Some days are hard: I can’t make myself get out of bed; or I get out of bed, write and do work for a few hours, then I go back to bed and snuggle with the kitties because I just don’t feel well. Or because I just feel lazy some days. And other days, I get going and go like the energizer Bunny for hours and hours and hours, until I wear myself out. And then I have more of those first kind of days to try to rebuild my energy reserves.
Today was a good day. I got up for the 7:00 a.m. Zoom Prompt Group (which I think is officially called “Rules, Schmules”), that I got involved with through my friend Sharon Waters, who I met at Table Rock in September of last year.I’ll be honest with you — when you have acid reflux until 3 or 4 a.m. most nights, getting up at 6:30 to get ready for a 7:00 a.m. writing group is not an easy feat; therefore, I only make it about half the time. Fortunately, the other ladies are okay with that and accept me whenever I can show up. They encourage and support me, even if I twist the daily prompts to suit my needs to write for the memoir I’m working on (yes, still Chasing After Rainbows). They go along with me to the UK and Europe and other road trips with Tasha that may or may not ever see the light of day and tell me they have a good time — I hope they really do. Lots of times, though, like today, for example, even if I manage to pull it together and get to the 7:00 a.m. Zoom, I write to finish up what I started, then I go back to bed for a while.
Today, there was something I needed to do in the afternoon, so I went back to bed around 9 and got up again around 11 to get dressed and ready to drive to Christiansburg, VA. My optometrist of nearly 30 years is up there. I ordered some glasses for night driving back in November and they were finally in. I wanted to drive up to have them fitted appropriately and to have an excuse to see my friend Becky, who works there in the office. It was misty and foggy all the way up to Wytheville, then things opened up and the rest of the drive was pretty nice. I arrived around 1:30, tried on some other glasses that Becky wanted me to see (she’s still not convinced that these are really the right ones for me long-term, but I’m pretty “sold” on them, so I have two weeks to make a decision for sure). I left and drove down to Wytheville to see Kandy — and you know we had to eat at Peking (because it’s where I always want to eat when I’m in Wytheville). I hadn’t seen her since before Christmas, so we took a couple of hours to catch up. She’s back in school (she works at a local elementary school there with special needs kids and she deserves huge paychecks, let me tell you), and had come straight to Peking from work. My favorite part of Peking, besides the fantabulous company, is always the fortune cookies. I didn’t start eating Chinese food until I was in my mid-20’s, when I lived and worked in Bedford, VA. My friend Leah got me hooked on the little place we had there in town, just down the street from the library (I can’t even remember the name of it anymore, it was so long ago). But I get absolutely giddy over fortune cookies! Even though they’re typically really generic and kinda hokie, I just love them. Well… Today, I got a DOUBLE fortune! I read my fortune and got all excited. I put it down on the table to take a picture — like I always do — and that’s when I noticed a SECOND Fortune lying right underneath it! They were both much more specific than my fortunes tend to be. The first one read, “Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you.” The second one read, “You will soon be receiving an important email.” Those are the kinds of fortunes I can get into, lol! Kandy’s was a good one, too, but I can’t remember now what it was.
So I drove back from Wytheville to Bristol. In the rain and fog. Again. As I neared home, Russ messaged me the movie times for A Man Called Otto. He was off tonight and we have wanted to see it since we first saw the previews when we went to see the George Clooney/Julia Roberts movie a few months ago. So I drove straight to the movie theater at The Pinnacle and met Russ. [Side note: If 80 For Brady didn’t actually have Tom Brady in it, I would TOTALLY go see it; but seeing as how he is my most hated football player ever, I can’t do it. Which really kinda crushes me. Also, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret may have to be something I go to alone — I know it’s not going to be a Russ movie and that’s okay; I almost cannot comprehend my childhood coming to the big screen like that! Memories!] Back to Otto, though… Otto Anderson is so many old men I have known and loved; Otto Anderson is very much like Russell Peters. I can’t remember the last time I laughed and cried so hard at the same movie. It was so tender, so moving, so heart-crushing, so hilarious, and so absolutely true that it held me spellbound. The dates on his wife’s grave (not a spoiler) were close to my birthday (August 24 instead of August 23, and to Mom’s death date — April 13, 2018 instead of April 19, 2018.; seeing those dates on a huge screen took me aback and I think I audibly gasped and then turned it into a cough. It was really rather disconcerting. So every cemetery scene tore me up, just because of that. It’s coming up on five years since Mom passed and that seems more surreal each year, I think. It took so long to actually get over being mad at her and just be able to grieve for her.) Otto has a lot of anger issues, too — about life, about death, and about everything in-between. He is a visual reminder, though, of what can happen if we take just a minute or two out of our busy lives to reach out to someone. It matters. People need to feel like they’re needed. They need to be involved in something besides their own lives, their own problems, their own disillusionment. [Semi-spoiler: 988 was the prefix on the telephone numbers where I grew up; it’s weird and somewhat ironic to me to see that as a national suicide prevention phone number now. Every person I ever called had a phone number that started with 988 — a lot of them still do.]
I came home, needing to finish up my blogs. They’re supposed to be done by the 15th of each month so my webmaster has until the 1st of the following month to get them posted. Both of us have been sick, but I am late again. I’ll be honest: I hate writing blogs. I feel like I’m writing to myself because I never get comments or feedback from anyone about any of them, good or bad. Well, tonight, I mentioned to my friend Michelle that I had to finish blogs, and she messaged me back, “BTW, I like reading your blogs.”
I told her she had made my night. And really, she did. Just knowing that someone reads them. That means more than I can say, honestly. I’m not just writing to myself. I love you, Michelle. Thanks.
So, even though I’m tired and it will take me days, probably, to build up my energy levels again from all the running I’ve done today, I’ve gotta say: I love it when life hands me just another day in paradise!
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