Day 9

This morning as I stumbled blindly for the coffee pot and my first sip of the ambrosia that is Gold Coast coffee, my mother announced that she was going on a cruise out of Venice, Italy, that went to Split, Croatia, Dubrovnik, Montenegro, Turkey and Greece.  After the cruise returned her to Venice she was going to take the train to Paris, stay a few days and then go to London for a few days before coming home.  Would I mind?

I instrinctively replied, "Of course not, you'll have a blast."  And I mean that.  Though I must admit that I am bone deep jealous of her trip.  I want/need/require like ai,r a break.  I am tired of running on fumes.  I am tired of running from one job to the next, sometimes finishing a sentence on my Android phone as I drive to work at Coffeeland.  I am, in a word, tired. 

Corduroy James takes a lot of time.  I do 5-6 loads of laundry a day just for his bedding.  He has to be rolled over every hour or so-and not always willingly.  I have been building his chariot for a week now, my hands and arms and back ache from sawing and pushing together and pulling apart and gluing and, now, finally, duct taping the pieces together.  I have to lift him up from the lower bed to the upper bed several times a day when the bedding gets too wet.  I cook his food so there's prep time and cook time and feeding time, twice a day.  There's washing him and hauling him out to go swimming and then walking around and around the pool making him swim so that he can regain his strength.  All of this I do willingly and do not begrudge a moment of time that is spent in service to him but it does eat up a large portion of my day.  Then I have freelance writing to do, going to work at Starbucks where people expect me to be nice to them, cleaning up the store and doing the prep work for the next day and then coming home, spending a few minutes playing with Cord before hitting the computer for some more writing time and then crashing onto the bed face first and trying to get some sleep before it starts again the next morning.  My legs are killing me from Starbucks, my left shoulder aches from carrying him around on it, my back which has never bothered me in my life aches in a weird, chewing on aluminum foil kind of way and I can't remember my last day off.

But, she will have a blast and it's not a trip I can take with her until Himself is at least up on his front legs again.  Besides we have a dog coming to stay with us for the next six weeks who arrives next Thursday.  So, wealth, tonight isn't about accumulating cash, it's about receiving an unexpected day off.  A day where everything is done for me.  I day I can roll over in bed in the morning, when the frig is filled with the food we need that day, with nothing to do but read a book while scratching my boy's tummy and sharing a floor picnic like we used to do in our little pink house by the lake, two blocks from the ocean.

So, yeah, tonight I want the wealth of free time.