FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER!

Life is a balance. Not everything can go your way all the time. Sometimes it seems as though everything is going against you. 

The last seven days have been full of ups and downs.

1.  On Friday, my sis’s care home had a live rat (eight-inch tail) running around inside the house. I was there. I saw it. I used a mop to try to swoosh it out the front door. I failed. The rat would not be swooshed.
2. The next day I went to a garden party to hear friends sing and play music and ended up with my picture in the newspaper.  The back of my head is now famous. Thank you, red hat and red jacket, which went so well with the bottle brush bush.
3. That night, I danced for three and a half hours with a great partner dancer in a church in North Oakland – new horizons as I admired the many parishioners’ fancy hats.
4. Sunday, I had neck pain up the back of my head. It’s old lady dancing syndrome.
5. Sunday, I threatened the care home owner with a call to the county if she didn’t do something about the rat.
6. Tuesday, I walked with a friend and beat the Thanksgiving rush to Costco.
7. I forgot the sweet potatoes.
8. Tuesday eve I had a good chorus rehearsal.
9. Sadly, I am far from knowing all the words.
10. Wednesday, Sis and I got flu shots. Sis made it the fifty feet to the front door, up the elevator, and to the waiting room chair with her walker.
11. We only waited five minutes before we were called back for the shots.
12. Sis was too pooped to walk back to the car, so I pushed her in a wheelchair. I had my left hand on her shoulder so she couldn’t lurch forward (involuntary action), my right arm carrying her walker and me pushing the wheelchair forawrd with my body. I looked up and some total dip wad had blocked the handicapped walkway with his delivery truck. I yelled at him until he moved it. He didn’t speak to me. Maybe he didn’t speak English?
13. Thursday, I got to hike for the first time in 6 months. There were cupcakes at the end!
14. Thursday afternoon, my two teacup customers failed to show.
15. At the grocery store today, a millennial guy let me cut the line since I had two items, and he had twenty.  I thanked him and he smiled at me and wished me a good day. Very cool.
16. I had to clean rat poop out of Sis’s closet today.
17. Tonight, I get to hear music with friends.
18. Tomorrow, I get to go dancing again.

As long as there is one happy for every one or two crappies, I can muddle through. It’s nice to be acknowledged that you exist when friends near and far comment on the back of your head in the paper. It’s also fun to dance.

I am old enough to yell at people when they are being dumb, like blocking a handicap walkway with a delivery truck or blaming the lack of action to get rid of rats on the exterminator not returning a phone call.

But sometimes it’s a lot, and you just want to throw up your hands and be done.  So I stop watching the depressing news about college kids getting murdered and wrong-way drivers getting in head-on collisions. Sometimes you just need to turn on hilarious and dark TV, like Dead to Me. It’s so great because it’s worse than what you’re going through. You can laugh at the irony of it all. And the gorgeous actors don’t hurt, either. What’s his name and what’s her name and Christina Applegate. Cute teenaged son, too.

500+ words.