Blah-blah, whine, whatever

I learned a long time ago that in order to maintain my sanity, I need to build a certain amount of down time into every day and a big chunk of it (usually Sunday) into every week. It isn’t that my life is particularly stressful; compared to lots of folks, it’s fairly sedate. The problem is that I’ve grown used to sedate. That’s the way I like it.

And the last two weeks have been hectic:

***** I’ve driven into Baton Rouge twice to take Butch to the vet. (Two phone calls were necessary to arrange that).

***** I’ve had two doctors’ appointments for myself: one with the GP to get prescriptions renewed and one with the dermatologist to confirm that all the spots that have materialized on my skin over the past few years are benign and common. (These appointments also required two phone calls, one of which was wasted because they had no record of the appointment when I showed up. Fortunately, they were able to fit me in.)

***** The cable TV guy had to come out twice, once when I was home and once when I wasn’t, to replace the DVR that was installed about five months ago and fix the on-screen caller ID that has never worked. (These repairs took three telephone calls, and I found out the day after they fixed the caller ID that my voice mail stopped working. Haven’t dealt with that one yet.)

***** There were multiple after-work trips to Kmart, the gas station and, because rain practically every afternoon prevented supermarket shopping, an assortment of fast-food restaurants. All in all, I’ve had something to do almost every evening.

Needless to say, all that stuff -- plus a full-time job, of course -- cut dramatically into my blogging time. I did my best to keep up with reading my favorite blogs, but I got way behind on posting and commenting.

The brightest spot of this whole two-week period was Friday afternoon, when my two daughters and I had lunch together, then went to see Sex and the City. We had a great time. I guess I could consider that afternoon as “down time,” but I felt so “up” about it, it would seem like a misnomer.

Yesterday and today, surrounded by chores that needed doing, I’ve taken it easy. It’s Sunday evening already, and I’m still in my bathrobe. I turned on the dishwasher earlier, and I'll possibly wash a couple of loads of laundry before bedtime. First, though, I think I’ll get dressed. It's time to go get take-out food again, and I can multi-task by picking up the Sunday morning newspaper that's still sitting at the curb.

I’ll try to spend some quality time here next week.