Brick Wall

I've run into one. I was cranky, exhausted, angry, over-reacting, my legs were like concrete and I honestly thought I wouldn't be able to make it out of Sobey's yesterday with my wee bits of groceries. That grinding halt thing.

Someone beat up, old and tired, and with a bellyful of complaints and waving a metaphorical stick at anyone who spoke to her, had taken up residence in this pathetic, ancient body. My doc has doubled up my blood pressure medication and these might be reactions - fuzz brain, concrete legs, exhaustion.

And then today I read the post in As Time Goes By and I just about wept in relief. I am not alone with these feelings and failings. The mind is willing but the flesh is weak - what an old but true trope.

Not alone. When I was. Because these issues can't be understood by anyone under the age of 60, right? Not on any gut level.

I do schedule my old age as Ronni suggests, but this whole activism thing is taking a toll I can't even begin to describe. The armchair critics are numerous. Friends I thought would support it haven't in any way, shape or form. On an email, one guy attacked my SOS partner out of the blue today. My partner and I had looked at our to-do list yesterday and our notoriety brought strangers to our table in the cafe, all verbally back-patting us. No offers of help even though we asked for it. Trouble is most seniors offering assistance are web and spreadsheet and marketing illiterate. Exactly the skill sets we need. At the end we decided to take today off and re-assess and regroup.

So I was squeezing my social life in around the edges. My writing, my knitting, my enjoyment and even my paid work which I desperately need were shoved into any chinks left.

How many years do I have left?

Not enough.

I can't do it all. I can't do everything.

What do I choose?

What would you do?

Nice Ran Away

It always takes me unawares. I'm cruising along, calendar a little too full as it nearly always is - Type A personality what can I say? - and I come to a complete halt. Almost paralyzed. It happened yesterday. I had a full day scheduled for today where I had to speak at a small annual retreat, prepare a pot luck dinner (orange-coconut-curry chicken over rice, my usual go-to potlucky thingie)gather a few items for a raffle, pack a lunch, select something half decent to wear and Bobbie's your aunt. Nothing to it.

So I get home around 7 yesterday. I forgot to mention there's a visiting book club plus guests coming on Monday for a lunch and discussion and about 26 already booked. So I had agreed to do the crab wraps for that (another go-to, cream cheese, seafood cocktail sauce, green onions, shredded lettuce, crab)AND bake a couple of my orange cranberry loaves. AND I agreed to take my new friend on a small trip on Sunday, I could work the food prep in around that, forgetting about the exhausting Saturday that would have wrung me out by then.

As I said, I got home about 7 and just the thought of all this activity made me collapse on my bed, feeling like a complete and absolute failure at life. And I slept. For about 2 hours. Refreshed when I got up? Hell, no. Distraught is a good word. I started in on what I had to do (there was an early start of 7.30am on Saturday's packed day which would run late - the after dinner candle lit discussion runs to 9 pm - and it was then I realized I'd misplaced my Nice. Nice ran away on Friday sometime. It was an overwhelming week for Nice. Committee meetings, newsletter, agenda planning, more event planning, editing (that never seems to end)and oh lawd yes, PGs staying for 2 days until this past Thursday where my output of Nice (and breakfasts!) had to be cubed if I wanted a pay-packet.

So awful as I felt, I canned out on today's relentless demands on Nice. Guilt? You don't know the half of it.

I need to plan the calendar a little better. Schedule some recuperation times. My health needs to be respected as frankly, it hasn't been that great for a while now. But I hate talking about that.

When you're greedy for life, as I am, how do you plan downtimes when all forward events collide and you want to be everywhere at once?