It’s been another few days. I’m not gone. I’m fine. Life is… good. Contentment seeps in along the edges. I’ve moved back into my studio. “Everything” is back in its place. This is enough.
…Hardly fantastic motivation for early morning writing, though, I will say…
I hear my Traveling Partner’s merry laughter in the other room, and the sound of comedy. Yeah. This is enough. 🙂
I’m finding new routines. New timing. Sorting out new ways to enjoy my experience in this new space, now freed of the stress and chaos of repair work in progress. Perhaps you are used to counting on me, each and every morning…? Are you feeling sorrowful or bereft, or perhaps just bored, or jostled from your own routine? I hope you will be patient while I figure a few more self-care details out in this new home… I promise you, there is a ton of amazing content on the internet! (It is vast, indeed.)
The week began with unexpected (but welcome) contractors. It continued, yesterday, with the return of the (now expected, still welcome) contractors and the completion of the dry walling, taping, texturing, and painting. Today? Carpet, and, I think, the completion of the last bit of our moving “adventure” (which was the discovery of a leak, by way of the visible damage it had caused). Finally.
New homeowner shit. I’m not bitching – I’m delighted to have a home. I’m just counting down the days (hours, now?) until I can sigh contentedly, feel safe, settled, and at home – without huge holes in the walls, and an entirely unfinished closet, and paintings stacked everywhere in a seemingly haphazard way. lol 🙂 I’m sipping my coffee feeling grateful for this house, our home, this partnership, and my partner – and mentally listing for myself all of the many things we’ve gotten done since we moved in, just 98 days ago. 😀
…Time is a funny thing, isn’t it? I feel simultaneously that I’ve “been here a long time” (and thus, it feels unreasonable that I’m not yet wholly “moved in”) and also feel as if we just moved in “a couple weeks ago” (in which case, it totally seems reasonable to still be “sorting out some details”).
In early April, we began looking for a home of our own together, quite seriously. The search became “urgent” in an earnest “this has to get done because we’ve got to move” sort of way, in spite of the pandemic, at the end of April. By May 19th, we’d found what we were looking for, and made an offer. I’m still surprised by how quickly that went. We closed at the end of June, and began moving in. Pandemic restrictions at their most severe (up to that point), we did the move ourselves, and it took just shy of 10 days to get it all “done”, such that we were no longer moving out of anywhere, just putting finishing touches on moving in. That makes it all sound rather easy – and it was as easy as my Traveling Partner could make it, no doubt. Organized. Well-considered. Planned carefully. Executed skillfully. Still hard. Still a lot of manual labor. Some fussing. Some crying.
…There were some trying moments, that’s just real…
Since we moved in, there has been what now seems like an inevitable cascade of “small things” to handle. Squeaky doors. A hot tub leak. Quite a bit of spilled water. Cleaning. Things to assemble. Small repairs. Totally ordinary homeowner stuff. lol At first it mostly felt new, and delightfully autonomous (no call to a landlord, no delay in getting stuff done that wasn’t chosen), then it began to feel sort of “crushing”. (Strictly temporary. Change is.) We fixed things, and moved on. I feel a bit as if this last bit of contractor work really finishes the move, is what I’m saying. (Omg, so many words just to get to that idea. Sorry.)
No idea what comes next. New adventures. Everyday life. Contentment. Romance. New recipes? New neighbors.
A sunny day on the deck, a view of the forest beyond.
I’d settled into work for the day, with a reminder to myself to phone the contractor handling the repair work (for the recent water damage). Having heard nothing for more than a week (again), it seemed wise to reach out pro-actively and see what could be delaying the work, and maybe get it scheduled. I felt very grown-up to be so on top of things on a Monday…
…Yeah…
So, just as I was preparing some routine work for follow-up with key stakeholders, fingers flying across my keyboard, I heard the doorbell. A package? So early? (I bet you know where this one is heading!) Yep. Contractors. Here to do dry wall. Wtf?? Nothing on my calendar… nothing coordinated with me… no follow-up since materials were picked. What. The. Fuck.
My Traveling Partner was wakened by the door bell. Hadn’t even had his coffee. My studio and the adjacent room were not ready for contractors to do work; I’d moved a bunch of stuff while my stepson was visiting. Paintings. Computer equipment. Paperwork. Book shelving complete with books. So, I did the only obvious thing… I smiled and welcomed the contractors in after alerting my partner they were here to work. I moved stuff out of their way. I did my best to keep my shit together while my work space was disrupted yet again. Fucking hell.
Things got moved. Including me; I’m in my partner’s game room, working. Whatever. It works, and I greatly appreciate having a partner who is flexible and quick-thinking. I managed to shed minimal tears over generally being faced with further upheaval. Win.
It’s a lovely autumn day. I’ve spent it on mindful service to hearth and home, and some pleasant opportunities to enjoy the company of my Traveling Partner. We both seem to be having a very good day. I’m enjoying that, unreservedly. I’m also in pain.
The forest beyond the deck, on an autumn morning.
If I allowed my physical pain to stop me from getting things done or enjoying my experience in every moment I am experiencing physical pain, I’d have to just give in. Do nothing. Enjoy nothing. Go nowhere. That doesn’t sound like the best possible way to experience life, so… mostly I choose differently. It sometimes feels like an endurance race. A test of will. A hex. Today? Today it feels like a lovely autumn day on which I happen to be in pain. Verbs. Choices. Practices. Self-care.
We each walk our own hard mile. Sometimes it’s not “well-paved” or “smooth and level”. Sometimes that hard mile is miserable, tedious, or painful. Sometimes it feels endless. Persist. Endure. Choose. Don’t like the outcome? Try choosing something else. Begin again. If every mile of this journey called life was easy, effortless, and on an obvious path, it would likely also be incredibly dull, and certainly there’d be damned little reason to grow, to learn, or to change. So… there’s that.
There’s also this pain, but… it’s wrapped in a sunny day, and I feel wrapped in love. 🙂 It’s enough.
Here it is already Friday. How did the time pass so quickly without notice? Living life, I guess, instead of measuring the minutes and weighing the value of the time involved. I’m okay with that. I hope you are, too.
3 or 4 days into my headache, after a work day of sort of being “half there”, and making a lot of dumb mistakes as I moved through various tasks and ran an errand or two (little stuff, like forgetting to close the cover on the hot tub after I got out, or misplacing a coffee cup in a strange place), my Traveling Partner encouraged me to make an early night of it. I wasn’t certain I could sleep so early, or that I needed sleep, or that sleep would help… but I “wasn’t all there”, as it was, and felt pretty miserable. So. I crashed early, figuring I could read quietly in a quiet dimly lit room, or some such thing.
…I woke abruptly shortly after midnight, with a recollection of conversing with my Traveling Partner sometime after I crashed… was that a dream? That’s what woke me; wondering if that conversation was real, or a fragment of a dream. I still don’t know. I fell back to sleep before I could do more than wonder. I woke again, around 2am, and got up for a few minutes. Drank some water. Realized I didn’t actually care to be awake, yet, and that I was, rather oddly, still sleepy. I went back to bed, only waking when the alarm went off.
Funny how fragile and high-maintenance these sacks of flesh are, is it not? Self-care matters. Giving ourselves time to heal with we’re injured or sick matters. Taking time for real rest matters. All of those things matter more than any household chore or errand. Generally, they even matter more than the jobs we work. (I mean, seriously, if I become so ill or fatigued that I can’t work at all… how important is the job, then? Just saying – not very.)
I sip my coffee making new promises (on top of old promises) to give myself better self-care and more of my own time. There will be verbs involved. Practices. My results will continue to vary. I notice that my coffee cup is empty, the rim cold against my lips. It must be time to begin again. 😉
Evening Light 