Tag: frustration

Just another Friday night…

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  • 8:05 pm. I arrive at home, 15 hour day. ooooooo, how do you spell, e-n-o-u-g-h…
  • 8:10 pm. Sitting at kitchen table. Thai takeout. Cold. Sticky rice, stucky rice.
  • 8:15 pm. Susan fussing with remote and TV. “Bloody cable box must be broken.”
  • 8:16 pm. DK: “No, must be the TV.  It’s time for one of those new 8K T.V.s.”
  • 8:17 pm. SK: “Are you out of your mind?”
  • 8:17 pm. She continues fussing with remote.
  • 8:18 pm. I’m picking at the cold rice which is slathered with Duck sauce.
  • 8:19 pm. I google Cablevision to see if there are outages. Widespread outages since 7:49 pm.
  • 8:20 pm. DK: “Why don’t you google it?”
  • 8:21 pm. SK: “I’m not googling anything. You google it.”
  • 8:22 pm. 36 years of marriage last week. I sit in silence and pick at the cold Garlic Chicken.
  • 8:23 pm. She reboots the cable box by powering it on and off. She waits for system to reset.
  • 8:26 pm. System resets.  She curses. Still no fix. She’s now irritated, advancing to angry.
  • 8:26 pm. She scurries over to the other room to test that TV.
  • 8:27 pm. She’s back. She’s isolated root cause to a cable problem.
  • 8:28 pm. She resets the entire T.V. to default settings. And waits and waits and waits.
  • 8:39 pm. It’s back up. No fix.
  • 8:40 pm. She runs downstairs to reset cable modem to reset the entire system.
  • 8:45 pm. Alarms beep. Entire system reboots.
  • 8:45 pm. I’m watching her with the remote, clutching a crucifix, whispering to herself.
  • 8:50 pm. Entire system reset. No fix.
  • 8:51 pm. DK: “Why don’t you google it?”
  • 8:52 pm: SK: “I’m not googling anything.”
  • 8:52 pm. She texts neighbor. To learn that neighbor has texted entire neighborhood.
  • 8:53 pm. Neighbor: “Cable out in three states CT, NY, NJ.”
  • 8:53 pm. Three states of cable addicts blitzing Cablevision 800 # and website.
  • 8:54 pm. I’ve moved onto dessert, continue watching this show. Who needs Broadway?
  • 8:55 pm. She googles Cablevision with her back to me. She finds number and dials. She’s on hold.
  • 8:58 pm. After being on hold for several minutes, she learns that it’s the wrong number.
  • 8:59 pm. She collapses onto couch, still clutching the remote.
  • 9:00 pm. I walk upstairs, looking over my shoulder. There she is, eyes closed, slumped on the couch. And I’m the one with problems?

Image & Story: Optimum customers report widespread outages (CtPost, September 6, 2019, 9:42 PM)

Good Friday. Yet, not so Good.

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I’m not proud of this. Nope.

And Peace be with you. On this Good Friday.

It’s a quiet morning, a day off, a Saturday morning pulled forward. What’s better than a long weekend?

The quiet is interrupted by ringing. And ringing.

We have a cheap home phone, with a piercing ring, one phone on each floor. Who uses a home phone anymore?

What used to be a source of such joy and anticipation in the pre-internet era, has turned into something vile.

Robocalls, a ratio of 7:1 to legitimate phone calls.

I count the rings. Most days I let it ring. And ring. I lean back in the chair, or close my eyes in bed, and count the rings. And feel my anxiety climb.

Other days, I pick up.  And all the pent-up frustration of the week explodes on the Parasite on the other side of this line. I Rage against the Machine.

Continue reading “Good Friday. Yet, not so Good.” →

Lightly child, lightly

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black-and-white-bubbles-light
Under the light of eternity
things,
the daily trivia,
the daily frustrations,
fall away.
It is all a matter of getting to the center of the beam.

~ May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

Credits:

  • Image Source: Carolyn Cochrane
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

that hot itch of indignation

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olena kassian drawings dressing 1, 36- x 36-

In this era of information overload and PC, authenticity is a beacon which cuts through the din.  Here’s Sandy Wyatt with an excerpt from her wonderful post titled The Hot Itch:

The daze turned to anger before I left the parking lot.  Are we in the Middle Ages, I fumed.  What was next?  Burning at the stake?  Dousing?…I met with my meditation group later in the day and felt righteous satisfaction in their outrage as I told the story.  It’s a hot itch, indignation.  It gets under the skin and festers. So, as we sat together in silence, I took a step back from what I was feeling.  I called up the part of me that observes my thrashing around with gentle curiosity.  What happened? I saw that I’m not as tolerant as I like to believe.  What does it matter anyway?  I tried to look a little deeper. My ego hates to be misunderstood.  It hates to be dismissed or categorized.  And it really hates to be discredited.  I’m proud of how hard I’ve worked to regain some functioning in the world.  Proud. Ah … If I could nudge my ego aside, there might even be A Teaching Moment. Coming home from meditation with my friends, I turned up the music and sang down the highway.  The ego is a stubborn little cuss.  Mine can be paranoid and hysterical if the mood is right.  Anything can offend it, and it defends itself with teeth and claws.  But, like a mediocre poker player, it has a tell—that hot itch of indignation.  When I feel that under my skin, I know it’s time to back up and look again.

I’m glad for that signal, and I’m glad I know what to do with it.

Thanks, Ego-Girl.  Keep raging.

~ Sandy Sue Wyatt, The Hot Itch

Drawing: Olena Kassian

Squirrels. Cardinals. Bumble Bees. And Me.

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CADDYSHACK, Bill Murray, 1980. (c) Warner Bros./ Courtesy: Everett Collection.

It’s difficult to understand how an innocuous  glance out the window could start a cascade of nonsense.  But, it did. And it does.

It’s Tuesday. I’m home on a late evening conference call. I see him through the window in the backyard.  He’s chubby-cheeked, hanging upside down, and clutching the iron cover of the bird feeder.

My call continued. And so did Chubby-Cheeks. The bird feeder is swinging from the pole. He’s shaking the cr*p out of it. And gorging on prime seed intended for goldfinches.  Had I been outside and not two floors up, I would have run the S.O.B. down.

My call continued.  I watched him. And wondered how this creature could manage to raise my ire.  This man, a college educated adult, 210 pounds (and counting)  vs. a foot-long squirrel weighing a pound or two.  There he was. Blissfully feeding. And I’m clenching a pencil between my teeth, tasting graphite on my tongue.

The call ended.  I ran down the stairs and out the door to find that he had vanished. Squirrel 483. DK: O.

Fast forward to Wednesday morning.  I’m heading out the door to walk to the train station.

There he was to my right.  Staring at me from the base of the evergreen tree in the front yard. Beady eyes.  His under carriage dragging on the grass, belly bursting from the bird seed. Continue reading “Squirrels. Cardinals. Bumble Bees. And Me.” →