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1:58 p.m. - 2012-06-06
Striving for Zen

Waiting. Today is a waiting day.

I am waiting for the cleaners. Today is their last day until September. I'm putting the cleaning service on hiatus for the summer. A money-saver, sure. But with the guys underfoot it'll be helpful to have chores to keep them busy with. Busy and out of each other's way. Plus, when I'm totally fed up with the pair of them I can send them out of the house for a few hours by insisting I need to wash and wax the floors. We've yet to make it through a weeklong school break without fights and tears so I am taking the upcoming 75 days of togetherness very seriously and am planning accordingly.

I am waiting for the Douchey neighbors to stop making noise. Joe Barky and his dad, the mad whistler, have spent the last three days using a table saw! Starts at 7:00am and goes all day! Between bouts of sawing there's hammering and Barky Senior's jolly whistling! Eats birdseed for breakfast that one. And for the occasional change-up they put the dog outside and let him bark for an hour or so. I lived in apartments for a good chunk of my life and know from neighbor noise, and never, not even when the biker gang moved into the apartment next-door and we had a drug dealer across the hall have I had the acoustic hell that is the Barky clan stinking up my life. I have given serious thought to taking up the bagpipes and practicing outside in the driveway at midnight just to even things up a little.

I am waiting to hear if FIL is going to be put in a rehab nursing home. He's in the hospital again. If the infection he's in there for doesn't clear up fast enough they're going to put him in a rehab facility to administer the long-term antibiotics he'll need. MIL's being her usual helpful cooperative self (*snort* mad cackles of sarcastic laughter) and poor Mick is going bonkers with the pair of them. Grief, frustration, guilt, anger- the Devil's brew served to adult children trying to deal with obstreperous elderly parents whose dogged dedication to doing the exact worst things for their health and safety would be enough to make Gandhi snarl and shout.

I am waiting for tomorrow's gyno appointment. An appointment I am dreading and am already preparing myself for a battle. A battle to be heard and have my complaints taken seriously. The stress is wicking me out and my sleep for the last few nights has been for shit. Of all the insults heaped upon middle-aged women the arrogant dismissal of our health concerns is the worst. Why is heart disease the #1 killer of women my age? Because anything that's wrong with us is chalked up to 'megrims'. We're just a gang of daffy middle-aged broads with nothing better to do than get our granny panties in a bunch over 'nothing', bless our sweet addled little heads. Add to that this particular doctors' group and their monomaniacal hatred of fat and contempt for anyone over a size 2 and your pal, LA, is an angry discombobulated mess of angst right now.

I am waiting for Wolf to get home. He's on his second day of final exams and I am hoping to hear that our study time together meant he recognized the material and answered today's test questions with confidence. I am also waiting to see how his cough is. Wolf's had a roupy cough since Sunday. I made an appointment with our GP for tomorrow to get him checked out, but in the meantime the poor kid has been hacking and hacking with nothing coming up. He has no other symptoms, no phlegm, no fever, no gastric distress. Just this nagging ugly cough. It's come at the most inconvenient time too, what with him having to sit for exams he can't miss and his constant coughing must be really irking his classmates. As flipped out as I am right now I'm doing my best to stave off thoughts of drug-resistant TB and esophageal cancer and any number of other highly unlikely causes, but it's difficult to be chill.

I am waiting for this month's child support check. (Hello? It's the 6th.)

I am waiting for a positive resolution to a minor but potentially costly glitch with the IRS and so far our efforts to get it straightened out have been met with crazy-making bureaucracy and endless red tape.

I am waiting for the rest of my hair to go grey. Last week I finally saw the first threads of glittering silver in my mop. I'm thrilled. For real. I dragged Mick outside yesterday to admire my new silver streaks in the sunlight and he was genuinely confused. All I've done lately is bitch about how old I'm feeling/looking but I'm happy about grey hair? I am. I might change my mind later on when the proportion of silver to brown is more lopsided, but for now I am honestly delighted with the silver. No secret I've always hated the lusterless turd brown of my hair. To me silver hair is far prettier. Bonus: not only will silver hair match my jewelry and footwear, but I'll join the ranks of the badass silvers. Jamie Lee Curtis, Judi Dench, Ellen Burstyn, Tyne Daly, Lena Horne, Diane Keaton, Helen Mirren, Dianne Wiest. Women who flaunt their silver with pride.

I am waiting for this goofy stalled weather pattern of rain, sun, cloud, sun, rain, heat, cloud, lather, rinse, repeat to pass. If we lived in Scotland I could understand. This kind of atmospheric do-si-do is their normal. But here in downstate NY weeks on end of pitchy-patchy is NOT the norm and it makes us uneasy. Be one thing or the other, okay? Make up your mind, Mother Nature. Drown us, fry us, bake us, whatever, but pick one and stick with it. If we wanted to live in Seattle or Glasgow or San Francisco we'd move there. Thanks.

I am waiting for the lawn service on the off chance they show up today. The constant rain has messed up the schedule and my lawn is looking mighty shaggy. I don't mind for my own self, but Mick minds. He minds the shaggy lawn A LOT. And what with this mess with his parents and the financial stuff and the health crap with me and Wolf, a tidy neatly clipped lawn would go a long way in easing my guy's frustrated feelings of helplessness. Something would be orderly and right, you know?

I am waiting. Waiting- the hardest, most difficult thing we can do. Waiting is to give over control and deal with an agenda and schedule you have no input about. Waiting is the cosmic downbeat- holding position until it's your turn to act and move.

Waiting is the essence of the Serenity Prayer.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.


Amen, ~LA

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