Bounty

A kind of strange thing just happened. Today was gorgeous--warm, sunny, lots of birds out and about. After work, I broke out the capris to wear while walking Josie. We set out on a fantastic walk--started out on the bike path, veered out into the woods right along the river for a while, then back to the bike path, then finished with a romp through the cemetery. (Not as morbid as it sounds, by the way. It was still very light out, and Josie loves to run back and forth across the cemetery path, for some reason. Also, it's peaceful--naturally.)

Anyway, we got back, and I fed her and the cats. I was starting to clean up the apartment a bit when I noticed, for some reason, something in the back pocket of these capris I hadn't worn since last fall. It was a $10 bill. Woo hoo! There's nothing quite like finding money in a pants pocket to make your day, even if it's not that much (and especially if it's more than a buck or two).

Then, however, I found myself just staring at this $10 bill, and I started feeling kind of gloopy. Gloopy, by the way, is an odd mix of nostalgia and guilt that I feel on occasion and have so dubbed. The $10 made me feel nostalgia about (not for, by the way--not like I'd want to go back) the days in my life in which $10 would have been a very big deal. And there were many, many days like that. The $10 also made me feel guilt--guilt about the fact that $10 actually doesn't make any difference to me anymore. This $10, that represents an amount more than some people in the world take home in a week, doesn't even show up on my radar, at all. Is this an American thing, this guilt? Should it be an American thing? But then, what can we do about it? Besides trying to make the world a better place by ________________________ [fill in your favorite cause here]. All this stuff was running through my head, triggered by nothing more than that $10 bill. (I have no solutions or answers to these questions, by the way--I just find the thought-triggering process interesting.)

On the other hand, that $10 will pay for lunch for a couple of days. So, woo-hoo, anyway.