Can it be? Am I now among the ranks of desperate housewives? In my suburbia, one neighbor is madly driving a charity’s local chapter. She feels that she has to do everything because no one else “has time.” Meanwhile, she works hard to spend time with her children, and her husband spends his extra time mowing the lawn. Another neighbor fights to keep the weeds down in her lawn while keeping the perennials alive long enough to establish themselves. The weeds are looking quite healthy next to the drooping flower heads. And she constantly cuts new recipes out of magazines to stave off cooking boredom. Another forty-something neighbor was delighted to hear that I was retired, and now invites me over to discuss summer travel plans and to lunch. I mean, who else is at home in the middle of the week and doing nothing? And I drive myself crazy mulling over all the possible things that I can do in my copious “spare” time (reading, writing, cleaning, gardening, singing, lunching, organizing, working out, shopping, sleeping, musing), when I am not being distracted by the senior citizens I live with (my cats) and forced into servitude, or cooking meals, which is the only thing my husband requires I do to earn my keep (well – there is one other ==:--}). Talk about inner demons. Hey, Lynette, Susan, Gabriella, and Bree, would you like to come over to play poker Tuesday?
I feel like a failure: I haven’t achieved my first goal of retirement: doing nothing. There is always something. No matter what. But Dave got me this neat game called Journey to Wild Divine, which teaches me exactly how to do nothing. I can learn to let all of it go and create nothing out of something. I am going to get right on it. Nothing, here I come!
And may I quote William Makepeace Thackeray?
“There are things we do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair, though we ever speak of them: as the Ahrimanians worship the devil, but don't mention him: and a polite public will no more bear to read an authentic description of vice than a truly refined English or American female will permit the word breeches to be pronounced in her chaste hearing. And yet, madam, both are walking the world before our faces every day, without much shocking us. If you were to blush every time they went by, what complexions you would have! It is only when their naughty names are called out that your modesty has any occasion to show alarm or sense of outrage, and it has been the wish of the present writer, all through this story, deferentially to submit to the fashion at present prevailing, and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended. I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly some vices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and inoffensive manner. In describing this Siren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie?
….
“If we were to give a full account of her proceedings during a couple of years that followed after the Curzon Street catastrophe, there might be some reason for people to say this book was improper. “
-- Chapter LXIV, “A Vagabond Chapter,” Vanity Fair by W.H. Thackeray
How old fashioned! Nothing relating to our current society. Oh, wait. Janet Jackson. “Nipple.” Accidental exposure of that body part (poor Elaine Benice). Shudder. Let the Siren plunge back into the depths!! Naughty, naughty! Keep those dangerous beacons of sexuality at bay! We must be decorous and proper. And now let’s get back to the football game!
I am waiting for Zsa Zsa to settle, but she won’t. So, I decide to get my notebook out and start writing anyway. Meditatively. I will focus on writing and not on the rest of the world. Ha! I just paused long enough to pet Cocoa, who just returned again to the pillow next to me. But it is true: I continue to write through all of it and do not stop and I focus on my free writing, finally. Zsa Zsa on my lap calmly purring. Dave setting down his coffee in the office with a light thud. Small engine planes zooming in the skies outside my window. And me just here writing...
I did stop just now to daydream. Zsa Zsa doesn’t really like the writing board. Well, she left. Didn’t help that Eva arrived then and goosed Cocoa. So much for focusing on my writing. Geez! Day dreaming again! What the hell! I almost made it. I almost focused only on writing. But I can do it right now. But now Zsa Zsa is looking at me over her shoulder. I pet her. Eva noticed and looks at me, so I pet her. Zsa Zsa is leaving now. Oh, well. I just have to let go and determine that it isn’t my fault. Zsa Zsa came back here and stood on my notebook. She slid off. I couldn’t offset her slide. She just kept going. Goodbye, Zsa Zsa. Now I am back on track…