A Widow’s First World Problems

It was raining on Friday when my house cleaner came for my monthly appointment. I’m to the point where I’m thinking it’s more trouble than it’s worth to have someone clean. The service charges me $27 an hour but the girls who actually do the cleaning only get paid $10 so there isn’t much incentive for them to work, should they want to take a long weekend off and lately I’m getting a different girl every month. Having a cleaning service was one luxury widowhood brought into my life that I really enjoyed at first. The girl who was assigned to me was a college kid studying to be a social worker and we had the best conversations while she worked but she’s moved on and all I’ve gotten since is a string of strangers. Can you believe I’m sitting there getting all bitchy, old person cranky about a first world problem? The strangers have done a passable job cleaning and I have no right to expect them to be able to carry on a decent conversation, too. But I do. Are humans ever truly happen with what we have? When we have luxuries not everyone can afford, most of us still want more. And that admission reminds me that all roads lead back to gratitude. When we don’t have gratitude, we become sourpusses. When we do have it we’re on the Zen Lane of life, seeking and often finding the fragile balance that keeps us happy.

I was so far from being Zen-like this past week when I was at my new monthly Write and Share MeetUp that I’m amazed I could even spell the word. At least I think I could. I didn’t try it at the time. Reading out loud freaked me out---again---and half way through the reading I realized I needed to slow down. I was making too many mistakes and I had to let go of the fear if I wanted to live to tell about it. I had picked a blog entry from my old caregiver days to share, one of my favorite humorous pieces that I’m thinking about putting in a book about living with language disorders. I started writing that book last year but quickly decided my widowhood was too fresh to be re-reading what I wrote about my life before Don died. Now, I think I can look back at that chapter of my life using an editor’s eye to hone my blog material into a story without me getting pulled into another round of grief.

When I finished reading to the group a conversation broke out about how people deal with stress. I knew my friends in the stroke community where I was blogging at the time I wrote the piece got my use of humor to convey stressed-out emotions but I wanted to find out if my writing style was strong enough to convey that to people who aren’t familiar with language disorders. The people in my writers group were my guinea pigs and they passed the test, they got me. If you want to see if you’d pass, click on this link to read: You’re in the Dog House Now!

Switching Topics: My new young neighbor guy is like a friendly puppy---energy in motion, feet too big for his skinny body and a perpetual grin on his face like he's been drinking goofy juice. But we might be having “an issue.” Last week a crew of young guys were like honey bees on a hive, swarming all over the hated two story deck in his back yard but in the process of taking it down and moving trucks and trailers back there one of them hit a 3’x3’ electrical junction box on the property line that services the whole the cul-de-sac. The tire tracks to the “crime” were as plain to see as Washington’s nose on Mount Rushmore. They also took out one of my irrigation thingamajigs. The next day I called the power company to report the junction box being off its cement foundation and within a half hour they came out with a boom truck to reset it. “That’s a dangerous situation,” one of the workers told me. He also said their “detective team” will study the photos he took and probably call my neighbor “to get his side of it. He may claim your lawn care service hit it.”

Oh, crap, that’s no way to start out a relationship with a brand new neighbor. (I had already decided to eat the cost of the service call from my irrigation company in the spirit of getting along.) It seems the electric company detectives, though, do their best to find someone to pin the bill on and I’m not going to be happy if it’s me since I’m the one who called it in. Another first world problem. Breathe, Jean, breathe. I have electricity every day. Regularly without interruption. I have enough money in the checking account to pay for a boom truck bill, should I begrudging have to pay it. And I have a new, young neighbor who has already borrowed a wrench which means he’s obligated to open my next new pickle jar. And those are all good things to write down in a gratitude journal. ©