Confessions of Saint Marty
Today was one of those off days. You know what I'm talking about. It was a day that started strangely (with an early morning meeting) and never seemed to fall into place for me. Most of the morning, I was trying to complete the steps for my annual evaluation at the university. Then, when I finally got that in hand, the fire alarm went off in the medical center, and we had to evacuate. (Nothing too serious. A kid decided to pull the pretty red handle on the wall to see what happened.)
Then, when I left the medical office, I had to shuttle my daughter back and forth to her dance studio, conduct a meeting with student poetry editors of the university's literary magazine, and give my son a bath. And then, just when I think things couldn't get any more hectic or stressful, I have lost my cell phone (for the second time in a week). Now, before you think to yourself, "Why doesn't the dumbass just call it?"--I did. The phone went directly to voice mail, which probably means that it's sitting in a snowbank somewhere, slowly turning into a hunk of frozen metal.
And, to top it all off, my sister (the one who just spent a couple of weeks in the hospital) fell at home about an hour ago. I got a phone call from another sister, asking me to come help. When I got there, my sister was on the floor, shivering, nauseated. She had a fever of 102 and didn't have the strength to move. I didn't want to risk moving her, so I said to call an ambulance. Everyone agreed.
So, here I sit, at the end of a day that went from hectic to worse. My question for Ives tonight is this:
When does life get easier?
And the answer:
She wasn't young. Once she had started to hit her fifties, not only had her resolve weakened but so had her body: limbs heavier, years of smoking catching up, and a kind of weariness aging her, Annie MacGuire slowly came to regret certain of her choices in life. On many a day, she would leave the apartment and go about her business, wishing she were a different kind of person...
Nice. So, when Saint Marty's old with heavy limbs, he's going to start regretting his life choices. Paging Dr. Kevorkian.
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| Speaking of regretting life choices... |
