Sour Grapes? in Everyday Ramblings

Tomorrow would be my oldest sister’s 81st birthday. This is a photo I took of a mobile in her beautiful old apartment on this day ten years ago. We had a challenging relationship and in spite of that I miss her. She was as capable of surprising me as well as annoying the absolute heck out of me.

I got sick this week. Not sure what it was but it was intense while it lasted. I had to cancel a class halfway through. I have never done anything like that before, but I thought I was going to throw up. I barely managed not to. Went straight to bed after and canceled the class that evening as well. My students said later I handled it quite gracefully. But ugh. They also teased me by saying it was nice to know I was human like the rest of them.

Since then, I have slowly been getting better and was able to teach the rest of my classes this week but not do much else. As it has been below freezing early, I have had groceries delivered the last few weeks. A luxury that has been most helpful.

Now they are saying we are going to get snow next week. It is a big deal here as it always means ice and we do not have snow equipment other than just enough to clear the main roads for emergency vehicles. Plus, we have this huge budget shortfall in our transportation department as our gas tax revenue is way down, so the roads aren’t in the best shape to begin with.

And now it turns out we have the second to the worst housing market in the country. That explains why they could increase my rent that much. I don’t think with the current circumstances nationally it is going to get better anytime soon.

One thing I have been doing as a person staying mostly indoors is attending meetings. Lot’s and lots of meetings. I swear I am participating in more meetings now than I did when I was working. I have about four more months of this and then I get a break of sorts.

I could go on about how challenging this work I am doing is, but I suspect you have all already figured that out. Every time it seems I need to do a new task it all gets incredibly complicated, and I realize I haven’t a clue what I am doing. It is exhausting.

This last weekend, when it turns out I was getting sick, I needed to do this federal identification verification process that involved way more technology than I would have imagined even five years ago just to have the capability to file a particular tax form that I used to type up by hand.

It is hard not to feel completely overwhelmed.

And then I participate in a meeting with our City Auditor (who is an elected official) like I did last Friday, and it is absolutely fascinating, and it feels good to know about our local government and that they do care about what we think and are willing to answer our questions and listen to our input.

And I am like, oh yeah, duh, that is why I am doing this.

I have been slacking on the guys though. Walt and his partner, and three other people in our group are all vacationing in Mexico. Yesterday we got a photo of them laughing (and doing a little dance) in a sunny vibrant room in their house down there with a link for them to join us for our weekly dialogue group. Two of the guys here showed up, both late and no one was there.

It was cloudy, the air quality was bad, three of us were sick or injured and it was below freezing. I don’t know. I am glad they are having a good time and recharging but somehow Walt’s insistence on focusing on beauty, and goodness, love and understanding, and the juxtaposition with the news from Washington just didn’t sit with me the right way yesterday.

I’ll get over it.

In a way, that is something to look forward to, I guess.