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MEITUS: Events of typical week waylay 10-year plan

By Marty Meitus, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published March 1, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Who has time to come up with a 10-year plan when there's a Murphy Brown reunion on TV?

Photo by Richard Drew / Associated Press

Who has time to come up with a 10-year plan when there's a Murphy Brown reunion on TV?

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About a month ago, I decided it was time to come up with a 10-year plan. The past 10 years, I had one goal: Get through it.

I'm still here; neither of the kids became a serial killer, so I guess that worked out.

So it's time to take a glance at the next 10 years. The problem at this age is that if you don't work on it now, the 10 years after that will really be a little too late. I'll be a senior. Harry Potter will be middle-aged.

But these 10-year plans take time to figure out. I'm a little like those people on the island in Lost. Every time I get close to the boat, something gets in my way. Here are just a few examples of how the week went:

* The cat, who is almost 11 years old, and has no 10-year plan to my knowledge, suddenly began looking really thin. Whereas he used to be the size of a pompom, he had shrunk to the size of a pom. He acted fine, still beating up on the other cat, but believe me, a mother knows.

Taking him to the vet is a not a project for the faint-of- heart, since the last time he clawed me from shoulder to shoulder. This time, I outsmarted him. I grabbed his feet and shoved him in the carrier. He only had time to sink one nail into my thigh.

Turns out, he has a urinary tract infection, which is not fatal, but you think he might have told me he was, you know, having trouble.

If putting him in the carrier involved a hazmat suit, giving him amoxicillin requires a hazmat crew. I finally figured out how to hold his head so I can squeeze the liquid into his mouth, but first I have to chase him around, pretending that I don't have a dropper in my hand.

This has been time-consuming in the extreme because he quickly figured out that "here kitty, kitty, kitty" is not a good thing.

The whole time I'm running around, I remember chasing my kids around to give them the very same antibiotic. Long about Day 4, they'd feel better, I'd get tired of the chase and those really virulent bugs would live to see another day. I know why we're going to have superbugs, no kidding.

* My sister got involved. Rather than work on my plan, she decided that I needed better makeup. Orange foundation, she said, doesn't match your face unless you're a pumpkin.

She dragged me to a makeup counter, where they made me up like Scheherazade and I spent so much money on products that I took a second mortgage out on my kids.

Who knew applying makeup could be such a time-consuming project? Once I washed my face, and reapplied only the products I liked, I felt that I had taken years off my life. No one noticed, but pssst, I could pass for at least 55. Oh, wait, I am 55.

* I had to catch all those sitcom reunions on the Today show which ate up time, and made me late to work. First, they had Happy Days, then One Day at a Time, then Murphy Brown, then my very favorite, Knots Landing.

They asked each of the actors what they were doing these days, and I loved the Murphy Brown actor, who said "topiary," and made sculpting movements with his hand, getting a laugh. He was a lot more impressive than the actors who clearly had a rather thin resume. I'm guessing that those were the ones who didn't have a 10-year plan.

When she's not working on a 10-year plan, Marty Meitus is the Food editor. meitusm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5229

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