Got it made....

And I know you think that sounds like a cheery, optimistic title, but it isn't really. Not in the context in my brain, anyway. Let me to 'splain...

I'm a pretty busy person. I'm a single mom. I work full time (sometimes more than, but don't tell my boss). I teach ESL classes on Saturdays. I go to church, generally three times a week. I get my son over to Molalla to visit his grandma on Fridays, I get him to his dad's on Saturdays (when his dad isn't "too busy", but that's a rant for another time). And now, adding to all that pre-existing fun, I'm on call twenty-four-seven. Meaning that tenants can and do call me at 8:15 p.m. because "the stove gets really hot when I cook on it and I think the paint is catching on fire."  (True story, actually happened Tuesday.) They can and do call me at 5 in the afternoon on Saturday because someone randomly decided to spray motor oil all over the wall of an apartment. They can call me at 8:30 on a Wednesday because the water won't drain out of their washing machine. And on weekends sometimes a certain other manager decides she'd like to go camping and forward all her calls to me for her complex which I know little to nothing about, so somebody from there can call me at 9 p.m. asking about seeing an apartment. (This actually happened last night... who the heck wants to see an apartment at 9 p.m. on a Friday?!) That's right... all of these calls were this week alone.

By the time I got home last night (Friday) at around 11:30 p.m., I. Was. Just. Done. The headache I'd had for three days was not getting any better, and the thought of getting up to drive up to pick up Germania on Glisan and then drive back to Oregon City to teach English this morning made me want to curl into a ball and rock back and forth and maybe weep softly. And I came to the realization that, for the time being at least, I had nothing left to give.

I can't think of a way to say this that doesn't sound like whining, but the truth of the matter is that I give of myself all the time. Pretty much 24 hours a day. I am the caretaker. I take care of my son, I take care of the house, I fix dinner, I pay the bills, I take care of the office, the paperwork, the sales calls, the tenants and their myriad problems, I teach English on Saturdays... yeah, I'm pretty much freakin' wonder-woman. And last night when I scraped the bottom of the proverbial barrel and found that there was nothing left there to dole out, I realized that very, very rarely does any of what I send out ever come back.

To sum up: Nobody takes care of me. Not even me. I'm too busy taking care of everyone else.

I do believe it was back in Genesis that God decreed something along the lines of, "It is not good for the man to be alone," and got about the business of creating the woman. Suddenly I'm realizing that the reverse is also true. It's not good for the woman to be alone either. Unfortunately the woman didn't choose this. Not any of it, actually. I suppose one of the few perks to having been the first woman (aside from the unlimited fruit and veggie buffet in Eden) was that Adam didn't have a whole lot of other options.

I was going to continue this whine and explain where the title of the blog came from (and I may still do that), but God just sent me a cheesecake. Let me to 'splain...

While I was sitting here kvetching about how I get nothing back, I got a text message from Germania, who I mentioned in passing earlier. She told me she was outside my house and that she was bringing me something that someone sent me. About five seconds later there was a knock on my door. Sure enough, there she was. And she brought me a cheesecake. The cheesecake was a gift from one of my English students, and she had brought it to class for me today, except I wasn't there. So Germania, who ended up going to class on the bus since I didn't take her, had stopped by on her way back through to drop off the cheesecake.

God has phenomenal timing, and I think that's his way of saying, "Quit yer whinin'." Though it appears that God may also be trying to make me fat(ter)... lol.

Anyway, back to the original topic, the song in my head today (and the origin of the post title) has been "Got It Made" by Seether, which runs a little something like this in the chorus part:

I'm feeling miles away
You think I've got it made
I don't belong here
I'm feeling like a candle
Burning at both ends
I don't belong here

I was also musing along those lines as I was driving through Molalla earlier today when I went to pick up Damian that while Gresham does not feel like home yet, Molalla doesn't feel quite like home anymore either. Where home is, I don't know at this point. I don't think Damian does either. Hopefully we'll figure it out before too much longer.