No Need to Panic: Let Me Do It for You

You know the saying "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"? I guess it’s supposed to be inspiring, but today it came to mind during a wash of anxiety. We have plenty of good reasons to be anxious—we still have medical expenses to pay off after insurance, Dear Husband needs a deviated septum fixed, I still need to find a new psych to check my apparently not functioning too well meds, I need new glasses and dental work, Dear Husband needs to pass his teacher certification test and find a new job. And I’m, well, wherever. Standing in the limbo of 40something looking back at what looks like 40 years wandering the desert and looking forward to what may be more of the same. That gives me plenty of anxiety. I think it’s supposed to be a symptom of ADD that you tend to drift, all your goals ephemeral or gauzy and indistinct. It’s not as if you can just shake yourself and say, “Well, what do you really want?” I don’t know—a happy family, fulfilling work, meaning, world peace and the end of suffering. What do those look like broken down into actual goals? Sheesh. A million different decisions every day. I start to hyperventilate just thinking about it. It’s one thing to say “One step at a time.” Yeah, right. One step. Oh, what’s that over there? Wait, where was I? Another step. This doesn’t look right. Was I supposed to go right or left? Another step. Oh for pete’s sake I forgot to bingety bing. Another step. Jeepers, I’m tired already. The only thing I can be certain about is that I won’t miss the exit.

We're In Our New House

We survived the move. Somehow. On Saturday morning DramaQueen boarded her flight to LA. While Dear Husband was doing that, I dropped off my car because the alignment was wacko and spent three hours at Wal-mart with Firecracker, wandering around toys and furnishings, getting her goggles and floaties and swim shoes for camp, and eating at McDonalds. The whole time she complained about her toe hurting. She told me that someone had stepped on it at camp, so I didn’t think anything of it.

Then I dropped her off to play with a friend while I went to the new house to wait for the cable guy and Dear Husband and friends moved boxes. And more boxes. When I picked up Firecracker the friend’s mom said it looked as if she had insect bites on her toe. Well, maybe that’s it, I thought—she’s having a reaction to ant bites or something. On Sunday morning I knew something was very wrong, because her toe had blisters all over it, so off we went to Urgent Care while Dear Husband moved more stuff. The doctor diagnosed a staph infection and put Firecracker on antibiotics.

Well, then she couldn’t go to daycare on Monday or Tuesday, and I had to bring her to work briefly because everyone who knows anything about my job is on vacation. In fact, I had requested the days off and couldn’t get them for that very reason. On Monday night Dear Husband broke the ball cock off the master toilet (I never knew the name until I saw the packaging on the replacement—I always called it the ball floatie thing) and on Tuesday he called a plumber to fix a leak in the laundry area. So we’re off to a rousing start with home ownership. Yesterday afternoon I lay down for a nap and didn’t wake up until 6:30. I don’t know how Firecracker amused herself during that time.

We did let the wormies go before moving, and this time Firecracker was fine with it, in fact she was eager to because it was raining and wormies like the rain. She called them all by name as they wiggled off (although some didn’t wiggle at all, which I didn’t comment on). She was then very concerned about the cats because we waited until last to move them, and she was worried we were leaving them behind forever. Then she made it her task to cajole, comfort and generally hound the kitties into acclimating to the new house. “They’re shy,” she said.

Tonight I am making another trip to the apartment to see what else could be left behind, and to empty the fridge. I know there’s chocolate mint ice cream, and I think I deserve it.