Bringing Back Sligo

As I drove to Wal-mart at 10:00 this evening to purchase lice treatment I thought about all of the ways my life is feeling just a little unsettled.  I also thought about all of the other things I would rather be doing besides going to Wal-mart which included, but was not limited to:  Removing my fingernails one by one, stabbing my eyes with needles, and/or walking through fire.  You may think I’m being dramatic but I would do just about anything to avoid Wal-mart and especially Wal-mart late on a Friday night.

Anyway, you all aren’t here to listen to me tell you about how Wal-mart is the worst and you’re probably not here to listen to my gripes but, too bad.  Marcus is gone again, this time to London and Germany.  He left just as the Cottage was starting to resemble an inhabitable space.  After eight days on travel he will return again only to leave for another four days for Navy Reserves training.  For the first time I kind of wish I had the skills Marcus has so that I could keep working on the Cottage but my skill set leaves me sitting here, late at night after a lice killing party, to write about how I don’t know anything about restoring houses.  I know so little about restoring homes that I managed to stab my hand with the vinyl flooring we’re installing and thus came an end to my short-lived career as a flooring installer.

Meanwhile, as we have worked on the Cottage for the past few weeks months almost one year, we have also had to reassess our finances, deplete my retirement account (officially saying goodbye to Lauren Rojek), sell a house, consider selling one of the children, and sign our souls over to the devil.  Believe me, I have enough self-awareness to recognize that many of our problems are “first world” but they’re problems nonetheless.

I also have enough self-awareness to know that things could always be worse.  I mean, at this very moment I have a really stinky dog lying next to me passing gas as if his life depended on it but I could be dead and not a smell a thing at all.  So, there’s that.