Dear Neighbor

Dear Neighbor,

Due to our work schedules, my husband and I are often trying to sleep anywhere from as early as 8-10 at night. This, however, has been difficult, due to your incessant tromping around in the middle of the freaking night, you selfish wretches! the noise level coming from your apartment, directly above us.

We hate to be "those" neighbors, but we, the neighbors directly below you, hate you need your help.

I recognize that our complaint may come across as blaming, because it is, and that you may feel there is nothing you are doing wrong. But you ARE wrong, and... We are grateful you're not throwing crazy parties, and really, the only complaint we have is that your walking sounds like a stampeding herd, your steps sound fat, you walk around too much, your walking is slightly loud.

Do you really have to walk in and out of the bedroom every ten seconds? Do you really have to walk around the bedroom so much? Have you considered surgery for your fat feet? Between 8-10 at night, when we are trying to fall asleep, we can hear you walking about your bedroom. Because of the fact that we live in a cheap apartment, the floors and ceilings are quite thin, and your heel-strikes piss us off to the max, reverberate quite loudly. You should take up river-dancing.

Could you just stop walking? I know this is difficult to solve, as you can't just stop walking around your apartment. Could you just stop breathing? We would ask if you might be able to be consciously aware of walking quietly during nighttime hours. I sincerely doubt you even care, but we can dream. It would really help us out. Fatty.

Sincerely,
Your Neighbors

Coming next week, a letter to the crazy, militant neighbors DOWNSTAIRS. 

Warm Up With An Egg

A typical routine, Monday through Friday, begins simply. My husband wakes me up before running off to work, around 5:45 in the morning. We say a prayer and he kisses me goodbye, and then I tuck myself BACK into the bed and sleep for another hour and a half. Some days I dream about staying awake – cleaning the house, washing the dishes, writing, watching a movie, reading a book – basically anything other than continuing to sleep. But I never do. I always sleep.

I finally wake up around 7:15 and rush to get ready. Sometimes I snooze until 7:30, but when I do this, I don’t have enough time to throw something together for breakfast or lunch, and so I end up just having to buy food at work – which is always more expensive, and always more unhealthy…

At work I do my best, but sometimes I struggle with wanting to meet with patients. I struggle with wanting to make all of my phone calls. It’s hard to see how I can’t always help them, how sometimes the only suggestion I have is, “Mountainlands?” Their family members call me, and I try to brainstorm solutions with them. I try to encourage them when they’re down, be empathetic when crap happens, and try not to think about it, when it’s a little old lady who tells me how lonely she is. I can’t solve all of their problems. But it gets hard when they return and return to the hospital, or otherwise - I find them in my daily search of the Obituaries.

I struggle with feeling important, or like I’m a part of the work “team,” when people constantly have to be reminded about who I am, and, “What is it that Grace does, again?” It’s not all bad. Sometimes people seek me out, for my extensive community resource knowledge, or to ask me if patients who came in on a pink slip need to be blue slipped before being transferred to another hospital in between counties, because I try to stay up to date on that kind of thing. (I try. Apparently I was wrong, though, the other day…) But for the most part, when things like that happen, I feel fantastic.

Even notarizing something is a change to my usual day, and, when the legal wording is on the document, and my notarization stamp decides to work, it’s a good day. I enjoy it. Some nights I stay late, running one of my Living Well with Chronic Conditions groups, or staying after for a late staff meeting. Sometimes this is an awesome addition to my night, depending on everyone’s humors. Sometimes it just reminds me of how unappreciated I can often feel at work, or how hypocritical I can be – especially when I teach the lesson on “Communication” in my Chronic Conditions group.

After work I’ll run an errand, or just go home, and immediately put on more comfortable pants. These things are important, when you live in slacks. This is only disturbed by the occasional dinner date you make with neighbors or friends, when you’re trying to have a social life. Even then, after work, if Nathan is still home, three days of the week, I’m sending him off to night classes.

The other two days of the week I’m looking at him and debating if I should be cooking him food, or if I should just make up an excuse to call it “a night out.” Sometimes I feel like cooking. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I look in the fridge and the cupboards, and everything disgusts me. Sometimes it’s just that it will take more than 30 minutes to make, and we’re both so hungry that 30 minutes feels more like 5 hours. Especially if we have to do all the work to cook it. Especially if we have to wash the dishes first. Or if I have the contents of my backpack still laid all over the couch, and I can’t seem to bear the thought of cooking with that kind of reckless sloth taking over my life. So I just become more slothful, and we buy cheap corndogs at Sonic.

When I do cook, though, I feel like a hero. If there’s a vegetable on the plate, I feel like a freakin’ saint. I feel like I’m holy translation material. I feel like they should write a book about my life, I’m that awesome when I cook. And it tastes good, too. After that, I imagine how I’m going to cook every night for the rest of my life from then on, until Nathan is gone the next night, and I realize I’m not really that hungry. Then I fall out of the habit. The next day…

Or maybe the dishes were just still dirty from the day before.

I dream of being a writer. I heard back from the first publisher, the other day. They told me they were interested in my book. They just wanted a couple things changed, and they’d publish it. But I’m not sure I want to publish. I’m not sure I have the energy for it. I’m not sure I have the energy to have someone else telling me what I have to do before such and such a deadline – I already have ME for that!

So I don’t spend my evenings writing. I haven’t done that in awhile. I guess having a publishing offer wasn’t motivation enough. So I spend my evenings either cleaning or obsessing about my dirty house, chores I’ve set for myself, about car repairs, or how I’m so anti-social, or about pretty much anything. You name it, I stress about it. Sometimes, instead of stressing about something or cleaning something, I decide to watch a movie.

When Nathan is home, we usually sit around and talk. Sometimes we take funny videos of ourselves pulling faces. Sometimes we do the laundry. Sometimes I force him to watch a movie with me. Sometimes both. He whittles, and the wood chips cover the floor. I actually don’t mind that as much as I thought I would. To me, wood chips on the ground are a sign of creativity. We’re abstract. Our house is cluttered with different displays: Swords, a half, hand-painted dragon, two large, porcelain, green goats, a Peruvian painting of Christ, a statue of a white, vein-filled foot. 

On Friday nights either Nathan or I am planning a Sunday School lesson for the following Sunday, and every other Saturday night I’m picking up a graveyard shift, where, you guessed it, I think about writing but usually don’t.  I’m usually surfing the internet, reading articles I find interesting, browsing news articles, or watching a crime documentary on Netflix.

There’s not really a day of rest, and sometimes I get tired of praying for one, so I just don’t pray at all. Yes, I recognize this doesn’t help any, my silent-treatment of the heavens. But when you’re tired and feel like you’re not being heard, sometimes you let a little bit of sulking in. I enjoy my teaching calling in church, but sometimes wonder why church has to be so long – why we can’t all just escape after an hour to go back to our homes where we weren’t really doing much that was productive, anyway, other than cleaning, stressing, and dreading work the next day.

This isn’t made better by the fact that my stomach has been having this unusual, difficult, nauseating reaction to my Dr. Pepper, lately.

There’s a lot on my mind, of worries and stress. I worry about schooling, I worry about jobs. I worry about Utah Mormons, and feel like I need a change of scene. They’re irritating me. (They’re not all bad, but some days...) There’s only so much PTO in a year, only so much money for a vacation. Only so many programs for schooling, and, one could argue, too much family with too many houses, quite stable in Utah. Perhaps I’m being avoidant of a deeper issue. Maybe it’s just the birth control I resent so much. Maybe it’s just my lifetime goal of living in Nebraska that’s going unfulfilled.

Monday comes, and I’m back in the car, heading off to work once more. I woke up at the 7:15 time, this morning, so I’ve packed myself a lunch of leftovers from the night before – rice. That sounds terrible, but I’m actually quite excited. Rice, with shredded cheese, which I’ve slathered in enchilada sauce. There’s some pineapple for it, too, and I’m thinking that I’m pretty creative for this particular concoction, today. It’s like a Mexican Hawaiian Haystack.

It’s cloudy and stormy, weather I quite like, and the heater is turned on in my car, as I take my left hand turn and the hospital comes into view. So does the McDonalds.

The electronic sign out front of the fast-food restaurant is set for the morning crowd, advertising their delicious breakfasts. “Warm Up With An Egg,” it announces. The seconds tick on, as you wonder about this curious proposed relationship with a poultry byproduct. But then it all makes sense, when the screen changes.

“McMuffin.”

You don’t have the whole story, till it makes sense. You can’t judge one minute from the next. Who are we to say what we know, or don’t, yet, when all around us is change and uncertainty? What is our purpose, or what is the plan? Do we truly understand it all, or are we just waiting for the fog to clear? Sometimes what we think is doomed, is actually alright. And sometimes the things we are so certain of really don’t mean much at all.

But there are always Egg McMuffins. So in the end, it’s not that bad.