You ever have a day, a week, a couple of weeks, a month, a year when sh!t seems to be coming at you fast and…

	I want to know, should I be screaming with screaming angry voices

	and making steaming faces, smoke bubbling out of my ears

	cause you saw that in a cartoon once? And you would like to

  smash    
  some 
furniture, maybe a hole in a wall (I have done that before.   A swollen hand is all I had to show for it). Look, here’s the deal.  

This ain’t no cartoon. No. This is just everyday life where lessons are all around us, and if we’re smart, that’s exactly how we see all this stuff that sometimes doesn’t make any goddamn sense, has no logic, and no one cares if you are upset. Hell, we’re all upset. Okay, some of us might get more upset than others…

     But that’s just the way it is. Some things happen, and it’s up to you to deal with it one way or another (as if you really have a choice. Deal with it). 

For example.

     My Prius was going to give me a few more years of comfort. 

Except hell, I wasn’t that great at taking care of it. I mean, a few oil changes and some minor repairs, 

and I figured at least three more years could easily be added to the current ten-eleven years. 

Yeah,

That didn’t happen. 

It just died (well, it warned me to get off the street. I’m going to get you home a block from here, and that’s it.) 

    Damn, rain and/or car washes where water seems to find its way into crevices and nooks and crannies and f#cks with you because, well, you don’t see anything or smell anything (can you smell the rain?). 

And you learn that water is an all-powerful natural resource that finds its way into nooks and crannies and crevices and does very violent acts of rust and erosion to an electrical line (you do remember that this is a gas and electric powered vehicle?) underneath the metal frame and the seats and the rug and you find out that you been rusting away all this time and never knew what hit you.

How the hell did the water get into the car 

(EARTHQUAKE. No, really. In the middle of writing this. 4.7) 

and mess with my hybrid system? Who cares? Rust, mold, this car isn’t going anywhere. 

The next day, I didn’t feel good, so I thought I would drive myself to the doctor, who believed that it would be a good idea to yell (okay, I’m exaggerating) “Call 911!” and off to the ambulance and two days of fun and games and the implantation of a pacemaker and I’ll live another 12-15 years, the life of the battery.

Wait, speaking of water. 

     A little (okay, not so little) storm dumping many inches and gallons of water from the sky onto my roof, into my gutters, onto my patio and grass and concrete, 

and finding ways into places that I never expected the water to be flowing through, and hell, days and days…

And there’s more coming. You can bet your life on that, and I hope you won’t have to. So, let me get this straight. I was expecting a calm beginning to this new year, but I’ve gotten some excitement. Yay, I love excitement.

Then I’ll love the note I got from school. 

With my last semester moving at what seems warp speed, I learned that I can’t count (or is it my fault?), and I have 119 units when I need 120 units to graduate in May. 

    Now, you tell me something about a computer being the real culprit, and no, really, it’s all there, but it isn’t, and I have only days to get this straightened out in search of a one-unit class, and time is running out because the deadline is Sunday and I find the solution with two days to spare. Not bad. 

I say all this to remind me and you that while you (I mean me) get anxiety attacks when the sh!t piles up in front of you, roadblocking your way to good feelings, there’s always some surprise waiting down the road around the corner that you didn’t expect and your/my only job is to slow down as you/I go around that corner and the curve that comes after it and the detour and the end of the closed road ahead so you can STOP…wait a minute…

Before you go giving me a lesson in patience and being chill, let me tell you, I got this. 

   I know what’s happening when stress begins to build, and  your  
mind and soul are processing what the F#ck is happening to me. 


You realize that at seventy-five, I ain’t got no time to waste my energy on small or big sh!t.

Don’t ask me why or how I came to this moment of crisis or how my pinky got caught in my zipper (just a speculative example), and I will tell you to shut up. I got this. No more sweating, crunching my teeth, pulling at my neck muscles, or suddenly having to pee again when I just went five minutes earlier. Come on, I’m going to take a deep breath and let the sun shine in and let the water roll down my back like a duck and (checking book of meaningless sayings) let happy feet guide me over the dance floor so I can dance and laugh all at the same time when facing the hard times as well as the good times.

I got this.

This is my time. I’m not going to let anything stand in my way between now and May. I got this because I know what I want is greater than the stuff that’s trying to keep me from getting to that place in May, when the last eight years will be proven worth the last eight years.

I got this.