A short list of the above:
- got paid $100 to clean the clothes from my closet
- visited a friend at her housesit in Raleigh & slept in a room where the closet had about the same square footage as the room I shared with my 2 sisters & (for a little while) my baby brother (& any stray visiting grandmothers & such)
- walked around the fab campus at Chapel Hill
- visited my new state capital
- ate at a fancy restaurant that was the home of the McGovern campaign in 1972
- petted Persian kitties
- gave an energy treatment to a 30-yr-old yoga-teacher-turned-law-student (lovely young woman with pigtails & a nose ring) in a Durham coffee shop
- went to a mother's day party with 2 kinds of cake & homemade peach ice cream
- met a wonderful 7-yr-old who speaks 4 languages
- got my bed put together (thanks to my friend Derrick, who has power tools & a pick-up!) so I am no longer sleeping on a mattress on the floor
- talked to my sons & my mom & dad (mother's day, of course)
- arranged a flight to (& from) Wiscon
- painting
- working on a new picture book idea
- various & sundry screenplays
- depositing checks & paying utility bills
- further putting (& throwing) away of possessions & papers
I was going to drive to Wiscon, with a stop in Oberlin to pick up Nick's desktop computer so it could take a short tour to Minnesota with me before I dropped it off at his summer job, but I thought about getting in the car--as much as I love it & as much as I love driving--& I went "WAAAAH!" It seems I just got back from a thousand miles away. But, I had planned to do it, so I was going to. Then I was visiting my friend in Raleigh & I felt the barest beginning of this little tickly cough & I thought, "Oh! If I get sick I won't be able to drive--" & I stopped that thought & instead thought, "If you don't want to drive, you don't have to drive & you don't have to get sick to change your plans." The little tickly cough went away instantly & I found a great plane reservation & a friend from Milwaukee (who I wanted to see anyway) is going to give me rides to & from the airport & it will actually be cheaper than driving with current gas prices. Plus I'll only be away from home for 6 days. I'll get to see my Minnesota friends & relatives another time. Nick will have to make some other computer arrangement, which he is perfectly capable of & willing to do (Thanks, Nick.) & I'll visit him later, when he's settled in at work & can show me around.
and now, what you've been waiting for!
Blog alternative:
46. Go back into the dim, dusty recesses of your memory banks & come up with a memory of a time when you didn't want to do something & you let yourself get sick or locked your keys in the car or some other
oh, goody--I mean,
oh darn,
now I don't have to--I mean
can't
do that thing I didn't want to do in the first place"
excuse.
Tell yourself
"Self, I'm sorry. Next time I don't have to drop that bowling ball on my foot for an excuse to honor you."
(Okay, so I cheated. That's really a hybrid philosophy/blog alternative. Blogalternosophy?)
P.S. You get extra brownie points if you don't have any such memories.
P.P.S. Unless the only reason is that your memory is really, really bad. Grin.
