The more things change, the more they stay the same. I am still a lousy blogger. Glad some things are consistent.
Anyhow, since my last post, I am unhappy to report that clarity and focus are still elusive. (Also consistent.) I wish there were some way to reduce the input into my brain, allowing me to give proper attention to those things that . . . well . . . need my proper attention. Since there is no such funnel, I’m afraid I will just have to learn to discard and disregard those things that do not truly matter.
I had the opportunity to stay home for two days this week (a good story in itself, which I will elaborate on in a moment) but I noticed how much more centered I was when I was there. Meg was sick, and was content lying on the couch watching The Disney Channel all day, and I could not believe how much I got accomplished. I cooked lunch. And dinner. And baked brownies. I did ALL the laundry (Mike was amazed when he got home and changed into the shirt he had worn the evening before . . . which was freshly laundered and put back in the closet! Woot to me. I pulled a Joansie!!) I organized the kitchen cabinets. All of them. Plastic dishes do not fall on you when you open the doors any longer. Yee haw. The sense of doing things completely and correctly is such a foreign concept to me. I’m so used to doing everything half-assed with a fraction of my concentration (The Joy of Doing Things Badly) that it amazes me when I can do something not only well, but in it’s entirety. How pathetic is that. Unfortunately for me, I don’t think I’ll be quitting my day job any time soon.
So, on to my story. I contemplated titling this post “The Can of Cream of Mushroom Soup.” But only Barb would know what the heck I was talking about. (Of course, Barb is the only person that reads my blog, so perhaps that would be okay.) The Can of Cream of Mushroom Soup is pretty much the same thing as The Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back, and refers to an incident where a can of soup was the last straw for Barb. It wasn’t a major crisis, it was a can of soup . . . and yet it was still her breaking point. I was *so* there.
Monday afternoon, I had the pleasure of teaching Safety Sense to Meg’s Brownie troop. It was fun, since I rarely get to interact with her classmates. It went well until we were packing up to leave . . . when Meg, who had been coughing incessantly, threw up. And I caught it with my bare hands. (If you haven’t had kids, this will be appalling. If you do have kids, you will admit to having done the same thing at some point, guaranteed.) This, however, was not the can of cream of mushroom soup. I took Meg home, got her cleaned up and into bed, and geared up for a sick day on Tuesday.
At bedtime, however, I couldn’t fall asleep. So, I read until midnight. I just dozed off, when Meg found her way to my room and crawled into bed next to me. Always comfy. A feverish, coughing, mumbling 7 year old hogging my side of the bed. I finally got her back into bed, when the cat decided my head would make an excellent pillow, and proceeded to purr loudly in my ear. At 3:30am, I heard a noise outside. I poked Mike and asked him if he heard it, too. He said it sounded like an animal on our front porch. I was okay with that explanation, until I clearly heard the noise above my head. I poked him again, and he reassured me it was probably some rogue squirrel foraging for food in our gutters. Not completely convinced, and now wide awake, I listened more closely. And then I started to panic. The noise was clearly not coming from our roof. It was coming from our attic, and whatever was making the noise was substantial in size. Mike told me there was no way that anything could have gotten into our attic, but my ears told me otherwise. THIS was my can of cream of mushroom soup. We had had a sewer back-up on Monday morning. (Again.) I got thrown up on Monday afternoon. I hadn’t slept a freakin’ wink all night. And NOW I had some large animal trying to take up residence in my attic. Could anything else go wrong???
I managed to pull myself together and have a good day. I thought Meg was having a fever-induced hallucination when she told me she saw a raccoon jump off of our roof into the bushes. Could it be?? When Mike got home from work, he climbed up the stairs into the attic armed with a flashlight and a broom (like this will save him from a rabid raccoon?? Uh, hello??) and found no critter . . . but did find a big pile of poo . . . and the way the critter peeled back some wire mesh on our attic vent fan and gained access. See?? I wasn’t so crazy after all, now was I?
The hole was patched, there have been no further noises, and I did not lose my mind, so perhaps it wasn’t my can of cream of mushroom soup, after all. It’s Friday, and barring any other unpleasant surprises in the next 24 hours, I am calling this week a complete success. 
Happy weekend, dear friends.
