I haven't done one of these posts in ages upon ages but today I feel there is so much I want to share and that so much of it is unrelated, one thing to the next, that I'd just present you with my random thoughts.
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Last night John had turned on our Wednesday evening service that is broadcast live from our church. Normally I'd sit down and listen to it and play a game on the computer, but last night I didn't. And why not? Because I had food still out in the kitchen, even though I'd covered it and dishes in the sink and I wanted to get things put up and away.
Now, I need to share that this is not my usual worker drone tendency to just keep working. No indeed! I am trying very hard this week to not work endlessly all day long. But we've had an outbreak of flies from some unknown source and they are thick and heavy in the house.
I asked John if the technician had left the door standing open while he was here installing the router box for the fiber optic service. He assured me that he had not. I have swatted, smashed, sprayed until I gagged, those pesky flies. They seem to be hyper focused on three of the windows in the kitchen.
I have cleaned and wiped surfaces and windows and blinds. I have checked potatoes and trash and compost to be sure I am not breeding them somehow. I have opened kitchen cabinets and checked all the contents. I even went outdoors and stood looking at the windows to see if the plague were outside and somehow coming in. There was nothing. I have no clue where they are coming from!
Today has been a little better, though we are not fly free. In a five-minute period yesterday I killed thirty, y'all. When I walked away for a few minutes and came back there were half that many again. Today I've seen them in groups of two to five.
I hate flies. Of all the bugs God put on this earth, I think flies and roaches are the nastiest and most pernicious and pesky things there are.
It's been so bad, I've resorted to that ghastly bug spray instead of the fly swatter I'd normally reach for. I've considered, seriously considered, going into town and purchasing fly paper strips. I cannot abide flypaper strips.
And for those of you that use them and like them well enough, please don't let my opinion of them in any way make you feel judged.
My loathing of them has everything to do with a former acquaintance who had fly paper strips hanging over her dining table, which she hung from her light fixture, so the strip hung right at eye level, and you viewed dead flies throughout the meal. I understood why she used them, because she lived in the vicinity of three big chicken houses and flies just naturally lived where the chickens did. I just never understood why she couldn't at least put a clean strip up before she served the meal...
Anyway, that's why I didn't sit and just listen to the sermon last night, I wanted to put things away so the flies didn't get attracted to it all.
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When I finished doing the dishes last night, I started to go back to the living room, but I noted I had the same irritable, restless, agitated sort of feeling I've had each evening this week. I thought longingly of the back porch and the quiet outdoors.
I struggled for a moment or two, thinking of what I ought to do (listen to the sermon, be a good Christian, etc.) and the back porch.
It was lovely.
(Can we just note too that there were NO flies outdoors?)
The sun was starting to set. The birds were quietly chirping, settling down for the night. It was so quiet, so very quiet. No sounds at all. Sassy came over and flopped onto my feet and started purring. Rufus came along and laid down on the top step (well out of reach!). We three just sat and soaked in the peace of the early evening.
And that irritable, restless, agitated feeling melted right away. I decided that being outdoors only has ever led me to a reverence of the Good Lord, and there was no shame in missing the sermon.
I wasn't out long. Mosquitoes soon discovered me, but that 10 minutes of nature did me a world of good.
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When did I determine that I had to be locked into working hard all of the time? When did I stop taking time to do things I actually enjoyed doing rather than just work, work, work? Even writing has more often than not, become compulsory work.
And much as I want and long to share all aspects of my life (within reason) I tend to be super focused on how I work or how I've saved money and little else.
When did I subtract so much of the pleasurable things from my life?
Swimming, feminine clothing, reading, journaling, writing (not including the usual money saving stuff), piano, pampering myself...When did I determine that those things had no value or worth and only when I did housework, yardwork or counting pennies, was I being productive and worthy of the space I take up on this earth?
And more importantly than when, WHY??
I have not always been such a person as I've been these last few years. I used to take time to read and journal and write and draw. I used to craft for fun with Katie. I used to pamper myself, taking care of my skin and nails and hair. I used to take time for walks and sitting on the porch often, and visiting with friends or family,
My house and home were presentable. Not perfect. I wasn't the drudge that I've turned into.
I miss me. I miss all the things I've subtracted out of my life. Perhaps I wouldn't feel so cheated if I'd added in new things to replace those old things I took out but I didn't. All I put back into my life was another list of jobs I needed to accomplish, another area to clean, another section of yard to conquer, another task, another chore.
Enough. Do you hear me, dear friends? ENOUGH.
I'm tired of always working, never stopping. There's always more work to be done if I do all I think I should. And no one but myself seems to be criticizing me for not doing more and more.
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Tomorrow, we have to go to two different schools to see the grandchildren for Grandparents Day. I've mentioned this in another post, one that likely won't be posted until after this one, so I'll say what I'm going to say, however unpopular it might be to voice my thoughts on this.
I have had bouts of anxiety for the past week about all of this. And why?
Because it is a zoo. It's NOT fun, not for us and not for the kids. Who the heck decided that the way to celebrate grandparents, the way to involve them at the schools was to have a day when you invite a mass of people in to visit.
Parking is a nightmare. And when you do get parked inevitably you have to walk along uneven ground for a mile so that you can stand in line for ages before they allow you in. It's worse than trying to find a cashier run line at the grocery at 5pm on a weekday.
It's loud. Oh, my word is it loud. At least at Caleb's school it's really loud because they herd us all into the cafeteria. To sit on tiny elf-sized stools at tiny elf-sized tables. Inevitably some poor soul has had to drag infants and toddlers with them to the event, and they are so overwhelmed they scream at the top of their lungs which triggers some of the school children as well.
We are packed into this little room with all the children and they try to make speeches and present a program and feed us and herd us back out again in a bit under an hour.
So that we can walk back across uneven ground to the distant car and then sit and wait in a traffic jam trying to get out.
At the county schools here they send you to the classrooms which are crowded with people to view paperwork that you can barely see through the crowds and some well-meaning teacher will say, "Get a book and let Gramma read it to you." There is NO place to sit, there are four other children who want your attention because they had no grandparents show up and the children have no desire to hear you read a story.
Then the teacher says loudly, and too hopefully if you ask me, towards the end of the visiting time, "You can take your grandchild home with you if you'd like." I don't like. My grandchild has another hour of school after I leave, and I don't have a child's car seat, and I'm worn out from all the noise. Children start to cry as other grandparents say, "I'm sorry...I'm not prepared to take you."
There's another long hike back out to the car that is practically parked in town over uneven ground ahead of me and another traffic jam. By this point my head is splitting.
Let's go back to the old ways. Let the kids make me a card to give me on Grandparent's Day. Let me NOT have to go through the anxiety of trying to do two different schools in two different counties with scarcely room to breathe between the two visiting times.
And we won't even mention when schedules conflict and one child has a visit in this county at the same hour another child has a visit schedule in the other county.
Unpopular or not, I loathe Grandparent's Day at school!
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Years ago, I heard Tracy Chapman's song, "You Gotta Fast Car" and I bought the album (okay the cassette but that's what we bought then!). I loved her voice, which was rich and thick like chocolate that's melted just right. Being the music lover, and poet, that I was back then (and where did that girl go?! Another missing part of me!) I was especially keen to hear her other songs.
One that stood out for me hard, was an almost philosophical one that started out, "If not now, then when? It not today, then...why make your promises..." That also happened to be the point of Sarah ban Breathnach's meditation for August 30. I was reminded of that song when I read the mediation that day and I've been asking myself that a lot this week.
I nearly postponed beginning The Artist's Way and why? Because I hadn't determined just how I was going to keep up with the papers I was supposed to write and keep, the lessons for each week. I sat there Monday evening and said, "I don't really have a notebook I can devote to this and I don't want to mix it into the Housekeeping book. Do I want to use a pretty journal or looseleaf paper? A composition book. Maybe I'll just wait another week, until I can decide..." and my head exploded with "If not now, then when?"
Yesterday, I'd said that today I would get outdoors and start the outdoor cleaning. Then I thought, "Maybe I'll garden instead," and then "Or I could..." and my head exploded again with "If not now, then when?" So, I went outdoors and tackled the railings and siding and did a whole lot of cleaning. I didn't knock myself out though. I kept to the promised hour and then came indoors.
The porch is a mess, but at least it's started. And all the windows on the north and west sides of the house are clean, too. Started is started! Started means that I will finish it. I never leave a job undone. Just un-started.
My reward for doing the cleaning was to be a half hour at the piano. I do not play well but I used to play every day, or barring that, to spend a few hours on a Saturday or Sunday at the piano. Then I got married...and I'll share that in a bit.
But I actually sat here and said, "I really should do this job and that one. I need to write my morning pages. I ought to..." and listed off a dozen things. BOOM! Another explosion.
When I came in, John was practicing at the time, so I changed out of the wet clothes and sat down and did my morning pages, while he finished up. "I'm going to play the piano..." and he ran back to the music room and cleaned up the space about it and found my book and said, "It's all ready for you.
I sat down and practiced for a half hour or so. When I came out, John said, "You can play anytime you want to...You know I bought that for you." And that leads me to the next random thing.
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I was never a great pianist. After years of playing, I couldn't accompany anyone, not even myself but I enjoyed it and somehow managed to sing and play enough to suit my soul.
Then I got married and moved and I didn't have a piano for years and years. One day, Mama told me she was giving me the piano. Daddy loaded it up and brought it down to my place and unloaded it into my home.
In all the years we'd had that piano, Mama had never been able to get it tuned and it was moved at least four times over the 20 years. I was so pleased to have my music books and piano once more. But I had children, very little children who wanted to hammer and bang on the keys whenever I sat down. And it was in the living room and my husband wanted to watch television.
When I divorced the piano went with me. It was sounding pretty pitiful, due to lack of tuning. Some of the keys wouldn't even sound. I closed the lid and left it for two years except for playing on very rare occasions when I was alone and well enough to sit and play. This was during that hard season of pain and illness and weariness that was both physical, emotional and spiritual all at once.
Then John came into my life and I'd play now and then but the keys that didn't sound were also main keys (like middle C) that are absolutely necessary to most songs. Mostly the thing sat closed and I'd talk about one day having enough money to get it worked upon.
When we bought our place here, John refused to move that piano. Mind you it only weighed about 900 pounds, was a solid oak upright, and needed six brawny men to move it inches, never mind up and down steep steps, etc. "It's in bad shape and needs a load of work. You could sell it, and I'd buy you another." he told me. I debated and debated and looked at it. I talked to it (after all it had been with me in my childhood) and polished it and ran my fingers over the mostly silent keys. Finally, I agreed.
I called several antique dealers and finally found one willing to drive to our small out of the way town and look at it. After they examined it, they told me they'd take it and named the price they were willing to pay. It was more than I'd expected but nothing at all compared to the cost of a newer piano. The guy told me, "We have a bunch of ivories at the shop that we can apply to the keys. You should keep one of these loose ones as a memento."
Getting into this house was costly in ways we hadn't expected. Money to buy a piano wasn't forthcoming. So, John bought a keyboard. Not a full keyboard, but it was a keyboard. We had to set it up on the dining table, I couldn't prop my books up to read music. I tried to play but it was less than ideal in many ways, size most of all. So, John gave it away and later bought another one with a larger keyboard and 'bookstand' that would hold a piece of sheet music but collapsed under the weight of a book.
We eventually let that one go, too. I was fine with it. John had kept his promise twice. I wasn't upset. I was resigned to not having a piano.
Then one day about ten years or so ago, we went into a music store and there was a 'piano', a full-sized keyboard with weighted keys, a stand, a bench, and synthesizers and such. And I played a bit. We moved it two or three different places and finally decided it should go into the music room which was poorly lit at the time. Or so I said when asked why I wouldn't play it.
Do you hear all of my excuses? They were my excuses. It wasn't John's choices or anything else, but my own reluctance. I had lost a lot of ground over 20 years in my ability to play. I needed to practice. A lot. I didn't want to put in the time to practice. I had given up.
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There's no shame in giving up. We all should give up some things. Abusive marriages, bad relationships, moldy carpet, habits that are detrimental to our health or relationships, caffeine after 2pm, old tapes that run in our head, etc.
But sometimes, for reasons we might not even know at the time, nor later, we give up things we enjoy, that identify us, that were part of the essence of who we were born to be, that made us good. And here I am to prove it.
No one forced me to give up the things I let go of. I've been examining the whys and mores of how I came to give up so much.
I think I gave up so much because I needed to learn to let go. I was hanging on so tightly to anger, hurt, resentment, shame, guilt, fear and all of these good things gave me the appearance of being 'normal' and 'healthy' when in fact I was deathly ill underneath it all. I had to peel back the layers to get to all that rot and cut it out like a tumor and then I needed to heal.
Now I have a healthy base. As I add back the good things, I can embrace them in full once more and maybe, just maybe. be as good or even better than I was before. I'm certain that I'll enjoy them far more than I ever did.
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