Of late, I’ve been sliding into the Slough of Despond.
It’s all freaking depressing, what with the dog ailing, hundreds of dollars in vet bills piling up, plagiarizing students (and more recently, a plagiarizing client), barely literate university seniors, the economy, the mess in Iraq, the horror in Burma, the meanness of the Democratic presidential campaign when we so desperately need leaders of good will, the neighbors having fits about a few enterprising burglars, and the general loneliness of onliness.
Time to shake that off!
Here’s the plan: come up with several things I would like and do them. These things have to
- be within reason;
- be possible to do in a fairly short time; and
- create a change, no matter how small, in the routine or the scenery.
So. Here are some things that would brighten my days:
I would like to keep my house cleaner!
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Start with a real spring housecleaning:
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Oil the kitchen & bathroom cabinets.
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Clean & condition the leather furniture.
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Scrub the dog nests off the walls.
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Wash the windows.
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Clean the dust off everything.
I would like my nails to quit splitting.
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Go to a salon and get a silk wrap or have product applied.
I would like the front yard to look less cluttered.
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Put Gerardo up to digging out some of the extraneous plants.
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While he’s at it, persuade him to clip off the frost-killed bougainvillea branches I can’t reach.
I would like to keep my car cleaner—gratis.
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Use early Sunday a.m. to wash car.
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Use shop-vac to wet-vacuum areas where coffee has spilled.
I would like to establish a second income stream that will bring in $12,000 to $18,000 a year by the time I retire.
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Go in with T.M.; frame the proposed business plan.
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Attend ABPA meetings; schmooze.
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Figure out how to increase blog traffic; monetize Funny about Money.
Really, there’s nothing we can do about the larger issues around us. We can’t change the damage an incompetent and craven leadership has done to the economy and to our country’s place in the world; we can’t talk sense into any of the candidates who hope to take over that leadership; we can do little or nothing to help the Burmese or make up for the failures of our educational system or get us out of Iraq; we can’t even stop burglars from burgling. Whatever changes make life more tolerable happen on the individual level. Voltaire was right:
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.