I often say that I can clean house or go for a walk but not on the same day.

Sometimes I face other choices even more challenging.  Go to work or go out to dinner.  Go to the store or dust the floors.  Make your own list.  My body can’t handle two tasks requiring physical exertion on the same day.

Yesterday my friend Rebecca invited me to tour wineries with her and her mother.  Rebecca gets me, though I’m sorry for her that she does.  She has  a spinal injury requiring surgery.  She knows the score.  Take a spill and your day suddenly takes a downward tilt.  Hopefully, she will have some relief after the doctors do their work on Wednesday.  I will send angels her way, to guide the surgeon’s knife.

I took Friday off to clean house in anticipation of my son’s potential visit.  When he said he had too much to do, I put aside cleaning.  Eventually, I learned he’s coming on Tuesday.  I’m overjoyed. Now he will get to hear our friend Sheldon singing Beethoven’s Ninth with the KC Symphony Chorale.  But I’m faced with cleaning house today, before a work day.  So it goes.

At one of our winery stops yesterday, a woman in white loafers stepped aside to watch me descend a flight of stairs.  Wine got you tipsy, I see, she snickered.  I paused.  I asked her to repeat what she had said.  Well I can see you’re drunk, she explained.

No.  Not drunk.  A mistake people have been making most of my adult life — since college.  I’m not drunk, I said mildly.  I’m disabled.  She laughed, unbelieving.  Oh darling don’t worry, I think you’re doing just fine.  I came to a full stop and said, Ma’am, I do not need your validation.  She broke out laughing.  Rebecca’s mother, ahead of me, looked back.  By this time, I had concluded that the woman should not concern me, and I continued through the door which Jean held open for me, leaving the woman to her cackling.  I remarked, sadly, that the woman had no manners.  What I really wanted to do was go back and smack her senseless but I just kept walking, down the stairs, into the June sunshine.

It’s the twelfth day of the thirtieth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Jean Beck and her daughter, my friend Rebecca Wirth.