It was just a piece of mail

I’m a big pile of emotions lately, most of them rational, I guess. Realistically, one who knows that her mother is approaching a terminal stage of cancer would have every reason to enter into some kind of existential crisis. It seems logical to reflect on the earlier deaths of friends and family to some extent.

It doesn’t seem—what’s the word I’m looking for... reasonable? fair?—normal to dwell on the freakish ends of life that others around you have met. Car accidents, murders, terrorists, sudden and unpredictable heart attacks. My elderly aunt was widowed while on vacation. The intern pastor was widowed while on vacation, and she was in her mid-thirties at the time. They both spoke of carrying their husbands’ ashes home in their laps on an airplane.

My fear of losing Brooke has grown exponentially in the last few weeks. In the last days, it’s been debilitating. This morning I broke down sobbing in the dining room. Nothing is right—there’s something wrong with everything. My mother is ill. We have no money. My pastor is leaving. My family is so subtly dysfunctional that I don’t think it’s possible to tolerate Thanksgiving dinner without vigilant passive-aggression or drugs. Work is going well save for the careful bullying by the administrative person.

Brooke reminded me that the cats are fine. It’s true, but they’re eating faster than we can earn the money to buy their food.

That clinches it. That, up there. The text above. I’m not losing it, I’m just negative. I’m one of the something’s-wrong-with-everything-and-I-have-to-tell-you-about-it people. Someone help me find drugs in this Godforsaken town.

Boy, are my arms tired

It's been a long time coming, but my moment for apathy in church dealings is nearly here. In true Lutheran form, I am quietly and ashamedly thrilled.

I spent most of a day at my parents' house, and Mom slept about half of the time. My brother and SIL managed to make me feel like an intruder in their space although they arranged to visit after I did.

Our friends and their daughter met us for dinner about halfway between our homes. She has another ear infection, and my cabernay left something strongly to be desired.

We arrived home from our overnight in suburbia to find that Quidditch had broken into the fireplace and Muggle had yakked on our quilt.

It's Novemer 16th, and our neighbors have their Christmas lights up and on. Preventing this would be the only benefit to having a neighborhood association. This time of year, it's a tough call.

Paradox: When women are critical of people and things, they're "negative." When men do the same thing, they're "opinionated." Despite this, through careful self-evaluation, I have discovered that I am somehow only opinionated and not negative.

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.

Keeping up

I’ve been dreaming about a strange variety of things lately, the most recent two being work and knitting. These are things I do nearly every day, but I rarely dream about things I do on a regular basis. My dreams bring up people from the past, ideas that never came to pass, and generally bizarre combinations of people and activities and places. The work dream was me doing what I do—creating spreadsheets, moving numbers around, sorting through data and summarizing it with other numbers. Very calm, very relaxing.

The knitting dream was stressful and produced anxiety. I was in a workshop and someone was demonstrating on the sweater I’m making for Brooke. The demonstrator dropped a stitch but I couldn’t get his attention. I watched as the dropped stitch made a huge run down the length of the body. He was going to ruin it, but he wouldn’t listen to me and just stop so I could fix it. He made several rounds past that dropped stitch in the time before I woke up.

Strange dream. Probably the result of a sad conversation with my mom and my drinking more wine than I should have.