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.
