(no subject)

 Friday night, Light and I drove down to generic massachusetts coastal town.  His parents, who reside in Wisconsin now, but lived in NH for much of his childhood and have strong coastal massachusetts ties had rented a beach house.  His sisters, their spouses and our niblings, all of whom reside in the midwest had also flown out to have a family reunion here.   The rented house was around the corner from one of Light's cousins, an amazing woman with three teenage boys and   the world's cutest goldendoodle   (she woofed once when we came in, and then when I crouched down to meet her, leaned against me until I fell over and then proceeded to love on me.   I ended up coated in dog hair and delighted about it.  And she was calm and sweet about meeting new people, (with occasional unprovoked bouts of very loud woofing)).

 

We stayed in the bedroom of a teenage boy and I have to say,  I don't miss teenage boys.   Parts of it were like little flashbacks to my late teens, a bathroom full of old spice type products and acne medication.  Sure, they're very different than my little brothers were, but there was still some generic teenage boy overlap.

 

Saturday was a family reunion, with at one point at least nineteen variously related people by blood or marriage eating barbeque and playing lawn games and talking.  It was actually pretty nice, everyone was well behaved and I even ducked out to take a nap at one point.  I don't know if that's going to come back around to bite me, but it was either that or faceplant on the table.

 

I didn't have a bad time.  It was a lot, but I didn't have a bad time.  We got home midafternoon and napped and binged on Brooklyn 99 episodes.   Then Light wanted to ask me some scheduling questions and I quietly lost it a litlte bit.  I managed to pull back enough to realize that I'd just spent two weekends away from home, and even if one of them was nice and involved as much alone time as I needed, I also just kind of wanted to not think about going anywhere for a bit, much less going someplace that involved a bunch of strangers.  

 

I'm home now, in my own bed, with a dog curled up at the foot of it.   I'm trying to find a umbrella stand that's the right combination of taking up minimal space, being attractive and being an amount of money I'm willing to spend on an umbrella stand.  I'm trying to remember that cleaning and cooking and feathering my nest can be rituals that connect me back to myself if I can figure out how to approach them.  (which isn't to say that some of it isn't also just straight up housework and is to say I'm pretty sure there's never going to be a mystical component of cleaning up cat hork)

 

I'm tired and I'm scattered and it's past my bedtime.  It's going to be an interesting week, I suspect, going back and forth between feeling very busy and feeling at loose ends.  Monday is house-stuff morning, date afternoon with Abundance and then Light's birthday dinner at night, no Spark because Goodhugs' parents are on the scene, Tuesday is going to be Spark in the AM, and then a conA corp meeting in the evening.  Wednesday is wide open except for a redo on helping Prof pack.  Thursday we go back out to generic coastal town for Light's mother's bday party.   Friday is gym and therapy and finally getting fitted for contacts.