Down The Rabbit Hole

The other night I was washing my hair and the back of my earring fell down the drain.  I was feeling luxurious for some reason, and wanted to be the kind of woman that washes her hair with diamonds in her ears, albeit, small ones.  Marilyn Monroe's Lorelie Lee in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" came to mind, although I am not a blonde, and not a gold-digger; yet.  While losing the back of an earring isn't a very big deal at all, I fretted.  I have always managed not to be "casual" with my possessions, and hold on to them for a long while (plus this was one of those "screw-backs" that are not supposed to fall off at any cost).  But there I was on Saturday night with soap in my eyes, using a small flashlight to see if the miniscule back went down the rabbit hole.  And there it was staring up at me, with an imaginary set of eyes affixed to its silver sheen. The anthropomorphic creature seemed to also have a voice that called out and said: "Help! Get me out of this muck!"  I unscrewed the top of the drain with a screwdriver, took a tweezer and got the little guy out of that sea of hair clumps and drain scum.  And then while marveling at my own handiness, I thought, gee, like my friend here the earring back, and Alice, I have fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole, slowly, through a tunnel lined with all sorts of strange occurrences and wonder.  This brave new world is awesomely mysterious, uncertain, and astonishing.  I've been spat out of the sluice, and I've landed into a strange room full of locked doors of varying sizes.  I know there is a beautiful, bountiful garden on the other side of these doors, and the key is there in plain sight, but I'm for now, clearly, the wrong size to fit through the door.  I am more expedient and facile in adjusting to the circumstance at hand, and like Alice, I have gotten my hands on the various drinkable/edible potions that build me up - so that I'm rendered a towering tree, hitting my head on the ceiling, only then to be cut down to size, ever the small inconsequential Minnie following the crumb trail.  This two year period of looking for a permanent job has been dizzying, and the back and forth of expectation, and then the dashed hope, has taken its toll, and there are stretch marks on my psyche to prove that its been a fierce battle of weathering the me as big and powerful, and the me as small and feeble. Until the doors open, I will have to do my time at the Mad Hatter's table, along with the Dodo, the Cheshire cat, the Mock Turtle, the March Hare, and the Dormouse.  It's good that I think I know how to deal with the effects of tea.