It has been one of those weeks when you could take my life and drop it into an I Love Lucy sitcom and it would be perfect. For those of you who are too young to remember, Lucille Ball was a wonderful comedy actress who stared in several shows that carried her name…I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucille Ball Show, and Here’s Lucy.
The fun part of watching a Lucy show was that you just knew she was going to do something goofy, create a catastrophe out of something simple, and the audience would find themselves laughing hysterically at her antics. It was a type of “if anything can go wrong, it will” and everyone loved watching.
Lucille Ball- photo found on internet
Now we take my week. Sunday I was fixing dinner and blew a circuit breaker. I went downstairs, reset the circuit, continued fixing dinner and blew the same circuit again. Before I could make a bee-line for the door the Master Electrician currently residing in my house stopped me. I couldn’t reset that breaker, he had to analyze the situation. Never mind that dinner is in the oven and that oven is no longer heating because it is on the blown circuit, the analysis had to be done first. Once he had analyzed the situation and made his determination I was free to reset the breaker and continue with meal preparation. However there was a glitch. I had lost track of how much time the food had been in the oven, and while I was getting a detailed explanation on his process the fish became quite overcooked and hard. Lets just say that meal left a lot to be desired.
Monday comes and I walk into work. The bottom of my shoes must have been wet from the snow and when I hit the tile floor of the kitchen area my feet flew out from under me and I went down hard on the tile floor, hitting the back of my head on the refrigerator as I went down. My startled scream was loud enough it brought all three men who were in the building running. Why can’t clumsy things happen when there is no one around to see them? Then once I am again on my feet I open the upper cupboard door to fix myself a cup of coffee and in the process hit myself in the head with the cupboard door. How could I not have enough sense to move my head out of the way? I’m still recovering from the injuries incurred that morning.
Tuesday was hectic but I seemed to make it through the day unscathed. I fixed spaghetti for dinner and decided to have a bottle of wine with it. Only I could manage to get the cork stuck up inside the corkscrew…but with a bit of persistence I got it back out. Only a moment to recover on that one.
Wednesday, hump day, shouldn’t I be on a roll to recovery now? Oh heck no. I was planning to take a second car I have into the dealership for service. A friend of mine gets all the snow off it, I go to hit the unlock button and open the door. The battery was so dead the car doors would not unlock. We finally got the door unlocked by inserting the key, but it was frozen shut! There is only one door on the entire vehicle with a key hole, so only one door we could work with. I called the towing service I have, but after about 45 minutes on the phone they informed me that until I got the door unfrozen and open they would not be able to assist me. I called the dealership and they advised me to pour hot water on it. Four gallons of hot water later the door seamed to be devoid of ice, but it still would not budge an inch. I called the dealership again to explain my problem. The gentleman from service came out and by the time he arrived the hot water had seeped far enough in that the door opened. The battery was still completely dead and had to be jumped, but at least the vehicle is now at the dealership. Between a recall, service I scheduled and a warning light being on, it will be there a while.
If that wasn’t enough I had a meeting to attend Wednesday night, and without anything major happening I did manage to call a green frog orange and a woman named Donna I referred to as Phyllis. I think because she has such a funny personality I was thinking of Phyllis Diller…..that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
So today is Thursday and I didn’t have any disasters, just fumbles. I was sitting at breakfast talking when my friend says “are you going in to late work today?” Crap! I made it…barely! Then when fixing dinner the potatoes were a bit under-cooked and the seasoning on the salmon wasn’t bad, just something we weren’t particularly fond of. The bagged salad turned out great! I think I need a vacation.
Wait! That is what I forgot about. I booked a vacation, a real 11-day vacation including airline flights. Then as I was reading the airline confirmation it said that you should check and make sure you don’t need a visa for the country you are traveling to. I knew I don’t need a visa, but I clicked on the button anyway and discovered that when traveling to Canada by air they require you to have a passport that does not expire for at least six months after your last flight. Mine expires five months after my last flight. I thought I was good, only to discover I have to renew my passport.
Now mind you I have plenty of time, but it did not do the mind and stress level any good. I found out I can renew by mail and located a local CVS that does passport photos. I went there after work to have it done, but the girl taking the photos was short and the first two didn’t turn out right, then the camera battery died, then my eyes were looking off to the side. It was the fourth or fifth photo before we got a good one. I didn’t think I was ever going to get out of there. So I now have the application completed and ready to take to the post office tomorrow. Lets hope that goes as planned.
Tomorrow is Friday and I hate to speculate on what could possibly go wrong. Hopefully nothing. With any luck it will be a no-excitement, ho-hum boring day. I wonder if Lucille Ball ever had an uneventful, boring day?
Do I set goals for the new year? Usually. Do I achieve them? Sometimes. Even though for the most part New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are just another day, they still contain a bit of tradition that is repeated year-after-year.
So what am I doing? I am going to downsize by sorting my belongings and accumulations of the past 36 years into keep and sell piles, and I am going to downsize out of my home and into something smaller and more manageable for me, both in upkeep and cost. I am changing financial advisors in the anticipation that my investments will provide me with better earnings for my retirement. I am going to forgo some of my activities and/or volunteer positions so that I have less commitments and more time to devote to things that I need or want to accomplish, such as the downsizing, running my photography business, and my writing.
With today’s internet if you search out something on any sight it will suddenly start popping up in massive quantities. That was the case with traits of my sign, Libra. What surprised me was how many of those quotes accurately reflect my personality.
Leisure & Hobbies are important to us Libra. We have a wide range of interests and taking time to enjoy the fun things in life is important to our well being. While we are the scales and like things in balance, we also like to debate issues and I for one certainly go for the win. However winning or loosing is not the ultimate goal, because knowledge is gained through debate so a good discussion is always good for the brain. If you always associate with people who think just like you there is no challenge, no gain in knowledge, it is just an ongoing, never changing, boring existence.
I will admit it was hard. However forcing myself to get out and do things has been beneficial. I am more physically active, which increases metabolism and energy. I discovered I am happier by being once again out and about partaking in different activities. The result is that I am more productive than I was when spending the entire weekend at home. Why? Because I have decompressed my brain so I am more relaxed, my energy level has increased, and therefore I am more productive.
We would sit on the porch playing jacks. At one time I was able to handle pick-ups of 20 jacks at a time. We played a lot. Do kids play jacks anymore? Are they even available to purchase? Ours were tiny metal jacks with a small red ball. What about hula hoops and pogo sticks? With a swing of the hips your hula hoop could be forced up to the neck or down to the knees and back to the waste. Regular jump rope, Chinese jump rope, and hop scotch kept us busy.
Back then most people did not have air conditioning. Windows were open, fans were used. One strong childhood summer memory does not involve me but my father. He would mow the lawn and then afterward watch the ball game on TV. One of my favorite scents and sounds of summer is the combination of fresh mowed grass and a baseball ball game on the TV or radio.
The reality is most couples are not as completely consumed in each others lives as we were. They spend more time doing things on their own and socializing with others. Living alone has allowed me to adjust to doing things on my own. I am still learning how to involve others in my plans so I am not always a solo act.
rejuvenated again. It is a battle of the brain, which way to go.
I found this frustrating as he suffers from depression and I would wonder how he was doing. Then suddenly I would receive an email or message. There were always reasons for his disappearance…busy, kids, grandchildren, sickness, depression…but were they reasons, or excuses? In my opinion there is a fine line between the two, and I wasn’t quite sure on which side it fell. Things would improve for a bit but eventually would fall back into the old pattern.
Boy, does this sound like a major pity-party or what! The fact of it is, I am alone. I have to figure out how to juggle the yard work and get it done. I have to eat alone, plan my own weekends, get out and be active by myself. When I’m sick and have chills, that’s the way it goes. I’m alone and I have to deal with it. That is life. That is reality. Pity-Party over.
--- LIFE IS A MELTING POT --- Grace Grogan...Writer, Photographer 