We had planned to work on and post a few items yesterday, but instead we spent the evening on the side of the road by an Iowa soybean field 20 miles west of Dubuque, waiting for a service truck to come and diagnose the sudden high decibel hissing noise/check engine light condition of our truck.
We worried and wondered if we'd have to stay up all night to transfer all of our inventory into a new rental truck.
We ate pickled herring and crackers and watched the sunset and then the deep deep clouds of midwestern stars.
The mechanic re-clamped an air hose that had popped off, and we're back on the road. No big tragedy. Only a few hours of our precious, rare, delicious free time lost forever.....
In a week we'll be wrapping up the travelling saleswomen gig. We'll rejoin the masses of the unemployed. We'll trade an income for priceless productive (and lazy) free time.
For a little while, anyway.
I'm already scheming about how to earn my next paycheck without getting tied down to a permanent job. The money I made at this job isn't going to carry me too far down the road. I thought I'd be able to figure all this out while I was a travelling saleswoman, bored in a hotel room. But I haven't had an ounce of boredom. Working 60+ hours a week, then all the driving time. And all the interesting things the road presents to us (on Sunday, before the truck broke down, we stopped at Frank Lloyd Wright's Cedar Rock Usonian home in Quasqueton on the Wapsin, IA).
Tess told me yesterday that she's accepted that there will always be people who get more than her, who have it easier. It's no joke that as women and artists and bottom feeders we're destined for a life of struggle. Constant problem solving, breakdowns. Very little rest. Sometimes I get tired, but I'm learning to accept it, too. It's a choice I'm making because I think it pays off. Not in money or time, but something else.