Empty Nest Syndrome

It’s been just more than a month since I finished my year’s obligation  and I’ve busied myself will all sorts of things I wouldn’t exactly describe as constructive.  The weather here has been far less than summery, with the only warm day arriving today when within sight of the Pacific we’ve actually mustered up an admirable 82 degrees.  With an almost non-existent summer, I can only say that constructiveness must be connected to the things I expect at any given time during the year.  A matter of rote.  Habit.

Better said, I’ve been spending my time processing the fact that I not longer work doing something I’ve done for more than 20 years, but this time for good.  I’ve also been processing that after mothering three boys, my youngest is headed off to school, leaving the MoH and I with a seriously empty nest.  I think that, more than anything, with all of its unknowns, has caught us completely by surprise.

It’s a bit of a choking sensation for me, felt when I least expect it.  It overwhelms me with its intensity, and I unrealistically imagine bears and woods, sinking boats, and other disasters I can’t help my son from.  How ridiculous is that?  Seriously.

But we still need to find our corners occasionally to weep silently in the middle of an unrelated conversation until one of us notices that the other has stopped his or her side of the conversation.  And then one of us knows.  We know that the empty nest syndrome has enveloped one of us and so the other quietly excuses him or herself to allow the sorrow to pass.

What the hell.

This should be a time of celebration.  It should be a time for looking forward to all that lies ahead.  The future.  Opportunity.  Yadda yadda yadda.

I try.  Honestly, I do.  And it works most of the time on most days.

I busy myself with planning a trip to the UK in the fall.  As someone who lived her professional life married to a school calendar, trust me.  I want to travel in the fall when everyone else is at work or in school.   It’s just that one moment on that one day on that one afternoon.  All it takes is a look, and then I’m toast.

We’ve purchased bedding for his dorm room.  We’ve paid for the housing and food.  We’ve reviewed books and supply lists and have made plans to purchase them here then drive them up.  But time is dwindling.  More than 30 years raising boys.  More than 20 years teaching other people’s children.

It will take a bit of time to adjust.

Windy Summer Days & Pickles

Windy summer days are gifts, their bursts of cool air a welcome relief to my perpetually damp middle-aged skin.  I  stand on the side of the house where the gusts are strongest and raise my arms a bit, allowing it to wash over me in much the same way water does as I swim.  It’s soothing.

I hold my face to the sky feeling the warmth and breathe deeply, completely content, and want the moment to last longer than it does.

I think I should get my book and sit in the sun — perhaps nap a minute or two.  There’s a place on the front steps behind the hedge where I can open my sand chair and somewhat hide from the neighbors as they pass, noticing that they try not to look my way.  But no, there’s someone coming to talk about a fence for the back yard, and knowing he’ll come through the house, I dart from one pile to the next, picking up, tossing away, sweeping, and scooping. With as little effort as possible, I, too, can still pretend like I might be Martha occasionally.

I slide open most of the windows, giving the stuffy warm air in the house a reason to escape while it has the chance and pause long enough at the top of the stairs to look around, deciding that I’ll stay in and feel the breeze through the window next to my desk while I work.

I may not be able to feel the air move over my skin, but I can watch the thin branches on the trees in the back bend in the wind as I’m thinking, and see the unusual clouds change from one formation to the next.

I can go out and sit in my chair any time.

Besides,  I’d have ended up even more sweaty than I already am and once the wind dies down, my only option will be to open the freezer and insert my face, hoping that will cool me down. It’s a fairly weak option compared to the relief a windy summer day provides, and it’s far less dramatic, but in a pinch, it’s better than feeling like I’m the main ingredient in a rather hearty brine.

Think about it: pickles are always better chilled, aren’t they?

Thinking with asterisks

William Zinsser says, “To write well about your life you only have to be true to yourself.”

I knew that.  It doesn’t make it easier to choose to delve into something I don’t feel like delving into, however, and I recognize all the signs of avoidance — like grabbing my broom to rid the stairs of the dust bunnies that have taken up residence since we got rid of the carpet.

They’re huge, shadowy puffs that seemingly morph from one corner to another, gathering cat hair and our life’s dentritus with each pair of passing feet.

I see them as I trudge up and down to refill my coffee cup or half-heartedly perform some chore and marvel that they appear so quickly.  They’re fascinating until they become a larger mass, swept to the bottom of the stairs waiting to be scooped into a dust pan and into the trash along with my determination.

* * *

I’m tired of thinking about food, about writing about food.  Tired of organizing my life around the planning and shopping, organizing and preparing of food.  If I needed just one scapegoat for my lack of productivity, it would be that, and yet the amount of time it takes contradicts any lack of productivity.

I’m tired of thinking about food.  Tired.  But that will most likely change at lunchtime.

* * *

I’ve been trying to decide whether it’s better to classify myself as a procrastinator, or dreamer.  Drifty is more like it.  Drifting like those dust bunnies from one point to another with little or no substance or anchor.  Well, not quite that dramatic, but puffing along from one whim to the next and incapable of moving of its own volition.  Lacking initiative.

Meh.

* * *

It was foggy outside this morning when I woke up and the residual dampness has given the air a smell that comes only when raindrops first hit the asphalt.  I stand on the patio in the slight chill, my not so willing to be outside this early in the morning toes curling against the flagstones, and I breathe deeply.  The trees rustle with the slight breeze and I’m surprised to hear a bird’s call I don’t recognize, wondering where it’s coming from and why I haven’t noticed it before.  Happy thing.

* * *

I just finished Blessings by Anna Quindlan.  It’s about identity and the effect family can have on it — or not. It’s about quite a bit more than that, but when I talk about a book I’ve read I somehow find myself feeling like I’m completing a book report and have to supress the urge to run screaming from the room.   I’ll find myself later picking this one up to read parts of again because Quindlan’s writing has that effect on me, most likely because I can wallow in long passages of description and deep delving into a character’s thoughts to a level not unlike that of my dust ball analysis.   Unfortunately, I read just before I go to sleep each night and not many pages at that these days.  Any influence her words have on me is lost in the jumble that has been my dreams recently, and since I still can’t quite give myself permission to read during the day, my thinking is lost and with it any inspiration to write.

Why a person needs to give herself permission to read during the day is fairly stupid.

* * *

You’re wondering about the silly asterisks right?  Me, too.  But it’s the only way that I could actually sit down and write something today.  Anything.

And so I did.  I’d call that being true to myself.

Or avoiding being true to myself, which is probably more the case.

Making a plan for myself, maybe.

Yesterday, I avoided coming up here to sit at the keyboard, to sort through emails, to sip my coffee while scrolling through the early morning cacophony that is Twitter.  I’ve been doing this for more time than I like to acknowledge.  Instead, I straightened things up around the kitchen and the rest of the house, started some laundry, and pulled a stool up to the kitchen counter to make a plan of sorts.  It was a scary concept, but I was armed with a pad of paper, stickies, and a sharp pencil.  It was going to happen, or else.

I also silently vowed to get in the car to get groceries before noon — something I resist doing like one might resist jumping into an ice cold pool buck naked just because it was there.

If you looked at my plan, you’d roll your eyes and tell me it was only a list, and I’d probably argue with you knowing you were right, but wouldn’t admit it since I have nothing more  important to argue about these days, and I love to argue.  For example, a few days ago, the MoH and I got into it over a risotto I’d made for dinner that I thought was quite delicious, and he though was not done.  Not exactly great deliberation material, is it?  I must be desperate.  What next?  Whether to move the recycling bin to the left of the kitchen doorway instead of the right?

When I first sat down to make my plan last Monday, I didn’t think for a moment I’d actually accomplish all of what I’d written by the end of the day. I have absolutely no need to pollute my entire day with that sort of business. But by the end of the week, as I scanned the list…erm…plan…I’d accomplished all but one or two things.

I’m thinking that this qualifies me as some sort of an expert and I should now write an e-book on How to Write and Accomplish a Weekly Plan and charge innocent web surfers $9.99 for it so that they, too, can be accomplished in three easy steps,  but I won’t.

No, I’ll sit here instead,  thinking about why I don’t feel the need to make myself accountable to me any longer.

I joked with the MoH last week that it must be some sort of Post Traumatic Distress Syndrome left from my career and having to have a plan and lists, and list plans, and plans for plans for everything.  Oh, and be accountable to too many people for too many years.  “Joked” would be the key word there, but he didn’t laugh.  I’m sure you’re not laughing either, but for a very different reason.  You’re thinking, “Well shit woman.  You don’t have to do anything all day long and you’re still bitching and moaning about it.  Get off your fat ass and do something so we don’t have to listen to you whine about how the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,” because you wish you were like me sometimes and didn’t have to be accountable to yourself and others either, right?

Maybe I am accountable to me, but it’s so annoying that I resist and do anything but what I know I should do.  You have on-going inane conversations with yourself, too, right?

Sometimes it feels as if I’ve got layers of gauze wrapped around my head, muting everything trying to get in, yet keeping what’s already inside tightly there.  Each day is filled with options — so many of them I rarely know where to begin, and so don’t, instead going through motions I’ve created over the past two years with the unconscious determination someone who busies themselves with errands each day might engage in.  (This is the part where if someone reading this is a compulsive day filler upper, he/she begins to get a bit cranky with me, but forgets I’m talking about myself, and not him/her…)

It’s like I exist on two planes:  one that’s physically active, and another that’s engrossed in what my mind really wants to work on.  They don’t always cooperate with one another, and the problem is, I can’t quite shake off the active aspect of myself because I might have to actually sit down and write something relevant.  I’ve figured out that if I’m active, I can procrastinate quite effectively because my activity interferes with my thinking.  Sort of.  But if I can persuade myself to avoid business, and just think, I might be able to get somewhere.  Anywhere but blathering on and on here, or on scraps of paper that I write on when I’m busy because something’s popped into my head and I don’t want to forget it.

I do forget it, though,  and I’m left at the end of the day with a clean house, business taken care of, and no writing.

Maybe I need two lists.  One for my crappy, time-consuming chores and errands, and another just for me.

Whatever that means.  What would it say?

1) When the urge strikes, go write.  Screw everything else.

Not very eloquent, but it does have possibilities.

Construction and Ugly Cookies

I’m exhausted, and I’m always surprised when I realize it.  Like someone who doesn’t spend 12 hours a day at the office shouldn’t be tired — ever.  So not only am I exhausted, I’m annoyed that I’m exhausted.

It’s pretty pathetic.  No, I’m pathetic.

To give myself half a break today, I’m looking at the disaster area that used to be my house, realizing that my black mood is most likely the result of construction that isn’t due to conclude for another two weeks — well, and deciding to engage in nearly two weeks of baking and writing about cookies.  What in hell was I thinking?

It’s always exciting when construction begins, but I’ve been through it twice before, so know that it gets stressful. I should know better, but the last two times, I was out of the house all day and didn’t have to watch and worry.  As nice as it is to be able to see all the changes happening each day, it’s not pleasant to see all the kinks in the plans, as well.  Add this additional cost to that additional cost, and the persistent drone from the talking heads on the television about the nation’s economic woes only makes it worse.  This morning I wanted to pull the covers over my head, wish the crew could let themselves in, and let them work as if I didn’t exist — which would be a bit strange considering the lump I’d make on the bed sitting in the middle of an empty room.

Our room is the only one in the house that’s nearly empty.  The others have all had our possessions shoved into them and smaller items perched on top, stacked in ways I’d never have attempted in any other situation.  We’ve been lucky that only one thing has been broken, and it wasn’t valuable from a monetary sense, but did have some pleasant memories attached to it.

There’s dust everywhere.  Even though plastic sheets are draped from time to time, it seems not to matter because the garage door is open, and the constant breeze through the house just distributes the particles everywhere.  In the beginning, I tried to vacuum at the end of each day in the small area where we can actually move around, but have given that up since I’ve run out of space to set things that weren’t packed.  I have dishes that have survived more than 100 years sitting in the middle of my family room.  As I stare at them, I wonder what I’m going to do with them.  Even if I purchased more boxes, there’s no more room in the garage to put anything.  And next week, the painters come.

Being the foodie I am, you’d think that sitting in front of my Mac tending to my food blog and cooking to my heart’s content would keep me happily occupied, wouldn’t you?  And it should, but at this point, I’m tired of that, too.  In fact, I’m so tired of it, I’m questioning why I’m doing it — and not just the cookie making.  Somewhere along the line, it has consumed my entire life and I make time for little else.  Like I said — pathetic.

All I want to do is clean my house.  I want to organize the piles and go through boxes and stacks.  I’m supposed to be choosing hardware for the doors and stair rails, but I’m not.  I should be tossing things we don’t need, and organizing yet another donation of items we no longer use, but can’t.  There’s no space to do it in.

Taking a shower is a pain, and putting on makeup or doing anything with my hair involves squeezing into a little space in front of my mirror in between the cat food tray and litter box, so I don’t.  But when I have to, there are usually strange men walking back and forth and it’s not that comfortable acting like I don’t care if they can see me putting on my eyebrows or peering at the wrinkles under my eyes in my magnifying mirror.  But who cares, right?

And the scariest part of all of this — Christmas is how many days away?  I can’t even imagine how I’m going to pull that off.  But I’ll try, and it will be great *whips superficial happy face from back pocket.* If one or two — okay, so maybe three bad days in the course of this is all I’ll have, then I guess that’s not too horrible.

I just wish the intensity wouldn’t build up in me like it does, surprising me when I should come to expect it.

And when it finally wraps its ugly coils around my throat, I don’t want to have to squelch my anger, or feel guilty over it and have to go into my “count my blessings” mode.  I don’t want to have a little heart to heart with myself about how nice it’s going to be when it’s all finished, or be thankful for what we have because we’re so fortunate, because I’ve already done that.  I do that every single day.  Relentlessly. It doesn’t erase the upwelling of ugliness that permeates every pore in my skin, and so I give in to it.

What I do want is to take a hot bath.  I want bubbles, and candles, and wine with that bath, please, and a book that almost reads itself.  Just one bath.  That’s all.

Maybe then, my mood could possibly improve to grey with chances of silver linings.

But writing it here helps, and eating five or six of the ugliest cookies I’ve ever seen.

Okay, so, maybe only sort of ugly.

But ugly.

Wordle and Other Excellent Friday Distractions

Have you spent time with wordle yet?

It’s fun if you don’t have anything better to do. In fact, it’s perfect if you do have things to do, but just can’t seem to motivate yourself to do them.

Cleaning the house seems more attractive by comparison considering the dark mood I was in after spending some time pencil writing last evening. I actually accomplished something while sitting in the late afternoon sun, thinking, remembering, questioning. And then my neighbor came home and wandered over to talk.  This would be the neighbor who feigns neighborliness until one’s out of earshot.  The one who puts his trash out on Sunday morning to sit for an entire day so the rest of the neighborhood can enjoy its loveliness.  The one who who seizes any moment to mention that our dog barks when she doesn’t.  And who lets the spindly trees that are supposed to be a hedge grow without trimming them.  Robert Frost had something to say about good fences making good neighbors, didn’t he?

Sometimes, I like to think that things happen for a reason, and the exercise was enough to make me really wonder about whether some aspects of our lives need to be put down on paper — even if they’re fictionalized. And if they actually happened, then why the need to fictionalize?

I’m just not sure.

But my mood was with me through the night, and it wasn’t until after I returned from my early walk with my friend that I realized the mood was gone, my spirits lifted.

That’s what exercise, non-stop blathering about everything under the sun, and laughter will do.

Of course, finding more interesting ways to distract myself also works.  I haven’t been able to decide whether I look best in Mucha,

Modigliani,

or Botticelli, 

but I’m leaning toward the latter since we saw La Primavera, The Birth of Venus, and other beautiful works while we were in Italy.

Well, and the eyebrows are right.  Nonexistent. Or very nearly.

In my next life, I will have eyebrows.

Perhaps I will write about that.

Finding a place to begin

Nike was smart when they launched their campaign admonishing those of us who sit far too long on our ever-expanding rear ends to “Just do It.”  But when you’re someone who is more inclined to first think, then talk about what you are thinking about — like writing — then think about writing before you actually write anything,  clearly those words have no effect.  None.

I haven’t “Done It” yet.  In other words, I’m still getting warmed up to the idea of possibly thinking about wanting to write something.  Not just anything, but the piece I am supposed to write.

The problem is twofold.  On second thought, it’s got quite a few more folds than two. Tenfold might be more accurate.  I have no excuse for this.  It’s pathetic.

And so when I find myself in this particular situation, I review what I know.  I mull over every detail and experience much like one might sort through an old recipe box, thinking about what is on each card instead of pulling one out, and actually cooking and serving it for dinner.

I could go back through the books I’ve used in the past whose authors have helped me sort out my thoughts.  People like Zinsser and Lamott, or Goldberg or E.B. White, because they force me to think about what I’m not doing. But I’d have to have something, anything, to work with before I’m compelled to pick up one of those books again.  Otherwise, it’s no different than reading travelogues and never traveling, or buying yet another cookbook when never intending to cook.

Somehow in my wandering today, I came across Vonnegut and his take on style.  I’d not seen it before, and I read it through several times acknowledging his advice, but thinking more about his writing.  I read parts of it aloud, as I often do when something is written just right, needing to hear the cadence of words as each works with another.  Then I considered the advice.

One thing was missing.

Find a place to begin.  And therein lies the rub.

Since it’s not a dark and stormy night, I’m taking myself out into the sun that has finally decided to grace us with its presence to sit and read something well-written, take a few notes, and find a place to begin while I’m distracted by green bugs in the vicinity.