The F**k-up Fairy's in town...and I'm too jet-lagged to give a damn
I used to care until I learned that none of it mattered, anyway
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
After yesterday’s marathon travel day, I’m grateful to be at home, with nowhere to be and no expectations that I’ll be anything near productive. The jet lag is massive, perhaps because I don’t feel like I’ve slept for two days. Even though Erin’s in Las Vegas on a business trip (right….), it was nice to have Magnus sleeping with me again. I woke up to him washing my head. There’s nothing like a wet dog tongue caressing your hairless skull at oh-dark-thirty….
Honestly, it felt pretty incredible this morning, and it put a smile on my face.
It’s 52 degrees here in Portland, which, by comparison to Minnesota, feels not unlike Palm Springs. I’ll acclimate to it soon enough, but when you consider that two weeks ago, I woke up to -9, yeah, I’ll take it.
Even though as I write this, it’s not even 11 a.m., and my mood today has already ranged from torpor to foggy to earth-shattering rage…and then back to lethargy, which I find infinitely preferable. With the past few weeks being what they have been, it’s all felt pretty heavy, and I’m still trying to process grieving for two loving ones I’ve watched slowly deteriorate, once from cancer and the other from dementia.
No stars…. I would not recommend it.
Yes, it’s the circle of life, and knowing that helps to place all of this mess into some perspective, but it certainly doesn’t make it any easier. It still sucks donkey balls. And still feels like a part of me has been removed sans anesthetic.
Grief is like that; this isn’t my first rodeo, and it certainly won’t be the last…but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier. Sometimes, I feel like I’m doing OK; other times, I feel like I’m dragging an anchor behind me.
I’ve spent the past 12 days looking after my brother and mother, ensuring they had what they needed before I came home. It meant not thinking of myself first, which felt good; I needed to think outside myself for a bit. The last few days, though, I could tell that it was beginning to catch up with me. It was all I could do to keep myself from breaking down when I’d talk to Erin on the phone. I knew it was time for me to come home and spend some time taking care of myself.
So, here I am. Today, at least, will be a day devoted to doing as little as possible. Oh, I may do some laundry and pick up around the house, but the rest of it will probably be spent flat on my ass reading or watching television and/or taking a nap. Now that sounds like a lovely idea, doesn’t it? Hell, yeah….
Eventually, I’ll take a shower, try to stow away the reason for my rage (I did promise Erin, after all), and try to pretend for as long as I can that it’s all systems normal.
One step at a time. We’ll see how that works.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch….
We could barely get out when we left Portland because of an ice storm. Our neighborhood was one of the lucky ones that didn’t lose power at any time, but we still had to drive to Seattle to be sure we could get a flight to Minneapolis. At the time, something like 70% of the flights out of PDX had been canceled due to ice, and even more had been delayed.
Of course, while I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of January in Minnesota (and even less so with the reason for our visit), we weren’t flying into some of the crazy weather hitting the Southeast and the Atlantic Seaboard. The first two mornings, we woke up to -9 degrees, but from there, it warmed up; it never snowed, and by the time I left, there was no snow on the ground in the Twin Cities.
Now that I’m back home, I did a quick inventory to see if anything feels different. Let’s see where things stand:
Is Donald Trump still a rapist? Check.
Is Donald Trump still a sentence-mangling demented dumbass with a Messiah complex? Check.
Are Republicans still acting as if our southern border isn’t a problem they want to solve but one they’d rather run on and blame Joe Biden for? Check.
Are Americans still blaming President Biden for the economy being in the shitter even though virtually ALL economic indicators are on the positive side- e.g., unemployment and inflation are down, etc.? Check.
Is Donald Trump still threatening to impose a 60% tariff on all goods imported from China, thus throwing the American and global economies into reverse almost overnight? Check.
Did the Minnesota Vikings miss the playoffs again? Check.
Yep, things look pretty much as they did when I left for Minnesota- FUBAR’d virtually beyond recognition, same as it ever was.
The difference is that at least now I’m not spending my days listening to my mother bitch about Donald Trump and relate the same cat stories repeatedly. Don’t get me wrong, I love the woman dearly, but 12 days of that will just about drive a man to drink. I don’t know how often I can say, “Mom, you’re preaching to the choir!!” when she gets wound up about Orange Jesus before it has an impact…because, to my knowledge, it never has.
And, as much as I love cats, one can only hear the same stories so many times before one begins to go ape-shit. She lives alone and sometimes lacks companionship, so her cat is now her child. And, yes, she is a bit of a crazy cat lady. Still, she is my mother, so I indulge her. After all, she is almost 83 and still living by herself, so…hey, you go, girl.
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