Some self-guru or other said, “You have the life you want,” all smug-like and distinctly sounding like Quit Bitching, You Totally Deserve Whatever Terrible Shit Is Happening To You. Truth or fiction, in my view this adage lacks both compassion and helpfulness when delivered to those who are suffering – especially as I often seen it delivered by parties currently enjoying more than their share of helpings from Life’s Comforts Buffet.
I do, however, feel pretty confident ascribing the mantra to myself – You Have The Life You Want – if anyone reads here and, you know, feels bad for my troubles or even worse, gets all SOLVE-Y about them (because seriously? You can ask if I want to solve the problem and I might say no! For reals!) As in:
The vehicle we’ve been borrowing (since our Mercedes threw the crankshaft pulley a week ago, my mom’s huge ginormous truck, died about a half hour ago and before I’d really got my day started. It turns out the truck has a charging system weakness whereupon engaging the headlights drains the battery in an exceeding fashion. So even though last night after our extensive shopping trip at Thrift World I raced home to safety as fast as I decently could before the sun went down (RIP Haim!), I did in fact find it necessary to turn on the headlights for a few minutes or else be in violation of the law, tapping my foot nervously as the kids turned up The Gossip on our little rigged-up mp3 / amp, thinking to myself, “Hell, no big deal, I’m only a few miles from home” –
and No I did not elect to force Ralph to re-charge the thing (he was very sick yesterday, so sad), and No I did not charge it myself, being occupied with laundry and cooking and cleaning and writing and chasing cats and children around the house, so today after the kids’ and my first stop downtown I jumped up in the cab on top of the world and put my key in and: the vehicle simply clicked and wouldn’t turn over.
So as of 1 PM all my children have consumed are cupcakes and green pop from the City Hall St. Patrick’s Day fundraising lunch (we arrived too late for the food, which sold out quickly, but please do know I generously donated for the cupcake breakfast) and we’re hauling around Beeps’ leopard gecko (their choice) and my plan to buy “new” sheets at the abovementioned Secondhand Mecca have all gone down the drain. Ah, and I have such modest, silly, Kelly Hogaboom plans most days: this morning after putting the St. Patrick’s Day roast in the oven (brown sugar! beef stock! garlic! salt! Worcestershire!) I’d measured our mattress and squirrelled my sewing tape into my bag so I could acquire decent sheets and outfit our bed for a few bucks, because bedding and sheets are one of those things I don’t get around to purchasing and then suddenly they’re all falling apart. (No seriously, I have the same sheet on my bed that I stole from the Surfcrest Resort when I worked there in high school!) And yes, I wash it often, which is a testament to the strength of the bedding used in the hospitality industry, especially since the sheet was already used when I ganked it.
Oh and for the record, I’m sorry I stole the sheet from the Surfcrest, even if it was a terrible job in some ways (but an excellent one in others; I worked with two of my best friends and my own brother, and for the only time Ever my mom made us paper bag lunches, and we watched “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not”, the full hour, every lunch, and we had lots of smoke breaks in between rooms, and the in-joke “Snake!”, are you listening Reecho?) it is still wrong to steal, and I do regret it, and let me remind you I was eighteen at the time.
Today the sun is shining though, and I practiced bellydancing in the morning and took a hot bath with my lovely children and put food in the oven and yelled after my kiddos, who upon dressing and brushing teeth and tumbling outside are my Favorite Companions Ever, and even though I must away soon for the cupcake-in-belly scenario seems hardly fair to their growing bodies, it is difficult indeed to get me down. Even if piling up around our ears are various and sundry old boxy vehicles that need our elbow grease in the from of DIY or Ralph’s sweat-income, and I mostly fritter away my days just, you know, living Life and not having a great deal to show for it.
Still. Life is still pretty great.
* Thrift World is FTW GH: I purchased three pair of new pants for Ralph (Dockers, Gap, Falconable), pajamas, a Twister game for the kids, two pair of shoes for kiddos, two t-shirts for myself, a new notecard set for Nels and a Chanel-style coat for my girl J. – all for $28!)
Hey there, Kelly! Sorry it took me so long to make my way over here. FANTASTIC content. I dig your writing style. Definitely adding a link to this site on my links page.
I wonder if anyone else reading my pipsqueak of a site knows how incredibly awesome it is to get both a comment and linkage from Snarky, famed Pop Culturalist and blogger extraordinaire? At any rate, thanks so much for stopping by and I am looking forward to reading the other authors on your linky-love post.
*raises hand*
I do! I do!
Big deal!
Is it wrong that I’m laughing and nodding my head in agreement at this?
I’ve been there with car problems that kick-start the wreckage of the day. About 6 years ago when Scott was in Iraq and we were living in Germany, my car was in the shop (I forget why) and I had to use his ancient used BMW, which I was convinced was having issues but which he wouldn’t acknowledge. We drove to the post office on the base and when we came out, the car wouldn’t start. I spent 20 minutes trying to get it to turn over (to no avail) and said “God, this car is a piece of crap!” I then left the car there and walked to the mail room where we got our mail, where I ran into not 1 but 2 chaplain’s wives. Maeve announced to them in her 4 year-old voice, “My Daddy’s car is a piece of crap!”. They both gave me a look with eyebrows raised, and all I could say was, “Well, I could have called it something worse.” I ended up having to get a ride back to our apartment from someone at the staff duty desk of Scott’s battalion, after retrieving the car seat from the car. Happily, the day was gorgeous and fortunately I didn’t have anywhere to go; it could have been a problem, since it was a German holiday and the shops were closed and the buses weren’t really running. Plus, I was able to get my own car from the garage the next day. So you win in the ‘one-thing-leads-to-another’ category of the game “how much worse can my day get?”. The bonus I got from the BMW not starting is that it finally visited the garage, where it was discovered that there was a serious fuel leak (I kept telling him I smelled gas when I drove it!) and that the spark plugs were arcing into the engine block or something, which could have caused the car to blow up at any moment. Talk about Unsafe at Any Speed!
Oh, and I’m jealous of the Thrift World experience. Around here there’s almost never anything good because they sell the good stuff on ebay!