THE ROOF JOB

We went out to eat a couple of nights ago at Pizza Hut. Yeah, it was a BIG NIGHT OUT. The conversation turned to new friends on facebook, of which there have been A LOT lately, which is totally awesome. One of those new friends is a girl, I mean woman, who lived around the corner from my family when we lived in Florida back in the 70s. This is why I said girl and not woman. Back then she was a girl. Of course, she was two years older than I was, but still. My mom knew her, and her family, and we were both excited by the reconnection. Mom then says, "Do you remember the time that I cleaned the roof?" Keep in mind that there are lots of things that mom remembers and I don't, and vice versa. As an aside, I am always amazed and surprised by those things! This had lots of potential to be one of those stories given my age at the time. My answer was, "You bet I do and I am still mad about it!"

Mom was taken aback. That wasn't where she was going with HER story. She says, "Well, let me tell my story and then we can get to you and your issues." I nod. "I was up on our roof cleaning it with bleach and Jody could see our house from her backyard." All of this explanation was for Steve who wasn't there. I needed no explanation. I remembered exactly where Jody lived. "She told me that she was sitting at her backyard picnic table when she saw me on the roof, and called to her parents telling them they wouldn't believe it. By the time they got outside, I had crested the peak and was on the other side. Her parents looked at her like she making up stories." Mom laughs at this funny memory of the roof job. I can't help but smile. It is funny. If I didn't have my own issues with the roof job, it would have been funnier. I can see Jody's parent's in my mind's eye coming out expecting to see my mom on our roof and there being no one there. At that point, they have to be thinking is our kid taking us for a ride, or what? How gullible does she think we are? Jan on the roof? Ha!

The thing is I probably wouldn't even remember the roof job were it not for my favorite purple jammies. Those are the only jammies I remember from my entire childhood. I loved the color purple and I adored those jammies. I liked them so much that I wore them at times that I probably shouldn't have been wearing them... like in the backyard when my mother was using bleach to clean the roof. What I don't remember is if I was out there making a nuisance of myself, or if was out there helping in some way. The only thing that is clear in my mind is the bleach coming into contact with my purple jammies. That is vivid for me. Did you know that undiluted bleach will completely remove the color from clothing? I did not know that until that day. When that bleach took the purple out of my jammies, leaving behind a spray pattern of little white dots, I understood precisely how bleach worked.

After I told my jammies story my mother told me how bad she felt about the bleach and my jammies (again). Apparently we went through this ad nauseum at the time of the incident. It is true what they say: there is no use crying over spilled bleach.

A TIME FOR EVERYTHING

Do you ever have those days when you really don't want to get out of bed? Well, I spent my first thirty minutes desperately having to pee but not wanting to move. It was a quandary. On my list of Things I Needed To Do was call my doctor's office and try to explain how I missed my appointment without sounding like a crazy person, which I think I am, but I am not sure I really want them to know. It made me cranky. And then I had a revelation about why old people are probably angry and bitter. People assume it's because they're old. Not so. Maybe it's because they forget stuff and then find appointment cards and realize they've forgotten stuff. I know it made me mad... at me. And that is lousy. It's always much better to blame someone else. Self-directed anger makes a person really pissy. Throw in a nursing home stay and I can see lots of anger issues. I started thinking about that instead of what I was going to say to my doctor's receptionist because I was still trying to divert my attention from my bladder. Finally the bladder won out and I got up.

Turns out the doctor's receptionist was totally cool about rescheduling my appointment for next week and that turned out A-okay. The other biggie on my plate for today was trying to get a copy of my vehicle title from Florida. This is a critical document that I should have. The crazy thing is that I lost it in storage when I moved from Georgia to Florida and had to go to the Georgia DMV and pay to get a copy sent to Florida. A person with their head screwed on straight would have filed it and not be going through this nightmare again. So, I am trying to order a copy online and have this resolved before my birthday at the end of this month. I have been fighting with the Florida website for a while now and getting nowhere. I tried using my stepdad's desktop today, instead of my laptop, and it did seem to go better, but it didn't recognize my VIN number. I am not sure how a mentally healthy person would have coped. I am fairly certain it wouldn't have been a crying jag followed by lying down on the floor with the dog. That was what I did. That doesn't sound so bad, except I was having a lot of negative thoughts during the crying jag. Bad bad bad.

People keep telling me that if you think you're crazy or you can identify the crazy, then you're really not crazy. It's when that line completely blurs for you that you actually are crazy. So, the truth is I know that I'm in trouble. Actually, I knew that when I woke up. I was dreaming about glazed donuts and rice krispy treats. Whenever I crave sweets that means I am STRESSED OUT and I am not a sweets eater. It's also a symptom of the chronic fatigue. So, I knew I had to do something healthy because my train was going nowhere good. I decided I could take one of the dogs for a walk. It was good for the dog. It was good for me. Sunshine is good. I could see no downside.


What caught my attention today were the trees. They aren't very pretty right now. They are all naked and exposed and barren looking. Winter strips of them their leaves, their adornment, their garnish, and they have to stand there and take it until spring. If a tree had feelings, I would imagine it would dislike winter the most, not for being cold, but for being so callous in denuding the tree of its glory. Of course, the tree has the advantage of understanding cycles and what some would call "the balance". Insomuch as it might loathe winter, its enormous love for spring wouldn't be as appreciated, if not for winter. That's what winter does for spring.; it creates a vacuum for spring to fill. Therefore, the tree doesn't resist winter. It accepts the seasons as they come and go.

I am like the tree in winter. I am naked and exposed and totally off my game. The difference is I am not accepting it. I am banging against it. A friend sent me this in an email and I couldn't wrap my brain around it in a productive way. I understood the theory, but it only WORKS when you USE it. She said this, "Here's the thing about the law of attraction that many people don't get: WE GET WHAT WE GIVE IN LIFE. When we want more of something, we have to give it to create a vacuum for more of it to flow toward us. Your reality seems to be a pretty closed system; send some energy OUT - give other people what you hope to receive physically, mentally, emotionally - and blessings will flow back to you." Let me put this another way, I knew that what she was saying was that I was going to have to leave my house and spend time with my friends. That sounds easy enough in theory.

The reality is that I am living on a schedule of popping pain pills every six hours, keeping up with it on my little calendar, feel like crap, and am really close to unhinged all of the time. I don't want my friends to SEE THAT. That is not sending good energy out, that is releasing a scary person that they haven't ever met into their universe. I don't ever want them to meet Scary Me. Scary Me is that denuded tree and it is ugly. Scary Me hasn't found "the balance" and doesn't know when spring is coming. Scary Me gets reprieves sometimes during the day and is able to make insightful comments on other people's blogs. Basically, I think that I have just said that the only people I can send good energy to are people I am not talking to face to face. Egads. In other words, I know what my friend is telling me. I get it. I understand it. I can see that for my life to be better I need to start doing those things. I have to be like the tree and create a vacuum if I ever want to see spring. Okay. Since I want to be lovely again, I will try.


A Time for Everything
Ecclesiastes 3
3:1 For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.