time well spent

I was up early – too hot, couldn’t sleep – so I finally got up to get a head start while everyone else was still in bed. I threw the office windows open and watched commuters pour down the highway from Houston, Big Lake, and Willow.

I’m never up this early, and I immediately questioned my judgment when the cats assumed my sole purpose in getting up was to feed them, howling for food loud enough to wake the neighbors. I hobbled downstairs, got their dishes, put old Gusser in the bathroom with his food and gave the other cats their food, went back upstairs, and turned on the computer.

time well spent

The summary of my productivity went like this: Open the document, change several sentences, consult the thesaurus for five different words, and say encouraging things to myself like, Wow, that’s a crappy segue.

Probably, I should’ve just stayed in bed.

It doesn’t help that I now have to wear house shoes, because I am fortier than I used to be. My arches started to fall during my pregnancy with Kavanagh, which aggravated a nerve injury in my foot and had me limping and occasionally losing balance. So now I clomp-clomp though the house in old, scrubbed tennis shoes and we call them my “house shoes” – a phrase I can’t even hear in my head without giving it a southern accent and picturing a polyester duster from the 70s.

You might know already that Alaskans don’t wear shoes in houses. Shoes are only worn in the house in those brief intervals of trying to run out the door, or having to deal with something urgent before even getting our shoes off when we get home. Or, as Iree pointed out, when we’re walking through glass and other debris from a 7.1 earthquake. So wearing shoes in the house feels inherently stressful, and I’m not used to it yet.

The week started rough, like we held time in a sieve and it poured out faster as the to-do list got longer. By the end of the day I was sucking wind and at six minutes after the hard-and-fast time we’d agreed upon for clocking out, I finally hit the shutdown button and closed the laptop.

It has to be enough, I thought. But it didn’t feel like it was. Does it ever?

On Tuesday I tried to make up for Monday. Here’s an example of how that went:

Go to Paypal to update account. Get error message with instructions to call Paypal.

Call Paypal, attempt to update over the phone’s automated system, which almost never works.

It doesn’t. Wait to speak to representative. Estimated wait time is 27-33 minutes. No problem, finding busywork for half an hour while listening to muzak is one of my very favorite things, like jury duty.

At 31 minutes of waiting, the call disconnects. YOU ARE KIDDING ME.

Call back. Estimated wait time is now only 17-22 minutes. This remarkable improvement is brought to us by a propensity to hang up on customers.

Someone picks up, hallelujah.

The representative’s ability to speak English is matched by her listening skills. I wish that was a compliment, but after interrupting me four times while asking what the problem is, it’s not.

Finally she reads from the same script I’ve heard from three other companies over the last month: “I have good news for you today, I can fix this for you.” But she can’t, because after putting me on hold two more times she informs me that my account is now under review and inaccessible by either of us. (Apparently Paypal’s security is so penetrative, it no longer recognizes you if you start wearing house shoes.)

“No worries,” she reassures me from her script. “You can access your account and try again in 48 hours.” Well, yippee. I have good news for you. I can fix this for you. No worries. I don’t think those things mean what she thinks those things mean.

“Can I help you with anything else?” she asks. Um, no thank you, I don’t think I can stand any more help today, I’m good, thankyouverymuch.

That was Tuesday.

Wednesday, five kids and I pile into the Stagecoach and drive over the river and through the Butte, to Grandma’s house we go. After the last two days it seemed like the wrong time to take the day off, but we’d already scheduled this and wouldn’t miss it for anything.

It was Kavanagh’s first trip there, probably his longest car ride so far. The wind was flying and whipping up waves of dirt and river silt in the intersections, and tiny tornadoes eddied along the road in front of us.

Two pictures of Grandpa sit on a shelf by her couch. One was taken a few years before he died; the other was black and white and faded, and he was young and handsome, six-foot-four, the guy Grandma fell in love with – sitting on a tree stump, filling his pipe, legs stretched out in front of him.

They’d known each other for about a week when it was taken. Grandma said he came by her mother’s store and she and all her younger siblings were there, probably driving her mother crazy. So they decided to take the kids all out for a walk to get them out of her hair. They went to a nearby pasture and he sat on that stump and filled his pipe, and she snapped his picture with the camera she took pretty much everywhere.

I asked her how old she was then. Now, she’s 87, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at her or hearing her voice. I grew up with her singing hymns around the house and leading worship at church, and her voice is usually still strong and beautiful – but it wasn’t when she answered my question.

“Twenty,” she said.

She was quiet for a minute, and then added, “I’d give anything to go back in time to that week.” Another pause. “Precious individual,” she said. “I miss him.”

They were married less than a year later, shortly before her twenty-first birthday. Had five boys: my uncle, my dad, and my other uncle within five years of each other, and thought they were done. But we’ve both had two surprises. We were both in our forties for the last one.

And Grandma wears house shoes, too.


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