An Ode to Maintenance

           So on a week that ends with new deals shaping up, a garden half planted...a GoPro to play with so as to videotape my goats and their many hilarious antics ... ka BOOM! Suddenly everything around me starts to kick out, which has me pausing on more than one occasion to ask “OK God, what gives?"

            To be clear,  I loathe maintenance. Let me start from scratch any day, but something about maintaining something already begun has little appeal to me. It's as if I'm missing a brain cell (probably more). Something about having to stop  my otherwise creative flow to tackle something in need of repair, OR (let's be real) ... call someone who knows where to begin to repair it-- really sends me reeling. So to describe the kinda stop-and-go/interrupt-the-flow week it's been around here,  I’ve compiled my maintenance woes into a little poem. (Sometimes it helps to laugh to keep from crying.)

            Here is describing--the week that was.

                                                         An Ode to Maintenance

            I chipped a tooth; I broke a nail.

            My maintenance ship, it lacks a sail.

            My A/C’s shot. (It needs a coil.)

            I'm quite afraid my kids will boil.

            While driving home, I bent a rim

            (and not just one – all 4 of them!)

            I’ve had a brake light out for months

            The car it squeaks…Sometimes it grunts.

            My flower bed is full of weeds…

            (but something thorny made me bleed).

            On top of this, there’s poison oak ~

            (Allergic, big time-- that’s no joke.)

            It's not so very hard to spot

            The chipping paint and door frame rot

            The leaves from fall are in a pile

            But first a permit I must file.

            My laundry is backed up for weeks

            The gutter o'er my back door leaks

            And in my porch lamp -- all new guests!

            A mama wren has built her nest.

            With so much here that needs repair,

            It's not as if I do not care...

            But somehow all that matters most

            Are pups that wag and funny goats.

            I’d trade my problems any day

            For those I see so far away

            Who’d kill to have my kind of angst
            I'll trade my whining in for thanks.

(Perspective. It's a good thing. Time to take a nap.)