Mud and My Escape to China

Industrial beauty... until it rains

What is it I need to escape? Mud. We have a kind of mud that is unimaginable until you've lived in it -actually there are two main varieties -one being brown and the other green. The brown mud is the spongy base of this land I live on. Only junipers and sage seem to really enjoy being rooted in it. It is sticky, really sticky... and it's everywhere. You absolutely cannot walk indoors with shoes on. Or you can, but you will regret the mistake as soon as you look at the floor. So you take your shoes off -no problem -good idea. Until you leave and you get to the car and realize you left your keys on the desk...

shoes on, shoes off, shoes on...

Or you didn't get all the ingredients for dinner from the storage shed (yes, I have a separate building in which to store food -another story, but part of living in a tiny space)...

shoes on, shoes off, shoes on, shoes off, slippers on (because the floor is too damn cold for bare feet).

Yep... people drive this daily to & from home

Even more frustrating is trying to go somewhere where perhaps the thermal lined farm overalls are a bit underdressed.... so you put on some clean jeans and even take clean shoes with you to put on in the car.... planning ahead... you arrive at your destination thinking maybe you won't be mistaken for a complete hillbilly.... then you notice the smudged mud across the back of your pant legs from the mud that has caked up around the door of the car.... you forgot about that while getting out of the car... damn it!

And so you find yourself constantly irritated, whether or not you are conscious of it. This is mud season and nothing seems to make me angrier... and when the mud dries it turns to a silty dust which, once loosened, accumulates on everything. I can be a raving bitch in these times. Is that ok to say on a blog? I hope so.

The second variety of mud is green... actually it is called sodium bentonite and it is used for kitty litter and natural dust abatement and a host of other beneficial uses... and when its dry, it looks pretty cool. When wet... imagine walking on honey... sticky and slick at the same time. The tires, or the feet, want to move, but the mud just accumulates with each rotation or each step, getting thicker and thicker -full throttle- going nowhere -or backwards if you're on a hill. If you step in it, you might sink... or slip all the way to China. So... I pray for weather cold enough to freeze the ground solid... and a short season of thaw next spring.



Which leads to the photo and the title. This is the alpaca sweatshirt for my trip to China... I plan to escape the mud and go to China. Except that I seem to have misplaced the pattern... and yes, this is a problem, so probably I won't finish in time.