What are you doing at this particular point in time? What are you thinking?
Me? It's a sort of useless day. I don't find anything wrong with that. Yes, I grew up listening to Depeche Mode. All the time. I wore black...all the time. One time I shocked a class of my peers by walking into the room wearing all white. At one time I had short firey red hair. I loved it and wish I could do it again. When my husband met me (the year my father died almost 10 years ago), I had jet black hair with splotches of blond - a mistake that caused my hair to both look and feel like straw. Because of that, my husband doesn't "allow" me to color my hair. "It's for people in Berlin", he says.
Things need to be done - a large pile of dishes, a kitchen table wiped clean, mountains of laundry to be washed and ironed, hats to be photographed and listed in my shop - or not, a long line of recipe posts along with photographs waiting to be posted but which will most likely never see the light of day...the list goes on forever it seems. Never ending, no respite. Some things will eventually be done. Others might not.
I'm thinking and wondering why did we have to move a gagillion times growing up? We were not in the Army (despite always being asked that). Why did we pack up all that we owned into one huge moving van and spend a shortened summer in Georgia? Why did my father have to die at a young age of 59 after being sick for an entire decade prior to that? Why? Why? Why?... Too many never ending questions.
What does the future hold? Well, one thing I did promise myself was that when I had children, I was not going to drag them from one address to another unless absolutely necessary. Did you attend 3 different schools in 2 different states in 3 different cities in 6th grade? No? Well, I did. I remember that route to school and the nice hardware store owner I saw everyday to and from school. He gave me a shooting fly swatter one day. Then one day I found out that he was shot to death in his store. Nice path to school when you're 11 years old. Do you have 30+ addresses attached to your name? Well, I do (although I believe that number is closer to 40). This house we live in now is the longest I've ever lived at one address - no joke. So, it's no surprise that I have the yearning to move. We most likely will not be moving at the moment but changes are coming.
Midlife is a strange time in one's life (I'm 42). A time when you're no longer carded when buying that bottle of red wine. A time when you think about your past more and more and wonder how your future will look. At times it seems as if you're driving in a dark tunnel waiting to get out on the other side. What is that other side? Will you be able to provide for your family? Will you be happy doing so? Change is inevitable. Without it you are stuck in the middle. You think about your past and although there is nothing you can do to change it, you can do things to better the future of your children.
Midlife is a time of reassessment. A time of challenge in both personal and work relationships. When some men return from a long drive with a shiny new yellow sports car one week and a new woman on their arm the next. Or when other men stick it out and drive with you through that dark tunnel of time to get to something that's hopefully better. It's a time when nothing seems to make sense yet we have to somehow make sense out of the senseless. Or do we?...
So, that's what I'm thinking on this crazy warm day. It's 79 degrees and I simply wish it would be cold, dark, and overcast.
P.S. My middle daughter just ran into my room to inform me that it started raining. It's a start...
P.P.S. More favorites...Enjoy the Silence and Walking in My Shoes