Till the Cows Come Home

      So this lady walks into a day.  More accurately, for the second time since this 24-hour span was launched, the three am stroll-about thankfully not having taken, this same lady makes her entrance.  Having been married to a doctor for forty three years, she's had more dress rehearsals than Helen Hayes, so start-of-day-interrupted is by no means a novelty.  And, as is her wont of late, she is determined that TODAY, she will dispose of post prandial, post ritualistic putterings and platitudes with admirable dispatch and then proceed post haste to do her own bidding.  Nothing big, but a win nonetheless.  Winning is a habit.  So is losing. All together, now, readers, which habit does she want to go for?
      One of my - OK, I'm 'the lady' - Peri-prandial putterings is doing the daily crossword puzzle - in ink.  And there's no 'pinning of a rose on the nose' of people who do crosswords in ink.  It's just as easy to alter inked mistakes as it is those pencil-penned.  In fact, it's less time-consuming.  One of today's correct responses to 'Arizona Indians' was H-O-P-I.  Even as I printed the letters I felt a grin coming on.
      (Must have been thirty one years ago.  I was gestating cum matriculating, indeed walking the two miles to the university, and, ever the sedulous student, was immersed in the research for my current class - one of the many in which I enrolled to ultimately receive the coveted, relatively new "Certificate in Jungian Studies".  This class was focused on archetypes which Dr. Jung held were paradigms of a sort, cousin to the more familiar prototype, but inhabitants of the unconscious world.  Albeit not readily accessible, they nevertheless exerted considerable control on one's personality type.  When applied to a group, they were referred to as "collective" and assisted one in analyzing, describing, understanding groups, like cultures.)
      Aware of at least two tasks left over from yesterday - editing an important letter one of our daughters was submitting and filling out an evaluation form I'd received from a medical center recently visited in Pittsburgh - I vowed once those promises were kept, it would be win/win day for this lusting-for-fulfillment-lady.  Intrepid though interruptions can be, THIS lady, like Lola, was going to get what she wanted - uninterrupted time to romp with and record thoughts, memories, observations, commentary whatever direction cagey Calliope indicated. 
      In fact, I was acutely aware of Calliope's restlessness.  Just last night, as I was commenting on a friend's post, she inserted her quill, de-inked my ball point, paralyzed my pecking fingers - resulting in a rather artfully phrased passage, one that could rise to the level of 'poetic' had it been a more protracted piece.  And I'm sure I don't have to tell you - but I will - just as with Superman, you don't tug on Calliope's cape.  Today, then, is reserved for composition.  I shall write till the cows come home, as the saying goes.  
 Then why was I getting the distinct feeling that it
didn't look like the cows were coming home any time soon?
      (After reviewing the list of choices of the cultural archetypes the prof had provided, I had decided I didn't like any of them.  So I asked permission to - utilizing Dr. Jung's blueprint, of course - 'create' one by combining several of his most colorful.  I called my archetype "IT" and focused on the culture of the Roaring Twenties, using the Trickster, the Child and the feminine, Anima.  On the day we were discussing titling our masterpieces, I was toying with "Re: Marx" v. "Syncopation and Sin-crony-city" when I  noticed a friend, seated close by, who seemed conflicted to the point of near tears.  I sidled over to her and asked how the title 'thing' was going. 
      Her selected culture was the Hopi Indian tribe and the archetype of the masculine, "Animus".  Recently returned from a vacation with her husband in the Himalayas, she'd been struck by Hopi 'footprints' in that region as impressing as those she'd researched in South America and Mexico.  She was therefore determined to incorporate this "element of the third" into her title and it just wasn't working. I wanted to put her out of her misery - especially since she obviously had no clue as to Jung's notion of "the third" - and brighten her day so I blurted, "Got it!"  She tried to focus her 'blank-tape' eyes on me but those brimming tears were a-bloomin' so I rushed in with "How about, ready?"  Nothing.  "It's perfect, Ann."  I was losing her, so, enunciating with robotic pauses, I mouthed, "Ho-pi-Springs-E-ter-nal". What with finding the little rascals in three huge regions, having exerted mega influence in each, was-there-a-CHOICE?  Help me here, dear reader.  Ann 'shut off' "Re: Me" faster than the "light on Daisy's dock".  Daresay, this 'old sport' could have used a shot of bathtub gin.)
      My penchant for tidiness was the next undoing, IE, doing the writing thing.  Computer on, signed in to access blog site, I - the devil's always busy - checked my email.  You know how it piles up and I'm waiting for an important reply from a doctor in Istanbul - no time to explain - so I checked, downloaded my daughter's letter, but before I could hit the "save" key, I saw it.  A new, talented, friend with whom I've fallen into a rather serious and emotional discourse, had sent a reply.  Well I had to open it.  She lives in Italy.  Something urgent may have happened hours ago that needed addressing. 
      I did and it had - in Bari - and address was executed.  She had posed follow-up questions to aid her in doing ME a favor.  You tell me.  Does one dare say, "Jeez!  I was just gonna create."  No, one responds in kind with answers and Asti Spumanti, if you have.  The issue involved my mother, no less.  A face-off between Mom and Calliope.  Not pretty.  On top of that, the questions involved some geography and I could feel my brain cells going cold.  "Like sand through the hour glass, so" were my thoughts pouring on the rocks, then whipping into a blended frostee.  'Mixed-metaphor-mind', I believe it's called, but I'm not sure. Time frozen.  That's not a cow, is it?  They DIDN'T come home.  They sent a bear.

On ice.  See what happens when you tug on - you know-who's - cape?  No bathtub gin for this lady today.  They're only serving 'cold shoulder'.  Gotta pass. Bad for my circulation.  Can't connect.  No friends here.  Will have to relate - Later, Lorane. . . .