After a long winter time-out, life has reawakened, bringing with it my usual schedule of activities. It seemed to me that the end of December and beginning of January hiatus was a time of resting and just letting life drift by. Now the drift is over and obligations are still here. My Wednesday study group is now meeting again. We greeted each other warmly after a month apart, eager to resume the informative discussions and the tea, fruit and cookies of the social half hour again. Body Recall classes have begun again and my alarm clock is again in use. No more sleeping until 10 o’clock in the morning and reading until two at night if the book is good.
And the deadline for my monthly column is here again. Because we produce two columns in an abbreviated November – one for December 1st and another for the end of the year – my inspiration is out of order. It was a ridiculous last of the year, waiting for our two parties to do the work that should have been done at least a month before. Knowing I was being had and my hired representatives in Washington and the press were scaring us and teasing us about going over the cliff and shutting down the government did not endear them to me. Rather, they earned even more of my disgust than they already had and I didn’t think that was possible. I hated them and I hated myself for letting them get to me when I knew better.
My New Year’s resolution was more sensible than the usual one about losing a few pounds. This one is to pay no attention to that jazz about refusing to raise the debt limit unless the opposite bunch of clowns takes away benefits for the poor. What I’d like to do is suspend legislators’ pay and long weekend vacations until they produce and approve a budget and other activities like approving appointments for judges and such functionaries. Do you suppose that would work? Of course, God would have to do it – the Senate and the House wouldn’t exercise such demands on themselves. My digestion will improve if I watch only detective stories and programs imported from Britain.
Incidentally, I love “Downton Abbey” to the degree that I watch both the Sunday show and Thursday repeats and the rerunning of “Downton Abbey Season Two” in spite of knowing the plot of each episode. The elegance of Masterpiece Theatre seems so civilized compared to our usual fare. I seldom leave PBS, and I support it, which those barbarians in Washington threaten not to do.
Because I’m such a duty-ridden person, tasks left undone and obligations unmet eat at me and will not let up until they are done. Before Christmas, the push was to take care of remembrances and charitable gifts on time, involving checking with last year’s records. Then the push became: write my new column and start with accumulating my income tax deductions in preparation for the CPA’s work.
As I paid my fourth quarter estimated income tax, I discovered that I hadn’t sent in the first quarter. A devastating mistake to me, for it signified that the old gray mare is not what she used to be. Now the IRS has the money and my apologies, but when you are really as old as I am, indications of failing in any way are frightening. It takes a while after I have remedied my mistake for me to remind myself that I’m still pretty much okay and that most of my contemporaries are already dead. So I’m still kicking – just not quite as actively as I once did. Time marches on.