Giving Yourself Permission

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Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

I gave myself permission to get nothing done this weekend. That was surprisingly helpful: I mean, there are lots and lots of weekends where I get absolutely nothing done unless you count sort of noticing how the light moves across the bedroom ceiling in between naps as getting something done, but usually I feel guilty about it. This is much better, since I have no guilt whatsoever at the moment despite the constant humming presence of all the shit I generally feel guilty about: deep, deep levels of house grunge and ballooning waistline and unwalked dogs and troubled children and the death of fish and the general, you know, messy and utterly lacking in perfection state of my life. I addressed nothing this weekend, instead, I drank a lot of coffee, sat around a lot, went to the fish store with my auntie, went out for pizza and beer with my friend Jay and went for a long walk - without the dogs! - at the Arboretum and I feel fine. Well, fineish. It would be finer if I had gnomes or brownies or something to clean the house and walk the dogs and go to the grocery store and, while they're at it, improve the status of my bank account but the damn things refuse to show up no matter how many saucers of milk I leave out.

I hadn't been to the arboretum for a long time. The guy at the gate was really sweet and let me in at a discount because I didn't have enough cash with me - 8 bucks to go the arboretum these days, goddamn, you young whippersnappers with your 8 bucks, I remember when it was free - and I had a great wander through the woods, which were damp and surprisingly still snowy. I took pictures but most of them sucked: the woods are great but they are not photogenic. It's like, there you are with all the trees and the air smells great and there's a creek burbling away and all is good and you take a picture and it is. . . trees. Lot o' trees, there! Wow, sure are some trees! Yeah, well, some of my best friends are trees and I love them but en masse, they don't photograph so good.

After the arboretum I went over to the used bookstore where I had $42.50 worth of credit and I bought, by some miracle, $42.80 worth of cheap paperbacks to devour, including a book about a flock of sheep who solve a murder mystery, which I had to buy, obviously, because, well, how could I not? With numismatic luck like that, perhaps my lottery chances are not nonexistent after all. Right?