Weekend Woes and Whoa's

Sometimes you just need a couple of days when no one expects anything of you, you have no place you have to be, nothing you have to do, no reason you have to take a shower. A carefree weekend, with no work, no stress, and everything goes just right and you can completely unwind and spend some time doing nothing but spending time. Which is why I took the opportunity to spend the weekend in the Derbyshire countryside. I reserved a room at a lovely little bed and breakfast on a working dairy farm, picked up some brochures on possible hiking trails in the area, and hopped on a train, leaving all my cares on the platform. Well...as much as I'd like to say that this weekend was like a warm, relaxing, soothing bubble bath, I'm afraid it was more like a bucket of cold water thrown in my face. Why? Well, it certainly could have been a lot worse. And I'm certainly not regretting the approximate $250 it cost me to do it. I made all my trains and buses, (although I did almost go to Southampton instead of London on my way home) but a few things went...a bit awry. First of all, I've been a bit sick lately, so I was coughing a lot the whole weekend, especially at night, which made for restless sleep. This was not helped in the slightest by the fact that just before I left on my little jaunt, for some outlandish reason, my skin decided it would be a fabulous time to break out in the most ridiculous hives. I haven't had hives since the third grade. This came out of nowhere. I still have no clue what caused it, but it was absolutely maddening. I've never itched so bad in my whole life. And I mean everywhere. Legs, arms, back, stomach, rear end, everywhere. On a scale of one to ten, a mosquito bite is about a two. This was about a thirty. So, combined with that and a bed that sunk in the middle and caused an uncomfortable sleeping position, my first night was relatively lacking in sleep. I sort of dozed for about an hour before waking to see what time it was before dozing off again, only to be awakened by either an attack of itches or coughs, or sometimes both. Besides all that, I have this problem when I travel, that actually can be reflected onto my life as a whole, that I have destinations in mind, but I never really work out how I'm going to get there. I know where I am going, and only when I go to get there do I realize I don't really know how to get there. So, I had plans to visit several spots in the Peak District and go hiking here, walking there, picnicing there. And then I woke up Saturday morning and realized I was about six miles from the nearest town, and about one mile from the nearest bus stop, and had no timetable for any buses or anything. Did I mention there was a steady rain all day, too? Having caught a total of four buses that day, barely making two of them, I made it back to the bus stop after my day out and had to walk the mile or so back to the farm house, in the rain, in my clothes and shoes that were soaked from already having walked the entire day in the rain. Fortunately, having bought benadryl earlier in the day, the itching had stopped and that night I only had to deal with the coughing. I still woke up every hour or two, but this time the sleep in between was more like sleep and less like lying there with my eyes shut. It took me a long time to get home today mostly because I had to do a lot of waiting. Services don't run as much on Sundays, which, of course, didn't occur to me until it was Sunday. It was an hour until the bus came, after I walked to the stop again, and when I got to the train station and asked when the next train to London was, the woman said, "No trains today." She waited several agonizing seconds before adding that there was a bus to Derby, where I could catch a train. So, I waited half an hour for the bus and drove for a good while to Derby. Here is where it could have been worse; I was two minutes late for the train, and the next one didn't leave for another hour. Fortunately the train I was two minutes late for was fifteen minutes late itself. It ended up being a bit more than that, and this is where I almost went to Southampton, but in the end I got the right train and was none the worse for it. After a two hour train ride and another half an hour on the busy tube, I finally made it home. Just my luck, the key was acting funny and for several minutes I fiddled with it, nearly in tears at the thought of being locked out until the family came home. Begging for the door to open, it finally did and I was soooooo happy--until the alarm began screaming in my ear. Totally startled and at a loss as to what to do, I panicked, running this way and that, trying to find a place to plug my dead phone into to call Farran because of course I don't have her number written down anywhere. Phone plugged in--"Battery is charging" I know its charging!!! It wouldn't let me do anything. I rush downstairs, suddenly remembering the number IS written somewhere. I find it, rush to the house phone and dial it three times, each time it said the line was busy. Get off the phone! I yell, nearly in tears, before realizing that the reason its busy is because that's the house number, not Farran's cell. I rush back over to my cellphone and randomly push buttons, shouting at it to behave. I don't swear often, but I was exhausted and the alarm, quite loud and certainly being heard all over the neighborhood, had been going for ten or more minutes by now and I was expecting the police to break down the door and apprehend me any second, so I may have said damn it. I was totally panicked and finally realized that I had to not only plug the phone in, but actually turn it on for it to work. Sigh. After finally getting hold of Farran and getting the alarm off, I felt like crying, laughing, and swearing all at once. Instead I poured an enormous bowl of coco pops and took a nice hot shower. So when I say that this weekend was exactly what I needed, I suppose most of you will want a bit more of an explanation. Because this post isn't long enough already ;) Well, like I said, it was like a bucket of cold water to the face. This is effectively jarring when one needs to be woken up. A nice, soothing hot bath will only make one sink further from awareness and attentiveness. And really, this weekend wasn't all that bad. Saturday was so wonderful. I'll write the details later, but I basically got to hike around in the most beautiful, enchanting forest I have ever seen. I'm realizing more and more that the trouble with me is that I have to be reminded and taught and retaught over and over again, and even then, I seem to have a hard time retaining the things I learn. Long story short...er...sort of...is that this weekend helped me realize that there really isn't any excuse to be selfish. I know there are times when we've earned the right to be selfish, but ultimately, it doesn't help anything if it lasts for more than an indulgent hour or two. If we--I should say I since I am the only one I can really speak for--If I keep it up much longer than that, I don't entirely pull myself out of it, and pretty soon all day every day is selfish. It's hard to see where you're going if you're always looking at your own feet. This house is very competitive--you have to be selfish to get any attention, and even then its short lived. It's an exhausting environment, and I let it get to me. Instead of keeping in mind that having a rotten attitude would only play right into that cunning devil's plot, rather than protect me from the rest of the rotten attitudes in the house, I let myself become just as selfish and childish as the girls I nanny. I was thinking only of my needs, and how their needs made it difficult for me to do what I wanted. My thought process was that if these girls are going to be brats, then I am not going to be the fun, happy nanny I could be. I'm going to be the bossy, rule-abiding nanny that tells them to do things and won't play with them. They don't earn me as a playmate until they've behaved. Well, the fact is, they are brats. Their environment hardly allows them to be otherwise. I know they are sweet to the core. They just have been taught to be brats. Me being bratty right back made everything go downhill. Maybe they don't deserve a fun nanny, but having a grumpy one doesn't help anything for anyone. This weekend being a bit less smooth than I hoped helped me see how selfish I've been. I didn't see it before because everyone else was just as bad around here, and I felt sort of like a victim. But, being on my own and listening to myself pout about being covered in hives, complain about coughing all night, whine about being tired, disgusted me and showed me how utterly pointless it is to be in a bad mood for more than a few minutes. No one is invincible, and sometimes things just get to you. It's up to you, or in my case, me, to save myself from any further misery by letting go of those irritations and moving on with life without them hanging on you all the time. I just had an image of Marley from A Christmas Carol, weighed down by the chains that represent the bad things he did in his life. That's sort of how I view it; its no ones fault but my own that I was having a hard time. I'm creating my own weights, my own difficulties, by being frustrated and irritable. Anyway, I could go on, but I'll spare you. Simply put: Lesson learned.