stress

I didn't even really close my eyes until 3:00am because there is so much static in my head about the next two weeks. We have done 5% of what needs to be done to empty out and refill a tiny basement apartment. Our power is getting shut off and the landlord needs his keys back on the 31st and I honestly don't know how we'll have the time and resources to actually be intact when we get to that point. S works all the time, and I'm kind of flickering and not particularly hearty enough to bear the brunt of the move myself. And we're going to be out of town this weekend for a good reason, a good wedding, but it is yet another chunk of time that's going to go by without us having a safe home. So I was wide awake and buzzing for hours and hours last night. I'm going to have to keep my knees jackhammering up and down all day today to stay awake and am going to have to give myself allowances for more sleepless nights and there's going to be a level of stress/busyness/mourning over the next 15 days that will be at a code red, but will hopefully stay within itself so I can go about readjusting to a new smaller reality with grace when June finally gets here. I forget why we're doing this.

spilling better

I wonder what it means that I am perpetually in the mindset that I'm becoming more honest. I keep thinking, oh man, I never used to be able to straight out admit that/ask for that/open up my chest like that. I think it's kind of true.

being not easy going

I am becoming stringently anti-clutter. I think this happens to people when they move. Also, my practical side is expanding. I am willy-nilly throwing out/giving away things, even lovely things sometimes, if they don't serve a current purpose and aren't achingly sentimental. Maybe even if they are. I am not good with the past, because I don't live in it, and I forget it. I keep digital copies and throw out the originals.

We're moving into a basement that is full (really) of several decades worth of 90% (in my eyes) junk. Dusty, claustrophobic, almost hoarder-level junk. It is lighting a fire under my ass. Can you BELIEVE I used to self-identify as 'easy going?!' I am not. I am discovering pet peeves by the bucket full these days. Like TRINKETS. DAMNIT, I AM ANTI-TRINKETS. I married into a family full of them, but luckily to a man who leans away from the pull of acquisition in his genes. I am almost disgusted, I'm afraid to admit, by multiple sets of novelty china, and specialty bowls and pie plates and half melted candles. I think I'm becoming my mom? I'm fighting, not to eliminate specialness and beauty, but to make sure that the specialness and beauty is utilitarian, and doesn't sit unused and dusty in a basement for ten years.

I have a vision of how to make the basement hospitable, and it involves a lot of gently urging S's parents to allow us to get rid of as much as we possibly can, and consolidating the rest into a neat pile on one end that I never have to look at. And then mopping and dusting and shampooing the current carpet and laying new rugs and scrubbing the baseboard and BLEACHING THE FUCK OUT OF THE BATHROOM and hanging curtains to cover the cracked cinder blocks and maximizing the small windows by actually washing them, and rigging up some room dividers and and and getting rid of as much of our stuff as we can stand and boxing up everything we won't mind not seeing for a few years and organizing--militantly--what remains in big tupperware bins and particle board cabinets in our little corner and then keeping the interior of our bedroomlivingroomkitchen as clean and usable as I most possibly can. My face is red.

circumstance

We're at the end of another school year. I have hated finals week less this semester than usual, because my mind has been elsewhere and the spectacle is kind of worth the crowd. There was a guy in a giant shark costume running around in here.

Again two of our work study students are graduating, and again my heart tugs. We have a pretty great record here, for having students who tug my heart. These two graduating are just so glaringly good and strong and clever, and one of the reasons I'm glad to have known one of them is because I like being able to think to myself, I know a gangly, cheerful astrophysicist (almost)! and the other, because she is a ball of sweetness and generosity and spent this week handing out Hershey's kisses to the studiers out on the floor and I have a soft spot for people who are composed of one giant soft spot. It's been so nice to have them around.

good morning

This week I've been in on two surprise parties thrown by two people, for each other. Fortunately they picked different days.

So I baked cookies.

And last evening I spent two hours talking to someone I hadn't talked to in two years and that's the dumbest thing, ever, not talking to a kindred spirit for two years. Things change in the meantime, and in this case, it's going to be better.

I've found an almond-scented hand lotion I love. I am at least the third generation of this.

And my window of feeling like I am going to die after arriving across town on my bike has shrunk from 30 minutes to 10.

I've got optimism coming out my ear holes today.

over and over

I am in the habit of--without trying to--speaking in asides and parentheses and being a co-conspirator and interrupting myself and misspelling the word 'receive.'

wrap up

This week has been loud noises and bright colors and a very bad day and a slightly less bad day and deep gravity and relearning a quilting needle and good behavior and season 5 of Mad Men and surprise Starbucks from a favorite student assistant and a decent amount of time on my bike and bright spring flowers stopping me in my tracks and lots of tzatziki sauce and bocce ball in a cool grassy evening with bare feet and grilled chicken and big trucks and stubborn love from my husband. I'm still kicking. I'm glad it's Friday.

step 2

I am getting too achy and inflexible to keep sitting on a slant and standing with my right butt cheek popped up and my legs in a knot. I need to shoot for symmetry or I'll end up curled into a ball unable to curl back.

heels in

I'd forgotten how cold my thumbs get when I bike through a chilly morning and how crusty the outside corners of my eyes.

I'd also forgotten how good then bad then good it feels to be active all weekend and then to realize I've scheduled myself into a sort of knot for the upcoming week, and it's probably ok, but it's much, much more.

There are things in my life right now that hadn't been, on purpose, for more than a year, because I couldn't handle them. The biking is one, the eating things made from scratch is another, and the tickets for events and the lunch dates and weekend mornings in a sunny park and dinner plans and moving next month and a calender full of out of town weekend trips all summer. I do NOT trust myself. I give that list and my hackles raise because my mindset is not there yet. I worry that I'm skipping the gray area again and going straight from one extreme to another, because I often do this: I am on or I am off. I am on, and I'm worried that I still should be off. I'm worried that I'm going to fail/fall/regress. I burst into tears yesterday afternoon because of this. But it's ok not to keep sitting down. If I have the guts I'm going to get stronger and sleeker and rosy. I don't reeeeally have a choice.

tiny rage

your ≠ you're, boss.