 There’s a page I started following on Facebook recently run by a mom blogger trying her hand at amateur comedy. This chick is killing it, too. Last I checked, she was up to 1.9 million followers.
Heather Land does a series of videos on her page, I Aint Doin It that offer commentary on everything from Crossfit to Black Friday, and just exactly why she ain’t doin’ any of ’em. The distorted visual and vocal filter she uses, combined with her heavy Southern accent and down-home colloquialisms, makes the videos all the more entertaining. The last time I watched one, I got to thinking about all the things in my life recently that I have decided that I just ain’t gonna do. It’s quite a list.
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 I was enjoying the balmy fall weather one recent night on my porch, when some patrons from a nearby neighborhood bar ambled down my street to their cars.
One woman, well-dressed and probably in her mid-50s, had parked her SUV directly across from my house. My dogs, who were enjoying the unseasonably warm evening with me from safely behind a baby gate, boofed a few times as per usual, then settled. I was nose deep in a book on my iPad and wasn’t paying any attention to the action in front of me until I heard keys jangling, dropping, then jangling again a few minutes later. This poor lady could not find the keyhole to unlock her car. And I am here to tell you that it may have been long past sunset, but between the street lamp above her and my porch lights across from her, it wasn’t all that dark.  I’ll be 45 next month. It occurred to me that this milestone birthday likely marks my true “middle age.” Yep, I am officially at the mid-point of my existence. Half dead, as it were.
The women in my family are a sturdy lot, particularly on my mother’s side, many of them living until age 90 or older. So, this is not naïveté on my part. It could actually happen. I feel fortunate that I’m more than likely going to grow into a wizened little old lady. If I make it another 45 years, I hope I inherit the spunk of my Aunt Pauline, who was still mowing her 2-acre yard in the heat of rural Mississippi summer just weeks before she passed at age 96.  There’s this marginally entertaining 1991 movie, “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” that stars Christina Applegate as Sue Ellen, a teenager who has to go to work to support her siblings when the babysitter her mom hired for the summer suddenly dies. In a not-at-all believable turn of events, Sue Ellen gets a job as an assistant at a fashion design company.
At one point, Sue Ellen’s boss, Rose, tells her that the only correct response to anything she asks her to do is, “I’m right on top of that, Rose.” So she says this over and over throughout the film. While the movie is not worth much more than the celluloid it’s printed on, Sue Ellen’s canned reply is pure gold. It has stuck with me for 25 years because it IS me.  Dear Internet,
It’s been four months since my last confession, er, blog. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been mentally and physically hibernating because, lately, everything is just too much for me. I spent the last half of 2016 feeling overwhelmed. Like I’m shouldering a rucksack full of bricks, standing in quicksand up to my neck. And just when I think I’m starting to pull myself up onto solid ground, something else pulls me under. The main reason for my overwhelm-itude has been my insane workload, a problem admittedly of my own making. And, as a self-employed media consultant, it’s kind of selfish to even call it a problem.  I’ve often spent time in rooms full of like-minded people who are focused on their spiritual and emotional growth. In one of those rooms recently, someone mentioned a tendency that I am all too familiar with — the extremes of either being obsessed with or indifferent to people, places, things or events.
I’ve been an extremist in many areas of my life, but particularly in romantic relationships — I think about you every minute of every day, or I completely cut you out of my mind and heart. There is no middle ground. I’ve come to realize that this approach is more than a little nutty and certainly not emotionally healthy. (Perhaps this is why I am blissfully single right now. But I digress.) |
About Amy HiggsA former newspaper columnist, Amy takes her random, slice-of-life stories to the web. After 12 years, she's still just saying. Archives
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