On Wealth

Sometimes the need to write comes at inconvenient times. Like in the shower. When getting ready to attend your six-year-old niece's birthday party. Guess she'll have to wait.

Why is it that I can totally love my job and have no money? And a surgeon can love his or her job and have tons of money? And then she can go off on fabulous vacations and see wonderful amazing parts of the world and I cannot. The surgeon's job is obviously very important. But if the surgeon wants to read anything, my job is important too. And actually, I have no qualms about my job. I feel it is important and I love it. I love the new part I'm learning about ordering books and I love being on the floor with the customers. And I believe we are almost equally intelligent. Almost. I mean, I could have been a surgeon. I just would have had to work my butt off. Still. here I am a bookseller who has not read Little Women, Moby Dick, Fahrenheit 451, East of Eden, or for that matter any Stephen King, Agatha Christie, or Kurt Vonnegut. And I will not have the chance to on any long airplane rides to Italy or the Galapagos.

So how can I go about enjoying life in the same way? How can I enjoy the freezing cold Pacific ocean since I can't even put a little toe in it when other people are splashing blissfully in the spa-like Atlantic? How can I enjoy EPA with it's bars-on-the corner store while others OOoh and AAahh and the Louvre? For heaven's sake I've even only been to Disney Land for 1/2 a day when I was 9. I can't even afford to go to camp with my church up state this summer because Who the Heck can take vacation? A mountain lake?! Please! Choose me!
I just long to enjoy life with friends and I take all the opportunity I can, but I end up burned out and broke. And even that is just from enjoying life here in three local Nor Cal towns.

Aiya. (Yes, I've turned Asian, also. What I meant to say was Uff-da.)
On that note. My headache and I are going to Amy's martial arts birthday party (I keep typing martian arts, which I think would be more interesting) for pizza and cake and the most beautiful thing the world has to offer-- happy children. (I'm actually not convinced that's true, but I'm trying to wrap this up on a happy note.)
I'll probably continue to "write" in the car, so maybe more later...

Have returned, and must say that now I want a martial arts birthday party too. Peter, the kids' teacher, always amazes me because he engages them so well. I've never seen anyone work with kids as well as he does. He also had my tough little girl sitting on his motorcycles revving the engine. It was a great party.
I'm home now to enjoy the feeling of a full tank of gas, a good book, and a voice mail from good friends (That's YOU, dear Choates! I know you read my blog!). That is how some of us feel rich, I suppose.