Day 2 (or: What Was I Thinking?)

Sick in bed today. Brain a bit fuzzy. It was a bit fuzzy yesterday, too. Otherwise I might have been able to reason my way out of making a 3-year commitment to do-gooding.

Did I mention that during and after the Crisis of July ’09 I also considered running away to Greece? And becoming a Nun? And starting a studio space for an interior design business? And becoming a fitness instructor/dancer? And joining a traveling Circus?

You get the idea, right? I found myself at the end of bad decisions, and having been laid off, and with a certain amount of new freedom, and the ideas simply never stopped for 3 months straight until I’d drilled a hole through a wire in my home (in a death defying and over-zealous home improvement project), pleaded with my friends to send me their husbands, dug and moved about 20 yards of soil, ripped about 100 plants from a friends yard (thank you, Mercedes), re-arranged the living room, stained the decks, paved a walk in the back of the house, moved what felt like 20 tons of rock. Oh, how I did go on. And on.

So today…ok, I admit it, yesterday, precisely one second after having posted my first blog post, I wondered exactly what on earth I was thinking when I pushed that “post” button. I’d just committed myself to 3-ish years of daily thought, research, writing, editing, do-gooding... Yeah. I’m still going on and on. I’m sorry, Holly.

And what, I ask with a funny stuffed-up-head accent, can I possibly do in a grand way when I’m at home in bed with a head cold, anyway? Promise not to post whiney Facebook updates about illness? Not pester my friends to bring me Thom Kha Guy soup? With 3 stars (hint, hint, Molly)? Use my cloth tissues (oh god, I’m so sick I can’t even think of what they’re called) instead of using up a non-renewable roll of toilet paper?

And more importantly, what would Holly approve of me doing? She insists that I can’t just wait until the end of a day and do something lame like making cookies. Except that I’m not really a cookie baker. I’ve only baked cookies once in the last 2 years. Maybe cookie baking is an extraordinary thing for me, ok Holly?

I am, however, resolute. I will acknowledge daily (for the next 998 days, at least) that there’s something bigger than me, and that I should focus on whatever that is.

Day 2 of One Thousand Days:  Tonight, in the quiet hours of the evening, I will sneak lovingly into my sons’ room, and clean it up for him. Today, in bed, I will make him a card, with drippy kisses and love and a sentimental (or maybe silly) expression of my admiration and pride, and leave it for him to wake up to in the morning. That’s what I can do today. I can love my boy. I’m pretty sure Holly will approve.  And if she doesn't, I'm pretty sure she'll let me know.

2 down, 998 to go.