Our Lady of Perpetual Worry

I worry about a lot of things. I’m really good at it since lord knows I’ve had years of practice. I do most of my best worrying from three to six in the morning. I worry about losing clients. I worry about money. I worry about my kids. I worry my grandchildren will be Yankees. The list is endless.  I think Southerners are better at worrying than folks from other regions. We kind of make it a religion- at least we incorporate it into our religion.  I guess you could say it is the root of many Southern denominations.  You know all that hellfire and damnation had to come from somebody worrying about being bad. I think a lot Southern preachers get most of the sermons from worrying. Worrying that people aren’t repenting. Worrying that people are committing one or more of the seven deadly sins. In the south missing Sunday School counts as one of those.  Worrying the collection plate will be empty or the sound system goes out during the altar call.  I think growing up in that environment helped me hone my worrying skills.

I must not be alone considering the myriad of inspirational posts on facebook- you know with the sappy flowers and unicorns. They say things like worry has never changed an outcome it just robs your present joy. Yeah right.  I wonder if it makes people feel better to post this stuff. I wonder if they are directing it to me. After all isn’t everything posted on facebook all about you?

Worrying sets you up for the inevitable, whatever that is. You know it is coming you just don’t when, but you know. So when it really happens you almost praise yourself for being psychic.  I’m thinking consummate worriers are really just frustrated psychics.  Maybe all these worries flooding our minds in the wee small hours of the morning are psychic vibes.  Maybe I’m not going broke, it’s my neighbor. Maybe my kid didn’t really get a speeding ticket and not tell me. Maybe it was the girl in front of me in the checkout line at the grocery store.  Maybe if I concentrated I could figure out how to place these worries with the proper owner.

I'm thinking I'll lie awake worrying with little sticky notes. With each new worry, if I really stretch my psychic powers, I could come up with the name of the unfortunate soul this worry rightfully belongs . Now that would be productive!  In the morning I could deliver the worry to its person. I would walk right up and stick it on their lapel and say, “This belongs to you.” Can you imagine the reaction? I’m sure it would not be positive but I would consider it a public service. I mean obviously if they don’t have the good sense to worry about this in the middle of the night and just go about wantonly snoozing while something might happen then someone has to warn them. 

I’m trying to be positive about this apparent gift. All the great persons in history had burdens to bear and most likely it is the way they bore them that made them famous. I know I’m stretching it.  I really don’t think I’ll end up in a masterpiece painting bearing yellow sticky notes. I don’t think I’ll be sainted as “Our Lady of Perpetual Worry.” It is comforting to think about though, but I won’t think of it between three and six since it is comforting and no comforting thoughts are aloud between those hours.

I think my worry may be related to my second best talent-jumping to conclusions. I can jump to conclusions quicker than it takes to get 14 “likes” on facebook after posting a don’t worry meme. Jumping to conclusions, for me anyway, is always in the negative.  I suppose some people jump to positive conclusions but that would only make them foolish optimists and dreamers. Silly people, I’m sure they sleep right through the night leaving the work of proper conclusion jumping and worry to an expert like me.

I revere other worriers. Eyeore and Charlie Brown are trusted companions. I have no time for all that “Power of Positive Thinking” drivel.  Who wants to be around a person who is perpetually optimistic?  Now I’m not talking about being happy.  I understand happy.  I can be happy about all sorts of things like not being run over by a bus, keeping my clients for one more day and not having Yankee grandkids but I have the sensibility to know that it could happen or at least worry that it will.  Perpetually optimistic is downright annoying.  You have to wonder how these people even find their way home at night since every single little thing that happens during the day is an opportunity for growth and a path to somewhere better. I mean shouldn’t they always be ending up somewhere else-like Xanadu? What a stupid place to want to end up what with all the roller skates and spandex. I’ll take my dark room and my dark thoughts. You won’t catch me abandoning my job as a professional worrier. It wouldn’t be the responsible thing to do and I worry about not being responsible.

My High Horse

My High Horse

In the right-hand corner of my condo stands a small stool, about a foot high and just about square.  It has a hole in the middle, for handy carrying, and two other very distinctive features.  This stool has a pair of felt, purple ears that stand erect and point slightly forward, if a stool has a forward side, and a lovely chenille yarn, cranberry colored tail that reaches all the way to the floor ending in a little “poof”.  It seems out of place next to the decidedly modern chairs, almost an anomaly, quietly resting against the wall.

It is the first thing I see when I open the door, tired and often frustrated at the end of the day.  It is ironic that it sits here, while I am out there, seriously trying to change the world.  It rarely speaks, stools do know their place in the great scheme of things; perhaps, a lesson I should do well to learn.  It often just looks at me, or at least I imagine that it is so, and I look at it, and we draw collective sighs.

As far as I know, there are no other step-stools like this one; because, I made it.  Late one night I was prowling around the living room, board and sleepless, and an idea came to me.  I needed a tangible object in my life that symbolized the endless hours of time I spend on moral rabbit chases.  Alice had her white rabbit and her looking glass, I had nothing, nothing at all to touch and hold that seemed real and concrete.  I just had a bunch of ideas, and dreams, and as a friend commented, “A whole barrel full of youthful enthusiasm.”

There was no sacrament in my daily ritual, no host or wine; there was nothing that transcended the ethereal and made manifest, no mysterious word to tangible object.  I just had me and my beliefs.  Sometimes, I felt like a street evangelist, spouting the gospel and waylaying busy people as they hurried to work.  Sometimes, I felt like the little match girl, sadly offering my pitiful wares to a world filled with greater and grander lights. Mostly, I felt like Horton the elephant, from the Dr. Seuss classic, “Horton Hears a Who” in constant danger of my precious dust speck being boiled in beezlenut oil.

I am a lobbyist for smaller clients who are mostly politically unsavvy, have very little money, and even less of a voice.  I am a sucker for underdogs and lost causes.  I am the absolute worst capitalist and yet a small business owner, employing of course, myself.  I spend most of time with a red mark on my forehead, pretty much permanent, from banging my head against the wall, the wall of the establishment.  Of course the “establishment” is anyone that doesn’t see it my way.

So, on this night that I couldn’t sleep, mindlessly clicking channels and staring out of the window, I had what I like to consider a small epiphany, mainly because I like the sound of the word.  I thought about my work and my reputation, actually I had had a really nasty altercation with a Senator, who had done something rather underhanded, and obviously should have known better.  I had handled the situation quietly, relying mostly on my facial expressions because they can’t be repeated in the media and because they rarely take a back seat on such occasions, one reason why I refuse to play poker.  It was later, in the cafeteria, that I flung, and only truly southerners will understand this, a hissy fit.

I have always assumed that a “hissy fit” had something to do with what a cat has when it is upset.  I have a cat, a big old tom cat, and on many occasions he has shown his displeasure with me, or the world, by hissing and frothing at the mouth.  He accentuates this state of being by swatting, claws exposed, at anyone or anything that comes near him.  I didn’t actually scratch anyone, but a close friend did make a screeching noise, much like my cat, imitating my voice as it rose to a high crescendo.

As I began my journey into the surreal on this evening following my feline fit, I felt the intense need to speak and be heard.  Secretly, you must know that I heard the words to an old Neil Diamond song in which he croons, “I am, I said, and no one heard at all, not even the chair.” Ashamed as I am, I am a Neil Diamond fan, and I know all the words to all the songs he ever sang.  That’s me, just full of useless information, fun facts to know and tell.  So, between the verses of old music and hot tears on my cheeks, I formed the one piece of my life that makes sense when nothing else seems to.  I created, from the dust of my pitiful existence, my high horse.

Of course I could have formed a soap box, and called it such; but a soap box just doesn’t seem to fit the bill.  I have always thought of a soap box as a mechanism for sales and personal gain.  Somehow, that just didn’t fit.  A high-horse bespeaks of callings, and grand campaigns, of challenging windmills and charging shadows.  It denotes the chivalry of battle, and the holiness of victory, or the sanctity of defeat in the face of insurmountable odds, bravely fought.

When people enter my home, they seem unfailingly to spot my high horse.  I think at first it appears a mere child’s toy, tossed to one corner of the room.  It seems oddly infantile in a room full of adult accoutrements. But slowly, almost surely, they inquire as to the strange little maple stool with felt ears and a chenille tail.  I proudly, as sure as a parent displays a child’s refrigerator drawing, extend my arm, palm out like a game show host, introducing my masterpiece, my sanity, my high-horse.

If it is true that laughter is the best medicine, then I have a found a prescription I intend to perpetually refill.  Sometimes I medicate myself, coming home to an empty room angry, frustrated, and voiceless.  As soon as I turn and close the door and drop my briefcase, I practically run to my high-horse.  Once several feet higher than my normal stance, I clear my throat, and enunciate loudly as I address the silent walls.  More often than not, I approach a mere whine, the whimper of a child left for lasts in the choosing of sides for a ball game.  But, there are times when my spirit soars and my consciousness simply lets itself go, and I am Caesar addressing the Roman Senate.  I bring the populace to their knees and enlighten the hearts and minds of the sooth-sayers and wise men.  Those nights are keen and remain forever etched in my memory.  Those are the nights, that surely, if the world could hear, there would be peace on earth, and goodwill towards mankind.

But, mostly, the evening springs into the sky, the lights of the city illuminate the landscape and the world revolves on without ever hearing my soliloquy to reason.  I gingerly climb down from my high-horse, pull off the panty hose picked and running, that never last more than one wearing, kick my shoes deftly into the closet, and plump down onto the sofa, my feet not quite reaching the floor.  It is very hard to be a force to be reckoned with when your feet don’t reach the floor. 

But, having sung my swan song, for tonight anyway, I feel better, relieved and a little revived.  I pad barefoot into the kitchen, grab a box of cheese straws and count out my caloric and carb intake for the evening.  As surely as I am a southern woman, and as surely as I can fling a hissy fit, I know that surely, tomorrow is another day.

Finding Your Inner Weirdness

Finding Your Inner Weirdness

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she is convinced she is not normal. This usually involves fluorescent lighting and bathing suits but it has been known manifest in other ways.

 Many times it stems from our inability to reconcile the media female from the one we see in the mirror. The one with spider veins, crepe-paper eyelids, and that ever sagging neck—and this as we are in our early thirties. 

Well dammit, I just freaking give up. I swear I’ve tried to picture myself “fitting in” and I’m sure sometimes I can appear to do so. But honest to god I just don’t.

I hate shopping. I hate "Lifetime Network". I have always hated soap operas. I hate "The Home Shopping Network", and I hate mass media pop culture.

Okay, so I guess hate is a strong word.  I should only reserve the word hate for right-wing misogynistic brain dead nuts. So I don’t hate that crap, let’s just say I don’t care. I’m ambivalent.

I’m drawn to any documentary sporting a monotone voice and a violin. I will inevitably halt on the channel displaying a panel of people looking like rejects from the Dick Cavit show. 

What is wrong with me? I will tell you. I’m boring. I’m a nerd and a policy wonk. The only competitive bone I have in my body, outside of winning for my clients, is the game of trivia.

Bombard me with inane, obscure geography questions and I will summon every ounce of strength I posses to dredge it up from the depths of my “Abbey-Normal” brain just to win a free beer. I don’t drink beer either.

I squirm and become immensely interested in my shoes when the subject turns to the latest television show or movie. I’m sure I haven’t seen it. I live in fear that I will blurt out something stupid like, “Did you guys catch the Brit-Com marathon on PBS last night?” (Insert sound of lone chirping cricket or a giant lobster insect thingy noise if you are a Kafka fan.)

I guess this blog isn’t to make a point. I think this blog is more like, “Are there any other women out there like me?”

God, this is sounding like a Rupert Holmes song. That being noted on to the chorus…

If you like “The Vicar of Dibley”

and watching late night C-Span,

If you’re not into Lifetime

and buying Green Diamond pans,

If you like waking up at midnight

to the voice of Ken Burns.

Then there’s hope for us weirdos

It’s like “As the World Turns.”