Sock-Sacks and Happiness

Okay, so after

Writers in The Field

, I have a new thesis statement:

we have too many huge, giant, apocalyptic nigh-unsolvable problems in this country, and not enough small ones

.

On Saturday, for example, my main problem was not dropping the cookies (that

LB Clark

and

Erin McGowan

brought all the way up from Galveston!) while a hundred of us were running through the mud to escape the tornado warning.

On Sunday, my main problem was not owning a second pair of shoes. (As it tur

ns out, grocery sacks make fair-to-middling sock-condoms.)

Today, my main problem is that I can't quite figure out how to get up off this couch.

And all of these are small, satisfying, and completely surmountable challenges.

I didn't have to worry about getting

Kathryn McClatchy

up off the floor of the ticket booth during the tornading, because

Marsha Hubbell

is a PTA Green Beret. Didn't have to figure out how to feed everyone after the food truck fell in a ditch, cuz Alex and

Allison Campolo

delivered pizza through flooded roads like Evel Knievel jumping the Snake River Canyon (in a Lexus, no less). Didn't have to know how to get the food truck *out* of the ditch, because as far as I can tell,

Shane Richmond

just Force-lifted it up like an X-wing from the Dagobah swamp. Didn't have to stop and thumb-type every late-breaking announcement, because

Kathryn

and

Sarah

and

Amanda

blew up the hashtags harder than a questionably-colored dress. Hell, I didn't even have time to wonder about getting the margarita machines in during the storm, because

Brandon Burgess

is the all-weather swashbuckling Jimmy Buffett this country needs.

My point is: all of these very short, specific, twenty-minute micro-crises are now 100% handled. Mostly because we had exactly the right people on point to handle them.

But also - you know, in a world where everything we need magically appears on a shelf or in a box at our front door (even as we wither in constant, paralyzing, existential fear), it was so good to remember what small, short, tangible challenges feel like. And now that I'm back home, clean and dry in my climate-controlled condo-box, I am jonesing for my next fix. Can these shoes go the dryer after I hose them off? I don't know, but I can't wait to find out!