Undaunted

OK, I’ll admit it. Right now. Up front. I’m having a pity party for myself right now. Yes, it is “poor me” time, so you can stop reading now if you’re looking for an uplifting pick me up. It’s not happening here. Not on my watch anyway. You see I’m really good at feeling sorry for myself. I mean, really good at it!

What do I have to feel sorry about? Where to start? Yes, as of this moment, I do have my health. My children are both healthy and sort of well-adjusted. My stomach is full and I’m lying in my bed with the covers pulled up. I am truly blessed. I know that in my heart, yet that sunny, happy disposition is alluding me this weekend. The silver lining, the glass half-full thing isn’t doing it for me. The stars are not aligning today.

So if you’ve gotten this far you may be asking yourself so what has gotten this rambling woman on a pessimistic, woe-is-me bent this windy, rainy evening. Well, here is my top three list of peeves of the weekend – one for each day. I figure if I write them all down, I can move past them and as Scarlet O’Hara once said, “Tomorrow is another day.” (And I hope it is better than this one!)

Friday Peeve # 1: My hubby took Friday off to go on a bird hunting weekend with his nephew. I took Friday off to get a handle on the chaos that is called our home – dusting, vacuuming, laundry, throwing away clutter, moving piles of crap from one room to another. You got the idea. I did make a noticeable dent in the disarray – the living room does look nice for the moment and I did get in a 45-minute nap, but I have to admit, that I’m still slightly, bitterly, passive-aggressively angered that he never takes days off to “clean house.”

Saturday Peeve # 2: The day started off good in that I did wake up, but then I got out of bed. I dressed in my favorite jeans and BGSU sweat-shirt; the girls and I were headed to a tailgate party with my parents. As I was fastening the orange and brown fused glass pendant that my mother made me for my birthday around my neck it slipped from my fingers and the metal hook broke away from the pendant. Sigh – warning sign # 1 to go back to bed.

Next, as the girls brushed their teeth and looked for their DS (in case they got bored), I headed out to the van to clean out any trash left behind. I noticed my five-year-old had left behind her slushy cup on the floor. Frowning, I picked it up and realized it was half full. I realized this as the bottom fell out of the foam cup and soaked my suede boots, jeans and sweatshirt with half-frozen mountain dew. So much for the perfect outfit. But even more horrifying my beloved, iPhone was in my pocket and it too was coated in the sticky, sweet concoction. At this point I must say I let out a string of explicatives, and yes, one of them happened to be the “f” word. Yes, this was warning #2 to go back to bed. You’d think I’d take the hint. But, no….we headed to the tailgate party and game where I ate entirely too much food and listened to my oldest daughter whine about how hungry she was, but how she didn’t ‘like’ anything there was to eat. We ended up leaving before the game even started – which – wasn’t so bad as shortly after we made it back to the car it started to rain. So I guess if I were looking for bright sides (which I’m really not) at least I averted a second drenching of the day.

Sunday Pet Peeve #3: My daughter wanted to go to a rabbit show to sell a couple of rabbits from her last litter and look for a dwarf hotot. I’d been looking for someone to teach my Sunday school class without success. My daughters were bummed about missing the show. As luck would have it (or not), we got a text from our hunters saying they were headed home early because it was too rainy. We now had our substitute Sunday school teacher (he only had to play a DVD so he was good), we hurried to load up the rabbits and make it to the show before registration ended. Yes – we were running behind as usual (due to the snooze button). As I loaded one of the rabbits into the carrier, she bit my wrist – hard enough to draw blood. This was warning #1 to go back to bed. Finally, we had everything loaded, Waze programmed to our destination and we headed out.

Not familiar with how to get to the rabbit show location, I was paying more attention to the lovely GPS voice and the fighting in the back seat than to my speed. Unfortunately the nice officer that pulled me over for going 68 in a 55 and gave me $125 ticket was paying attention. Sigh. Yes, warning #2 was upon me and still I pressed on. We made it to the show and got set up. The show was crowded and loud. Not good for a woman who is deaf in one ear, fuming over a stupid, speeding ticket and at her rope’s end with her children who were still “hungry” after just eating McDonald’s. Three hours later, we still had all the rabbits we’d come with, a new carpet square thing-a-ma-jig to pose the rabbits on, and I had a migraine. As we headed home (early as I couldn’t take it anymore), my oldest was bummed because we didn’t buy a dwarf hotot, even though we found one and the youngest was starving and thirsty. And I still had a headache…

In fact, I can still feel it there in the back of my skull, so for now, I am going to go to bed – that place I should never have left…and hope tomorrow brings, well, I don’t know what exactly. Mostly, I hope the rabbit bite on my wrist doesn’t get infected and my headache is gone in the morning….

Ok, the violins have stopped playing. The party is over. Good night!