Epiphany 2: Now with More Goat!

This morning Trombone was being a little crankpot. Saint Aardvark made a grand gesture and took him out for a walk in the rain and I stayed home to make bacon and egg sandwiches.

After I shut the door after them, I felt wistful and sad. It sucks, I thought, yes, rather petulantly, that I wait all week to spend the day with my kid and then he’s cranky.

But of course, I realized, I am the one who has attributed greater significance to this time. It’s just a day, like any other day, except I have higher expectations of it and thus am being more disappointed when those expectations are not met.

It’s like when you work in retail and people say “Have a good weekend!” to you on Friday and you scowl at them and say, “Yeah, I work all weekend; this is my Wednesday,” and they say, “Oh. Sorry,” and run off guiltily.

I’m all, “Hey, it’s Sunday! We’re all together as a family for ONE DAY ONLY – let’s have fun and sing songs! Why are you crying? There is no crying on Sunday!”

Yeah, actually, there’s crying every day when you’re 12.5 months old. Everyday is like everyday. I’m home. I’m not home. It’s not so special.

So I ate some more bacon and did me some thinking.

This time, OUR time, is going to be good, bad, indifferent and wonderful. (This is also exactly the same as it has been all year but in a two-day instead of seven-day dose.) And I can either hate each moment and then regret it or just live each moment and at least know I’m living fully, not waiting for a future moment that will never – can never – arrive.

Yes, I am now helping Bon Jovi write songs. Why do you ask?

To honour my new mindset, I scrubbed the bathtub. As I watched the Tilex eat great swathes of clean through the grime, I realized that subconsciously I had been postponing cleaning the bathtub for some mythical day when I wasn’t
a) at work or
b) enjoying not being at work.

And that, in fact, no perfect, right day or time ever comes. For cleaning or living or anything.

Plus yesterday? At the petting zoo? One of the goats BIT ME. It didn’t break the skin but it left a little goat-tooth-shaped bruise. I came THAT CLOSE to dying of goat poisoning. Carpe diem, for tomorrow a goat may kill you.

The troublesome goat is the one in the background. The one in the foreground was delightful.