this is life?

so this is the 9-5 club i've been scrambling to join. while i was in school, i could think of nothing better than having a manageable, predictable work schedule, no homework hanging over my head, no hours until infinity. but now... well, the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence.

where's the time for life? in the mornings, by the time i get up, get ready for work, it's time to go. in the evenings, i come home, unwind for an hour or two (or more likely do chores and errands, like cleaning the house, shopping for dinner, etc). then i make dinner, and by the time we eat and clean up, look at the time! it's 10 p.m.! off to bed (we're both 30 or over now, after all), maybe to read or write for an hour or so, and then, that's it.

that's it?? and then on the weekends, we try to squeeze in the stuff we couldn't do during the week. more shopping for groceries, catching up on sleep, gardening, all the miscellaneous tasks.

the only way i can find to get more time is to sleep less (difficult to do) or make the days longer (impossible to do).

at least with school, i had one day off. of course, that was filled with stuff to do, or if i wasn't doing my homework, i was certainly stressing about it!

borrowed time

there are times when i want nothing more than to move out of this house. the windows that i put in with an ex trap me inside, yielding only dusty, cobweb strewn glimpses of the world outside. The walls crawling with mold and the leaking roof remind me i'm living beyond my means in a house i can't afford to keep. i've spent too long on borrowed time, letting the house depreciate little by little with deferred maintenance.

my sister says the house is a leash that binds me with responsibility. the rooms are packed with stuff that's not mine, but left here over the years by the residents that have come and gone. i've never decorated, never fully made this place mine.

now my hand might soon by forced. my sister doesn't want to keep the house, and while i'm conflicted, i don't feel i have the right to convince her otherwise. part of me aches like muscles stiff with stillness. at last, i think, i will be free. i'm itching to start a life with my dearest love.

but then my eye travels along the redwood fence, now silvered, that i built using only hand tools (i was too scared of the power tools to use them) and my mind lingers on the kitty graveyard on the side of the house, which holds the cats that have lived her as long as i have and i think of the cats living now, who know no other home.

the roses are in bloom now, i see. Lascivious and voluptuous things, their thorny stems sagging with the weight of their pendulous blossoms. I clip some and bring them inside, where their heady scent penetrates the room, and i remember how my mother would lean up on tiptoe with her slight frame, close her eyes, and smell them.

"oh annie," she would say. "don't they smell wonderful?"

how can i give up those roses? how i can i ever entrust them another's care?

argh

how do i write something when i have absolutely no idea on how to write it? they always say, go with your instinct, what's interesting about something. well, i do think it's interesting, but there's nothing that new - my article is about a blogger. come one, people have been blogging for a while. true, this guy is interesting, but how do i convey that without dipping too far into touchy feely, definitely non-newsy writing?