Saturday, November 18, 2006

Saturday

Awoke early and watched numerous flocks of Sandhill Cranes rushing south. They are late for the Festival of the Cranes (Bosque Del Apache...Nov. 14-19) and seemed intent on making up for lost time, their usual lazy, ill-ordered flight patterned abandoned for a more formal "V" to maximize airstream velocity.

I went on to the shelter to meet my volunteers. Picked up some coffee and Dunkin' Donuts and the 10 warm bodies went to work. They cleaned the van, began construction on additional bike storage, painted my office (sea foam with an accented deep forest green), re-organized the back room storage and dismantled forgotten belongings that we will give to Goodwill, redistributed bunk beds to alleviate overcrowding, and re-installed a partition of walls. Wow. It is so good to have a crew of such dedicated persons who are willing to work so hard.

My own work time has been, as I mentioned yesterday, mostly consumed by the homeless shelter. Thirteen hours yesterday and an extra work day today for 5 hours, utilizing the volunteer help.

That's the joy. The sadness (both are present in life as I posted earlier) lies in the ineptness of the guy that I previously had interest in to be able to support even a normal friendship. I make up that he only allows himself to be capable of superficial connections. When I shared that I am struggling in life right now, he replied that he has things to do this weekend and might be able to connect sometime before he leaves next week for vacation.

Yeah, right. "How 'bout them Bears?" (For my foreign readers: that's a reference to a movie quotation when actor Steve Martin jumps from his bed and offers this line to the guy he was sleeping with as a way to imply that nothing was meant by their being together.)

Sheesh. Why do I endlessly attach myself to unavailable and/or shallow people? Bad trait, that. I'm working to improve my record and for the time being am ridding myself of superficial connections. Down with the infidels of "How are you?"/"I'm fine. You?"!

As that translates into practicality, at least I'm freeing a lot of digital memory in my cell phone as unnecessary numbers are deleted.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Dennis--We haven't talked in a long time and I miss our conversations. I'm hoping to connect with you soon. Thanks to your blog, I don't feel as disconnected from you.

--Mark

Dennis R. Plummer said...

Mark! Glad to hear from you and glad that this blog helps keep us a little connected. Wish you were swinging through the SW soon. Tell John that I got his phone message. Hope you are both well.

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