Start the Day Ordering a Bathtub

Claiming Fridays for carving order out of chaos. Nobody is here to freak out because I’m “making a mess” to get rid of one. No dinosaur brains roaring over my train of thought as I’m setting the paper shredder to terminate mode.

The painting and sanding that hurts me badly during the rest of my days have to wait.

It’s difficult to go through those bills for my father’s ambulance rides and stays at “rehab” facilities where he hung out and did very little because he’d convinced himself the staff brought him coffee because “they like me.” Difficult because what it cost the rest of us wasn’t counted in cash.

It’s difficult to find letters from a mother who I wasn’t speaking to because her rabid narcissism had extended beyond me (and my brothers thought I didn’t know the depths of it) to my children and my spouse. Taunts from beyond the beach about my life choices. Those choices became necessary because somebody had to actually pull some damn weight and get shit done instead of just effing around with other people’s reality. The stuff people leave behind for others to clean up. Wrong-headed and selfish stuff. Ten years can go by and it still works itself into my house, an infestation. Fading away isn’t as awful as it seems from the onset, at least the part of you that matters still belongs to you.

I have a lot of work to do.

My grandmother was gone by 62. Her mother died at 59. I’d better hurry. To be fair my great Aunt Kitt made it to her 90s thanks to the miracles of modernish medicine. At some point, that side of the family embraced Christian Scientists teaching. Prayer doesn’t do a hell of a lot for Diabetes (all of them had it) unless you mix it with insulin and exercise. Know better, do better…

The appearance of sunshine has done wonders for my attitude. I cleared off the deck the other day and put the table and rocking chairs back where they belong. Still too cold to go sit out there but enough to feel hopeful.