a while, and I have no energy to keep going, but I do, and I have to deal with all the mess in private, and for a brief moment I got to be in the company of someone who didn't have to give a shit, but did.

that was santa. No one can convince me other wise. I got a belated christmas gift in the middle of a very long and exausting personal war.

...and my heart isn't so heavy tonight because of that one act of kindness out of the blue on a very bitter and windy winter mornning in January...

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.