Aw, man.
I don't know if it's allergies, or hormones, or external events, or some combination, but I'm just not feelin' it today.
Part of it is: someone I knew well and liked at church (an older man who was pretty well beloved by the whole congregation) succumbed to lung cancer yesterday. It wasn't *unexpected* (I think it's worse when someone dies unexpectedly, coping-wise), but still, it makes me sad. He's going to leave a hole.
His wife is now a widow and although I'm sure she'll cope fine (eventually), I feel for her. He also leaves behind a grown son from his first marriage.
I also find that I'm entering one of those periods where I need to keep the fool news turned off: everything either gets on my nerves or makes me want to weep. (The latest: a couple of teens arrested in Dallas for forcing a 5 year old and a 2 year old to smoke pot. Now, if you smoke it as an adult I won't say anything to you: I don't, myself, and wouldn't want to, but I don't care what you do as long as you're not out driving stoned or you don't show up to my class stoned. But forcing it on children is sick and wrong and it makes me both sad and angry).
I also knit a bit on the pink Magic socks, only to find that I dropped a stitch several inches back. I've caught it up with a spare piece of yarn but I'm seriously considering just ripping back to that point - the repair-before-they're-even-finished offends my sensibilities. So that bums me out, too.
(I find that when a lot of bad/sad things happen at once, things that normally don't bother me that much loom sort of large.)
I got up this morning to work out and made the mistake of calculating how long it would be before I returned home again (12 hours) and how long it would be before I was truly done for the day (16 hours; German class is tonight and although I really enjoy it, it makes for a long day.). I got through the workout but I kept thinking how nice it would be to go back to bed.
I've also had to deal with a few people being difficult, work-wise, over the past couple days and although I can usually shrug that off, I feel like I'm entering one of those times when shrugging it off and stepping up* is going to be more of a challenge than it usually is
(*from the old parable about the farmer's mule that fell in a disused well. The farmer decided that neither the mule nor the well was worth saving, so he got a shovel and started to fill in the well - the intention being, he'd bury the mule alive [poor mule]. At first, when the mule felt the earth hit him, he was upset and scared. But then he learned that if he shrugged and shook a little, the earth fell off him, and began to accumulate under his feet. So he kept shrugging it off and stepping up on the piled up soil. Finally, he wound up being able to walk out of the well. The moral being: when people dump dirt on you, intending to bury you, shrug it off and step up.)
I think perhaps I need to take the tiny precious bit of free time I get between 5 pm and 7 pm tonight and start a new project. I have yarn put aside for a blue-and-white zebra (I had black but it looked too stark; I like the light blue instead). The pattern is a Knitting at Knoon safari-animals pattern that also has an elephant and a giraffe in it. I am eventually going to do the giraffe, too, using the brown and tan variegated left over from the first Sitcom Chic I made....
2 comments:
I'm sure you've heard of Dr. Andrew Weil (he has a website, several books, and PBS specials). He recommends a periodic "news fast" because he thinks a constant stream of (usually) bad news via t.v., newspaper, internet, and radio just wears you down and aggravates anxieties in those so prone. I firmly believe this, because I find myself "down" after too much bad news, not being able to process it and then let it go. Of course you cannot "let go" of personal news concerning family and friends, but some of us do tend to be super sensitive and live through others pain and fear, even those we do not know. Frankly, I cannot watch or read or listen to anything that involves children being hurt in any way. I quickly became sensitive to that after my own three kids were born. And I understand the allergy thing. I suffer from them too and they just wear you down so that everything becomes harder to deal with.
-- Grace
death is never easy, expected or not. i suppose the difference is shock level. my grandmother passed away 6 months after she had her first stroke (at 97, oy!). after that first stroke, when i talked to her on the phone, i knew. anybody who didn't know her really well wouldn't have noticed, but i did. while it didn't make me happy, it was not unexpected. my dad had a stroke 3 weeks after her funeral, and died 33 days after she did. (not his mother, she was my maternal grandmother) that was shock. after having spent the better part of 3 days translating for my mother and father (they're deaf) at my grandmother's funeral, i found myself going through all the motions again, only with my father. tough.
and long days just slay me. when the kids were living with my brother, i hated saturdays. i had to be at work at 530 (am!), and got off at 2. i'd go home, change, and drive to where my kids were, pick up my daughter, and drive to another town (nothing to do in that town). go back, and drop her off, and pick up the boys to take them to church. by the time i got home, it was 930. thank goodness i didn't have to be at work until 630 on sundays. on really crappy days, i'd end up driving 200 miles with all the insanity involved.
Post a Comment