Another thought... "Once in a Lifetime" - having listened to it again, and really listened, not half-listened while doing something else.

It's a song I find strangely comforting. I don't think it's just the "someone else has felt this way, where they sometimes feel like screaming 'What have I DONE?!?!'" but there's also something more to it. Something very accepting of the fact that life is maybe not what we expect it to be...but despite all the changes that distress us, on some level, things are "same as it ever was." And there's the whole passages about the water...and I don't think those are random; I think Eno and Byrne were very conscious of all the healing metaphors and images related to water. And very possibly all the rebirth imagery, which is most explicit in Christian baptism.

***

I gathered up allllll my tax stuff. Plus the copies I made of the filled-out forms from last year, because I have one complicated tricky thing I have to do on the taxes and seeing how I did it last year will help.

I'm also contemplating projects. I think I'm going to take both Honeycomb and the Thermal sweater (I have to wind off the rest of the wool for Thermal). And probably the socks-in-progress in hopes of getting somewhere on them.

I also think I want to take a just-brand-new, never-before-started project, to have something new and different and fun.

I think this has just been a challenging semester and I've not taken as much time for myself as would ideally be good for me.

****

The image came up the other day - in a discussion - about the idea of the oxygen masks on the airplane, and how when they give the instructions on how to use them, they tell parents or people who are otherwise traveling with people who can't quite fend for themselves that they need to put their own oxygen mask on first, before they try to help their child (or the other person). In other words: if you're not getting enough oxygen, you're not going to be able to help other people, no matter how much you might want to.

And that's not really the same thing as the cynical quotation from Frank Cross (played by Bill Murray) of "Scrape 'em off, Claire: if you want to save someone, save yourself."

I think it's hard in our society to find the right balance. Too many people are too interested in figuratively 'scraping 'em off,' but the opposite of that is not winding up gasping for oxygen while you are checking to be sure everyone else has their masks on.

I tend to try to want to make sure that everyone's got their oxygen masks on, figuring I can hold my breath for long enough while I do that. And then I get frustrated when people seem to keep demanding stuff of me, and I begin muttering "Scrape 'em off, Claire." And then I get sadder because I know that's not the way to be.

And I find that increasingly, I can't always handle all the stuff I used to be able to handle; I don't know if it's just a feature of getting older or if I have some of the idealism I once had burned away, or what, but there really are times I want to look at people and go, "oh, can't you solve your own problems?"