That's Bad. No, that's good!

I have been accused of being someone who's never frustrated, or who never shares frustrations. I figured I'd share.

The wind is howling, and an outside trashcan had blown over, the inside bag fastened around the rim with encircling electrical tape) was out like a balloon and flapping loudly, so I decided to just bring it into the house until later. I bumped it on the door twice (it's 6:30 and people are sleeping) and felt bad about the noise, but the dog didn't come. My dog is getting old.

I wanted to make tea, but the sink is too full of dishes to get to the water. I could use water from the Britta-filter pitcher, but it's nearly empty, which isn't right; it doesn't work well that way, but someone else couldn't get to the sink last night, I guess.

The dishwasher is totally full of clean dishes (better than dirty), and the counter is too full to easily process the clean stuff.

At 5:30 when he was leaving for work, I asked Keith to pull the hot tub plug and put the hose to drain on one of the Arizona Cypress trees, before I knew how totally COLD it is outside, and windy, and the thought of messing with water to clean the tub is daunting.

Years back when I was in my 20's, all this could've been enough reason for me to hunt the dog down and wake her up just to make sure she's alive and well, to be really angry with every single person who hasn't done dishes, to tell Keith his idea about taping the bag to the outside trashcan is stupid, and to bang dishes around kinda hoping it would disturb some of those lazy people sleeping. I could have worked myself into a martyrly froth and cried self-righteous tears.

Now with decades of practice and maturity, I can write a self-righteous blog post instead.

Here's what's good about the imperfect morning:

There's no snow or rain with that wind, and our roof is stable and our windows don't rattle. Not a luxury house, but a serviceable, warm and solid house, at least where people are sleeping.

If the dog is old, at least she's asleep somewhere and is better off sleeping than having me make her feel guilty for not being up just because I'm up. She's got to sleep sometime. (If the dog has died in her sleep, no hurry for me to know; we don't have little kids who would be traumatized by being the discoverer. And I don't think she's dead, I'm just reporting my thoughts.)

It's trash day, Keith put the rolling dumpster and the recycling out last night. Good. Marty parked his jeep in the driveway instead of on the road; trash-day requirement; good.

I can drink V-8 juice instead of having tea. Good. Tea later.

My dishwasher works AND my sink drains, and we have hot water. There's no pressing deadline for getting those dishes done.

Also in the "good" column:
Keith is well enough to go to work, and even to take the motorcycle instead of the car. That makes him happy.
Holly had a long day yesterday, at a Teleflora workshop her #2 job paid for. She had fun; each participant got flowers to keep, and she stopped by and gave hers to a friend who broke his back in a car accident a couple of weeks ago; she's sleeping.
Marty had a long weekend housesitting, working, fighter practice, more working, and he's home asleep.
Brett-the-boyfriend had a weekend of working, computer failure, computer shopping and set-up, long WoW raid on new computer, guild problems, and he's sleeping.
I could be sleeping if I wanted to be (if I could sleep at will), because I don't have young children anymore. I'm healthy and walking well, which I might not appreciate as much as I do with memories of a broken leg once and a broken ankle another time, and I'm glad I have a hot tub that needs cleaning, and that needs to drain over 400 gallons of water; good for my trees!


There will be days in my future that involve worse than inconvenience and frustration, but rather than imagine those clearly, I'm trying to see the day I'm in now clearly. It's not so bad at all.

Here are recent images of the state of some of the plants in my yard. Hollyhocks, onions, a strawberry plant blooming, mulberry tree budding, vinca blooming and mint (not in that order).