what’s your man got to do with me?

It’s 8:50am and I am still groggy from the whole waking up thing which happened an hour earlier, but which is entirely OVERATED. So, I get in my car and see a smudge on my windshield. I’m tired; I don’t really care about smudges on my windshield. I pull onto the road and then I notice a 3D object on the hood of my car directly in my line of vision. And then a gasp emits from my mouth and my right hand goes to catch it. My hood has caught a dead baby squirrel and it is so baby that it doesn’t even have fur, it’s all smoothed, gray, wrinkled skin.

I consider what to do and my first thought is to call my father. And then a pang hits me with the realization that there is no man around who will save me from dead baby squirrels and the notion that I need to, at some point in this day, become Brave Super Woman, starts to make me sad. I’m all independent, but I didn’t sign up for dead baby squirrels.

I drive to work because it is only a block away (I know, but I need a lot of teachery things that need to be hauled in a vehicle). And when I get to work and get out to have a look and say goodbye to dead baby squirrel I gasp again and cover my mouth because dead baby squirrel is missing half of it’s brain as if a bird pecked it out. I really want my Daddy now.

I go to work. I do my thing and when I get a break I ask a custodian for a shovel. I then go and as best I can without looking, I scoop up dead baby squirrel and put him in the dumpster. There are four men watching me do this intently. No one offers to help. I am making very girly, cringing faces. And then I think of the women that these four men are probably trying to love in their lives and I feel sorry for them too.