(In Response To Emails): Amenities Deprivation Cured…and Other Observations For The Thursday Night Group

Apropos of nothing….I finally got my key to the pool. I got the key to the pool by persistently calling the HOA, and lo and behold, eventually was contacted by a real human being, who took my old key and exchanged it for a new one. So I am now once again pool-enabled, which is a nice thing to be in the summer time. And against my better judgment and because I am nothing if not a pushover, a.k.a., someone who is always going to extend the olive branch and see the best in a person even if they do insist on holding romantic dramas in stairwells and otherwise disturbing my own domestic peace, I loaned the key to Chad to have copies made, so that my neighbors might bypass the bureaucratic b*llsh*t I had to go through to get a key in the first place. Days went by. No key returned.

Lainie called me this morning. Chad dropped the key copies by last night. I am now again, as I said, pool-enabled. So once more my faith is restored in people in general. Either that or it’s as simple as that once more I made a gesture I shouldn’t have, and dodged a bullet by having it come out well.

Amenity Deprivation cured.

Going to the pool right this minute would seem like a tremendous idea, and one that I would like to pursue. It’s just not going to happen because in ninety minutes, I’m due at work. Originally I was due a half hour ago, but I changed it, realizing nothing happened until this evening and I might as well stave off the chaos and the running around one more hour if such a thing was possible and it was. I talked with Holly and she is pretty much holding down the fort. Which is good because it enabled me to take an extra long walk with Basil, and run some errands, and basically take a slower approach to starting the day which worked out well for me because --- and I will only note this because it might explain why I may miss, as I did last week, a blog post or two (and really peeve my writer’s group in so doing. You can forget to bring something to eat to the meeting. You can forget to bring something to drink. You can not forget to write something, or post something, or even to attend altogether, which was the egregious error I committed on Thursday, being otherwise occupied with a relationship which as of last night appears to be over. You can do that, and you will get emails. Emails wanting to know what the heck is going on and why are you missing Thursdays? Do you really think Grace Metalious ever missed a day at her typewriter putting together Peyton Place? Do you think Irving Wallace ever let the personal encroach on the writing?).

It’s odd to note this, but I really don’t have anything to say and yet I have to say something because I’ve really peeved my writer’s group. I have nothing to say except that, in ninety minutes, I will be at work and I will have big smiles for everyone and everything, and this is what we do. This is the nature of the industry. The industry that can be and is subject to change at any given moment. The industry that says – and we happily comply – that no matter what else is going on with your life, in ninety minutes or five minutes or thirty seconds, you will be there, you will be ‘on’ for the client, and a good time will be had by all.

I really don’t have anything to say, but in the interest of pacifying those members of my faithful Thursday night writer’s group, have to say to them, “You’re right. I should have been there.” And possibly to the ladies of my one time Monday book club, you’re right as well. I should have been there. I wasn’t, because I went off in pursuit of something that just frankly was wonderful and will always be in my heart, but here’s the thing. Here’s what’s equivalent to the small print at the bottom of every offer you ever receive in the mail, every ‘too good to be true’ that floats your way through the universe. Here’s the ‘price for life’ I got on my Internet service that was truly (had I read the fine print) only good for 24 months (damned short life, I thought):

I think everything happens for a reason, in life.

OK, trite, stupid, and mundane, but it is what it is. And it’s what it boils down to, and it’s what I was thinking at 8:30 this morning when the calls from work started, and I realized that no matter what was going on in my personal life, I still had to be ‘on’, it was terribly important to be so, and I would be. I am the less than intelligent one who was less than intelligent enough to allow myself to fall in love with Roy, and ….well, for reasons there’s no reason to delve into, that isn’t going to happen.

You might want an explanation for that, but you’re not getting one. I have my hands full explaining it to Basil. That, and reinstating myself with her as somebody it’s still worth having wandered into their life five years ago.

I’m not rescinding, for the record, the “I love you”. As for anybody who really knows me, it’s hard enough to get one of those in the first place. That’s something I’ll always have. What I don’t have, apparently, are the things I would need to make something like that work. I don’t have a predictable schedule. I have friends who are single, and many of them are off the wall, and I have a few very close friends who are married, but unhappily so. I work in a pressure cooker so I require flexibility in my schedule and time alone. Much as I’d like to say I’ve had only one romantic tryst in my past, I’m not saying it and frankly, at my age – it would be more sad than virtuous if that were the case. I’d like to say I will only say what people want, or can stand – to hear. But, as M. observed after dating me for two years, “You just don’t edit yourself, do you?” and the truth is, I don’t.
And taken all together, it’s not really something that mixes well with another person.

So I accept that.
And if something was meant to be, it will be.
And if it’s not, it won’t.
And I was married once, for a long time, so I can’t say I missed out on having had a long term relationship. A lot of people go through life without ever having had that once, so it is, if you think about it, a bit presumptuous for me to consider having it twice.
And that’s all I have to say about that.

And to the Monday night book club, I will be there, even if you have chosen Wollitzer’s “Ten Year Nap”, which I’ve already read. And as to Thursday night…I’ll come up with something.

And as to Basil….
I’ll make it up to you, sweets.
Two extra blocks, I promise. Every single day.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to put my personal life aside, and go to work.