Yikes! I’ve been stumbling along through life pretty well lately, at least on a basic level. Every day, I make myself wake up at 0-dark-thirty and force myself to go out and walk and let the early morning dark and the stars (when I can see them) beat back my nightmares. Go to class, get my homework done, keep the dishes clean, go thru the u-scan, force myself to do the laundry and clean the bathroom. The bare minimum.

As the days progressed toward Thanksgiving, I was feeling kind of panicky. It’s not like we are even doing anything much this year. I’m just cooking the food that has evolved as “traditional” around here and hanging out. I *like* Thanksgivings like that, fer Kee-reist! Except that this place is a *mess*. I *hate* when it’s like this. But to even think about doing something like vacuuming requires moving all kinds of furniture and clutter around. I just cannot force myself to deal with the place. I’m not operating up to the standards I usually set for myself and I’m not happy about that.

So, after coffee w/ Marci @ Barry’s and a trip through the Westgate Kroger u-scan (yes, again), I approached home with quite some trepidation. I had so much to do and I just didn’t have the right psychic energy to do it. When I got home, the *door* was open! Say what? I was sure I had locked that door! When I went inside, there was a bunch of stuff in the living room. Including a spinning wheel! And the shower was going. This was not Rumpelstiltskin. It was my own Mouse, home via Lairi the Rake and her brother. I knew Mouse was coming home this “morning” but I didn’t quite believe that “morning” actually meant *before* noon.

My “mighty” little Mouse is at least as hyper-sensitive to other people’s moods as I am. “Moom, what’s wrong? Come on, I know something’s wrong.” I couldn’t even begin to articulate what was wrong. I never can. Like, haveya got five hours? 🙂 But I couldn’t hide either. grok grok. Yer just ‘n ol’ bag, tha’s all tha’s wrong w’ ya. grok grok. There was one piece of the whole complicated, boring mess of issues that we managed to bite off, chew up, and spit out. For the next half hour or so, we dragged furniture around the living room and she vacuumed while I dredged through some of the clutter. What I couldn’t do alone was pretty quick work with a partner.

And then we “celebrated” by going out to lunch. This house is far from perfect. It still needs dusting. The back room is cluttered with a 6th grade sand collection and all of the financial crap from last year’s taxes. And other stuff. And I’m afraid to turn on the light in the basement. But somehow it’s okay now and I’m gonna relax tomorrow come hell or high water.

Y’all, please have a happy Thanksgiving. We all have our ghosts and gremlins, trials and tribulations, and I don’t have any monopoly on nightmares. But we have a lot to be thankful for too.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.