Older and Older still

I was going to say older and wiser but that remains to be seen. I read a journal last night that I started in 1982. What a whiner I was and still am. Back then I smoked and drank and was overweight. My brother had been thrown out of his house and was living with me. My husband and I were living together out of wedlock. Don't you love that phrase? Well we were. We were in the midst of an alcohol related auto accident for which I was being sued. The car was registered to me and driven by my future husband and we had been at a wedding. Oh I could go on and on about the injustice of the event and blah blah but, the driver, my future and current husband had been drinking (albeit very conservatively -- enough however to bring alcohol into the equation). Oh how I squirm with that issue. Anyhow, the lawsuit was pending and the amount of money I was being sued for was laughably huge. What a chaotic wreck our lives were.

No here we are some 23 years later and the chaos has somewhat settled. I guess that outsiders would look at this life and shake their heads that I would consider it peaceful. Perhaps. I still have lawsuits swirling, although of a much different kind. I have no siblings left or parents. I don't smoke any more. I drink less and am still overweight but not as concerned by being so. And -- I am married, no longer living "in sin".

I had what I call John Kerry moment yesterday. You know the kind. You are in over your head and get caught. You grab the shovel and start to dig out but the hole gets deeper and deeper and you know you should just shut up and throw yourself at the mercy of your questioners but you don't. Maybe that's why people voted for the man......they saw themselves in his gigantic puffed up fantasy life and felt sorry for him. Anyhow -- I think that the difference between John and me is that I go over and over the encounter countless times and realize how stupid it is to pretend to be expert on issues about which you have only a tad of learning and that is second hand or maybe third hand. I wake up at 4AM and ponder the foolishness of my self. I guess I bought into my mother's propaganda concerning her children. You know that propaganda, the "My child is an honor student at blah blah school and in the top echelon of the whaddayacallit blah e blahs." Yeah, that stuff. Well I'm not and was never but believed I was because she told the world I was and so I believed.

Well -- maybe wisdom is knowing what you don't know and aren't capable of and shutting up when you are faced with it.

Sigh!!