The Suffering of Wants

Every once in a while (okay, usually every 28 days or so), I go through a continuous craving and wanting stage that I have to talk myself down from.

I get this bubble of discontent that bursts with a varied list of wants and just recently it went something like this:

I wish we had a bigger house, if we had a bigger house I could get another kitten. I want another kitten. I’m supposed to have nine cats for Cat of Nine Tales, but Snafu couldn’t tolerate another cat unless we had a bigger house. I wish we had a bigger house.

Once I’ve awakened from the suffering of wants, I counter this kind of thinking with this kind of thinking:

You can’t have a bigger house unless you have a lot more money. If you had a bigger house, you’d only need to spend more time cleaning it and you wouldn’t have more time, because you’d be working more hours to earn more money to pay for the bigger house.

AND YOU DON’T WANT TO WORK MORE HOURS.

If you worked more hours, you’d be miserable and you certainly wouldn’t have enough time to spend with a new kitten (never mind writing!).

Be grateful and enjoy the cats you have! Enjoy the small manageable house and work less hours so you can enjoy life and have time to write.

Most of the time I understand this choice, because it was a choice DP and I made to live simpler, smaller lives with no debt and as stress free a work life as we can manage.  But, the suffering of wants can get to me sometimes. 

Hi Ho

What a luxury it’s been to stay home sick and write. Today, Monday morning, I must return to the wild world of insurance and continue my paid mission to spread the cheer.

Why don’t I work at a book store?

Because I’m well suited for office work.

I crave routine and I create it where there isn’t any. I’m a natural organizer. That’s not to say I don’t like to mix it up now and then…usually every twenty-eight days or so.

When I took two years off from the workforce to write, I created a daily routine and had a space within my day for writing, getting the mail, doing chores.

I know that in retail and many other jobs, they mix up your schedule so you work various slots of hours during the given work week. I hate that. Waiting for your manager to make the schedule to see when you’d be working…would you have a weekend day off? I never understood why it had to be that way and the idea of subjecting myself to it, well it’s worse than the idea of working in insurance.

And to be honest, I choose not to do much “selling” of health insurance. I choose to be the account manager, the support person for my salesperson boss. I do not need the sales goal pressure, or the client loss disappointment. Even though those affect me, they do not run or ruin my work.

I got a lot of organizing and writing done on my projects the two full days I managed to focus on them. I feel real good about that. I have no goal or deadline for finishing it, so I’m free to progress at my own pace. Until another day…

By the way, our neighbors treated us to an hour’s worth of Foreigner and other 80’s music  blasted through their speakers on Sunday afternoon.

Still haven’t seen any little dogs, though J.

Happy Monday.

Cleaning

As you can imagine, living with 12 animals requires a lot of cleaning. This is my chemical arsenal. As organic as I’d like to be, I’m not convinced organic products work as well as these…and these aren’t even 100%, especially on a hot and humid day. They are the best I can do at this point. Ideally, DP and I would love to have wall to wall linoleum floors, but we have settled on carpets that are barf and poo brown.

I got a Spot Bot carpet cleaner for Christmas, but I’ve yet to open it because, well, there is so much more than a spot. I’m afraid all I’ll end up with is a carpet patched with clean spots. So why don’t I rent a carpet cleaner? Oy. That is a summer project because the furniture would have to go out onto the lawn. That means it would need to be a sunny stretch of days so there’s no mud which, here in Maine, is limited to about two months, and it would have to be over a weekend - a pay weekend since it’s not free to rent a machine; a weekend I’m not having my period or at mid-cycle because I have very little spare energy during those times, and…well, three years later I’m hoping this will be the summer.

I must tell you that during the writing of the above paragraphs I’ve had to stop three times to clean up cat vomit. OK, one of those treasures was “released” earlier but just discovered because Nick was trying to cover it up. The most recent vomit was given up by sweet Owen as he sat on top of the three story cat tower. Yeah, it was like hail. Good thing no one was under it (namely me).

So, I know you think I’m crazy (those of you who are not pet people, anyway) but this is what I’d rather be doing, writing and caring for our pets. It’s selling health insurance that is the real crazy thing.

Leaving the County

As we were driving down Route 1A from Fort Fairfield into Mars Hill, the wind turbines whirled most productively atop the hill in the distance. It was only overcast up there and we did not hit rain until passed Houlton. The brown snow patched fields and endless evergreens were cast even grayer than the day before without benefit of sun, and I got thinking that I may have been harsh on the County in my previous post.

What were some of the good things I saw and felt the day before? On our way up (before we got off the interstate and into the towns) I saw three pairs of “birds of prey” in separate nests built on power line poles. In two cases one bird was sitting in the nest while the other perched beside it. In one sighting, both birds were in the nest. I could not tell which were hawks, ospreys or eagles. But I most definitely saw an American bald eagle soaring over I-95 North. When the sun shone through the brilliant white tail feathers and head as we drove under him, there was no question what type of bird he was. Now that was a gift.

Where ever we stopped, the Dead River gas station, a restaurant, our hotel, our clients, the people we talked to were very friendly and went out of their way to be helpful. I thought to myself, they are the employed ones up here in the County. They are the best at what they do and are grateful to have a job. When I was packing up to leave the hotel in the morning, I got a knock on the door and a woman’s voice said “housekeeping.” When I opened the door, I must confess I was shocked to see a young white woman with red hair and a big smile. She is a Mainer and not an immigrant. Looking around I noticed the whole housekeeping staff were cheerful, laughing young American women. I wondered if this was a sign of how bad the economy is…that Americans are choosing to work the usually less desirable (lower paying) jobs.

We were there in the County to deliver bad news. That’s our job. We tell our clients, “Guess what? You are going to pay more for your health insurance than you did last year, and you are going to get less coverage. Okay? Sign here.”  In one meeting of a small group of just two people, I was getting punchy by this time of day when I said, “It’s simple. The insurance carrier says ‘You-pay-more. You-get-less.’” Then we all laughed at the truth. My boss and I try to make it fun and friendly to pay more and get less. That’s our job too - as health insurance brokers.