Cell phones and cows

WARNING : annoying, cranky, whiny post ahead

My cell phone is acting up.  Big deal, huh?  Not for me.  Not when it's my connection to both my daughters at college.  Anything that decreases my availability to my daughters shakes me to the core. A few years ago I joked that I wanted my mythical gravestone to read "She never had a cell phone."  Then my daughters became teenagers and one went away to college. Cell phone = lifeline = necessity.

This disastrous-for-me development comes when I am definitely not in a position to drop a couple hundred bucks on a new one and just when I thought I might get a little bit ahead.  (Hah!  Dream on!)

One of my health-related goals (#34) was to check out gyms/fitness centers, and, if I could find one with a location that wasn't round Robin Hood's barn from my house and didn't cost another mortgage payment, I would join and begin to get some structured physical activity into my life.  During the worst of the past few years, I was a member of a local fitness center and was -- for the first time in my lengthy life -- fairly regular in my attendance. Then it closed.  In addition to the physical exercise, I discovered it was an excellent way to deal with the abundance of anxiety I carried with me in that period.   For whatever reason, my anxiety level is, once again, ramping up, so it seemed that the time is right. Last week I visited a place not too far away that is promising, and I am giving serious consideration to membership.

In addition to the fee for the gym, I had hoped to acquire and load music on an MP3 player (#96) so I had music to listen to while exercising.    Yeah, I know I could get outside and walk. Walking is free, you say. Autumn weather generally lends itself to being outdoors, you observe. Unfortunately, it also heralds the following season, winter, with its ever earlier darkness, low temperatures, and ready-made excuses to withdraw into my home and myself.   But I know myself and walking is not something I can "force" myself to do on a regular schedule -- and, even if  I could, I'd need music for that too.  (Whine, whine, whine...)

I know that there are many people out there who lack the basics of food, shelter, medical care, employment -- all of which I have, at least for now.  I am very aware that there are people around me who have lost loved ones recently or who are in fresh pain from rejection.  I know that I am, relatively speaking, fortunate in many ways.  But the past several years have taken away so much of the life I expected to have that the little things can take on far more importance than they ever should.  Like that proverbial straw on the camel, some days it takes merely a small glitch to throw me off into the Land of OverWhelmed and Anxious.  Things that should be, and used to be easy to deal with, become obstacles that require more reserves of effort than I feel I have. 


So, today, I am a major C.O.W. (Thanks, Nancy)