No Sense in Fretting About It

You wake up feeling as if you'd spent half the night in some highly agitated variation of REM sleep. Really you have gotten more exercise tossing and turning than you're probably going to get during the entire day, especially if you forgo (as you've been inclined to do lately) your 30 minute morning walk. What traumatic situation were you dreaming about? Something to do with smuggling tiny illegal aliens across the U.S./Mexican border in your purse and running like hell with La Migra in hot pursuit.You decide not to try to analyze this.

Today of all days you are in dire need of your ritual caffeine boost. Unfortunately the milk in your refrigerator is in a transformative state, going  from liquid to solid, and so you are obliged to manage with a can of whipped cream.  Which would be fine except that there are only enough squirts for one mug of coffee and you really are in need of refills, but "Oh well," you say, "Black is fine!."

Having adopted what you believe is a positive attitude, you go forth bravely into the daylit world. You carry your trash to the dumpster, slipping and almost tripping over random heaps of dirty old snow but, nonetheless, making it there and back without falling and breaking a single one of your elderly bones which you have been told are now certifiably brittle.



Next you attempt to vacuum cat hair off the carpet which, given the amount of shedding your cat does, is a little bit like trying to sweep the sand off a beach.

After that, you decide to tackle the laundry. No problems there until it's time to take things out of the dryer. "Nice, warm, clean clothes," you tell yourself in a chirpy Harriet Homemaker voice.  However... The strings on two pairs of your drawstring pants have apparently crawled out of their casings and wrapped themselves like anorexic pythons around various articles of clothing. Thus, you are engaged for several minutes in an untangling, re-threading event which plainly demonstrates that your fine motor ability is only marginally better than when you were in second grade. You also discover that out of nineteen odd socks, only six are legitimate pairs.

At this point, you are somewhat irritated but nowhere near what one would call upset. Then you go to retrieve the mail and discover that your health insurance has been cancelled. This makes no sense to you since you know that the monthly premium amount has been regularly deducted from your checking account. A visit to your bank's web site confirms that this is so. You go to print this evidence of fiscal responsibility only to find that your cartridge is out of ink and the two new (expensive) cartridges you just bought are the wrong ones.

You attempt to call the insurance company and are informed,  after listening to a number of irrelevant messages, that their offices are closed.

At this point, you are thinking that the best course of action might be returning to bed. Instead you attempt to quell your anxiety by doing a crossword puzzles but the one you choose only serves to demonstrate that your mental acuity has definite limits and you can no longer remember who wrote the poem, Musee Des Beaux Arts though you're pretty sure his name begins with the letter a. You wonder if living with integrity decrees that you should give back your BA in English lit.

You decide to spend some "down time" rocking gently and quietly in your antique bentwood rocker which is located next to a window that overlooks the courtyard of your apartment complex. This seems to work for awhile until you spy a strange man who is apparently peeing against the wall of the opposite building. You reflect that you live in a proper, mainly upper middle class, community where behaviors like this are not supposed to happen. "Perhaps the poor soul has a urinary tract disorder," you reprove yourself. It also occurs to you that your reaction is based on some snobbish sense of entitlement. I mean what qualifies you, in particular, to live out your life in an environment free of public urinators? At this point, you realize there's absolutely no sense in denying that you have become demonstrably UPSET.

You arrive at your daughter's house for dinner in an agitated state and manage to spill almost the entire contents of a pint size container of feta cheese all over the table, the chair, the floor and yourself. Pebble-sized white chunks of this substance are lodged in the grooves of the chair and a few have already been crushed and smeared under foot. With downcast eyes and burning cheeks, you quickly begin the process of cleaning up. "It kind of looks like barf," your eleven-year-old grandson comments matter of factly.

Suddenly find yourself laughing so hard you have to cross your legs to keep from wetting your pants. After staring down at you in consternation and disapproval for several minutes the rest of your family starts laughing too.

After all, what else can one possibly do.