"a boat by your side"

A couple days ago my headphones broke.  I've almost gotten to the point where I consider earbud style headphones fungible goods, but I'd actually kept these and kept them working for over a year, despite being a model I picked up at the counter of Staples one day as an impulse buy.

But, I've been spending a lot more time with headphones on (while I would totally pick this house every time, the last house was better in terms of room-to-room soundproofing, if not great in terms of outside-to-inside soundproofing.  This one's really good at outside-to-inside, but crap at the other.  )   And I'm a figdeter and I suspect I accidentally fidgeted them out of working at some point.    So, while I'm waiting for my new earbuds to arrive, Abundance has a pair of wireless ones he can lend me.   

I try to avoid wireless goods, anything small and breakable or losable, because a little bit of inconvenience, even if it's daily inconvenience easily solved, feels like such a minimal cost when weighed against breaking or losing something, which I'm hardwired to believe is a catastrophe, a reflection of my lack of worth and somehow, ingratitude.  (gee, I wonder what that's calling back to) .   

But I'm loving these headphones.  I cleaned the bathroom quite vigorous all while listening to a book, and they were so comfortable and I acclimated so fast that when I stripped for the show, I actually forgot to take them off until I'd turned on the water (they didn't get wet. all is well) and it seems like it might be time to try to re-examine some of my "i can't have nice thing" impulses.    
A lot of books have had a lot of impacts on me over the years, I'm stumped by the question of favorite or most meaningful books, and I've struggled in the past to even select the handful most likely to be my bibliography/works cited.  But there was this one book, Attached, which abundance had me read at some point, and it was remarkably soothing in that it gave me a framework to hang my hypersensitivity on.  I'm anxious and prone to trying to read seventeen layers deep, and I'm actually pretty good at it, and so whatever my sensitivity to conditions is that causes me to pick up on tension/weirdness even when nothing's being made explicit or really ever going to be made explicit isn't some horrible thing I need to get over, it might just be how I roll.  It might just be a thing that has benefits and detriments and the thing I need to work on is just to roll with it, that I'm not always going to know why someone sounds off, all I can do is ask (though I'm more likely to comment on it in a way that lets the other person pick up the thread or ignore it as they see fit).  And even though I'm still not great at that, for whatever reason, sometimes I can notice myself doing something, say "hey, that's a thing" and just let it pass on by without feeling the need to track it down to make sure it's not dangerous.  

I made morning glory oatmeal this morning, cleaned a whole lot of the bathroom, butted heads with a recalcitrant dryer (it's in a closet on the second floor on a hot day and it turns off if it's too hot so as not to burn the house down.  I appreciate the not burning the house down bit, the turning off after running for ten minutes meaning drying a load requires constant vigilance and patience simultaneously, which is not my favorite jam.  (though, to be honest, it might be one of my core competencies) I even read some, and then for date night, Light and I watched Lego Masters, drank fruit smoothies and did our own taza tasting and watched a Kris Delmhorst facebook concert  I even called both my PCP and my dentist to try to schedule a tele-heath with my pcp (mostly about allergies, because I am pretty sure my face and the lilac bush are in a fight to the death and it's a lot bigger than my face) and a conversation with my dentist, because I really, really don't want to go in, but also might need antibiotics.  

So, once again, I did things.  It wasn't enough, but it was something.