Shut the front door
I went to sleep so peacefully. “Thanks,” was the last word on my lips.
I woke a few hours later with a vice grip closing around my throat. It’s all not alright. None of it. The project that has dogged me since last year is howling at the moon right outside my window – loose ends that have frayed my last nerve. There is no money coming in but there is money is going out. The lighted marquis at St. Rose de Lima still announces the St. Joseph Altar at 100 Men Hall on March 19th as a reminder that the world has been altered.
Unable to sleep, and two thirds of the way through Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts: Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way with the World that my niece sent me, I picked up Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything: Notes on Hope that Kandi left on my doorstep. Three chapters into Lamott, I thought I had self soothed and could go back to sleep, but as soon as the lights were out, my brain reactivated its doomsday scenario.
I screamed. Lord Chill jumped off the bed. Stella stood up from her bed.
I came into the kitchen looking for a sip of water to calm my nerves and my phone was lit up with a message entitled Quarantune #3 – an mp4 of my friend, her husband and daughter singing I’m Happy To Be Stuck With You by Huey Lewis and the News. It made me smile.
Now, I’m going to take an Atavan, my last ditch effort to quell anxiety when my more holisitic remedies aren’t working.
I’m sure we will all be okay in the end and if we are not okay, then it’s not the end [quote from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel]. In the meantime, God bless my friends who send me missives of hope at just the right hour.
