buckling in

Sometimes I really do struggle with wanting to wait until after I've been rewarded to do good things rather than doing good things in the hunt for a reward.

I don't have the option of skipping

Well, I had a stink bug in my coffee this morning, which is only marginally better than stink bug in my cheerios, and also today fully 50% of my office is out sick with a stomach bug. Bugs! Also my back muscles are making a fist.

So it is coffee from Starbucks, with a shrug, and open ears. Glad for rice and lentils, glad for warm and strong and patient S. Glad for being not (currently) one of the ill 50% of ILL. Glad for this job and for recovery.

movement

Things I used to be ok with:

backtracking

midnight three-mile walks

shopping at Walmart

performing/wielding power toward an audience

insular thinking

flying by the seat of my pants

the end of crisp sandpaper

I am feeling flush with good cheer, because after seven months of line-dried clothes, yesterday afternoon a dryer was installed in our little home, and after seven months of line-dried jeans, the ones I'm wearing today feel like heaven. Warm, soft heaven.

pounced

Well, this morning the upstairs/outside cat pounced at me out of a basement shadow and oh my heart, and yesterday I stole a faux snowball and almost cried over a sandwich, but I'm still really happy. We have a tiny fake tabletop tree and it's topped with an owl, and my husband likes to light the oil lamp and read in front of it, and I'm doing better with the underpinnings of work stuff and relishing the chance to take a full two weeks away from it soon. I like the fact that I hear band music in my head and I like the fact that cold makes warmth divine.

three snow days

On Sunday morning S and I woke to an empty fridge and snow already drifting down, so we bundled up, even pre-coffee, and within ten minutes were on the way to the grocery store for milk and bananas and cheese doodles, and stopped at Mr J's on the way home for an egg and cheese breakfast bagel for me and everything else they sell for breakfast at once for S. Home through the snowglobe fluffy powder, oil lamps lit, styrofoam containers full of steaming food and eventually coffee and the calm, quiet of a Sunday morning snow with nowhere to be. Later the day included short commute up the basement steps, and red wine and football and roast beef.

Monday morning we woke up to the odd sort of ice that Virginia always gets where it's too warm for straight snow and not warm enough for rain, and so every twig, branch, blade of grass is encased in ice. So were our cars, but S had the day off, even if I didn't, and he good naturedly volunteered to drive me into town, and between the two of us we chipped the solid block of ice back into something resembling a Ford Taurus and puttered in. I don't know what made work crazier--the ice, the non-delay, the start of finals week--the morning was a beast. The day was a beast. Later the day included cookies and a gift exchange and sitting in a living room with three girls I have really grown to love lately and discussing books-->discussing life-->making plans-->staying out much later than normal.

This morning instead of ice, there was a blanket of beautiful wet packing snow. And too much of it to be overruled by the importance of finals week, so the university closed for the morning. S unstuck his car and I made him text me when he made it to work safely and I sat in my robe on the couch and cried while I watched the previous night's Sing Off on hulu and then I put on boots and tramped around outside, turning my face up to catch the flakes and thinking about snowmen. I painted my fingernails gold instead. By 11:00 the snow melt was on, so I just drove the snow off my hood with my arms and inched down the driveway and into town. Everything is heavy and wet, and I'm the first one in the office so far, so I'm listening to Swan Lake and drying the cuffs of my pants and later today will certainly include chai and dripping and being helpful.

recommending kindness and books

I hit a goose--a big white goose--and ran my car off the road. I think the goose lived.
I ate the same meal in the same restaurant twice in one week.
I had a private tear and snot fest over the fact that kindness and benefit-of-the-doubt-i-ness is Very Important to me and I don't know how to handle the fact that sometimes the same is not true of the people I rely on for their kindness. Relatedly, I am bone breakingly thankful for my husband and my husband's brother for how they have deliberately chosen to look at the world.
I read a few books, and watched a few movies. Was at the theater twice in one week, kind of like the restaurant thing. A year's quota at once. Saw Catching Fire, which made me goggle and ache and cry, and The Book Thief, which edged its way to the top of my favorite book ever list when I read it last month, and which, in movie form, made me goggle and ache and cry. Can't recommend either enough. Read, watch. Especially ensconced in the seats between fellow book lovers.
I'm wearing new socks today, and drinking chai, and am back into yarn-craft mode after months of relative apathy, and all of this feels very December. So does the eating gift fudge and sleeping in past workout time thing. Take a deep breath.

blurry with gratitude

I am once again blurry with gratitude, in tears twice today for youtube videos and book endings, out of work early for the rest of the week with resounding well-wishes and a ride through the snow --the SNOW-- to a lunch with my husband, and a sandwich on rye bread. Oh, how I love rye bread. And I still had time before S had to leave for his evening shift to take an accidental nap all curled up with him on the couch as we watched an original Star Trek episode. I caught maybe the first fifteen minutes before I was out cold, full belly, cuddly husband, deep couch.
I am so warm here, and so happy to be feeling all these rushes of life and thankfulness that were muted for nearly two years of sickness. I'm not sick anymore. My immune system, my nervous system, are back in as much alignment as I can hope to expect. I'm so markedly better, and maybe in some ways better than I was before, because of this added unsolicited gloss of wisdom and knowledge of boundary that I didn't have in the past. It's just wicked good, really, this living thing.

thankful

I think everything just may be perfect. The strength in my legs to walk up hills and run in circles and fit into pants from two years ago. Things full of love, like baked brie and bridal bouquets made of ferns and pine cones, and homemade Chinese food and board games. The husband who aces his nursing tests and aces his husband tests and who at this very moment is engrossed in making a big batch of chili while wearing surgical gloves. I have a comfortable home, albeit a small one. I have friends to make me laugh and to laugh with me, who shriek and run toward a playground against the wind chill and clamor and swing. I can share a cup of coffee and conversation that lasts for two hours. I have a mother who is overwhelmingly comforting to me and who can explain my differences by matching them up to her own. I have old friends and new friends and a book club and an adventure club and a yarn club and I live in a place where I can stand in the middle of a field for fifteen minutes watching a cloud of starlings hum from tree to tree overhead. I have podcasts like Ask Me Another and My Brother, My Brother, and Me, and Stuff You Should Know and Welcome to Nightvale to keep me fed, and a freezer full of actual foods to keep me actual fed. I have a job that I love, not despite things, because of them. I have exuberance running through my veins and on top of all of this, it is Thanksgiving week, and there is very little better I can imagine than getting to sit around a full, warm table full of my entire, inimitable family and sharing a purposeful, joyful meal. Also, having 2.5 days off of work. I LOVE this season, even counting my wind-burned cheeks, and I am beyond grateful for the steady, level head on my shoulders and the fact that I am whole, hale, and absolutely alive.

too much too soon

Today has been oh for the love of god why can I not just stop time to stay in bed longer or to pause a meeting of high emotions and pinched self-esteem to go by myself to an empty study room to growl at things. Or to get this cascade of work done alone, in quiet. But I got home from work to a bottle of wine from a friend and a nicely made bed my by husband and instead of combining the two, yet, I'm going to snort back in these doubts and wobbly tears and go to watch my sister in law perform in a play and tomorrow I'll start over.