The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

There is a part of my brain which is begging me to call first thing in the morning to my surgeon's office and make them read the pathology report out loud to me if it is available.  That's a big "if" given that the intervening Thanksgiving holiday has slowed down everyone including the lab, I'm sure.  And that the folks at the office have better things to do than assuage a stressed out patient over the phone.

Especially when she has her appointment with the doctor to go over said lab report and surgery notes on Tuesday anyway.

Color me impatient for all the answers.

You know what, though?  It's a sort of lesson in zen.  You cannot make the world move to your timetable every single time you wish that it were so.  You can choose to chafe at that, or instead use it as an opportunity to learn patience and find some better thing to do with your time than fretting.

I'm choosing the latter.

Some things I'll be doing this week instead of sitting around and stewing over the three short days left to get my news, in no particular order:

-- Being grateful for my loving family who have taken such good care of me the last few days.  My life is really, really wonderful, and stopping to soak that in fully gives me enormous comfort and joy.

-- Planting an indoor herb garden to get me through the winter months with fresh, antioxidant-rich herbs in the house.  I already have a thriving rosemary plant that will be coming indoors shortly before the frost claims it.  I have another pot that will get filled and planted this week with thyme, oregano, and a few other choice herbs -- not too many because I don't want to overcrowd, but at least some that we'll be able to pick from fresh through the snowy, winter months outside.  Won't that be lovely?


-- Some general straightening around the house, and a day of clutter removal by going room to room with a trash bag and throwing out wayward scraps of paper, old McDonald's toys and other detritus that seems to breed on the flat surfaces and in the corners of our house.  I've been re-reading some of Simple Abundance, and it strikes me all over again how much the lack of chaos and clutter makes a difference in my overall mood about being in the house.  On the off chance that further surgery will be required or, heaven forbid, treatment over and above that as well?  I'd like our home to be as stress-free and deliberately soothing and calm as possible before any of that happens.

-- To that end, I'm also going to go through and weed out old magazines for the recycling bin.  These also tend to reproduce in corners here at our house, and I need to make them go away for my own sanity.

-- It's time to take a few boxes of gently read books to the library for donation, too.  We've begun to run out of bookshelf space, and that is not good.  Our Kindles have cut back a bit on the books we buy, but we are very much a reading family and sometimes we want a hard copy of a particular book.  That is not going to change for us, so we will be instituting a "one book in, one book out" policy to at least slow the inevitable shelf space scarcity.

--Taking some time to write.  To really sit down with my own thoughts in the quiet of my own space and write.  I haven't done that in ages -- life has gotten away from me, I'm afraid, and things have been so chaotic that I haven't been on the fiction page is far too long.  And I'm longing for it.  It's therapeutic in so many ways, and it needs to happen this week for me.  So at some point very soon, I'm going to find a way to carve out regular "butt to chair" sessions for me and the page.

-- Ditto for doing my Morning Pages.  I've been far too lax about them recently, and it shows -- I fray at the edges when I don't take care of my inner self.  And now is not the time to miss something so important, now is it?

-- Speaking of things that are important, meal planning this week will be done in earnest, with an eye toward healthy and tasty food for the entire family.  The importance of nourishing my little family with the best possible healthy food has been brought home with a vengeance the last few weeks, and I'm not going to let this opportunity pass me by, now am I?

So it will be back to basics in a lot of ways, but also moving forward with a renewed sense of purpose and direction.  All this to say, Tuesday is coming soon enough...and there is plenty to do until then.

(YouTube -- Tom Petty and the Heartbreaks from 1981 doing The Waiting Is The Hardest Part. Love this.  Look how young they all were -- just babies.  Weren't we all back then?  LOL)