Maintenance

I have been up since 3--we slept with the windows open, and somewhere down the street, at 3 a.m., someone was having an argument with voices loud enough for me to listen to make sure I didn't need to call the police.  I couldn't tell what they were fighting about.

Earlier in the week (as Monday went into Tuesday), I spent several hours being awakened by a barking/whimpering dog.

I love fresh air as much as the next person, but this is getting to be ridiculous.

But is this topic really important enough to write about?  We've had some losses of creative people over the week-end:  Derek Walcott, Chuck Berry, and Jimmy Breslin.  In later years, when I look back over what I was thinking about, will I wonder why I didn't write about those losses?

Will I wonder why I'm not writing more about politics?  I do feel like we're on the cusp of something huge, but I've felt this way before.  I'm the woman who spent her late adolescence and early adulthood scanning the horizon for mushroom clouds.

I do want to record how my friends and I are all commenting on how hard it seems to be to do basic maintenance, much less the getting ahead type of improvements we might wish we could do.  My spouse and I spent much of yesterday afternoon trying to get the new--and very expensive--pool vacuum to work.  It's not like buying a new coffee pot, where we plug it in and know how to operate it.  And then we discovered a dial was missing.  Ugh.

I'm trying to tell myself that we're taking care of things, like taxes and bill paying and laundry and surface cleaning, if not deep cleaning.  But I'd like to get the furniture steam cleaned.  And we've been living in the house almost 4 years, and our temporary kitchen is looking more permanent--in part, because it's perfectly useful.

Let me also remember, when I look back on these days, that my work means that I don't have much free time each day.  It will not always be this way, but it is now.

Let me give myself credit for clean laundry and clean dishes and getting the oil changed in the car, even if I didn't get it done in the recommended time frame, but close.

 

Let me continue to do my very best for my school and its students.  Let me remember that I do that too, and how important that work is.