Emerging

Emerging

Phew. Broken free of the vortex, folks; doing better today.

Yesterday’s mail brought two small smiles: 1) the gas bill! I’d been a little fretful, because I’ve started heating the house, and ... it wasn’t too expensive. It’s a relief. And 2) Her Majesty’s Government has sent me the forms to claim for widow’s benefit or whatever the hell it’s called, and they’re just ...sweet. Every other page has “we’re so sorry to bother you with this, we just really need the information; it may be helpful to have someone else fill this out for you.” Like so many things, the UK government just doesn’t feel like the faceless bureaucracy that the US one does. What has me giggling in disbelief is that the form is – drum roll, please – twenty four pages long. I’m not overwhelmed; at this point I have almost every conceivable piece of documentation anyone could possibly ask for. It’s just so over the top, and so apologetic, and it makes me smile. Most of the pages have one question and a box to check off: yes or no. Then you turn the page.

I’m assembling things for my secret pal, which is delightful. I was right about this: it does give me a small, simple way to get outside my own head and do something that’s just happy. Yay!

I made bacon and pancakes for breakfast today, which resulted in happy kids all around. Extremely frustrated dog, though—she can smell the bacon, she knows it’s there, but she can not have it. This has her simply frozen to the floor with longing. Poor thing.

My coffee plant has coffee beans on it, and I think they’re getting ripe. I base this notion on the brief glimpses of coffee growing in ads on tv and in the movie Out of Africa; I have no idea what these things are supposed to look like or when to pick them. It’s fun learning, though.

Thank you, everyone. This all ebbs and flows, and I’m getting used to it, I think.

I even got some work done (ha, if you can call it that) on my NaNoWriMo project. I have almost stopped being in constant instant-edit mode and am trying to just let the weirdness flow. A veritable cornucopia of weirdness. A land flowing with milk and weirdness. “Let the Weirdness Flow” sounds like a title for something, doesn’t it?

Something else is starting to peek out, very tentatively and more like a too-early crocus through the snow than anything more substantial, but it’s the faintest tendrils of hope. I’m starting to think of things that I could choose to do. Some of that comes from the water-in-the-face of doing financial planning, and it’s scary, but also...hopeful.

WIP: little guy’s gloves are progressing, this time on larger needles. We’ll see if that makes them wearable. I knit the first attempt so tightly that he really couldn’t get his fingers in. “Fits like a glove” is supposed to be a good thing.