January 28 -- Today I had a staging for a couple who is in the downsizing stage of their lives. Their two boys are in the twenties and early thirties and they decided it was time to sell their raised ranch where they had lived for the past 40 years.
I actually envied them for their clarity of vision. There was no emotional whining -- she was quite clear about how much she hated living there, how excited she was to move on. "The sad thing," she said, "is that we have to sell every single piece of furniture we have. Nothing is going to fit in our new place." She turned to me then and gave me a wide grin. "Oh well," she said with a little shrug of her shoulder. "Oh well."
Like I said, there was a part of me that listened to her and was immensely jealous.
I arrived home from that appointment with a few minutes to spare before I had to leave to meet up with my friend Lori for an hour or so of snowshoeing. I had already stopped on the way home to fill up the tank with gas, to pick up some grinders for the kids for tonight's snowboard excursion to the local mountain and to stop at the library to get the issue of TIME magazine article about Jonathan Franzen, the next great American novelist. (I had just completed "Corrections" and "Freedom," his last two books.) I did a mental fist pumping over my head as I entered my house. I was starving and there was leftover soup in the fridge I could heat up for a quick lunch before I left to meet Lori. All was right with the world.
Not.
When I quickly checked the voice mail, I saw that there was no phone message from the dept chair I had phoned yesterday about my possible application for employment at the school where she worked. (I had met her in the fall and thought we hit it off -- an evening of four chicks hanging out together at a wake -- I thought she might be able to give me some insight about a position which had opened up at the school where she worked. Silly me. No call back.) And the unravelling continued. A text from my girlfriend saying she would pick up Tessa after school followed by another text saying Tessa had forgotten about the meeting, a phone call from the garage saying Luke's car had been repaired and could I be there before 5pm to pick it up? ( No!) Couldn't find my snowshoes, completely forgot about a task I needed to complete TODAY at work, and finally -- my favorite part -- the ceiling in the garage drenched in water and dripping all over the bay. Ice damage had finally struck at our home. I was like, holy sh*t!! 20 minutes and all hell breaks loose.
So I left. Went to meet Lori. Water was gushing out of the electric outlet in the garage ceiling and I was like, I. Don't. Care.
I have no control. So the least I can do is go snowshoeing. And so I did. And it was beautiful.
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