Oh my

August 11

Have I been busy! Of course I know that's no excuse for neglecting my blog. What's more, writing it may help me clarify any number of things. So here are my current four tasks, for which I have neither sufficient hands nor head.

1. I have been organizing an auction for my synagogue since February, to take place October 29th. There is still much to be done. I ran my fourth and "last" one in 2005. Retired, publically, and in my head. But I know how to do it, and others don't have the experience or know-how--such as that it takes eight months to do well. Others tried to get one going. No go. So this past winter, I volunteered to do it again. It's harder work than I remembered. (My mother used to say that it was a good thing women didn't remember how much childbirth hurt, or no woman would ever have more than one child.)

2. I have been looking to move for a while now, to rent another apartment where this NYC-raised non-driver can still walk to my usual haunts (such as the Y). The right place in the right building turned up at, well, not the best time. I move september 15th. Decades of files and drafts need to be culled, the rest packed. This, too, is hard work.

3. I have had several health issues, which, rest assured, will not be detailed here. Besides, I hate to dwell on them long enough to write at all clearly about them. Suffice it to say that I have an unpleasant knack for getting unusual health problems. Know how many meds there are to treat high blood pressure? Me neither, but there are many many many. Know how many there are to treat abnormally low blood pressure? I'm on IT. I pray that my doctors to learn to collaborate. My current observation is that each one--and they are good physicians--tends to forget that a patient has numerous organs which interact, more than a single orifice, and is sometimes prescribed meds which don't "play well" with others.

4. I have in recent weeks had several people about whom I care require serious surgeries. I pray for them, a lot, partly to cut my worry level down above sea level; partly in hopes of reminding God to keep watch over my friends and, especially, to take good care of the surgeons involved, without reminding Him/Her so often that I get on God's nerves.

5. Maybe simply writing these down as I just have will help me to manage my time and effort more productively. Maybe not. But it's worth a try.

God bless my friends, my therapist, and God Him/Herself for allowing me to trust that, when I pray, I'm not pissing in the wind.