"could be lobsters, could be trash"

Long, odd weekend. I started cleaning when I got home from the gym on Friday night, and basically didn't stop until a migraine felled me late Sunday morning. I have washed walls, and cabinetry, scrubbed the stove and the sink, swept the front stairs and the first floor, washed the skid marks off the entry walls, polished all three tables, and the chairs. I've swept under the tv, popped the front off of the terrifying heat vent in the downstairs bath. I've washed windows and lampshades, washed floors, wiped down the tops of bookcases, polished all the teeny glasses and everything else in the hutch (not ready to dust Princess's ashes, it turned out). You get the general idea.

It's one of those perfect storm moments, when I'm pretty sure I've made the last contact with just about everyone, and now I have to wait for responses, offers, etc. I'm certainly less anxious than I once was, having a weekend alone to clean while Light did worky-work was actually pretty nice and exceptionally productive. But it turns out less anxious isn't the same thing as not anxious.

There were outings as well. Grocery store, and Moppet to the groomer, and temple, and a craft store to buy frames to hang art (I'm seriously contemplating trying what I think of as a Martha Stewart wall, where there are multiples pieces of art seemingly randomly arranged), and a lovely, unexpected evening of Chinese food and Rock Band with Hips and Hands.

I spent so long thinking my mother's happiness was fundamentally dishonest that it's hard to think of my own as valid, and so I poke at it until it falls down. I don't know how to talk about it, I don't know how to experience it, I don't know how to relax into it. I can write litanies, lists of the things that trouble me, and give them weight and heft until they block out the horizon, but I'm wordless in the face of comfort.

And of course, there are all sorts of quasi-religious/philosophical debates happening internally, once my shoulders real and metaphorical relax enough to pay attention to something other than an endless one foot in front of the other, making it to midnight and then noon and then midnight again sort of living.

Why do I exist, what good am I doing, why take up the hobbies I do, is there anything left in me besides love of Light and small mammals, was academia actually going to be bitter, or is it more of the grapes were sour anyway? Is "read all the books" going to be enough, or am I going to loop back around to another crisis in four years, when I turn forty and find it too late to take some grand adventure? (I suspect that I will have a crisis of biology at some point, and I hope to silence it with firm words and possibly another dog).

You know, the little stuff.

"could be lobsters, could be trash"

Long, odd weekend. I started cleaning when I got home from the gym on Friday night, and basically didn't stop until a migraine felled me late Sunday morning. I have washed walls, and cabinetry, scrubbed the stove and the sink, swept the front stairs and the first floor, washed the skid marks off the entry walls, polished all three tables, and the chairs. I've swept under the tv, popped the front off of the terrifying heat vent in the downstairs bath. I've washed windows and lampshades, washed floors, wiped down the tops of bookcases, polished all the teeny glasses and everything else in the hutch (not ready to dust Princess's ashes, it turned out). You get the general idea.

It's one of those perfect storm moments, when I'm pretty sure I've made the last contact with just about everyone, and now I have to wait for responses, offers, etc. I'm certainly less anxious than I once was, having a weekend alone to clean while Light did worky-work was actually pretty nice and exceptionally productive. But it turns out less anxious isn't the same thing as not anxious.

There were outings as well. Grocery store, and Moppet to the groomer, and temple, and a craft store to buy frames to hang art (I'm seriously contemplating trying what I think of as a Martha Stewart wall, where there are multiples pieces of art seemingly randomly arranged), and a lovely, unexpected evening of Chinese food and Rock Band with Hips and Hands.

I spent so long thinking my mother's happiness was fundamentally dishonest that it's hard to think of my own as valid, and so I poke at it until it falls down. I don't know how to talk about it, I don't know how to experience it, I don't know how to relax into it. I can write litanies, lists of the things that trouble me, and give them weight and heft until they block out the horizon, but I'm wordless in the face of comfort.

And of course, there are all sorts of quasi-religious/philosophical debates happening internally, once my shoulders real and metaphorical relax enough to pay attention to something other than an endless one foot in front of the other, making it to midnight and then noon and then midnight again sort of living.

Why do I exist, what good am I doing, why take up the hobbies I do, is there anything left in me besides love of Light and small mammals, was academia actually going to be bitter, or is it more of the grapes were sour anyway? Is "read all the books" going to be enough, or am I going to loop back around to another crisis in four years, when I turn forty and find it too late to take some grand adventure? (I suspect that I will have a crisis of biology at some point, and I hope to silence it with firm words and possibly another dog).

You know, the little stuff.