Waiting for the Hot Water
Posted: Tuesday, February 07, 2012
by Dianne Lehmann
Artisan Jewelry from SyZyGy
Every morning before dispensing our supplements, I wash my hands. I've rubbed our cat's belly while she lay beside me in bed and scratched her head. Maybe I've cleaned her litter box and I've voided my urinary bladder. Often, just as I am about to wash my hands, Bernd is ready for our kiss-all-the-owies ritual and wants me to hurry up because he has to finish dressing and go to work. But there I am, waiting for the hot water.
I've mentioned before in my writings that I have a bit of Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder. It's not as bad as Adrian Monk's from the television program "Monk," but I do have some things in common with the character. Just not the fear of germs that he has … despite the hand washing. Actually, I spend all day twice a week with horses and never wash my hands … even when I share a bite of carrot with them. But I do tend to count repetitious things and there are just some things that beg to be touched. Really.
Hot water on my hands in the morning is all about feeling "right." And that's a fairly easy thing to parse out. When my hands are warm, the rest of me feels warm too. When I put my hands into cold water, I shiver all over. So I wait for the hot water.
I have waited for other things in order to feel good as well. But many of them are less tangible and much harder to figure out. Usually, the realization comes well after it would have done me any good. That's when I slap myself upside of my head and say, "I could have had a V-8."
A lot of people equate feeling good or feeling right with happiness. I'm going to say this just once. It is not possible to be happy all the of the time. And the expectation that you should be happy all of the time is a major source of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. So just dump that expectation. I know. It's not nearly as easily done as said.
But how many times have you found yourself thinking you could be happy if you had a little more money? Or a new car? Or if you lost ten pounds? Or if you were a little smarter. Or if you were married? Or if you had kids? Or didn't have kids? Or maybe it's not even as concrete as any of that. Maybe you hunger for something more and do not know what that something more might be and you are waiting for it to just fall from the sky. Once, at Disneyland while we were near the river boat ride, some duck poop fell from the sky right onto my head. Ducks eat very wet food … you can figure out the corollary.
So … are you waiting for the hot water? And the next time you find yourself waiting for something, ask yourself why. It's okay to wait as long as you know why you are doing it.
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Top-level comments on this article: (5 total)--
Dianne,
I can relate here. Maybe it's some kind of jointly exhaustive dichcotomy, but when I worked on the Tom Sawyer Island Raft ride, we would have duck doo-doo on the rafts each morning, so we'd wipe it off with our clean sandles, then swish our foot with sandle in the river water which was really the ducks' bathwater. Now our sandles were clean again--forget the foot!
Ron KelleyMy mom lived for awhile in a mobile home park in Chino, California where Canada Geese stopped every year during their migration. The park was called Lake Los Serranos ... hence the stopover. For a couple of weeks there was goose poop EVERYWHERE. I'm surprised that Disneyland didn't have some better way of taking care of the poop on the rafts. :)
Bernd and I had annual passes for a couple of years and spent a lot of free time there (we lived about a half and hour drive away) and got to observe it all in action. We were always very impressed with the operation.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Hugs,
Dianne
--
D,
But they did have a cheap way to deal with it--us.
R.
Dianne, as always, a great piece of writing. And, yes, I think we all have some compulsions that drive us and we all have something in our lives that is just not right. Sometimes it is best not to know what that thing is and sometimes it can help if we know and recognize it. But, like you said, we cannot go through our lives wasting them waiting for wall-to-wall happiness. Life will never grant that and we will die unhappy and unfulfilled. We may die that way anyway, so why not make the most out of what comes before then?Hi George.
Very well said!
I can remember my father-in-law and how he never seemed to have any fun. He was waiting for retirement for the fun the commence ... I think. Unfortunately, he didn't live too many more years after he retired. That seems to happen a lot.
Thanks for stopping by, George.
Hugs,
Dianne
I LOVE Adrian Monk!! You can figure out the corollary... Thank you for making me look up that word, I've never known exactly what it meant, and somehow I always came across it when I didn't have a dictionary. Now I have Google, ha.
Dianne I can completely relate to the hot water thing.
This paragraph - "I have waited for other things in order to feel good as well. But many of them are less tangible and much harder to figure out. Usually, the realization comes well after it would have done me any good. That's when I slap myself upside of my head and say, "I could have had a V-8." - made me laugh, but it's also beautiful. Your writing is full of quotable quotes :)
.Hi Jennifer.
Thanks!
I also like Sheldon on "The Big Bang Theory." Sometimes I think I have way too much in common with both characters.
As for "corollary" ... man, I hope I used it correctly. :)
Glad you liked it.
Hugs,
Dianne
Great article! I loved this. I do the same thing with the water. Just like I'm not washing my whites in cold water - duh. You are so right. Thanks for a smile upon my face.Hi Nancy.
I'm always happy when I can make you smile!
Thanks for stopping by.
Hugs,
Dianne
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