Have YOU ever been mellow?

Running the “play all” shuffle on my music tonight and one of the songs I got from my friend Tom came on. Olivia Newton John’s ‘Have you Ever Been Mellow?’ gave me a good laugh - a hearty and no doubt salt induced laugh after eating the lunch the Girls cooked me today. I haven’t heard that one in a few hundred years. Damn girl, you talking to me???

I definitely need some “mellow” and a chance to relax and do something not work related. On the other hand, I have no social life outside of meeting people and doing things with them. Okay that sounded stupid, but what I mean is, I am mostly meeting people and “helping capacitate them” and thus not just hanging out and having a social life.  And I am mostly okay with that although I could handle a bit more of this being non-work related. And more social.

Not sure where to fit it in with the 40+ hour work week and 45 minute walk each way, Rotary and its projects, the Girls on the weekend, laundry, shopping, cleaning, trying to teach Sisi to NOT wake me at 5-ish on the weekends, and writing my account of my activities. Okay, I can give up the cleaning. And teaching Sisi anything she doesn’t want to learn doesn’t really take much time either.

So I just invited a young woman from the support group to come and use my computer on Sunday morning to practice her typing skills on this nifty typing tutorial program. She is a below knee amputee, not sure the cause. She is 20 years old. Her mother died in 2003, a brother in 2008 and she lives with her Grandmother and 3 remaining brothers. She is smart, speaks decent English and needs work. She would like to become a secretary but needs to go to school to learn stuff and pay money for the privilege. I told her I could help her learn to type, how to use word and excel and surf the web. That ought to count for something. 

We will see if she shows up.  I get a lot of people saying they will come by and “check me” or come to work on something at the office. If they all showed up I would be even busier than I am.  I mostly don’t mind it – them not showing up – though sometimes it is a pain. But it gives me permission to not show up sometimes; a skill which I think I need to practice more.

This week I bent over backwards apologizing to the funders of our grant for not being able to go to a three day training starting on Wednesday, even though I only heard about on Monday. Then I realized: wait. We are trying desperately to finalize all the expenditures (renovate a building, build a building, you know – every day stuff) and do the reports and, and, and, in time for a deadline I heard you say was the end of November, and you now want me to spend 3 days in a workshop?  And I am apologizing?  And then you are sending the Ambassador from the EU (didn’t know that existed but I guess it makes sense) here to visit the funded projects and he wants to visit us on December 8. Awesome. I have to get our report done by December 2 so that I can enjoy my trip the same EU to replenish my inner icicle reservoir in Germany on that same day, but maybe I can stop by his home in Europe during my stay, once he is back from Botswana?

Then I will be able to ask HIM: have YOU ever been mellow, Herr, Monsieur, Senor Ambassador?