I'm Okay. Really. I Think...

I got a Nook for Yule. The HD model, so I can surf the internet and watch Netflix (I heartily thank you for the introduction to Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch), read endless books, and generally waste more time doing nothing when I ought to be doing the floors (I even dreamed one night that I should wake up and clean the toilets). I admit, it saved me a bit, that Nook. Saved me from having to think too hard on my mother's passing, saved me from having to fully engage in the condolences, saved me from sinking, though, as it turns out, it is a form of sinking itself. I downloaded a lot of cheap books. Lots. Read about 10 the first week and wondered what the hell happened to all the good writers? Have I been out of the loop so long (in my other life I was an aspiring writer) that I'd lost track of the good ones? Or perhaps I was being cheap. Buying the $1.99 specials and cruising the free listings too often, what I'd imagine finding in the 99 cent bin at the Dollar Tree ~ bios of obscure politicians, craft books for crafts no one wants to do (365 Ways to Recycle Toilet Paper Tubes was never going to be a bestseller), no fewer than a half dozen books on how to get rich quick, and fiction that makes no sense and goes no where. I've been trying to wean myself off the Nook, get myself out of my pajamas for a change, walk around the neighborhood, do something other than wearing a path between home and the post office, or home and the grocery store, or home and wherever the family deems to drag the unwilling me. I worry about chem trails and radiation and the bad air in the valley and my granddaughter's well being and the drought and legalizing marijuana and the state of my hair. I'm growing my fingernails out but I've got one that splits down the center and has to be trimmed short, so it all seems futile, nine long nails and a stubby one cut down, and it's all done, all this nonsense, to not think about my mom. Because when I do think about her, like right now, I fall apart. If I were alone, falling apart would be welcome. I'm no longer alone and I do not want to have someone trying to 'hug it out' or ask me questions or tsk-tsk and pat my arm or show any kind of response whatsoever to my grief. I want to be let alone. I want to just let it wash over me and get it done with, however many times it takes, however many days or weeks or months or years it takes, I want to feel it and I don't want anyone to interfere or try to take it away. So I'm a closet griever.

I'm trying to mix things up around here, trying to find 'normal'. I'm not entirely settled yet, nearly all of my possessions still reside in boxes in the garage, a terrible thing when the creative itch strikes, and despite best efforts, that box with those things cannot be located. I bought a paper cutter the other day knowing full well I had a paper cutter here -- in a box -- in the garage -- hidden away, and while on another errand looking for something else I couldn't find, I found the lost paper cutter. This is what I deem as clutter. Finding normal is turning out to be more difficult that I thought. I have no friends here. No one to visit during the day. I'm not a telephone person, hell, sometimes I don't even want to chat online, so I'm missing my faraway friends. I miss my old house. Just the house and the general neighborhood, not the nasty neighbors or the drug addicts passing out on the lawn or strange cars blocking my car in the driveway or the constant hum and chatter of the neighborhood echoing down the street. When I dream of being at home, that's where I dream I am. I miss it terribly.

I admit, there is a certain amount of melancholy in all my situations. Blame it on the introversion.

Today, in an effort to break the streak of Nook and living in my pajamas, I'm going to clean up, put on my walking shoes and cruise the neighborhood a bit, buy a little dinner, and then sit at the tea shop and try to 'make friends' like a normal person. Then I'm going to come home fully inspired to make rosemary soap.