Overachievers

Loreto bay seems like a distant memory. I browsed through Nellie Hutchinson's blog tonight (something I hadn't done in months) and caught up on the happenings down there. A super competent and ambitious woman, Nellie. She's wrapping that little Baja town around her little finger. I marvel at what she's accomplished so far. Her blog is part marketing tool, part society pages. She posts photo after photo of smiling people, most of whom I know, having fun and hugging and after awhile I'm feeling the ping of envy. Does anybody miss me? Waaah.

Back home my life is operating at a sleepy pace. I basically lay in wait for my men to come home from work so I can ask all three of them how was their day. My daughter I am taking to drama camp ( a 30 minute 10-dollars-in-gas commute) every morning. She says she hates it and is mad at me for signing her up. On the second day her teacher asked me to wait till the other parents left so she could speak to me. I waited in dread thinking she would report how my little munchkin was being stubborn or uncooperative, but no, she surprises me with, "Allison read her lines today and she was fabulous. I'd like her to play Juliet." But she won't because she is the youngest in camp and she says she has stage fright, a term she must have picked up there, so I guess she's learning something.

Robert has flown off to Naples, Florida to visit his fabulously rich friend, Steve, the one who has a bicycle plant in China and a contract to sell said bicycles to every Wal-Mart in America, I'm expecting his phone call soon telling me about some cool toy Steve has. I can just hear Robert telling Steve about our new Airstream trailer and Steve responding with, "Hey we just bought a villa in Tuscany, wanna go?" Then they'll laugh their asses off playing the rich boy/poor boy game and fall asleep drunk on Steve's $10,000 sofas. "Brother, once you get that money thing down, "Steve says to Robert, "life is a piece of cake," unaware of the irony of that axiom (I just looked that word up and it sounded right.) Robert thinks after 20+ years of slaving away at his business he has a hold of fortune's shirttail but Steve's got it by the collar for sure.

Meanwhile I dream about our upcoming Airstream adventure. There I will flourish as I indulge myself in writing about my experiences. Never mind a thousand others have gone before us and many a wonderful document on the matter has been published. I will forge ahead like everything that happens to me is novel and significant and original.

Originality is merely an illusion, wrote M.C Escher, and that should make me feel better. But sometimes I ponder about the futility of everything. Nothing I say, do, think, write, hasn't been explored by some other poor curious soul. Can't let that stop you, right? Forge ahead like you were the first discoverer, like no indigenous people beat you to it. Okay I've been reading too much Lewis and Clark mythology. I've learned that Lewis himself was probably struck humble by the realization that the wilderness he set out to untangle wasn't as unpeopled and undiscovered as he and Jefferson imagined. Being first is always an illusion.