THE CAT HAS FLEAS
Cindy Maddera
See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap
Sometimes I really think I should be on drugs. I will fixate on something and worry it to death until I've spent all of my money trying to do something about the something or until I've chewed my lips off. Whichever comes first. Sometimes it all happens at the same time. Right now, I can feel the grooves I chewed into the inside of my cheeks while I was sleeping last night. But Cindy, you do all that yoga! No. No I don't. I mean, I could do more yoga. The meditation practice I started at the beginning of the year got derailed and yoga rarely happens for me on the weekend. Trust me when I say that the amount of yoga I do practice, keeps me from clawing the skin off of my body.
This morning, before I called IKEA to check on the other half of our couch, I started to worry that they would have the chaise, but they wouldn't hold it for us. I started thinking that I should just leave work and go to IKEA and try to fit the chaise into my car (no way it would fit into my car). It really seemed like something I was going to have to do especially after spending over twenty minutes on hold. To get totally off track here, Josephine's been super itchy lately. She get's flea and tick medicine once a month and the groomer said that allergies where really bad right now for dogs. We've started adding fish oil to her food and rub her down with lavender oil each evening, but this morning I found fleas on my bed. So while I'm on hold with IKEA, I'm thinking about fleas and how I know they didn't come from Josephine. Albus has fleas and Michael and I are probably going to need body armor in order to put his flea medicine on his back. Even worse is that there are fleas.
Let me go back to Josephine's itching problem because that's the beginning of my recent neurosis. Josephine is a schnauzer. Schnauzer are known for their itchy skin problems, yet I was on the verge of diagnosing my dog with scabies. I bought allergy wipes. I bought an anti-fungal spray. I bought lavender oil and fish oil and read all of the awful bad things on the internet. The fish oil and lavender oil are actually helping, but I was obsessed with solving this problem. She went to the groomer's and things have improved, but then the fleas. Except I know Josephine does not have fleas. I know it's that stupid cat who has the fleas and I'm going to completely obsess about it until I don't know when. When I'm not obsessing about fleas, I'm going to obsess about getting the rest of the couch together. Then I'm going to start freaking out over the cleanliness of the house because of fleas. I am one flea away from kleenex box shoes.
Of course, by the time it's taken me to write all of this, I've successfully put flea treatment on the cat by bribing him with a cat treat. IKEA pulled the chaise and had it on hold for Michael when he got there after work. We now have a complete couch (though I'm starting to rethink the cover...another story). Josephine was only a little itchy last night and I only found one flea, half dead on the couch throw. As per usual, my obsessive compulsive worrying is for naught. I know this, even while I'm playing out every possible scenario and outcome in my head and picking at my lip. I know that there's no reason for it. Oh, and guess what? I rode the scooter today and it looks like it's going to rain and I have a dentist appointment at lunch. So now, I've got a whole new list and I want to delete this entire entry because it sounds so complainy.
Worrying about things going wrong is almost like wishing for things to go wrong. Things are going pretty right for me in this moment. That's usually when the voices start talking about how I shouldn't get used to things going right and start listing all the ways it could all go wrong. Just to make sure I'm listening, the voices will whisper "remember what happened the last time when everything was going right and you were super happy?" Except right now, I'm wondering how long do I have to remember that. How long do I have to remember cursing myself with saying out loud just how happy I was? I'm not saying that I need to forget. I'm saying that I need to change the language. I'm saying it's time to silence those voices.
Today, I've decided that I never cursed myself by admitting to being happy. Today, I've decided to just let things be right.