Riptide

Here in Virginia, routine water play is occasionally interrupted by the harsh and hazardous phenomenon known as a riptide: a strong undercurrent with the power to suck even the most adept swimmer into a hydraulic tailspin of uncertain outcome.

I’ve been living in the midst of my own metaphoric riptide for the past ten days.
Swimming along at a steady clip in the sea of my daily affairs, I detected a subtle turn of the tide, a hiccup, if you will, in the ebb and flow of my personal affairs. Nothing any more or less dramatic than an accumulation of normal events that suddenly threatened to reach a high water mark, my riptide—in characteristic fashion—caught me off-guard, unprepared to navigate the steady stream of personal and professional opportunities, responsibilities, and routine eventualities which have left me with a cup that is not merely half full, but spilling over into slick and slightly dangerous puddles, some of which manifested themselves as indiscretions my Labradors have left, in expressions of displeasure, when last week found half of the family away from home on various business.

Mopping up the literal and figurative overflow of life events remains my solitary focus as I enter a new week. I long to write…I miss it so, but I am still firmly within the grasp of the current. This post is akin to a moment of control, of emerging from the roiling waves to let shoreline onlookers know I’m still here, OK, breathing—lest more silence cause undue speculation.

In Other News:

Today was a notable day in the life of my mosaic seahorse. Originally scheduled to arrive at the gallery along with a handful of other pieces in mid-June, his life took an unexpected turn when I received word that the gallery was hosting a water themed show. Committed as I am to giving Readers the behind-the-scenes scoop on life events, I will confess here that he would still be waiting on my studio counter were it not for a good catch on the part of my daughter. She inquired about the progress of the pieces last week and I told her that things were plodding along, but I was overwhelmed by a communiqué I received from the gallery about the show. “Who just has water-themed art work lying about?” I scoffed, noting that the show was less than two weeks away. “Who could just whip something up in so short a time?” I continued.

She looked at me as though I had disembarked a spaceship from planet Zorp. “You are kidding, right?” she said.

“Kidding? No, why would I be kidding?”

“The seahorse, Mom. The seahorse.”

“Oh.”

So the seahorse is apparently going to be in a show. I say apparently because he could, technically, not make the cut. But my friend Lisa says this won’t happen, so I’ll just assume smoother waters for him at the gallery than those he’s witnessed here.

I’d also be remiss not to report that I evidently don’t have skin cancer. Although I have a wide range of interestingly named blemishes, all save one are of absolutely no consequence. The only one worthy of even an elevation of eyebrow is just on a generic sort of watch list. Which is really good, because I have a host of other problems: when it’s cold (half the days) my heat doesn’t work. When it’s blazing hot (the rest of them) the air doesn’t work. I also found some bugs that examination with the Discovery Channel 30X indicates may be termites. Of course, this is the device that started the whole skin cancer hub-bub, so perhaps the bugs are really just benign creatures with some exotic sounding name.