Rain today, some sleet – an altogether messy day. A good day to hunker down and read a good book, which is exactly what I plan to do – along with washing the sheets.
Yesterday, I was functioning on overdrive. I did work outside, I watered all the plants, I cleaned the kitchen, living room and den – and the bathroom, which you know I hate doing. I ticked a few minor things that had been annoying me off my list, the kind of little chores that you come upon every day and file away for the future.
Very satisfying, indeed!
I’ve a couple of presents yet to buy for Don, but I know what I’m getting him. One is on the way. We’re keeping things rather low-key this year. We’ve had an extraordinary year. We’ve been blessed. And even though the show’s closing caused us great pain, as well as a huge loss of income, the good most definitely outweighed the bad. We don’t take any of it for granted and we are humbly aware of the gifts we have been given.
You know, we’ve had some very tough years in the past. Up until very, very recently we never knew if we were going to have enough money to pay our bills and our mortgage each month. Much of my energy was taken up with worrying about money. How much to pay on this bill or that? Would the check for some freelance work or acting work arrive in time to pay that bill? There’s no way I can adequately describe it to you, but believe me, we were in a constant state of stress about our finances. It’s only within the past couple of years that we’ve been able to relax a bit. We still have to cope with living on a limited income, as so many of us do. It was so wonderful to NOT have to worry about money at all when Don was working on Broadway. That’s over. So we still worry. Just not as much as we used to.
Thankfully, we’ve never missed a mortgage payment. We have good credit. But we had to fight, tooth and nail, to accomplish that.
We’ve had Christmases where we tried to scrape enough money together to spend $50 on each other. Sometimes less. In the end, it doesn’t really matter how much, if anything, you spend on a present. Some of our most creative Christmases were in those very lean years.
We’re just grateful that we’re together. That we have a roof over our head. That we love and are loved. That we have friends and family. That we laugh together – a lot.
It’s all good.
Happy Sunday.
