Tired, so tired—and bizarre news items

Ever since the holidays I’ve found my days eaten up with errands and doctors’ appointments, grocery store trips and household chores like laundry and kitchen things. I look around my house and see all the things that need to be done. Physical therapy twice a week also takes a chunk out of my week. And sorting papers for the tax return looms as a big chunk of time. The result of all this is that by Friday night I’m exhausted and ready to sleep all weekend, which of course I won’t do. At seven in the morning, I’ll be wide awake.

Every night I swear I’ll go to bed by ten—I have yet to make it before about 11:15. I seem to get a second wind in the evening, get lost in whatever I’m doing, and keep thinking that any minute I’ll go to bed. It won’t happen, especially tonight when I have Jacob who likes to stay up late on weekend.

His mom comes home from a travel agent “fam” trip to Costa Rica tomorrow night. His dad is going to a party, although reluctantly because he has to go alone. So I’ve promised to fix Jordan salmon—which Christian won’t eat. I’m loving getting back in the kitchen more, even if it does make my back scream at me.

I’ll be glad to have Jordan home for lots of reasons, among them the fact that she wants to pack up my Christmas decorations herself—she’s tired of my grocery sacks and has brought plastic bins—one is already full of all the greens I took down. I doubt the rest will fit in the second bin, but I’m ready to have Christmas off my dining table. I think it’s all the first baby steps toward our consolidation or merging households—as we sort, things inevitably get messy. And I, who used to swoop through the house, picking up empty coffee cups and other detritus that bothered me, don’t have the energy for that. I note things that need to be done and think, “Tomorrow.” Really welcome the three-day weekend coming up.

Lest this sound like whining, I’ll admit that bizarre news items have convinced me we live in an age of loons. There’s a legislator in Tennessee who want to inspect the privates of every child before they use a restroom to make sure they go into the correct one for their gender. Apparently he’s concerned about transgender transgressions. How many transgender school children do you know? And I’m quite sure that’s against the law. We spend hours teaching children and grandchildren about inappropriate touching, and then this nut job comes along. I’ve noticed that Republicans seem particularly concerned with our privates and what we do with them.

And now, in Texas, it’s legal to open-carry a weapon into a mental institution. How safe does that sound to you? We can’t do background checks but we can give mental patients a chance to snatch someone’s gun and open fire. Our Fort Worth Southwestern Exposition and Stock Show now also allows open carry with “certain restrictions,” though I never did see what those restrictions are. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, and one of the friends I had lunch with said sometimes she likes to go to the stock show but not this year. She has made a promise to herself not to enter any business that says “We welcome open carry” and to leave immediately if she finds herself in a business that allows it, signage or not. I so agree with her. It’s not that guns scare me—the people who parade them that scare me.

The same friend wondered aloud today if people were as crazy 500 years ago and concluded they probably were. We’re just seeing the 21^st-century spin on it. I’m not so sure.

Okay, I’m going to bed and wake up in a happier frame of mind. Everyone needs to kvetch once in a while.

 

The Remodeling/Merger Woes Begin

It’s Friday night, and I’m tired. It’s been a week of doctor appointments, a haircut for me and one for Sophie, people in the house every evening or out for dinner. I appreciate the busy social life, but it leaves little time or energy for writing. Not one day to stay at home all day at my desk. I have developed a standard answer when people ask if I’m writing or what I’m writing. My answer: “I’m managing my career.” For that is truly what I’m doing in the odd moments at my desk—arranging blog tours, working to post older titles that disappeared from Amazon, figuring out marketing plans for old and new books.

This week, in addition to all the busyness, we’ve made baby steps toward our project of merging households and remodeling. Jordan and Christian want some structural changes inside the house—a door closed off and made into a wall, a louvered door replaced with a solid door. And they couldn’t understand why it was taking so long. Today Lewis, my contractor about whom you’ll hear a lot more, was finally able to corral his painter and bring him over to look at the two rooms that will have to be repainted. No report yet.

What I feared would happen did: I became the middleman, the kids demanding answers from me about why this took so long, when would such and such be done. Today I got Christian to talk to Lewis and I think it was a mutually satisfying talk—Christian says they agreed the next step is up to the architect. So we need to light a firecracker under him.

Meantime, my most organized daughter, is leaving town on business for a week but has left me a list of chores: first is to dismantle Christmas, though I must leave it for her to pack in her own efficient way. When she comes back, we’ll pack up Christmas and then load the dining table with dishes, etc., that my children may want. They’ll all be here January 29 for the rodeo. I have given sets of china to Jamie and Megan, but there are others that I think the other kids want. As always I face the dilemma that many are family pieces. I may not have room for them in my new quarters, but I don’t want to see them leave the family. That is going to be an even bigger problem with furniture, though Jordan and Christian want my wonderful oak dining table with a gazillion leaves and the 1846 sideboard that has been in my family for generations. They’ll also keep the round oak table I bought for $3 at a farm sale in Missouri. Today you’d pay a fortune for that. I’m mentally trying to figure out which antiques and family pieces I can move to the apartment—my wonderful mahogany bed, with its six-foot headboard and four-foot footboard for sure, and my large square oak coffee table—once a kitchen table but we cut it down. Probably another $3 purchase when I lived in rural Missouri. Such decisions are sure to be wrenching.

I don’t foresee a lot of writing in the coming year. I will be busy managing my career and managing the merger and arranging my new space. Wish me luck, please.