Lucky Grizzly

So I’m a pretty social person.  It usually takes me thirty minutes to an hour to walk my dog around the block because while she sniffs for the perfect place to leave her mark I have at least a couple encounters with neighbors.  This is a far cry from the upscale neighborhood I lived in three years ago.  Hardly anyone talked to each other and when they did I felt I was on another planet talking to aliens or an extra in the movie Stepford Wives. 

These current encounters with neighbors are usually appreciated.  They make me feel a part of the community, a part of an inner circle, alive and valued for my opinions and needed for occasional sidewalk therapy sessions.  I also get phone calls during the day from my mother-in-law, who I will write about soon because she is so crazy you cannot make up the shit she does.  It’s dozens of stories just waiting to be told.  And then I get phone calls from yet more neighbors and old friends.  Add the emails and texts and Facebook shout-outs and I could call my various rendezvous a full-time job.  Oh yeah, and there’s the kid and hubby and dog who need vast amounts of attention, too. Although I am extremely grateful for it all, sometimes it does feel like a job.  And that is when I need to close the curtains, ignore the phone, and turn into a zombie watching crap TV.  I need to hibernate.

I know why he’s smiling. And even though I was in the back of an SUV when I took this photo I nearly peed my pants.

I am jealous of the grizzly bear.  He has full permission by the laws of nature and every other being in the universe to hole up in a dark, cozy den for enough time to totally refresh him.  Why can’t humans do this?  I mean, the Italians go on holiday for a month and that is pretty close.  But here in America it is looked down on to even take a nap.  When I see the Mexican lawn workers dozing under a Jacaranda after lunch I smile and think how brilliant that is.  Good for them.

I mean, can you imagine how wonderfully relaxing it would be to know you get to stuff your face then slink off to a place where no one is asking for dinner, no one needs you to help them bandage their bloody wounds, no one is whining and complaining?  No boss over your shoulder jingling the change in his pants pocket, no toilet to scrub, no errands to run in rush-hour traffic?  Just you and your closest brood rebooting in slumber as the fat you just consumed melts off into oblivion.  Damn you, grizzly.  And you have that shiny, fluffy, beautiful coat of fur, too.  And you scare the crap out of anyone who gets in your space.  And YOU GET TO HIBERNATE.