Someday when I write my autobiography - or someday when I'm dead and someone has the notion to make a television sitcom about my life - the title should be "Six of one," except I'd be borrowing the title from Rita Mae Brown and it wouldn't be a fictional funny drama about one woman's coming out story. It would be the story of the woman whose life story seems to consistently be pointing how life is this continual mishmash of good stuff and hard stuff - ALL THE TIME with the good stuff and the hard stuff.
I suppose that's my blog theme. I wish I'd figured that out a few years ago. Here all this time I thought I was writing about horses and special needs. See what the wine does?
I hit the grocery store yesterday after dropping the kids off with their dad (hint: if you take your kids halloween costume shopping do not finish the trip by dropping them off with their other parent. Kids with new halloween costumes want to go home and put them on, not leave them with you and go to their other parent's house). Since my Mom has been picking up the kids after school , she does their homework and feeds them dinner, which makes my grocery list rather sparse. Unless there's someone to cook for, I don't cook. What's the point? Its cereal for breakfast and dinner is eggs or soup. So I'm at the grocery store and putting my things on the moving belt at the checkstand and I realize that everyone in line behind me probably thinks I'm a middle-aged single woman with no kids and a house full of cats. I was half tempted to throw a True Confessions in with everything just to say "La la la, I don't care what you think!" but actually no one even has True Confessions on the shelf anymore and I at least just managed to establish the fact that I'm getting a bit long in the tooth.
Its a big silence to wrap my thoughts around, those first hours after the kids have gone. With SG on the road everything is at the same time both more and less meaningful. I put away the groceries, empty the dishwasher, wash the few dishes in the sink. I have six more hours before I have to go to bed, and I can pick and choose how I want to spend the time. I'm lonely and not lonely, all at the same time. I do realize that with a house full of pushy cats and large, noisy dogs that I'm never really alone, but since I'm the only one who can actually talk, its a lot quieter. Being alone with my thoughts is a really dicey proposition. I'm one of those people who can go either way -- and sometimes its a matter of a few minutes between happy as a lark and sooooooo lonely and sad.
Is this just part of the human process, learning how to accept while still retaining the option to complain when we don't like what's happening? There's a distinct line between "doormat" and "punch life in the face."
Last night life gave me a 90 pound puppy who thinks she's a lap dog and a 22 year old horse who was on the verge of colicking, a chicken intent on sitting on eggs I do not wish her to hatch and a husband whose phone couldn't get a clear connection to give us a chance to connect for five damn minutes. Life also gave me a nice bottle of wine, a friend on the other end of the phone to be a substitute shoulder, and a nice cold evening to make my dinner of soup ever so enjoyable. So who am I to complain?
Six of one. Half a dozen of the other. It all balances out in the end. Its all good.
Pick your cliche'. Any one of 'em will do.
