I haven’t stopped mourning Tom Petty. I have loved him since high school and high school was a long goddamn time ago.
Anyway, I stole my blog post title from Tom Petty. May he rest in peace. Also, I am so glad that I was born at the precisely right time in history to have gotten to see him play live more than once.
But I digress.
I’m always waiting.
No matter what happens or what I do or what I am thinking about, I am always waiting.
- Waiting to go to Erma.
- Waiting to sell my house.
- Waiting to buy a new house.
- Waiting to feel safe.
- Waiting to feel peace.
- Waiting to feel content.
- Waiting for the next big project at work.
- Waiting for life to converge in a perfect way so I can feel the peace and serenity of a baby angel riding on a unicorn.
I can only assume a baby angel on a unicorn would feel peace and serenity. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe, unicorn hair chafes.Â
Waiting, waiting waiting.
This feeling of anticipation isn’t rational.
I’m waiting, always, for the other shoe to drop.
Conversely, I am waiting for an event or a sentence or a gift from the universe that will loosen up my chest and allow 
me to sleep through the goddamn night. These two completely made up events are at odds with each other.
And it’s all completely crazy because I am waiting for shit to happen which I have no control over.
I can concoct dozens and dozens of possible scenarios for any situation. My success rate at predicting good or bad events is not very good. I’m going to go with under 2%.
Peace and serenity.
I would give my left nut for peace and serenity. Which is easy to promise as I am nutless.
I guess I could give my left ovary, but honestly, it’s nothing but cobwebs in there. The only good thing my ovaries are good for are pushing out the last hurrah of my adult onset acne. I guess. I don’t know my ovaries are at fault for that. I’m assuming. I mean, they were to blame for a lot of misery over the years, so it stands to reason.
I have been trying to live in the moment. I’ve been making a good attempt at not guessing what the next tragedy or blessing will be. I’m not doing great, but efforts are being made.
Because no matter what I guess, I am always blindsided.
I had no scenarios for painting because I’ve been painting for a year. Not every day or anything, but I started painting the interior of my house over a year ago.
I was finished. Other than touch up, but touch up is forever.
Then, we had the power washer incident.
We rented a power washer to clean the house and man did it do a good job. My house is sparkling. My house looks amazing.
Until Randy got to the garage doors. The power washer just took the paint right goddamn off the door, in the pattern which he sprayed. My garage doors looked like the place were Zorro goes to practice his ‘Z’.
So, I painted garage doors. I didn’t anticipate it. I certainly didn’t enjoy it. But my garage doors do look nice now.
I know I’ve been a one track record for a while now, but the house goes on the market in 2 days. We already have 2 showings scheduled and it’s not even listed yet.
I accept that I cannot predict the future. I am trying to live in this moment.
But for the love of everything that is holy, please let me be done with painting.
Until we buy a house.
Photo courtesy of Thorn Yang.
You sound JUST. LIKE. ME.
Have you buried St. Joseph yet? I’m not sure what direction you put him in but at a minimum it will make a good blog.
Would a bottle of st joseph aspirin work?
Fuck St. Joe. Your house will sell because of its location/condition/totally random other shit. But 100% fuck burying a statue of a fucking saint in your fucking yard.
I was going to give a bottle of aspirin a shot. haha.
Sometimes I do wish I had a glimpse into the future just a week or so but alas. On a side note, I think the unicorn could have helped with the painting.
At the very least, I could have used his horn to hold the paint can.
the baby angel could have flown up to do the high parts
True.
Greetings from Canada. I can tell you that unicorn hair does chafe. I have a unicorn and when I ride him bareback (but not naked) chafing and prickling does occur in parts where those sensations are uncomfortable. I too am always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I hate that feeling. I hate how that feeling boots me in the gut at 2am and continues to harass me when I should be sleeping. You are not alone. Lastly, adult onset acne. WTF! I’m going through it too and I am trying to find some humour in it rather than shrivel up inside myself and wallow in self pity and concealer. I told the G man yesterday that I no longer have pizza face but rather salad face as I am embarking on home remedies to cure this mess of redness and zits. I start with a face wash made of raw honey, coconut oil and tea tree oil, followed by an apple cider vinegar astringent, topped off with coconut oil as a moisturizer (and more tea tree oil as zit zapper). All I need to do is add salt and pepper and I am all dressed!! Sheesh. Can’t wait to turn 56 and see what the 57th year has in store. Good luck selling your house. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of work to make it show well.
I have a zit in the corner of my nose right now and it hurts like a mofo.
We’re getting showings scheduled, hopefully it will go fast
I feel that pain. I literally have lists of things that I’m “waiting for” and I cross them off as they happen but the list never seems to get any shorter. I just went through a terrible time with 4 things I needed to have happen, and they did, but now I’m waiting for 2 more things…it sucks!
I hate waiting. I feel like I am letting my life drain away while I am in a constant state of anticipation.
it was a stressfuk weekend, and this morning I get a text from husband:
“my new mantra is ‘here not now’.” I don’t think its working.
I was going to correct stressfuk to stressful, but then realized that what started out as a typo is actually a more accurate word, and I think we should use it with wild abandon.
stressfuk.
stressfuk.
Stressfuk is the best word I’ve read all week.
Waiting does suck, but I found it to be a skill that I could improve with effort. That was in 2015 when I was getting my eyes fixed at Highland Hospital and riding Paratransit to get there and back.
I love Paratransit, it improved the quality of my life a lot. But you have to schedule it ahead of time, and the arrival windows are an hour long.
So when do you schedule your ride home from a 1:30 pre-op appointment? Well, the appointment might last an hour, or it might last 15 minutes, and the wait to get in might last an hour, or it could be right on schedule, and the arrival window is an hour, although they go to Highland many times daily, so it might be right on time or even a little early (although they won’t leave early without you) so ????
My best and most successful guess would be 4:30. If I miss a little, they will send another ride, but that can take an hour…
So a couple of times I showed up right on time, hobbled into the appointment and found out it was just to fill out insurance info or some such horse shit, and waltzed (read that hobbled) right right out to the waiting area with three hours before my ride.
After I got my first eye fixed, I just brought a book, but before that?
Wait.
Text Sara.
Wait more.
Quietly sing a few songs.
Wait more.
Repeat as necessary.
I found it helpful to try and look at things until my cataracts frustrated me into being so fucking glad that I was there to get them fixed that my mood improved.
I miss Tom Petty also. And Lemmy. And Chris Squire. And David Bowie.
This trend will probably continue, as I am old and my heroes, for the most part, weren’t too concerned with their health while they were young.
Power washers can blow the paint off of lots of things. We had a special one at the autobody shop I worked at, and my brother could sometimes remove most of a badly done paint job a customer had brought in with it. It had the side benefit of leaving the car clean and dust-free in the process.
This will be over soon.
I wouldn’t want a unicorn around when I was trying to paint, if they are anything like horses, who get really cranky when you have to wash paint splatters off of them…
I’m so glad your eyes are better. You make a good point about the unicorn. No one wants a cranky unicorn.
Ah yes. In my case, I can’t wait for something to happen. All my life it has been:
I can’t wait to go to Grammy and Pappy’s house for fried chicken on Sunday after church.
I can’t wait to take a train to see Grandma and Grandpa in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.
I can’t wait until Christmas.
I can’t wait until my birthday.
I can’t wait until we colour Easter Eggs.
I can’t wait until…..
I can’t wait until…..my son’s (3) girls will be born or my daughter’s next daughter will be born (in 22 days)
And for the past 3 years of saving, it was I can’t WAIT until I go to Kenya in February to see my foster elephant babies and then to Tanzania to continue on with more game drives.
What I forget to do every damn time is to enjoy the moment, not frickin’ worry about the past or look forward to the future, but once again, enjoy the moment. The here and now. It’s a constant endeavor.
You know – you will sell your house (probably quickly because it sparkles and will smell like pie or cookies), and you will move into a new place and enjoy a new colour of paint. 🙂
I am working so hard on living in the moment. This week is going to be hard.
Waiting sucks. Hell, Tom Petty sang about how much waiting sucks, and he had fame and talent, not to mention a funny recurring character on “King Of The Hill”, and who will be forever missed. By the way I thought Boomhauer was just some weird joke until I met a guy who really talked like that, but that’s another story.
What also sucks is that you had to repaint the garage doors. In a perfect world, or, at the very least a much better world, a garage door with a big Z on it would have been a selling point. You could have added “Zorro parked here” to the “For Sale” sign and gotten 10% more.
Fortunately there are those little moments when the suckage stops, or at least doesn’t suck quite as much.
He was on the Garry Shandling show as well. I miss him. Too late to cash in on Zorro as I already painted over it.
The waiting is the worst, I know. My therapist recently told me I needed to “believe in only positive outcomes” and I told her that was the stupidest advice I’d ever heard. Because I can hope for only positive outcomes, but I need to plan for the shit outcomes if I want to stay on my feet in a worst-case-scenario. And until then, it’s all waiting.
The upside, if you’re looking for one, is this: since we’re always waiting, this means we’re also always doing something productive while we wait. Even if seems like a totally unrelated something—keeping busy, for me, feels less like waiting and more like Getting Shit Done While The Universe Takes Its Sweet Time.
You make a good point. I do get shit done when I’m waiting.
The ovary paragraph. That’s why I read you. Oh, and your house is awesome. And painting requires marijuana. Just MHO.
Haha..well, I know booze is not a good idea.
I realized yesterday I am always waiting for the bad thing to happen, like some cosmic monster is on the other side of the veil looking to snatch me away, but it starts with some dude stealing my parking spot and escalates through job loss, house loss, and health loss to those horrible things in Wes Craven’s They. They say horror helps manage fear, my brain is using it as a blueprint against me.
OMG this sounds so familiar. I am the queen of converting mole hills into mountains. You are not alone.
Ah. The power washer garage door thing… except in our case it was the interior stair railing and microfiber cloth with just some fucking generic “I say I am antimicrobial but you pays yer money you takes yer chances” spray. I swear, the dirt from fifty years of grubby paws is what kept the color on.
So primed and painted black, it looks great. And touch up just requires a Sharpie, and what with packing boxes, we have those handy! Yay! (I am really fucking high off Sharpie. Try it. You have earned it.)
Hang tough, or whatever the kids say now to encourage friends in the struggle.
The sharpie thing is genius!!