49% Of The Way There

March 12, 2012 49% Of the Way There - Life at Andy and Mary’s

Trouble comes to us in threes, so they tell me. Our precious Molly, the wonder dog, has been very sick for over a month, a water pipe burst on the back patio last night and one of us got a speeding ticket.

We dropped Molly off this morning for her biopsy.The skin rashes she cannot seem to get rid of are baffling all the doctors. There was a skin scraping and blood tests on Thursday, today we look forward to some definite answers.

In the big picture of life, these are not earth-shattering, They are troubling (the thing with Molly is super scary), incovenient (the water is turned off) and expensive. ($224 for a speeding ticket, over $1,000 for Molly and counting.)

     

The theory that I actually like goes something like this: when you are 49% of the way to success, all hell breaks loose. So if a rain of troubles pour down on your unsuspecting and hard-working head, a proper response is Yes! As opposed to "Why me?".

I have been working as hard as one can with a trick back that goes out after 15 minutes of standing, to keep up the house and write for profit. I have been working with a talented teacher, Jennifer Block, and she expects results rather than whining. Go figure.

Andy, in addition to working full time, is taking classes (yes, more classes. It took me 10 years to get him into school and it will take me 10 years to get him out!) Plus there are lot of new things popping at his job, including training, which always seems to occur on his days off.

So we are not exactly enjoying an early retirement. We are moving, as well as we can, into a new life. And that requires more than giddily spending the gazillion dollars we are going to earn. It takes lot of work, faith and patience. I have been praying for guidance numerous times a day. The class I just finished taught that you don’t always hear from God in the manner you expect to, a voice won’t necessarily boom down from the sky. He expects us to use common sense. (I can’t imagine why it’s called "common sense" when it’s so rare.)

I always thought once I no longer worked outside my house 50 hours a week (I’m counting lunches and coming and going time) I would have plenty of time to write. Ha! Ha! I say, Ha! For me at least, I’m as busy as I ever was and find the temptation of readily available on-line games and Direct TV hard to resist.

Plus reading, of course. I have just discovered the delicious Dexter books, and an working my way through the magnificent Alexander McCall Smith books, (I just finished Corduroy Mansions), and am still trying to finish the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

Did you ever notice people are never too busy to tell you how busy they are?

So besides all that, the Littles are coming! Yes, our grandchildren arrive at the end of the month and will stay in Grammy/Grampy land for an entire week, much to the relief of their parents. This means I have to finish up projects before they get here, as I will certainly need to sleep for a month after they leave. So I have to tidy up the taxes, and get new living room curtains. I took the old ones down in a fit of optimism and thought leaving them down would motivate me to get the new ones. Ha! I say again, Ha! Ha!

But we are designing our lives, bit by bit, day by day. In between taking care of sick Molly, burst pipes and what else was I complaining about? Oh well, it’ll come back to me.

All of which proves we are well on the way and - dare I say it? Forty-nine percent of the way to success.