I love Karen Carpenter. Laugh if you must, but there it is. I love her soulful voice and the fact that she is often imitated but never, in my opinion, has anyone managed to duplicate her unique, truly one of a kind voice.
I’m having a serious teeth-clenching moment and have escaped to the great outdoors…banning everyone from following me…and fired up itunes. What should the first song be but good ole Karen singing “Rainy Days and Mondays.” I just had to laugh and immediately decided to blog.
I survived the weekend trip to Cleveland for Tracy’s surgical biopsy. We met my in-laws Cleveland on Thursday, and on Saturday we loaded up, and I do mean loaded up, in my car and headed home. We got home last night…in perfect time to watch the Gators soundly trounce UCLA. It was a perfect ending to the long, stressful, long, stressful…did I say long and stressful?…two days.
Today I looked forward to rest, relaxation, taking care of my husband and some relief to the stress that has been slowly eating away at me for weeks now. Instead, I find I am screaming at the children, mumbling under my breath at my in-laws and ready to yank Tracy’s stitches out myself, which would be a marvelous feat considering he has no stitches…only surgical glue keeping his incision together.
I had hoped for some relief, but all I am getting is more stress. I don’t know why I expected anything different. My body is still reacting to the stress of the unknown and I need to relax. I need it to all go away. I need someone to say, “Hey, your emotions are valid and you have a TON on your shoulders right now.” It’s just hard to be strong for everyone all at the same time.
So I’m singing to Karen, gritting my teeth and cringing at the sound of the kids’ voices.
At least the sun is shining and it’s a beautiful day.
The stress will go, in time, I know. I just need to complain and whine and remind people that I, too, am suffering from this series of unfortunate events in our family life. I just want to shout, “Me! Me! Me! It’s all about me!” Sigh. Until the next squabble with the kids and the next call from Tracy for something and my in-laws get home from the store with something odd for dinner all remind me that it’s not, in fact, about me.
“Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.”
So does life.
