This Must Be My Day

Saint Agnes, the Pathetic

 Holy Candi!  It’s All Saint’s Day

I spent about ten minutes in the bookstore today paging through a book that I thought would be a good read.  Mustering my self-discipline, I put it down and said to myself “I don’t have time to read just for fun,” and walked out.  I have honed the art of self-denial to such an extent that I am the envy of the freaking saints.

We have this life, this miraculous but busy life.  Working, taking one class each semester in my graduate program (I know, I know, I'll never get through the program at this rate.)  keeping healthy, which, in our household means shopping and cooking well-balanced and appealing meals every day, and keeping a germ-free house.  And now, we have what has become our once-a-month pilgrimage to Salt Lake.  It seems we are constantly in some stage of packing or unpacking.  Everything we have to do fills up all the time we have to do it in.  When would I have time to read a book just for fun?

This is the life we fought like demons to keep. And yet, sometimes I get this niggling, ungrateful feeling that our life is small and limited.  That bothers me.  So I’ve given it some thought and here’s the deal.  It’s not from lack of gratitude; it’s just the will to live exerting itself.  The trick is to let off steam before it blows.  Taylor reminded me recently of a cartoon that made us laugh – a 1960’s housewife with a melodramatic expression of raging anxiety on her face, her speech bubble saying, “The baby was crying, the dog was barking. I had to burn it down!”

Don’t worry, I won’t burn it down.  But, I did go back and get the book and I will make the time for some fun reading.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.