The dictionary defines "chaos" as a state of complete disorder and confusion. Under the so-named blog, I naturally assume all entries will qualify its title. But do they, really? Let's examine one of them:
A couple of months ago, a blog post (see below this paragraph) was about things that ruin one's day. I have added my own submissions (see further down in this blog) that may just put a different light on these things.
• pants with a tight waistband
• flat hair
• a dirty kitchen floor
• two soccer games on two different fields at the same time
• an e-mail with an exclamation point attached that is not at all urgent
• an unsatisfying lunch
• having to ask your son four times to empty the dishwasher
• Magic Markers without their caps
• no fruit in the fruit drawer
....and she could go on, she added.
Her readers responded with their own frustrations and irritations, such as dust bunnies, slippers that have to be held on by clenching your toes, putting the wearer in a bad mood (me: easy solution - get rid of them!), non-thong, yet thongy underwear (me: I hear ya, but, again, I just toss mine), clothes from the dryer needing folding (me: you have a dryer that works? What the heck are you complaining about?), very uncomfortable shoes (me: refer to my slipper response), a pile of unread emails, frizzy hair, too short tights, and a weak cup of coffee ruining the start of a day!
Someone else states that mushy grapes actually gross her out as she cleans them (me: ever try to - oh, never mind...) and the mom who sighs over finding clean dishes still in the dishwasher when she opens it to load it with dirty ones is trumped by the woman for whom waiting while a dishwasher full of dirty dishes (because her hubby forgot to turn it on at night) goes through its cycles equals a day that is not only bad, but BAD BAD (me: at least your husband put his dishes in the dishwasher!).
The mom with the clean dishes in the dishwasher dilemma also gets miffed when her kid spills juice on the floor after the housekeeper has left. Gee, now the mom actually has to get down on her hands and knees and ....naw, she'll probably have the kid clean it. The comments section ends with a bang - the "older" (almost 40 year old!) woman who is put in a bad mood by her bangs.
Thirty or so years ago I could have compiled a similar list, so I don't really fault the blogger (or some of her commenters) her age and inexperience with the deeper, darker side of life. She thinks she's old because she has a child in high school, but betrays her maturity using the well-worn, woefully wistful statement that in her head she's still in her early twenties.
I did that all the time - until quite recently, actually - but once I hit my 60s, that door closed with an audible slam. I no longer feel, neither physically nor mentally, that I am still the sweet young thing I felt best being. Too much has happened to me and my family for me to ever make that claim again.
Here's my submissions to counter the ones given in "Adventures in Chaos":
AIC: • pants with a tight waistband
- having every pair of pants you put on dig into your huge abdominal tumour. Knowing you can never again in life wear a pair of pants that you don't have to buckle tightly to keep them (only temporarily) from sliding down over your bulging tumour and threatening to be around your ankles before you even get to the front door of the supermarket, makes you tolerate the hipbone-numbing pain caused by having to belt your pants tightly enough to keep them up.
Never feeling empty - concave - in your middle (like when you used to suck your stomach in and touch your middle with your hand) because no amount of dieting can reduce the size of the 20-pound alien entity that you've been carrying around, with all the pain and discomfort it causes every day of your life, for over 16 years.
Not being able to sleep on one's back or stomach ever again, and risking another heart attack when you turn from your right side (because of the pain emanating from the right hip bone) to try lying on your left side for awhile (the side which invariably causes your heart to start racing) just to be relieved of the pain.
- hair that has thinned to less than half its former volume because of the side symptoms of the medullary thyroid cancer one has in addition to the abdominal tumour (which comes from the tiny adrenal gland and carries the unwieldy name of pheochromocytoma); flat hair would be a blessing - it would mean I had enough hair to have it look flat instead of having to brush my skinny strands over thinning spots and widening parts
- I'd give anything to have such a wonderful thing to classify as a "day ruiner"! I'd swab the deck with a song in my heart.
- Two high school graduations at the same time in two different cities. Lastborn child's high school ceremony was held at exactly the hour next-to-last born's high school graduation ceremony was held two hours away. Next-to-last, being a ballerina, had gone straight from high school to European ballet company at age 17, leaving 6 credits unfinished.
Still dancing professionally, but back on this side of the pond, she took the courses required to graduate at the age of 22. It was a triumph for her. Of course, being at one's youngest child's graduation is a big deal, too. So hubby and I each went to one of them. Hub was able to see daughter receive President's award (a total surprise) and I was there to see son receive 2 awards (hinted at) back home. How we had wanted to be at both events together!
- !!! Puh-leez !!! (send money!!!) !!!
A day ruiner? Delete, delete, delete, tra-la!
- doubled-over kind of pain and huge discomfort after every meal due to tumour mentioned in tight pants post. A girl's got to eat so you learn to live with it. I certainly cannot do anything for an hour or so as my internal organs, intestines and blood vessels perform grueling calisthenics impossible to adequately describe to someone who has never experienced it.
In medical terms it's simply referred to as "motility". The medical profession likes to use benign words to describe painful procedures and symptoms. (That's why, for example, when they take your blood and dig around for a viable vein that will support blood withdrawal, they say, "I'm just going to give you a little poke.")
- waiting anxiously for the fourth time (as I am doing right now as I type) for the police to find your schizophrenic grownup son who has run away in sub-zero weather with no money (not to mention but I will: no watch, no cell phone, no bank card, and probably no gloves) in a city he does not know, from the fourth psychiatric hospital he's been in in the past year, before something happens to him as he is doing the bidding of the voices in his head
- 18-27 used coffee cups and soda glasses plus several dinner plates collected (every few days) from the basement where son with schizophrenia lived when he was at home
- no money in the wallet - just about every day
...and I could go on..... ;) ....but you get the picture.
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