Secret Journal Entry
September 29th
Today’s Fantasy: I take Baxter for a long walk to the park, only when we get there, there’s an arch leading to the path in the trees. I’ve never seen it before, but it looks very old and somehow magical. We walk through it and suddenly the park disappears and we’re standing in what looks like an old-timey town from the turn of the twentieth century. I look down at my clothes and see that I’m dressed like a hobo. I realize I’m holding one of those sticks with the blanket fastened to it. A bindle, I think, is the name for it. Only this bindle holds unlimited breadsticks from the Olive Garden, always fresh and hot whenever I open it.
Baxter, who no longer needs a leash because he’s so obedient back in 1920, barks at a train approaching. “Should we hop on and go for a ride?” I ask him.
He wags his tail, clearly loving the hobo life.
We’ll sleep on a bed of hay while the train takes us wherever it’s going. Who cares that it’ll be horribly uncomfortable, not to mention completely unhygienic? I won’t have to do anything for anyone ever again. The freedom of it is delicious. As are the breadsticks.
3
"People waste their time pondering whether a glass is half empty or half full. Me, I just drink whatever's in the glass."
~ Sophia Petrillo, The Golden Girls
Gratitude Journal Entry — Thursday, October 5th - 1 p.m.
All Fired Up! Paint Your Own Pottery Shop
Note: Missed two months of gratitude journalling due to severe PMS which caused a complete inability to find anything for which to be grateful. That led to me getting out of the habit, and replacing it with the secret fantasy journal, which I promise to abandon. At first, I thought it would be helpful—as if getting the ‘runaway’ fantasies on paper would help rid them from my mind, but it’s really only serving to solidify the idea that I want out. But really I don’t. I would never, ever leave my family. Ever. I’m not my father’s daughter. I just need to focus on all the amazing things in my life, and all will be well. Which I will start doing…now.
Come on, Jess, think of three things you’re grateful for. Do it now, while you have a few minutes.She had rewatched one of Kira’s gratitude videos that morning, in which Kira had promised that the key to a happy life really was finding all the thousands of things to be grateful for each day. Jess simply had to train her brain to focus on the positive, then her life would actuallygetbetter because she’d attract people with a similar positive energy into it. Opportunities would pop up for her because her energy would shift to vibrating at a higher plane. Or something like that.
I’m grateful that today’s clients have managed to go a full five minutes without needing to ask me for anything.
Hmm…that sounded sarcastic instead of thankful, and it pretty much was. Talk about high maintenance. It was a group of six seniors who came in every week, October through December, to make gifts for their ungrateful grandkids (their words, not Jess’s, although if her grandma had given her pottery she painted when Jess was thirteen, she wouldn’t have exactly been thrilled either).
“Jessica, dear, can you look at this?” Mavis (a.k.a. the one with the tight blue perm) asked. She was painting a saltshaker for her granddaughter, Stella. Last year, she gave her the pepper shaker. At the time, Mavis had been worried the shop would sell the matching one before she was ready for this year’s gift, so she bought both and asked Jess to store it for her. Jess had agreed to it even though she knew it would piss off her boss, Evelyn, to no end. And it had. Jess still heard about it every few weeks.
She smiled, set down her pen, and walked over. “It’s really coming along nicely.”
“Do you think this is the same pink I used last year? For the pig’s lips?”
Oh for … how the hell was she supposed to remember? “Well, it’ll get a little darker when we fire it.”
“I thought it would get lighter?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at Jess.
Carol, the woman next to her, rolled her eyes. “No,darker, Mavis. Always darker.”
Mavis looked up at Jess for confirmation of what she and Carol had already told her. “She’s right.”
Glancing down at the small pig, she sighed. “If it’s going to get darker, she’ll look like a total tramp.”
“Or… she’ll look like a really fun pig pepper shaker who’s ready to head out dancing with her friends,” Jess offered, not wanting to go in search of a less whorey paint color for a set of lips smaller than the white of her pinky fingernail.
“No, I need to change it. Stella’s getting to that age where we have to be careful about the messages we send her.”
Betty, the woman at the end of the table, and Jess exchanged a glance. Betty was Jess’s favorite. She had long, white hair that fell to her shoulders, and glasses with thick, perfectly round red frames that shocked people when they first saw her. Betty wasn’t a woman trying to hide. She wanted to be noticed, and she knew exactly how to make it happen. There was a connection between her and Jess that had been there since the feisty grans first walked into the shop three years ago. “I’ll go look for a less tawdry pink,” Jess said, patting Mavis on the shoulder.
1:14 p.m.
I’m grateful that’s over and I’m finally sitting down.
Jess knew she should not have reorganized the linen closet this morning before her shift. Now, she was wiped and all she could think about was curling up on the couch with a good book. Okay, a movie. She was too tired to read today.
“Jess! Can you help me for a second?”
