Fitbit told me that I slept for 6 hours and 36 minutes last night with 47 minutes awake and/or restess. That would be the 47 minutes that I spent trying to get Prince’s Pop Life out of my head – it’s like a brain tumor now – and gave up trying to sleep because the full moon was fucking with me. I rarely allow myself to get up out of bed at night for anything other than to pee but last night I couldn’t stand it any more. I wandered around the dark house and found the moon shining through the back room window. It was hiding behind the maple tree’s branches but it was no better at hiding than a 2 year old “hiding” behind a living room curtain. I see your toes sticking out! I hear you giggling! You can’t fool me!
It’s been a rough couple of days for reasons I can’t fully explain. Maybe it’s been a rough few weeks. I don’t know. I’ve lost count.
I’ve been working on the band’s budget at the same time I’ve been working on my own. I’ve tallied up all the money I’ve spent on food and gas and miscellaneous and discovered that the “miscellaneous” needs to be axed or we will not make it. And maybe even the food. I’m pissed off at so many things and people these days I don’t even know where to start. I’ll start with pretty much every Republican in Congress and work my way down from there. I feel guilty that I can’t be involved in much of anything political because my life is too full of musts – work, kids, lying awake at night trying to shake off a song so I can sleep.
I wrote a note listing all the things to discuss, should I ever write a blog post again, and most of them boil down to money or lack thereof: budget, money stress, band fees, band trip, jobs, IB test fees, the whole idea of who is priveleged and who isn’t. I think when you can’t afford to buy yourself a bed frame, are you priveleged or not? If you aren’t even sure how to spell the word correctly are you privileged? I’m white, what do I know? I know I am stressing out over paying for band and the upcoming November trip to NYC where they will march in the Veterans Day Parade down 5th Avenue, on top of Dusty’s IB tests now that she’s starting the IB diploma program. Which should help with college except….add college to that list. Put it on the top of the list. Underline it.
I don’t sleep well. I worry. My mother is “worried” about me but only in the most general way. The way the average person is “worried” about a rising interest rate or the price of “summer blend” gasoline. There’s nothing behind that worry, nothing that helps.
My house needs a roof. My car has 231k miles on it and isn’t paid off yet and needs 4 tires. Should I be worried? What good would it do?
I’m doing all the things that I can to ignore/counteract the worry – I’ve started a garden again despite my utter exhaustion last fall (of course, I knew I would). I’m walking (goal is 7,500 steps a day and most days I exceed that). I’m mowing again. I’m obsessed with the podcast S-Town (are you? Let’s talk! I started to write a whole post about it and then lost the will to hit ‘publish’). I’m attempting to read but I’m not making much headway. I’m writing 10 minutes every morning. I’m meditating/napping 15 minutes most evenings. I was doing a weight lifting thing until I injured a rib and have had to wait for it to heal until I could get back to it. Today, I cleaned my gutters of maple tree helicopters while Red watched HGTV and dealt with cramps and nausea. I am dealing with a kid who does NOT want to grow up and is depressed by the changes in her body and really isn’t down with swallowing pills though tempus fugit and all that. I don’t know what to do for her except to buy a pill chopper for the ibuprofen she needs. We recently went through the Barbies to get rid of most of Barbie World and she has gotten it all out again, setting up new realms, refusing to grow up. It’s hard. It’s all hard.
She detects my stress, I think; the slogging I do every day to make sure we are housed and fed and clothed and the roof (that needs replacing) doesn’t leak and the clogged sinks get unclogged and the cat vomit is cleaned up and the clothes are washed and the dishes are washed and the car gets us where we need to go and I continue to go to a job I’m tired of – burnt out beyond all recognition – or the other job that pays shit but only requires that I am competent, which I am, even when I have to clean up some asshole’s literal shit he purposely left on the bathroom floor. I don’t know why people do this.
Either way, I put on the gloves and knelt down and scooped up his shit and mopped up the pond of piss and sprayed every inch with hazmat spray and locked the bathroom so that everyone else would lose because some shithead decided to make a statement. That is my life: cleaning up after other people’s statements.
It is what it is but what I’d really like is to have a family that says, Oh guess what? We forgot to tell you we’ve set something aside for the grandchildren’s college because we actually care. Or a life that says, Oh guess what? You can retire early and get the hell out of Dodge and do whatever you want to do without having to worry about paying the phone bill or the fact that soon three of you will need phones and we talked to the satellite company and they agreed your tv bill was too high so they’re cutting it in half and also decent internet is coming your way and it won’t cost any more than what you’re paying now and if you do flee for parts unknown, it’ll come with you! Oh, and buy all the underwear and shoes you need! Send us the bill!
Spain is sounding really nice right now. Ireland. Scotland. Anywhere but here. Anywhere that I can get 8 hours of solid sleep without 47 minutes of wandering around looking for the reason for my problems and trying to get a Prince song out of my head. Not that I don’t love him but seriously. My brain hurts. He should understand and cut me a break.
I know this is the decade that’s supposed to be better but I’m thinking my better one might be the next one, should I live that long. I’ve got to get these kids through college first before I start my donkey rescue farm. With bee hives for kicks. I will live that long, right? Right?
Life After Scribbletown 
I remember those days, with the worry and the wakefulness (although without the dread about the fate of the country). In retrospect, those were sweet days because the kids were still young and still needed me. While you’re in them, though, you don’t want to be needed so much. So it’s cold comfort, and I’m sorry about that.
Buy some of the underwear and shoes you need; send me the bill. Seriously.
Right now it seems like money is the only thing anyone needs from me, but it’s better than being entirely superfluous.
I’m drinking a beer tonight, feeling pretty much all you described (kids are older, worries still remain. It’s funny (odd) how the kinds of worries shift but they are still there). No answers from me alas except to say I’d like to help sponsor a pair of shoes for you. Where do you normally buy them?
I’d like to buy you a new roof, if I could. Or the tires — those seem important. I sympathize with Red — let her keep the Barbies up. Soon enough she will outgrow them. And I can’t believe they don’t have scholarships for IB fees — they ought to, anyway. I sympathize, too, about the moon. It keeps me up, too, but I can’t bear to close the shades, so I just wake up and the cat tries to tell me it’s time for breakfast. At 3.
Your post made me feel really old because it seems like decades ago that I had a similar list of stresses. But I guess that means it DOES get better, although it doesn’t seem like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for you – yet. I swear on my life that if I ever win the lottery, I’ll share it with you.