Ah, January. The month of resolutions. Exercise more. Eat healthier. Get more sleep. Get organized (How? When? Add 10 hours to every day and the problem will solve itself). Nearly 40% of Americans make some kind of New Year’s resolution. Most say they are “very or somewhat likely” to keep those vows. Someone should do a follow-up in February.

Regular readers of this blog might recall that I, too, succumbed to resolution mania last January.  Sick of the stress overload many of us are suffering, I bravely, if naively, declared that 2023 would see me “…Saying NO to counting minutes. NO to stressing over the mind-numbing roster of repetitive daily chores. NO to replaying ad nauseum the cock-ups of life or the rude slights of others (who are doubtless stressed themselves). And YES to life. YES to time without a stopwatch, time as process—to be enjoyed, relaxed with, contented in. To bask in the great good fortune of being ALIVE.”

Well, you can’t fault me for being a pessimist.

Okay, confession: While I no longer hyperventilate over a lost ten minutes or resist having to unload the dishwasher for the 1,978,244^th time, I’m still having some—okay, more than some—issues regarding life’s stressful cock-ups. I want to solve problems as soon as they arise. As for the rude slights of others, like a needle stuck in the groove of an LP, my brain replays their angry words—what inspired them?  

Case in point: A few weeks back, at the end of a lovely day of holiday shopping, Ed and I waited in line to check out our basket of purchases. When our turn came at the register, the saleswoman was hostile from the moment I laid the first item on the counter, even telling me to be silent as I was talking to Ed. Afterward, at lunch, I was still feeling the sting of her sharp words and combative manner. Ed encouraged me to put it out of my mind, to not let it warp the happiness of the day, which had extended to the meal we were now enjoying—a sunny table in a relaxed atmosphere, pleasant exchanges with our server and the bartender. I knew he was right. F*** it, I thought. Let it go. And thus, this post was born.

So, going forward into the new year, whenever the insanities and inanities of life sling their arrows of “outrageous fortune” my way, I’m not going to waste time and energy on things gone awry or people behaving badly. I am turning off the “replay ad nauseum” switch in my head and dismissing all annoyances, great and small, with these two little words: F*** it.

Not even an exclamation mark to punctuate. Just a calm, determined choice.

The Waiting Game

I actually had an opportunity to apply my new resolution immediately after that post-shop lunch. Six days before, I had emailed twelves invites to our annual Winter Solstice Party—a high-spirited gathering where the brandy and eggnog flow freely, the table is heaped with savories and sweets, and the conversation is lively until the last guests depart 4-5 hours later.    

So, what was I angst-ing about? I had only heard from three people. How was I to shop for a party when I had no idea how many people might show? I sent “hope you can make it” reminder emails and texts a week before the party. I tried contacting several old friends through Facebook in the event their email addy had changed. Then, Ed and I had our holiday shopping outing. Afterward, I decided I would just send my customary cheery date and time reminder to everyone on the list a day before and F*** it, we’d celebrate with whoever showed up.   

Two days before I emailed the reminder, I got three more yesses, one no, and a maybe, pending recovery from a recent surgery. In the end, most everyone showed up and it was one of our best parties ever. I could have saved my head and heart the numerous replays of “what if” and “why aren’t they?” The outcome would have been exactly the same.

As is the case for the following:

Stuff That Doesn’t Work the Way It’s Supposed To

Ed and I take several trips a year—travel is our passion. Until this past September, though, we’d never experienced a cock-up in getting from one place to another. Long lines at security, yes. Annoying passengers in front of us who launch their seats so far back, we can’t use our meal trays—yes. But that’s part and parcel of life on the road (or in the air). Well, this fall when we flew to Copenhagen, there were no direct flights, so we booked a Boston to Munich/Munich to Copenhagen flight going over, and a Copenhagen to Frankfurt/Frankfurt to Boston flight coming back. All on an airline whose name rhymes with Woof-bonza.  

After the customary knee-breaking backward-thrust-of-seat by a decidedly unfriendly man in the row ahead, we queued up our movies, ordered a drink and away we flew. Our flight had departed 30 minutes late, but we still had almost an hour to make our connection. No sweat. In Munich, however, we had to sit on the ground for another 30 minutes, waiting for a gate to open. By the time we made it inside the airport, we had a scant twenty minutes.to make our flight. I ran daily for more than 25 years and never were those leg muscles put to better service than my sprint to the next gate where the attendant waved us on, calling out encouragement as if we were in some World Cup race. We made it, but… our luggage did not. We arrived in Copenhagen with nothing more than our passports and a package of cookies we got on the plane. Apparently, this happens so often with Woof-bonza that they had cartons of packets containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant. We each took one and caught the metro to our Airbnb in the clothes we had now been wearing some 30 some hours—and would don the next morning until an airport van delivered our luggage around noon. But world travelers are not easily daunted. We greeted our suitcases with unbridled joy, changed clothes and had a marvelous month in Copenhagen. Then…

Our return flight from Copenhagen to Frankfurt was a full hour late in taking off. Leaving us just 15 minutes to make the Boston flight. Well, you can guess the story. Arriving late in Frankfurt, we again had to wait for a gate. It turned out to be Gate A. The Boston flight left from—and I am not making this up—Gate ZZ80. Not even Jesse Owens, greatest Olympic runner of all time, could have made that transfer, but I gave it my all. On and on I ran, only to find they were packing up the gate and turning off the lights at ZZ80. This time, it was our luggage that made it onto the plane, while we stood in a near-deserted airport, stranded.

Woof-bonza’s claims office booked a flight to Boston for the next morning, gave us a meal voucher for one of the airport eateries, and a train ticket to a hotel thirty miles away. Once again, we would have to wait another 24 hours to lay our hands on clean clothes. Having been victims of luggage-separation once, though, we’d smartly included clean underwear, deodorant, and toothbrushes in our carry-on bag.

I should have said F*** it, gone down to the hotel bar and enjoyed a drink, but instead I bogged down in my exhaustion, greatly annoyed at having to go through the whole flight thing again the next day and losing the money for the room we’d booked in Boston that night.     

Best Laid Plans…    

Our small in-town front yard is a terraced garden, roughly 30 feet long and 15 feet from sidewalk to house. It took me two years to dig through the bindweed left by the previous owners and another two years to terrace the beds and plant them. The task of refining—getting the right mix of colors, heights, greenery—never really ends, but by 2022 I was satisfied with the whole. Hoping to deter the joyous children and manic doggies who romp through and trample the lower garden abutting the sidewalk, I invested in some attractive, heavy-duty garden edging. It arrived just days before our house was to be re-roofed in preparation for solar panels.

The morning the roofers arrived, I came down to breakfast in time to see one of the crew trundling a wheelbarrow through the upper tier of my garden. The entire tier. A third of my garden, flattened. In apoplectic shock, I could only point to Ed and make distress noises. All I can say is it was a good thing I hadn’t yet noticed the roofers’ trucks, parked well over the curb, their tires settled in the garden’s lowest level. All my purple sage, my bee balm—gone.  

When I was capable of rational thought again, I told myself: I’ll wait until the roof project is done and then I’ll set up the edging. Next spring, I can replace the plants.  But the roof project finished just ten days before Ed and I were scheduled to leave for France for a month. By that time, I had a zillion trip-prep tasks. I’ll install the edging when we return in October. Upon our return, however, Ed came down with a cellular infection that landed him in the hospital for a week and kept him off his feet for over a month. The upshot? Hospital visits, taking on all the household tasks and autumn leaf-raking brought me right into early December and the first snows—no garden edging. Next spring, I told myself. Next spring, definitely. The box containing the edging—a sizable mother, 27” x 17” x 17”—sat through the winter, just off the laundry room, at the entrance to the kitchen.

The next spring, I received an unexpected (but very welcome!) one-off bonus from my annuity account, so we decided to use the windfall to re-side the house, something we’d wanted to do since we purchased the place. You can probably guess the rest—a crew of construction workers with sawhorses, scaffolding and ladders everywhere. What plants had escaped devastation during the re-roofing took a hit this time around. And my hopes of installing the edging…

As I write, that mammoth box of edging still stands near the entrance to the kitchen. It’s become a sort of table, a home to a variety of flotsam and jetsam, including a hefty carton of cookbooks we winnowed out some years ago to donate—where???

Someday. Sometime. But for now, heading into winter, I just gotta say F*** it.       

Annoying Circumstances   

My town has just four days—alternate Saturdays—in October and November when you can take your leaves to the landfill. We usually rake about 30 bags each year, but this year, we filled 52 bags. So, getting leaves to the landfill at every opportunity was a priority. We ran multiple trips on each of the appointed days.

On Saturday, November 11, I stuffed eight bags of leaves into every possible nook and cranny of my Subaru and drove off on what was supposed to be the first of two dump-runs. The day was beautiful, sunny, with sweeping vistas of hillsides dotted with the last color of the season. It was all going splendidly until…I arrived at the dump to find the gate closed and locked. A sign advised me to go to a second gate down the road—the one where large brush can be dumped. So off I drove only to find that gate also closed. The ride home was not so sunny. I unloaded the bags. Twenty-two bags on the porch. And more to rake in the coming week. I managed to clear a narrow pathway for the mail carrier.

When I told Ed the news, he said, “Oh, it’s Veterans Day.” “But don’t government ops like the Post Office always observe those holidays on Monday?” I asked. Turns out that when it comes to Veterans Day, they don’t. MLK Day, yes. Presidents’ Day, yes, but not Veterans Day. Doing a quick calendar check online, I found that Veterans Day had only fallen once on a Saturday in the fourteen years we’ve lived here, and I hadn’t noticed because pre-pandemic, the town offered two days every week for leaf disposal.  

Petty, ridiculously so in hindsight, as is so much of what we stew over, and definitely deserving of a F*** it.

Anticipation: Why Worry Later When You Can Worry Now?

Just before we left for Copenhagen this past fall, I received a summons for jury duty for October 31. Happy Halloween! I decided not to ask to postpone because I didn’t want to risk getting rescheduled for a time when we were traveling—you can’t ask for a postponement twice on the same summons—and face forfeiting all the $$$ we’d laid out for plane fare and lodging.

The problem with jury duty is that you have no idea how big a chunk of your life it could lay claim to. You could show up to find they don’t need you and you’re excused. You could serve one, two, three days and be done. Or you could land a trial that lasts for weeks. Not only might my life be thrown into chaos for a lengthy time, but right at the start of the holiday season when family would be gathering. Anticipation, as Carly Simon might have sung, was making me…crazy. Every day after we returned from Copenhagen was a mental back and forth: What’ll I do if…Don’t worry about it until it happens…What’ll I do if… 

On the day-before phone check-in, I was supremely relieved to hear: There are no cases scheduled for tomorrow. Your presence is not required. I should have just said F*** it from the start and let the dice fall as they would. As noted up-top about the holiday party invites, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but it would have saved wasted energy for something happier and more productive in the meantime. And that’s true for all things beyond our control.

Into the New Year—Bring It On!

As I write, family has started arriving for the holidays. This time is super-precious as both my kids live some distance away and we’re seldom able to get together more than two or three times a year. I’m sitting here now, thinking I really should give this post one more good edit. Cut it back here. Spark it up there. Revise that one section.

But with just three days to go until Christmas, I’m going to listen to myself. Take my own advice. Sail into 2024 with a lighter heart. This post is good enough, finished. F*** it.