There's an old saw...

...about how helping people less fortunate than yourself will help you feel better, or at least help you forget your troubles for a bit.

This seems to be true. I helped Mrs. Rabbi pack intermittently yesterday, and had her and her son over for dinner last night. After seeing the trainwreck that is their packing job -- they have literally waited until something like 48 hours before the movers arrive to start, mainly because Reb Useless did NOTHING up until he left the other day. Unbelievable. All he would have had to do is start a month or so ago, put in one or two solid hours a day (he was unemployed, and home with their son while she worked), and the place would have been packed up and echoing by now. Now, of course, he's at their new town, in a hotel (since their apt. is not furnished yet), and doing things like going to the movies, or out to dinner with new colleagues.

Anyway, after dinner I plied her with wine so she'd start talking, and we sat outside while the kids ran around and played, along with another neighbor and her brood. I'm starting to realize that the disorganization and chaos is both of them, not just him. In part I think hers stems from profound burnout and fatigue.

In any case, I would not trade places with her for one trillion dollars in cash.

Meanwhile, I've gotten my credit cards squared away, gotten a replacement drivers' license, even made sure my library card was cancelled (I'll just go get a new one later), and went to Target and bought the UGLIEST bright neon pink wallet. Nothing else in my entire house is that color, except for a few Barbie-esque toys of Hannah's which still don't come quite near the neon brightness of it. This way it will be much harder to lose, ignore or forget. I am convinced my other wallet is in the house somewhere, but I have not seen any sign of it, and probably won't unless we move or something and it turns out to have been under the TV cabinet or something. I sure hope it's here -- I did also have a $40 Target gift card and a $10 Barnes & Noble one, and I had big plans for them.

Tonight Gretchen and I went out and had dinner and walked around the bookstore a bit. It was nice to get out.

I'm kind of in a weird food/cooking holding pattern -- not only am I still working on weight loss, and not only is the weather unbearably hot, but I recently got a physical and my cholesterol is ridiculously high (at least in my opinion, factoring in age and eating habits) -- 241 total, and I know the good one is also low and the bad one is high and so are the triglycerides. Jon had a physical too and even his cholesterol is up, although lower than mine (his is 211). This is the guy who snacks on things like apples and whole-wheat bread, and who hates cream cheese, butter, cottage cheese, cream, sour cream, etc. with a passion. Meanwhile, I've got a freezer full of various meats that I've stocked up on. I absolutely do not want to throw them out, but I don't want to do any further damage to myself. Jon says we should just chip away at it -- once a week or less for the red meats, and once they're gone, just stop buying them unless it's a holiday meal. I also have a lot of chicken, and we could do a lot of good grilling, I suppose. Then once we've depleted our carnivore stash, we'll go mostly veg except for holidays/company meals/occasional restaurants.

I have done a lot of reading, though, and I've seen one study after another cited which links stress with heart disease/elevated cholesterol, and god knows we've had most of the major life stresses within the last two years alone -- job loss, death of a child, job change, two moves -- plus my dad seems to be in the beginning, but definitive, stages of Alzheimer's, my sister is having brain surgery sometime in the next two weeks -- more about that later -- I'm going nuts being home all day with Emily, etc.

But I can't let this continue. 40 is more or less the midpoint of my life, give or take a decade or so, and I just don't want to let things get progressively worse -- I have a feeling I'm going to need more strength and health in the next ten years or so than I ever have even up until now, with aging parents + growing child + grief all put together.

I really was looking forward to this time as being the time when I could start to have a bit of my own life back, once the kids were not babies/toddlers any more. I wasn't delusional enough to imagine that I'd have anything like REAL free time until I was at least in my mid-50's, but the constant-care-and-supervision era was supposed to be abating a bit, enough to give me time to start pursuing my work again (graphic design) and start doing other fun things, like taking some art classes again, exercising more, spending more time ALONE with Jon. I hadn't factored in aging parents (not sure how I overlooked that one, since I watched my mom go through exactly this scenario 30 years ago, except for the dead child) or profound grieving.

ONE of these days I just want to be able to say to Jon, "Hey, let's go to Europe next month", and only have to concern ourselves with packing, cat-sitting, and passports. I also want this to happen sometime before my 80's, so I can be relatively unencumbered by incontinence products, medications, and ugly support shoes.

Rats.

Well, apparently the anti-depressant effect of helping others wears off after about 24 hours.

It's awfully late, but I think next time I'll address my sister's upcoming surgery (hey, this is already starting to read like an old person's blog...). There is a real chance that we might lose her, and I simply can't wrap my head around that. Really, it's been more than enough, thank you.