a date with an angel....

It's finally Friday!!  Okay, so not really, but for me it is.  And what a glorious Friday it is!  Today after work we get to pick up a princess!  I know it isn't' but it seems like it's been forever... she lives about 40 minutes away from us now, so when we don't talk on the phone, we simply don't see or hear from her.

Looking forward to our turn with this girl...

We are "borrowing" her all weekend.  She has school tomorrow, and then she has made a request to go to the science center and maybe the zoo.  These all sound like great ideas to me.  I have been wanting to go to the zoo forever, they have a new enclosure for the sea lions and I simply cannot wait to check it out.  The St. Louis Zoo is one of the most amazing in the world, and I have been to a lot of them.

I am looking forward to a step away from craziness and some quality time with our princess.  Things seem to just be really weird in St. L lately.  It hasn't gotten significantly warmer, in fact nothing seems to have changed much except the behaviors of the street people.  They are really getting aggressive lately. 

After six and a half years the other day I actually got scared.  It wasn't dark as we were leaving, it was still daylight.  She wasn't huge or armed, but she simply seemed crazed.  She was a skinny lady, demanding money, because she knew we had some and she needed it.  She reeked of alcohol, and after asking Hubby and being turned down, she leaned in the car and started calling to me "momma, momma, you got money?" It was the vacant look in her eyes, the fact that  she seemed focused only on one thing that was disturbing.

As she walked deliberately off across the alley she held herself awkwardly, almost like they do in those b-rated zombie movies, targeting every person she saw demanding money.  It was almost surreal. And I have been out there as the sun is waking up on deserted  snow covered streets, shoveling snow, when the homeless shelter kicks them out at o'dark thirty.  It was worse than that.  It was aimless and deliberate at the same time. 

I think I need a few days away, a few days of hanging out with our princess and simply forgetting about the daily stuff.  It isn't that my compassion is broken, it isn't.  But I think that I need some down time, to be able to process it all.  Because I feel like I am struggling to process it all. 

I don't understand those vacant looks, I don't understand what I am seeing and why we can't help these folks help themselves.  I don't understand the kids riding their bikes down the sidewalks of a busy street forcing folks into the road - when there are safer places to ride, for everyone concerned. 

I am struggling with so much that I have seen this week... I am a country girl at heart.  This feels like an overwhelming amount of "stuff"... I am feeling a strong need to take care of myself and my family and run and hide.

I am sure it has more to do with the turning of the planet, moon, the summer, the seasons than anything else... or at least I hope so. I can't think about the fact that these things are becoming far more frequent and that it seems to be getting worse.

I need to lose myself in normal.  I need to play silly games, maybe make some pasta, go to the science center and zoo.  Spend time laughing at normal.