Well, it was…a rough week and a busy social weekend and it’s only Monday and I’m exhausted. I look at what everyone else does and it amazes me that I’m exhausted when I do so much less than they do, yet they keep on truckin’.
Good news: this weekend I reconnected with weavers from our local guild, and got out to see and shop a couple of craft shows, including one at Providence Farm, where I’ve been meaning to go for a long time now. I ate at three great restaurants, INSIDE (ackkkkkk, so nerve wracking), and others paid for my meals! Sandy repaired our dryer and so I was able to get caught up on laundry. Not much else happened as far as art or house cleaning. I did some cooking and had a little more energy. The Christmas break is much anticipated.
Not so good news: I finally took Diego to the vet. He has asthma. He needs dental work. It will be expensive, again. His prescription food was changed and so far they both like it (knocking wood). A week ago Sandy tried to go to his doctor for a med check and about multiple problems like his persistent cough that keeps getting worse, probably polymyositis related, but it needs evaluating. They sent him away to get a Co-vid test so he couldn’t go back for an appointment until late today. (It wasn’t Co-vid. He’s had this cough for years.)
Embarrassing news: Today I was looking forward to seeing the video that was posted on YouTube about the exhibition my collage was in this summer. I got treated to about a full minute (out of about 8 minutes!) of it falling down and the installation team repairing my hanging wire and sighing and saying, “When an exhibition says that the art has to be ready to hang…this is why your art has to be ready to hang.” Well, it hung on my wall; what can I say. I’m not posting the link to it because now I am embarrassed and I don’t understand why they included all that in the film when I didn’t even know that it happened. At least they blurred out my name on the back, but instead of being excited now I have tears in my eyes. Gah. It’s a nice documentary other than that. A small glitch in the scheme of things, but I’m not having a good week and I’m hurt that they didn’t consider my feelings.
Terrible news: a vivacious friend of ours who lives in Japan died suddenly this week. We missed him anyway, but he usually came back to town during the holidays and visited friends, and now we will never see him again. He was a major extrovert and entertainer so he had many, many friends and acquaintances who loved him. More terrible news: a PhD student died this week also. Four people I knew died within one month. The other two deaths weren’t surprises, but the unexpected ones made me dwell a bit on this quote from The Lord of the Rings.
“‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'”
We would never have thought back when we read these books that this quote would so directly relate to us toward the ends of our lives.
And how will we decide what to do, when to do it, and how to do it? How will we manage our health related problems within a health system that only works for the rich? In a country where the working class often has to choose between rent, medication, insurance premiums, childcare, and food? And what do you do when violent people are able to act with impunity, and are encouraged by those in power to attack those who disagree with them? What do you do when governments and corporations with the ability to help the environmental problems refuse to acknowledge that there are problems they have to address for human civilization to continue on this planet?
I had terrible nightmares early this morning and had a full-on panic attack from the first one, heart pounding, heavy breathing from the running I was doing in my dream. I can barely think about the fascism that is being embraced by a minority in this country and who seem to be succeeding in taking power.
I think that I’m going to have to go back to therapy. Hopefully I’ll be able to stay off the anxiety meds.
slowly she turned 