concrete karma

i live in a concrete jungle. all the rolling hills i see are man made concrete overpasses running along miles and miles of chemical plants. the refinery lights are so bright, it's never dark in my city. the smoke stack flames reflect an orange glow across the clouds as they blanket the sky, hiding almost all the night stars from view. If you care to take a drive and cross the concrete bridges, you would think it was christmas, no matter the time of year, there are miles and miles of lights, as far as the eyes can see. concrete streets, concrete parking lots, concrete buildings,
all the concrete walls start to close in on you from time to time.
i live here because this is where my family lives. i live here because this is where my husband's family lives. my ugly city is beautiful because the people make it home.

My husband and i try to get away as often as we can. i love nature and the great outdoors. i enjoy collecting seashells when we journey to a beach, collecting sticks or a twig when we hike through the woods, and collecting rocks when exploring a canyon road.

my son is attending texas tech college, it was only natural for us to take a little side trip to a nearby state park. while hiking city style (that's driving really, really slow with the windows rolled down) we came across a rather spectacular rock. a beautiful white and pink-ish shade about this size of a bowling ball. Lucy and Desi, together again! my husbands eyes all but bugged out of his head when i told him i wanted that rock. but he stopped the car and popped the trunk for me. it was perfect. i had a vision when i saw the pink bowling ball rock: it belonged in Granny's flower garden.

once home, i washed my rock. silly boys! every girl knows rocks are dirty and need to be cleaned before you put them into a flower garden! i sprayed my new treasure with the water hose and left it out to dry in the sun, hoping it would still sparkle and shine in the concrete city just like it did out in the wild canyon.

well, today when i came home from work, my rock was gone. i asked my husband if he moved my rock. no. he didn't move it. i asked my daughter if she moved my rock. no, she didn't move my rock. the neighbor kids were out running around so we asked them about it.

yeah, they took my rock.
their dad was replacing their back fence that was destroyed by hurricane ike. he needed some rocks to mix with the concrete for his new fence posts.
my new neighbors smashed my rock, mixed it with concrete and set his back fence posts.
it was just a rock, he didn't think it was important.

i couldn't believe it. what? what? you did what with my pretty pink and white bowling ball sized rock that we drove 12 hours one way to......ohh... find?
is this karma?

my stolen property got stolen!