Enough Already!

I’ve had it!  I don’t want to be productive.  I want to just sit back and let life happen—as long as the ebb and flow doesn’t disturb me at all.

Why is every single day cluttered with things I don’t want to do?  Why do the clothes need washing and folding and being put away?  Why does the dishwasher need emptying?  Why is there crap on the floor that wasn’t there yesterday, and why do I have to get out the vacuum cleaner to take care of it?Dust?  Fall on someone else’s furniture.  Please!

I’m not my mother.  Nor do I live in her generation.  Thank god.  Well can I remember her endless series of chores.  Like, the washing machine, where she had to put clothes through an actual ringer to get the water out of them and to then hang them outside on the clothesline to dry.  In all sorts of weather.  Sheets frozen stiff in winter?  What a pretty picture, until they were draped on the bed.  Dishwasher, none.  Except us children.  Let’s not even mention the effort it took to defrost first the ice box and then the refrigerator, with water all over the floor, no matter her efforts to contain the flow.

Times have changed!

But have they?

What happened to the prediction that in the future we’d all become little blobs, with big brains, no arms and legs because we wouldn’t need them due to automation?  As I sit and type with fingers attached to hands attached to arms, I can see my legs stretched out under the desk.  If you can’t trust futurists, whom can you trust?

But enough meditation on what we were supposed to look like, blobs and brains.  Okay, my body is a blob, but that’s another story.  One I don’t have time to consider for the moment as I prepare my list of annoyances that I’m responsible for:  pay bills, change sheets, do the laundry, load and unload the dishwasher, be a good wife, try to be a supportive parent, worry about water in the basement, wonder if my garden plots are getting enough sustenance to last until the first frost.

To be continued—

Vacuum, get the garbage and recycle ready to put out at the curb, clean teeth, go to dentist for broken tooth, wonder why my new eye cream leaves the skin around my eyes dry.

Change the toilet paper roll.  WHY!  I have three bidets.  Why am I still using toilet paper?

Did you ever want to just withdraw?  Just turn into a tree and reach upward toward the sun, be bathed in its glorious light, then become a shadow in the dark, your silhouette revealed by the light of the moon and stars, not worry about the nematodes on your roots, insects boring into your bark, caterpillars eating your leaves.

Oh, damn it, there I go again.  I can’t even enjoy being a tree.  Why?

Which reminds me.  There’s a dead tree in my back yard.  Add to the list.  Call a tree service.  Why!

A body at rest stays at rest.  If only that were true.  Science you have failed me.  Life, you have screwed me.

I am now withdrawing my fingers from the keyboard and placing them in my lap.  I will close my eyes and then—then I’ll be dizzy and wonder, is it worth making an appointment with a doctor, which would entail getting on the phone, checking my calendar, already too full of crap—

What am I searching for desperately?  Where have I mislaid my moment of zen?

Cleanse yourself, my mind, I beg of you, and let me be at peace.