waiting for godzilla

I'll be the first to admit I live a very filtered life.  For the most part, I remain politically ignorant and ever hopeful that in the great see-saw of life, one side will very much balance the other over time.   I am slightly aware of world tensions and  precarious economies, but never so much so that I feel I could effectively debate with a person of strong opinion. My filters are an armor that keep my mind free to do what it seems to do naturally, which is of course to create.  But disasters, the kind of stuff where people are humming along one minute and mother nature or a doofus or group of doofuses just completely turns your world upside down the next?  Yeah, my filters don't always seem to work with that.

I have been to Japan once, on a business trip.  It was an experience that was in many ways as one might expect, with the language barrier and rather small sized everything serving as constant reminders that I was a foreigner in a foreign land.  That this was not home.  Yet Japan and I still managed to find common ground, mostly because of what seems to be our profound love of craft, and of course, shopping.  Back then I didn't have time to be as much of a maker as I am now, but I still left Japan with a suitcase full of coolness and a burning desire to go back again. 

Fast forward ten or so years to yesterday, and I'm sitting on the sofa, watching in disbelief at the photographs and scenes I saw on television. The earthquake and tsunami and the havoc it is still causing.  With cars being tossed in the waters like little toys, and houses being turned into floating driftwood, I was hoping that at any moment Godzilla would appear, and by default, that would mean that none of it was real. But of course, that never happened.  It is all too real.  And I feel a little guilty that I can sit here and tell you that my day, tiny chumley's day, was blissfully uneventful. But I am also very very thankful.

Today, taxes are on the agenda for our tiny little pack.  And as I sit with Big Boyfriend and grunt and groan over the numbers with our tax preparer while tiny boyfriend is curled up in his bed, I will remind myself that it could most definitely be worse. That my life could be turned upside down in an instant.  That I could be the one waiting for Godzilla.