going a little nuts

This will be one of those entries where, in the beginning, I intend to make one concise point. But then, as one idea bounces to another, it will surely meander along, making murky thought-puddles instead of points. So, you've been warned.

This is what my house looks like now. While I try to be patient and accept that it's all "part of the process" as Ryan so kindly reminds me, it's driving me a little crazy.

Then, the other day, I get a much-needed life lesson from a squirrel. How is such a thing possible? you wonder.

I'm sitting in my car, in the driveway, listening to NPR (and just so you don't think I'm all-too-classy, I was also finishing my McDonald's fries). I see this freakishly huge squirrel in the backyard, carrying what looks like three miniature tennis balls in his mouth. He approaches the fence. I stop eating the fries. I grab my camera.

He tries to push his way under the fence, but doesn't fit. Does he quit and drop the loot? No. Does he give up and eat his meal on that side of the fence? No. After several failed attempts, he climbs up and over. Success.

The lesson here is obvious. It's like the little engine that could, except that he's a squirrel, not an engine. And as previously stated, he wasn't little. He was very large (and orange — what is it with these Indiana squirrels? They're all orange).

So then I get to wondering, what was that he was carrying anyway? I do a little research....

At first I think it's a fig. And I get excited like any English nerd would, because as a Plath fan and fellow neurotic, I've always loved this Bell Jar passage:

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.

Alas, it's not a fig. My best cyber-sleuthing skills tell me it comes from a Black Walnut tree.

No deeper meaning there. Just a squirrel with a nut.