I reached my limit

It's Sunday evening now, about 9:10 p.m. as I start writing. It's almost time for me to crawl back in bed. It's not that I've done anything strenuous today -- in fact, I haven't done anything heavier than a few loads of laundry. And seriously, that's not any harder than poking the clothes in the washer, pushing some buttons, going back into the house (my machines are in the garage), waiting, going back out and hauling clean clothes to poke into another machine and push a few buttons. After the button pushing comes the hardest part -- taking the clean, dry clothes into the house and hanging them up or folding them up and putting them away. It's a good time to discard the old, the stretched out, the holey or the clothes that can be donated because they are too big now.

And with the stress of this week I am feeling as though I, too, could be donated. Ah, but I'm more like the ugly argyle sweater that no one would take even if it's free. Yep, that's right, I'm feeling pitiful! Nothing new, it's sort of a chronic condition.

I'm homesick for my friends, and for my old house that is no longer my house; the one I spent 11 years MAKING my house. Oh well, I now have the project of making THIS house "my" house.

OK, so I've been in this house for three weeks now and have been staying in a stranger's house all this time. This is the first "at home" day I have had in months, and the first day I've taken to be at home here. I shut off the alarm clocks and slept in today. That's right, I missed church because God and I had an appointment here. He made me lie down. Not necessarily in green pastures, but in my bed.

It's been a hard week for me emotionally. A 71-year-old co-worker was ugly to me and said some things he ought not to have said. I've been stretched thin work-wise, and really was ready to get out of work on Friday with the great hope of not working on Saturday.

Right up at 5 p.m. I got a call about a creek where there was a chemical dumped in the water. The men in the yellow space suits were there vacuuming up the toxic mess and I went out to cover it -- photos and interviews of the landowner and the cleanup crew. They don't know what the chemicals were -- the sample is at the state Department of Environmental Quality. It's a couple of miles upstream of the lake that's our water supply -- not enough of the substance to be any threat to the water supply, but it could have been lethal to the horses that live on the property and the cattle on the pond next downstream.

I've had to do this kind of reporting a LOT in the past, so it's not something new to me. This time, though, I was dressed up -- sweater, nice skirt, pantyhose (YES! Dang PANTYHOSE!) and nice shoes. And I got into an area that had been vacuumed. After a while my feet and legs started stinging and I wanted to get home as fast as possible.

And I had dinner plans with my friend JT and his father, and I was late. Finally I got to the house, washed off the toxic stuff and changed clothes before I could finally meet them. They were very polite about waiting, which I really appreciated, but I felt very bad about making them wait.

Saturday on his way out of town JT stopped by for a little while to see my house. At that point I was feeling more miserable about the fact that I'm still not settled in. My car still has stuff stacked up in it from my temporary apartment.

So today I've stayed at home, feeling the full effects of my case of blues, sleeping late, eating whatever I wanted, pouting over not being able to connect my DSL and fussing to myself about buying a modem last night which so far has not done one thing for my benefit. I've even been listening to all the mopey music I can find.

Pout! Pout!! Pout!!! Whine! Why can't things go my way? Why can't I manage to get anything to work, or get someone else to make things work? WHiiiNEEEEEEE!

Time to see if the load of sheets is dry yet. I need to make my bed and cry myself to sleep. WHHHYYYYYYNE! Poor poor pitiful me.