Saving Mary from the Protestants
So, this week has been about getting up and going with the get up and go, and I've done varying well with that. I've put together good to-do lists and banished the scary mystery piles, so that helps. My bills are paid up to date (for today), and that makes me feel okay. I have groceries in the house. That said, I got up this morning, brought the kid to school, and knew I was not going to be getting much done today. My brain just isn't complying.
I have a secret belief (don't tell anyone, or even say it out loud. When you say it out loud, it sounds crazy) that if I play dead like a possum, I can stop time and the commensurate flow of responsibilities, bills, emails and phone calls to return, the spoilage of lunch meat, the uncontrollable and occasionally violent growth of my hair, the weekly erosion of my unemployment qualification, and possibly, the inexorable trip south of my breasts. Playing possum can look like napping, or just laying on my belly reading a book. This, not surprisingly, not only doesn't stop time, it makes the very real time I'm living in go more quickly and when it's gone? I'm no farther along in my tasks and jobbies and manifesting my fuzzy vision of my personal development.
So I'm trying to stay present with the time. It's hard.
This morning, in the interest of not running home to sleep, I picked up a free pound of (unsalted, or course) butter at Stop & Shop (use your coupons, people!), my free book for October from Salvation Army (punch card!), then I hit up a church tag sale on the way home. I figured I'd only spend a few bucks, and there might be some cool books or toys for the kids. Well, there were, and I got an awesome vintage rubber duck (in hopeful belief that a trip through the dishwasher and/or washing machine would render it sanitary enough for child enjoyment), but the coolest thing I found was a(nother) big statue of Mary and St. Theresa. For those of you who have known me for a while, I no longer collect madonnas, having deaccessioned over 500 of them over the course of years. Never again. That said, it's hard to see the girls out in the world, getting disrespected. Last year I found a big (2 feet tall x 2 feet across) plaster or chalk joined twin statue of Mary and St. Theresa, which I presented to my very grateful sister Theresa for Christmas. Today what do I find at this Methodist tag sale? Same thing. For two dollars. And it was standing sort of off to the side on a table of tragedies. When I hustled up to pay for it, the woman said, "Oh yes, someone dropped that off, and they said it had been blessed, so I didn't think it would be right to throw it out." What? They were going to throw out a statue that been donated to a tag sale? I felt like some sort of papist hack, standing there explaining that it was Mary and Theresa ("See? She's always shown with flowers"), but I was grateful that I'd saved the girls.
When I got home, I poked around on amazon and posted a few CDs and books I'd picked up. I've been selling a few books on amazon lately (do it! It's super easy). If I sell one unopened set of CDs I bought today, I'll make back the $10.00 I spent on the tag sale. And I'll still have scored a wooden puzzle and a few other toys for the kids. (Plus a 1968 Snoopy music box that I'm going to try to ebay, although I've never been able to sell anything there.) I looked up the statue to see if I could sell that, but I can't find anything really like it, and it's really heavy and fragile. So it's living in the kitchen for now.
If my goal today was to get a job, or solve my problems or save the world? Not so much. If my job was not pass out in a depressed funk, I'm doing okay so far.
I have a secret belief (don't tell anyone, or even say it out loud. When you say it out loud, it sounds crazy) that if I play dead like a possum, I can stop time and the commensurate flow of responsibilities, bills, emails and phone calls to return, the spoilage of lunch meat, the uncontrollable and occasionally violent growth of my hair, the weekly erosion of my unemployment qualification, and possibly, the inexorable trip south of my breasts. Playing possum can look like napping, or just laying on my belly reading a book. This, not surprisingly, not only doesn't stop time, it makes the very real time I'm living in go more quickly and when it's gone? I'm no farther along in my tasks and jobbies and manifesting my fuzzy vision of my personal development.
So I'm trying to stay present with the time. It's hard.
This morning, in the interest of not running home to sleep, I picked up a free pound of (unsalted, or course) butter at Stop & Shop (use your coupons, people!), my free book for October from Salvation Army (punch card!), then I hit up a church tag sale on the way home. I figured I'd only spend a few bucks, and there might be some cool books or toys for the kids. Well, there were, and I got an awesome vintage rubber duck (in hopeful belief that a trip through the dishwasher and/or washing machine would render it sanitary enough for child enjoyment), but the coolest thing I found was a(nother) big statue of Mary and St. Theresa. For those of you who have known me for a while, I no longer collect madonnas, having deaccessioned over 500 of them over the course of years. Never again. That said, it's hard to see the girls out in the world, getting disrespected. Last year I found a big (2 feet tall x 2 feet across) plaster or chalk joined twin statue of Mary and St. Theresa, which I presented to my very grateful sister Theresa for Christmas. Today what do I find at this Methodist tag sale? Same thing. For two dollars. And it was standing sort of off to the side on a table of tragedies. When I hustled up to pay for it, the woman said, "Oh yes, someone dropped that off, and they said it had been blessed, so I didn't think it would be right to throw it out." What? They were going to throw out a statue that been donated to a tag sale? I felt like some sort of papist hack, standing there explaining that it was Mary and Theresa ("See? She's always shown with flowers"), but I was grateful that I'd saved the girls.
When I got home, I poked around on amazon and posted a few CDs and books I'd picked up. I've been selling a few books on amazon lately (do it! It's super easy). If I sell one unopened set of CDs I bought today, I'll make back the $10.00 I spent on the tag sale. And I'll still have scored a wooden puzzle and a few other toys for the kids. (Plus a 1968 Snoopy music box that I'm going to try to ebay, although I've never been able to sell anything there.) I looked up the statue to see if I could sell that, but I can't find anything really like it, and it's really heavy and fragile. So it's living in the kitchen for now.
If my goal today was to get a job, or solve my problems or save the world? Not so much. If my job was not pass out in a depressed funk, I'm doing okay so far.