Ten-Finger Exercises

A Look Around

I ran across an old friend from grade school on facebook. When I looked through the pictures she posted of kindergarten and first grade classes, I remembered the names of more than a dozen faces, even though I hadn't been in that class. Pretty good, considering how very many years ago I moved away from that little town. She filled me in on what had happened to a few, but she moved away too and hasn't kept up with everybody.

Bill grew up in this town, and my kids don't live far from where they lived most of their childhood. I envy them that. They all know what their peers are doing, or have done. They can look around and see how well they've done by comparison, or how they aren't alone in this or that. Like marriage/divorce, or careers, or health issues.

I don't have that perspective, and I wish I did. I wish I had some old friends to play "Remember when?" with. I wish I knew if anybody my age and with my background still goes to church, or lives is CEO somewhere, or wrote a book.

Still, comparing oneself with others can be a pretty bad habit, no matter who comes out ahead. You can feel sorry for yourself, or you can feel better than other people; and neither one of those attitudes is good for you in the end.



I'm all alone today. Bill left at 3am to drive to Tacoma for the day, won't be back till midnight probably. I just came back from Portland last evening. I flew over there on Wednesday, rented a car and met my daughter at the airport to take her to her quarterly oncology appointment. This was the first one since she finished her chemo, and she might have been nervous about it, even though she had the DVD of her MRI and a letter saying that everything looked okay. No new growth of the remaining part of the brain tumor.

Driving in city traffic, in a strange car, and on unfamiliar roads adds up to a major thing for me. I've done it three times now, and surprised myself that I could do it without a terrible tension headache. Or that I could do it at all. This time was the hardest, for some unknown reason. Maybe it was the rain, and the urgency of getting to the hospital from the airport in an hour, then later trying to find a particular restaurant where my son and his family would be waiting to meet us for dinner. In the dark, in the rain. My daughter's iPhone directed us, but she couldn't always get a connection, and you know how it is to follow Mapquest or any of those directions that are not always accurate or understandable. I made lots of u-turns, or at least round-the-blocks, heading back the way we'd come when the GPS re-calculated.

When I left her at the shopping mall to be picked up by my son's wife, I headed back to the airport hoping I wouldn't get too lost or in an accident on the way. She knew I was anxious, and she said to call if I had trouble. I did have trouble finding my way to I-5, and had to disregard the printed out directions and find it on my own. When I finally got the car turned in at the rental agency and made my way to the private terminal I was flying out of, I was exhausted. I called her to tell her I'd made it and got the regular recorded message saying she wasn't available. I was pissed. I always am when I get that message, but much more so when I'd been counting on her at least being on the other end of the phone if I needed her.

So I'm in sort of a grinchy mood, and I may continue this rant at another time to complain about the best friend who texts her continually, even in the middle of the night. The chime of the phone woke me but not her. I'm worried about her. Since she doesn't read this blog any more, since I haven't written it for so long, I may write about her and my concerns. I took her name off, along with the rest of the cast of characters I used to list at the top of blog. But for now, I've got to go to bed.