Day 13: If we were sharing a bottle of wine

I haven't done one of these in a while. The original idea was for bloggers to write a blog post about what we -- you and I -- might talk about over a cup of coffee, but I write at night, and I don't drink caffeine. Also I do what I want. I can think of a few things I might talk about. Maybe you could write what you'd talk about in the comments.

I'm sitting on my couch in the middle of my living room as I write this. I pulled it out earlier and cleaned behind and underneath it. Yuck. Where does all that dust come from? I understand the socks, colored pencils, markers, and almonds, but the dust? It's disgusting.

After I finished vacuuming and mopping back there, I couldn't bear to put the couch back, because it looks so good. I will before I go to bed. I don't know what possessed me to do that at 11:00 at night, but I am glad it's done.

When I was a young Air Force officer's wife, I struggled with a dirty little secret called depression and anxiety. At the time I was awfully hard on myself about it, but looking back I can understand why that young woman struggled. It's not an easy life, being a military wife, and I was very young. I'm not going to talk about that though. Cleaning behind the couch reminded me of one of the things I did that kept me sane during my husband's weeks- or months-long  TDY's (temporary duty).

I'd give myself one job every day that was not a daily chore. Like cleaning behind the couch or sorting out the sock drawers, going to the commissary or alphabetizing the pantry. OK, I never alphabetized the pantry. But I might clean and organize it. Having that one job to do every day got me through some lonely days when college classes didn't take enough time and kids were in the future. It's a shame I wasn't better at building a life back then.

These days, I could make a list with 15 of those kind of chores on it every day here in my big old Victorian and never run out of days. How I wish I could split the work up more evenly over my life. Maybe that's why I rarely get depressed or anxious these days.

If we were sharing a bottle of wine, I'd ask you what you've done to keep yourself sane and above water. If you don't have any tricks, I have a list of chores you could help me whittle down.
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If we were sharing a bottle of wine, I'd tell you I miss some of the courtesies people used to offer each other. Coraline and I were driving home yesterday and we came to a traffic light that was green, but the cars who had the green light weren't going through. And the cars that had the red light were driving on through it. It was a funeral procession, of course, but since they didn't have a police escort, it took me a second to notice the little flags on some of the cars and figure out what was going on.

It was a long procession. We sat through 3 or 4 green lights before the last car passed by. A couple of people honked and tried to get the line of cars to go through the green light, but most either knew what was happening or didn't want to go against the majority.

When I was a kid growing up in a small town, people would pull over and stop their cars as a funeral passed by, but I don't see that very often these days. I'm not sure it's a thing any more. Letting the procession go through a light, yes. Stopping along the other side of the road, not so  much.

I miss it. And I think it's not a bad blessing: May your funeral procession be long enough to cause the  drivers in the cars going the other way to honk their frustration.
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If we were sharing a bottle of wine, I'd say my granddaughter Coraline and I are going to Iowa for my mom's 80th birthday soon. I wrote already that we're flying. It's her first time, and it's been so long since I've flown it might as well be mine too. I always drive, but my little brother talked me into flying so I wouldn't have to spend 24+ hours driving through Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. The I states.

It's been 3 1/2 years since I've been home. I always worry about the same things. I just know everybody is going to notice how much fatter I am than last time I was there. And I got a shitty haircut last Thursday that I need to try to get fixed at another salon before I go. It's hard to take the risk again with another new place, first because I could just get more shitty haircutting. And second because I hardly have any hair left to cut. Bitch really chopped a lot off. Also, haircuts are fucking expensive. At least on my budget. So I need to lose 40 pounds and get a decent haircut out of what's left of my hair before I go.

I also need to move my couch back against the wall, and I can predict with reliability which is most likely to happen.
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 It's not a joke, those 40 pounds. My 3-year-old standard poodle Crow Cocker is too fat, according to his vet. And I'm too fat. Hmmmm. Seems like we could work on that together, but one of us is too lazy and too busy, both at the same fucking time. Pour me some more wine, will ya?
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If we were sharing a bottle of wine, I'd ask if you've noticed things are so fucking serious these days. Remember when we could go days and not think about politics? I do. I tell myself almost daily I'm going to pull the fucking Facebook IV out of my arm and get my life back. But what I really want to do is take a break from politics. I want to keep the personal stuff that connects me to my friends and get rid of every political article on my feed. No offense to anybody who shares political articles. I do it too sometimes, although I've backed way off on that. It's preaching to the choir.

I've never had one of those vacations where you just lie around on beaches and stroll through quaint cities and other people take care of you. I need one of those.

I also need to move my couch back against the wall, and I can predict with reliability which is most likely to happen.
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Neither is a fuck buddy going to happen, although somebody commented the other day that I needed to write about that. Ugh. I will, but not tonight. I tried it once, mostly because my daughter Elvira insisted I needed to, and it wasn't as easy as you'd think.

By the time somebody makes a decent fuck buddy robot, I'll be too old to give a fuck. I can almost see the appeal though. Almost. OK, not really.
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I'm going to bed now. The wine is gone, and I'm craving potato chips. Sorry this has been kind of a boring ramble. I'm boring these days. I need somebody to entertain me .... and yes, I DO mean like that. Next thing you know I'll be trolling Craigslist again.