Running Away

I have fantasies about running away - just getting in the car and driving until I find a cool place to stop. In these fantasies, the cool place includes wonderful people, fun work, a great guy (or two), and a hip, cozy place to call home. Oh, and a dog. I read a lot of books with this plot line because it's so darn appealing.

I will never do this for two reasons. I cannot leave my geezer horse, T, behind. Even if I owned a trailer and a vehicle to tow it, pulling the trailer endlessly until finding the cool place would be too big a worry. At 26, T doesn't need the upset. Plus, while running away is strange in a cute, quirky, I'm-finding-my-place kind of way, running away with a horse in a trailer is just plain strange.

The real reason, though, is health insurance. Everyone I know, including me, is totally terrified about life without health insurance. Why are the characters in the books with this story not concerned? You know it's fiction when they lose their jobs or their husbands or whatever and the first words out of their mouths are not "Oh my God! How do I get COBRA?!"

I could live with being the strange woman with the horse in a trailer. I tremble to think about living without health insurance. Monday, I'm back at work. (Hmmm... Could it be a national conspiracy between companies and the government to force people back to their less than inspiring jobs each week? Hmmm....)

For an excellent look at what could be done with health care in the US, see PBS.org for "Sick Around the World" hosted by T.R. Reid (who has been a huge nerd-crush for me long before he did this show).

The books that inspired me today: The Way Life Should Be by Christina Baker Kline and Love & Biology at the Center of the Universe by Jennie Shortridge. Both were were warm, funny and uplifting even if no one freaked out about losing health insurance.

Coffee free status update: pretty much want to kill myself but too tired to do so. (Note: herbal tea, while all very good in its way, is not coffee.)