Damsel in Distress


Me and the box.
(and lawsy me! googling "damsel in distress" images reminds me
that I need to turn on the parental controls.)

So I bought David something large, heavy, and unwieldy for Christmas. (There is a joke in there, I'm sure. I will pause now while you formulate your own version ... ) It was delivered yesterday while I was out. The UPS guy(s) left it behind the house. When ZandO and I got home it was raining hard and threatening snow. I did not think that David's new object should be left out in the rain. Moving an object 3/4 your own height and twice your width that weighs 98 lbs (I just looked it up. That's how much it weighs.), in the cold wind and rain, is no small feat. I managed to get it into the side door, so it was out of the rain, but I couldn't get it up the stairs into the kitchen, so I couldn't close the door, which meant I couldn't leave to take ZandO to music lessons.

I sat down and literally put my head in my hands. I had that deep existential gut exhaustion that makes you feel like crying (and also signals a need to return to a regular workout schedule), and I felt helpless. O said, "It's okay, mom. I know how you feel. I had to wait 5 weeks for you to give me my allowance once." David  was at work and couldn't be home for hours. He encouraged me to call someone to come help. Who? I hate asking for help. It means I'm helpless.

I told the kids we'd miss music lessons, and I lay down on my bed and thought about all the ways I have failed in my life. O came and cuddled up with me. We breathed together for a while. Then I had a bright idea. I posted on my neighborhood facebook page that I needed help ... and in LESS THAN 5 MINUTES help arrived -- in the form of Barb, a smart, funny retired grandmother and neighborhood dog walker, eye-keeper-on, and co-block party planner extraordinaire. I knew Barb was bad ass, but I had no idea she was so BAD ASS! "I actually life weights," she told me after tidily helping me to walk the box up two stairs then tip it and slide it into the kitchen. My heroine!

I love my neighborhood.

(Oh, and Whit Stillman released a movie last year called Damsels in Distress? Why did I not know this? I love Whit Stillman.)

Reading: 
Still inching through story 1 in the Lurie book. "Ilse's House." Studying her magical realist technique. Wishing I had a whole day to cuddle up with this book and have someone bring me hot toddies at regular intervals. (I know what I'm doing on Christmas.)

Writing: 
>sigh<

Dinner: 
Mushroom barley soup, with the last little bits of the Hanukkah brisket. Next year, I am doing an 8 Nights of Miraculous Brisket recipe collection.

Soundtrack: 
Katie Goodman's I Didn't F*ck It Up!, which my boss that I should hear. Very funny rauncy, middle aged, liberal, feminist comedy songs, but "Soccer Mom Hos" should have been a lot funnier than it was.

Random thing:
O and I often stop in at On the Rise bakery after his drum lesson to get a cookie and sit and read or play a game. Tonight, I was so beat by the box that I bought a cookie for everyone in the family just so I could justify having a whole cookie (apricot pecan bar) myself. We started in on O's new "Top Secret Adventure" pack from Highlights, which is 100% exactly the kind of thing I would have loved as a kid. As we left O held hand and said, "On the Rise is a pretty great place, don't you think?"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sick Days

Image
I'm on day 2 of being sick, after spending a day with a sick O, and I am fighting terrible feelings of self-doubt and lurking failure. This is a normal way to be when sick, I suppose, but it comes at a time when I was already struggling against despair. Why despair? Because I am genetically predisposed? Because I am working too much and I'm worn out? Hormones? Yes. Yes. Probably. Because the BiP is more a fantasy than a reality at this point? (For those keeping track, NaNoWriMo feels to me more like NoNeGoWriMo ~ Not Never Gonna Write More.) The last is probably the clincher. Whenever I lose track of my writing I get desperate. This is an ongoing dance I do with myself. Commit to the writing ~ do the writing ~ neglect the writing ~ hear the writing whispering recriminations ~ avoid the writing ~ loathe self and others ~ eventually get back to the writing (repeat). Wouldn't it be nice if we could lose steps 3, 4, & 5? Hope in a Prison of Despair , pre-raphaelite painting...
Read more

Bait Fish

Image
David made fun of me when I told him, two weeks ago, that I had "started writing the first post" for this blog. "You don't get it, do you?" he asked, knowing perfectly well that I do. I probably threatened to throw something at him. I erased that fragment of first post. It was too mannered and laborious. It was all about what I want this blog to be about. It was all about my anxiety of influence re certain other writers (namely George Eliot), and about the wonder of coming upon a manuscript of Middlemarch in the British Library about 5 million years ago, and the little paperback reproduction of her quotation-filled blotter I bought in the gift shop. The paperback looks like this. (I haven't actually read it.) Miraculously, I was able to find it in less than 5 minutes, despite the shocking disarray of my bookshelves ... it was on the attic stairs. ( more on bookshelves in some other post ) In the intervening two weeks, I have made a list of possible topics fo...
Read more

Under 20, dammit

Image
Anita Loos photographed by Edward Steichen presence of photo explained below, as though a picture like this requires an explanation. This exercise in blarg-- blerg-- uh, blogging is enjoyable, but I think I have been breaking my 20-minute rule rather regularly. So, the challenge now is to keep it under 20. And, somehow, it took me 2 minutes to write that first sentence. No wonder it is taking me so long to write the tome of tomorrow ... that's my official new name for it. Tome of Tomorrow, or ToT for short. No more of this BiP or E(ndless)BiP or what have you. Reading: Continuing on with the Lurie. Looking forward to beginning something new tomorrow. Also, the writing letters chapter from Bird by Bird Writing: Muchly, at the hospitable Donkey. Dinner: O and I made a nice succotash with shallots and a splash of half and half to perk up the frozen limas and corn. My mom made a second night of Yorkshire pudding, because she could. If you have bothered to render suet, you might as wel...
Read more