Meh and bleh

Today, I wasted twelve hours of my life.
Read a little, ate a little, got on Facebook a little, napped a little.
Took a shower, dressed, and then went nowhere. Unless you count the front porch or the back patio. I went there four times each. Had coffee; had tea; drank ice water.
Read the Sunday newspaper, started a book (seven pages and then put it down), trolled Facebook some more, made the bed, dusted some furniture, walked in going-nowhere circles.
HAS grilled salmon for supper. Veggies and garlic-herb pasta rounded out the meal.
I ate; I asked Child Three to clean up supper dishes. She did, without complaint.

And now it's 7:15 p.m. and still I have gone nowhere. I feel restless and melancholy and anxious and tired. I feel guilty that I've had an entire day stretched out before me and I have wasted it. Cancer patients know not to do this; people vacationing know not to do this; lovers spending weekends together know not to do this. So why am I here, (boringly) holed up in my two-story suburban home, dreaming of city life and food vendors and people passing by?

I tell you: this life here is backing me into a corner. I need a career job again; I need my own money; I need another Sunday--the kind that doesn't have enough hours to get everything done that I have planned.

You Just Never Know

In 26 days I'll turn 49. That's a four PLUS a nine and I am losing my (aging) mind.
How in hell did I get to be 49? I still feel 14 in my head; I am quite immature. Someone farts around me and I laugh. I get much enjoyment watching a dog chase its tail. Cartoons still crack me up. I know every word of every song from Disney's Frozen. (I saw the movie twice, by myself.)
Then I wake up each morning, feeling cadaverous: stiff, I mean. The back, the neck, the shoulders, the knees, my right ankle. Left wrist.
And I am (only?) 48. What will 58 feel like? Seventy? Eighty? Will I be too stiff to stand erect? Will I be one of those humped-back women I see pushing the grocery cart?
***
Fortunately, my Uncle Neal called me, out of the blue, two nights ago. He was requesting a phone number that I didn't have, but given my reporting acumen, I was able to get what he needed within two minutes. (Sometimes I am truly awesome.)

Me with Uncle Neal, 2013

Here's the fortunate part: Uncle Neal, my grandmother's big brother (she died in 1985), told me, proudly, that he turned 89 five days ago. Eighty-nine years old and still capable of using the phone and hearing well enough not to ask, even once, What? I didn't hear you.
After congratulating him and promising to visit--I would bring a sugar-free cherry pie-- I told him I was turning 49 in less than a month. He laughed. (Swear, he laughed!)
"You're a baby," he said.
"Don't feel like a baby," I said.
"Every day's a gift," he said. "When do you think you might come visit? We're here all the time; can't go anywhere."
The "we're" is Uncle Neal plus his beautiful wife, Marcella. Each is home bound and in various stages of life-ending poor health. Marcella had a severe stroke about a year ago. Uncle Neal has congestive heart failure that has advanced. Hospice nurses come three times a week.
"What about the other four days?" I asked.
"We have round-the-clock care," he said. "Twenty-five hundred dollars a week."
I gasped. "A week?" Good God, I thought. Highway robbery.
"It's getting too expensive," he said. "That's a terrific amount of money every week."
I changed the subject. I become outraged and start feeling insane whenever the cost of elder care is being discussed. It's a hot-button topic for me, almost as bad as the immigrant-children issue that's bringing out the mean in people.
***
"When you were my age, did you think you'd make it to 89?" I asked my uncle.
He laughed again.
"Oh, no. No, no, no."
Suddenly I felt better about my upcoming birthday. Maybe I do have a few good (stiff) years left.

How Have I Not?

There are holes in my upbringing,
knowledge, absent.
Consider Walden, the woods-lived
life--the proud pond;
sixty-one acres of knowing,
trusting simple existence:
that it was enough.
                -Kate Churchill

From The Writer's Almanac, July 12, 2014~
David Henry Thoreau was born July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He went to Harvard, but he didn't like it very much, nor did he enjoy his later job as a schoolteacher. He seemed destined for a career in his father's pencil factory, and in fact, he came up with a better way to bind graphite and clay, which saved his father money. But in 1844, Thoreau's friend Ralph Waldo Emerson bought land on the shore of Walden Pond, a 61-acre pond, surrounded by woods, and Thoreau decided to build a cabin there. It was only two miles from the village of Concord, and he had frequent visitors. During the two years he lived there, Thoreau kept a journal that he later published as Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). In the conclusion to Walden, Thoreau wrote, "I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

Fantasy husband

Do YOU know who this handsome man is?
He's not within my reach, but a girl can dream, right?
I'll give you three clues:
1) He lives in France--he's an expat.
2) His writing makes me laugh so hard I pee my pants.
3) I have met him, albeit briefly. (OK, so it was a book signing.)

Diet #729

What I'm eating today:

What I want to be eating today:

Breakfast

Yes, please.

Good Q & A juju, please

Tomorrow morning I have a job interview. Nine a.m. With a company I've been drooling over for ten years: Andrews McMeel Universal.  They're a big-deal-stationed-right-here-in-KC publisher of everything I love: humor, cookbooks, comics, puzzles, gift books, calendars.
They're looking for a Calendar Editor.
I hope they're looking for me.
I'll keep you posted.