My Bad (day)

My new discipline is to post every Tuesday and Thursday. This morning I had to run out to get some bloodwork done - early, because if I can get in and get out before 7:30 it's a 15 minute ordeal. One minute later and - - no offense but if I get there after 7:30 the waiting room is filled with um, older people. And it could be an hour. So, I was up early.

I came home ready for my morning at home. No classes, no visits or appointments. Just time for me, me, me. I made a quick bowl of oatmeal and had a neat shot of espresso (I know - you thought I was going to say scotch...) and headed upstairs. I had a post to write. But first I had to reduce to at least one, the four piles of - I'll just say it - crap that obscured any open space on my desk. I've written about my home office before, but the last time was when it was planted in the middle of our living room. Which worked just fine until we had company or wanted to use our table or any number of small and large distractions that keep one from working at home. Like its proximity to the kitchen. Now I've got a whole desk - with drawers and everything. It became my desk a week ago when my husband and I decided that he had all the office space he needed in the building where our Mom and Pop Therapy business is. The room at home, which he used to use, was now declared mine. He moved out most of his books and paperwork, I shifted my books and paperwork upstairs from the living room. All I had to do was clear it off and begin working.

You'd think I was handed a shovel and told to muck out the Aegean stables in a day by the way I was acting this morning. The piles I had to clear contained textbooks, old calendars, worksheets, lesson plans, pictures and cards from my 50th birthday. (Everyone keeps all their cards from their 50th, right? I'm not weird to do that, am I? Please say no...) I had a new and spacious place for everything, due to hearing over and over in my head one of my Dad's mantras as I was growing up: "A place for everything and everything thing in its place." But I whined at every turn.  And then it got worse...

The bag I had been tossing old papers in split and erupted its contents as if powered by a volcanic plume. The books I placed on the shelves crashed over and spilled to the floor - not in alphabetical order. The post I started this morning about annoying people in the medical field wasn't working out because my vocabulary would not come when summoned. The station I had playing on Pandora was irritating - who told Mary J. Blige she could sing?  I banged my fists, I stomped my feet. I yelled out bad words. The cat fled the room. Why was life so unfair?

And then, to distract myself, I visited my daughter's blog. Her last few posts are about cheese, snow days and happiness. Oh, so cheery, blah blah blah. Wishing everyone a happy Friday and an inspired March. Oh, please. How could she write about such wonderfulness? What made her so perky? Why isn't she writing about her stupid subway ride home or how hard it is to start her own business in a shaky economy?

Finally, finally, dear reader, a big cosmic hand came through the haze of my self pity and smacked me on the forehead. What the hell is wrong with me, anyway? What am I complaining about? Of course she's perky - she's an energetic and enterprising young woman who is doing what she wants to do. And I am clearing a place in my very own home so I can have a private place to work; a move suggested by my supportive husband so that I wouldn't have to work in the middle of the living room. And, oh, yeah...wah... I can spend all morning doing this because I don't have to go into a 9 to 5 job where I'm working my tail off for someone else, but have the luxury of time to follow my dreams. Is that what I'm complaining about?

Well, yes, I suppose it was. Yes, it was pitiful, but thankfully, I'm better now.  I'm fortunate to have people in my life who remind me how lucky I am without even saying a word. No one yelled at me, no one scolded me. They're just there...being themselves. And you, dear readers, totally dodged a bullet as now you won't be subjected to my tirade on irritating medical personnel. (Well, you might, but not today!) And even though some hippies with a dog have already memorialized this on T-shirts and other 100% cotton accessories - Life is good. Shame on me for forgetting that.