Ten-Finger Exercises

Pass the mind, please...

"If this is my old mind I got back, somebody else can have it. It's bitchy and gritchy and generally disagreeable."

"Wren, you are hard to please, you know," Rupert uttered, looking distraught.

"Well, I don't mean to be. I feel like I've been walking in a ditch for two days and can't see out over the sides."

"So I should add 'ditchy' to your list?" he suggested.

"Yes, and while you're at it, it isn't even a straight ditch. It's full of 'Yes, but's.'"

"Of what?" he exclaimed.

"You know: I ought to go clean up that room the children stayed in and put away all those things of Mother's that I removed from the drawer; but, I don't know where to put them. I ought to go iron shirts, but my leg is hurting. I ought to pick out a place to spend Thanksgiving with our East Coast and West Coast kids, but now the East Coast ones think they'd rather be near skiing than the ocean."

"Oh, I see: what my mother used to call the old ball of yarn dilemma. You see an end sticking out of the ball and start to knit, but then it disappears somewhere down the innards and you have to start over. Or unwrap the whole ball."

"Yes, like that. Except there are so many more loose ends than any ball of yarn I ever had," I pointed out.

"Say, does this have anything to do with that blog about goals you were threatening us with?"

"Ah, you see my point."

"Not exactly," Rupert admitted.

"Let me try to put it more clearly then; although, I dare say that if I could, if it was clear to me that is, I wouldn't have to put it any way at all."

"Uh, yes."

"Here's the thing: the great unknowns. I have 'x' number of years left in my life, 'x' dollars to spend and to make do with, 'x' amount of health and stamina to enjoy travel and such. I don't want to run out of one before I run out of the other.

"One of the things I want to be doing," I continued, "is writing. Am I spending too much valuable time making piddling money, or will I have to have it just to survive? My grandfather was 106 years old when he died, you know."

"No, I didn't know that."

"I watch these hospital and hospice patients come down with cancer the week they retire, or spend all their savings on hospital bills and never get to take the trips they always dreamed of. All the time it happens. And I don't want it to happen to us."

"Wren, I'd like to help, but I don't have any answers for you," Rupert said. He sounded sincere.

"No, of course you don't. But you're a dear for listening. I guess I'll just have to muddle through. Maybe tomorrow I'll start my list."