Rainy day blues

There are some killer mosquitoes around here, and they seem to like the way I taste. I have bites up and down my arms and legs. I’m having a hard time refraining from scratching them. In fact, I haven’t been able to and they have turned into huge red itching welts. I hope they don’t scar my beautiful skin! But I suppose it’d be my own fault if they do, since I’m the one scratching them. Sometimes I think I scratch them in my sleep, when I have no conscious control over my hands and nails. But I’ve been scratching enough during the day when I am conscious.
Why do mosquitoes exist, anyway? I’m sure I’m not the first to ask this question. They don’t seam to serve any purpose that I can find. Most insects and worms are vital players when it comes to pollination and decomposition; they are needed in the cycle of life. Mosquitoes do nothing of the kind. I also found out during my research that it’s only female mosquitoes that bite us; they need our iron and protein for egg production. So the little bitches that bit me did it so they can lay eggs that will give life to more mosquitoes, who will also try to bite me.
Ed, in his Buddhist leanings is all for living and letting live when it comes to other creatures who inhabit this planet, except for mosquitoes, flies and sometimes spiders. If they are just going to bite us and make us itch like crazy, then we are going to kill as many as we can. Have you ever killed a mosquito that was in the middle of sucking your blood, and you swat it, and raise your hand to find a small smudge of blood on your arm? Was that your blood or the mosquito’s? At what point in their taking it from you does it cease to be yours and start to be theirs? When they fly off I suppose.

Ed and I are both horribly depressed lately. Two steps forward and three steps back. A few days filled with sunshine and good news followed by weeks and weeks of frustration. It’s frustrating. There is not a lot of economy or industry up here in the best of times, and these are not them. Most of the job postings are for health care, and I am not a RN. We briefly talked about me becoming one, which would require schooling, but I have to ask myself, do I really want to be poking people with needles, and cleaning scars and being coughed on? Ummm, I don’t think so. I mean, it is a valuable skill and god bless nurses; it’s just not for me.
What is for me? What do I want to do with my life? All I need to do is answer that question then go out and do it. How easy it all sounds. And how stupid I feel for not being able to answer it. My religious upbringing taught me that girls should dream of being a good housewife and mom. Those are noble endeavors, but I’m neither. Well, I am a step-mom, but Hannah is 16 and still in LA. And if I really think about it, I am a trailer-wife, whatever that is worth. Some people will argue that my religion (I was raised Mormon but no longer subscribe to the belief system) does not pigeonhole girls into that role, but those are the messages I received being raised in the church. I was never asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. Whenever I came up with something I wanted to be, a ballerina or an actress, I was told that it wasn’t likely to happen, nobody liked me and I should read my scriptures. Like everyone, I see my past though my colored glasses and other’s might disagree, but they are my memories. Revisionist history.
So I sit here, on my hands, racking my brain. Maybe I know the answers, and maybe I’m scared to admit what I want, for fear that I’m not good enough. And demons are in my head, and under my bed and in my sock drawer. So I’m paralyzed, sitting in my boat floating down the river. Don’t go wherever the river flows. But why not let the river answer the questions for me? Beats having to do it myself. That would leave my life uncomplicated and unfulfilled. But I’ve never been one to take the answers given to me, thus the mental battle. Have I said that already?

So where do we go from here? Ed and I have now extended our job search to a national level. And if something gets offered, we’d leave the farm. Our financial stability is more immediately necessary and important than raising pigs. Without cash we would not be able to keep up the farm anyway. I’ve often pondered this: it’s impossible for nothing to happen, by the very nature of nature, something is going to happen. The sun will rise again; the plants and animals will grow. I will age, and get wrinkles, and my hair will turn grey, and Ed and I will move out of this trailer, build a house where we will sit by the fire laughing about the days we were cramped in the Airstream.