If I Die Tomorrow, It Was Nice to Know Ya

I don't think I'm the only person who is business as usual in my frontal lobe, working and feeding the cat and running errands, while playing in the background is a horror-filled monologue informing me that we're all going to die.

Now I know what all those people on doomed trains and airplanes feel like, when there's nothing to do but wait and see whether the outcome is a last-minute miracle save, or a Hollywood-worthy crash and burn.  I went to bed last night, as those involved with the North Korean nuclear specter artfully changed the word "threat" to "rhetoric," thinking "What if I wake up just to go to sleep permanently?"

This isn't my usual slice-of-life post. I'm not feeling very cheerful today, and I can't see the humor in this experience. Except that I keep finding myself telling friends and family how much I love them, and then I acknowledge that if nothing catastrophic comes to pass, I'm going to feel awfully stupid about how goopy I got. It goes something like this: "This is why I love you, it was really great to have you in my life, and if nothing happens please forget how passionate this sounded."

I'm scared, because I have so little faith that cool heads will prevail. I'm terrified at the prospect of anyone getting hurt in this fiasco. There are people just as frightened as we are in a few other countries.

I'm ashamed, in advance, because I know that there will be some awful, disgraceful relief if something doesn't happen here, but happens someplace else. If we get to say "whew!" at someone else's expense.

I'm kicking myself for not using my life better, for not loving that one guy when I had the chance, for not letting go of anger when it would have been so easy to, for not apologizing when someone deserved it, for not learning two or three languages, for not volunteering more, for not adding a few more countries to the list of those I've visited, for not always being the person who is my best me, because some days my head and heart and soul are lazy. But this is good to know: when I look at my life from a "what if the worst happens" perspective, I'm pretty comfy in the loving and kind department. No regrets there.

Today I have one foot in a world where family and friends and my house and car are intact, and one foot in a scorched-earth dystopia. I can't jolly myself out of it. This is real. It's possible. And I just want to tell you - if I die tomorrow, it was nice knowing you.

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Why, Oh WiFi?

My sister and her family were in from the West Coast last week, and I got to have three whole days and nights alone with my teenage nephew and preteen niece. Because they WANTED to be with me. Or so I thought.

While my sister and her husband stayed with our father, J and J happily packed their bags for what was supposed to be one sleepover. We went to the pool, did the mom tasks they were assigned (him: thank-you notes from his recent birthday; her: reading); and went out to dinner at a Japanese steakhouse (complete with open grill and startling flames and flying shrimp sometimes making it into a diner's gaping, expectant mouth). Then home to brush teeth, watch a movie and camp out in the living room, as we have always done; the tent-bedroom I set up when they were small giving way to him on a pull-out couch, her in a chair-plus-hassock bed she likes to cobble together, and me on the big sofa, until they fall asleep and I remove myself to one of the upstairs bedrooms they don't want to use. I love it - love the auntie-ness of it, watching them sleep, making them breakfast, the fact that they are so well-behaved for me even though they act differently with their parents... it's all good.

So I was delighted when they asked their parents if they could spend another night, and then another. Until the sibs started fighting, and the 14-year-old busted his 11-year-old sister: "She wants to be here for your wifi, you know." And then my sister/his mom, told me later: "He wants to be at your home because you have On Demand movies." Sigh. I know they love me. I just didn't know I would be sharing their love with my house.

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie