But First

I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't seem to get anything done. This is not to say I'm sitting on my ass and not doing anything because I am not. I am not not doing anything. I have done plenty.

I just can't get past the But Firsts. You know the But Firsts. I've talked about them before. Like, you're going to mop the floor but first you have to dust the piano. This is life. Life is one big but first after another.
Until death, I suppose, at which point it doesn't matter what but-firsts you might have.

I bought a new welcome mat today, a pretty one at the World Market and when I checked out, the woman asked, as they always do, if I am a member of their Explorer Club and I said, "God, I think so," and it turned out that yes, I was, and she rang me up and I said, "What did it save me today?" and she said, "Nothing. But there's always tomorrow!"
"Not always," I said.
"Well, I guess you're right," she said. "When it's your turn for the good Lord to come and take you, there will be no more tomorrows."
"Or you just...DIE!" I said, almost gleefully.

I'm so mean.

So it took me all damn afternoon to run my errands and on my way to Publix it was pouring rain and I saw a boy, perhaps nine or ten, riding his bike on the big sidewalk and he was grinning as if this was the most balls-out fun thing he'd ever done- to ride his bike in a rainstorm. I had to grin, too, he was just so full of the joy of it. Right after I saw him, I saw an older boy, walking on that same sidewalk. He was probably fifteen or sixteen, that age when cool is everything and he was just walking along with that hitch-walk that white boys do where they are trying, I think, to walk like the uber-cool black kids, and he was naked except for a pair of low-slung shorts, holding a drink of some kind in his hand, acting for all the world as if he were just SO DAMN COOL that he didn't even notice the rain, nope, no rain was going to mess with his coolness, uh-huh, and that made me smile too.

Boys.

And then I came home and there was a message on my answering machine from my mother's social worker and she wanted me to call her so that she could meet with both me and my "Mom" at the assisted living place and she gave no reason and I called her back but she was already gone for the weekend, I guess and so I left her a message and shame filled me because what does she want to talk to me about with my Mom? Does she want to do some sort of counseling thing because it is glaringly obvious that I do not go to visit her the way I should and my stomach knotted up and I was filled with the horrible feeling I get, that fear, that anger, that shame whenever I think about how cruelly I treat my mother.

I unloaded my groceries and it was time to clean but first I had to take the trash to the trash place and I had to check on the chickens and I had to clean up dogshit in the hallway and I had to transfer laundry and then I had to make up the bed and also I wanted to, and did, make meringues with the egg whites I had leftover from the Key Lime pies for tomorrow. And wash the dishes and I did all of those things and I haven't started cleaning yet and if I could just stop doing But Firsts, I could finish it in an hour, it's not so much.

Sometimes I feel like I need to live my one true life but first I have to figure this thing out with my mother and that seems impossible and if that's truly true and what the social worker wants, well then...

I am screwed. I am so very, very screwed.