Bustle

Bustle

So I'm discovering this week that apparently I'm really not functional enough to, oh, finish a sweater in any reasonable amount of time, but apart from that, things are okay.

I've been digging out from things this week. We had some dead houseplants. So I got some new ones, and re-potted the ones that really, really needed it, like the long-suffering coffee plant, and the aloe near the stove that has I swear to god only about half an inch of soil left in the pot after falling into the sink ten too many times. The lime plant is still happy and making a whole bunch of new limes for us just now--whee! I seem to do best with plants that appreciate benign neglect. Geraniums, for example, really thrive when you let them dry out totally and then finally water them. My geraniums are just ducky.

I also unearthed a bunch of (mostly) clean laundry and other clothing type items, and did a pile of ironing. I had some housecleaners for a while that would sometimes take my piles of stuff and jam everything into a plastic bag and then stick the plastic bag in a closet somewhere. This is how I found my gray turtleneck that I hadn't seen in about two years. Also several sets of curtains. Anyway, got to the bottom of several piles. And there are now some healthy (so far) new plants around. Yay!

Thank you, you guys, for your righteous outrage. It helps to know it's not just me, that some stuff sounds crazy to non-crazy people, too. I stayed home from the non-support group Thursday. The person who runs it is a friend of some friends, so I do have to bite my tongue a little bit, but if she ever follows up I think I'm going to just say I don't think the group's a good fit for me.

I am working toward fully functional, and some days, I think I can see it coming, but now and then, I notice that I'm not really all there. Who knew ironing was going to be such an emotional trip? I dreamed about dh more this week, too. There are probably several reasons why it's felt like an endless week. The ironing--well, I was starching cloth napkins ('cause I like to, that's why, shhh), and that dredged up this big thing. Big thing being that dh was positive that he was allergic to laundry starch. He was allergic to some kinds of bandage adhesive, which he discovered in his teens when he had an emergency appendectomy, but the laundry starch thing was based on him going on a business trip and having this horrendous sweating, heart racing, all kinds of scary, and it went away when he took off his shirt. He called me from his hotel with this whole story. And now, I think he may have been having a small heart attack then. And that the shirt was a coincidence. And I never put the pieces together until I was ironing napkins this week.

It changes nothing. It would not have, probably. And even if it would have, that's not the way things happened. Joan Didion writes that she keeps going back to what happened, and she eventually realizes that she's searching for a way to change something so that her husband dying didn't really happen. I'm pretty sure I'm doing the same thing. My head knows it won't help. But the animal part of me keeps trying to find a way for him to still be alive, keeps flying around in circles looking for where he might be, keeps wondering how to fix this. And is it really my fault, somehow. Wondering what I have to do to get to be with him again, please; I'm so sick of this, now, can I just go home to my husband and talk over this whole thing? No? How about if I do--

So it's been a long week. Looking for magic. The magic is from other places, like you guys and your astonishing patience and gentleness. And from spring. Wonderful kids. Really cool sock yarn. My cousin's having a baby--that's some pretty serious magic right there, too. Thank you, everybody. See you around.