It's been so long I don't even know where to start. When life gets difficult, I tend to withdraw from the technology aspect. I don't want to reach out; I don't want to expend the energy to tell my story. My texts to friends are basic, non-committal. It will take me days to return an email, if I even remember, and sometimes texts that ask "how are you doing?" hang out on my phone, unanswered, for so long that it becomes almost rude to respond.
How am I doing? It depends on the day, I guess. I've become good at compartmentalizing, so even when people say, "it must be so stressful!" I kind of shrug and say, "well, not really." And I mean it. I don't stray too close to thoughts about what is actually happening in my life... I shove it away, into a mental corner, always to deal with it "later."
Later never really comes.
I think it is this compartmentalization that makes me hate answering those texts and those emails, and the phone calls. I don't want to answer the questions, I don't want to have any conversations that will force me to face the fact that I have no answers, no plan, no control. I don't want to face the fact that we're supposed to be moving a year after we finally moved "home," or that my husband is so burnt out at his job that I worry for his health, or that he works so many hours and travels so much that I've become a "work widow," or that I left a job that I liked for a job that I hate. I don't want to think about how we're trying to stay put, and everything is coming together in mis-matched pieces so that the timing is all wrong... the job interview the week after we have to sign a lease or else lose the apartment, the move that--if it goes through--takes us away from here just in time to miss some friends passing through, but if we don't move then, we miss friends passing through on the other side.
I wake in the morning to an alarm that I snooze three or four times, until the little white fur balls curled up against me--one on each side--finally stir restlessly and start nosing and nudging for pets and cuddles. On feistier days the pets and cuddles are traded for licks and ear-lobe nibbling, which generally forces me out of bed faster. I have to shoo and shepherd the dogs off the bed or shunt them to the other side so that I can swing my legs off the mattress and trudge to the bathroom. Then I'm dressed, and the dogs race each other down the stairs to get outside. The little one spins in circles in front of the door, the eagerness to get outside and go potty potty potty combining to make a cheerful morning dance.
They trot outside, and while the big one picks his way daintily through the grass to find just the right spot, the little one leaps across the lawn, pauses nearly mid-air to land in his "duty crouch," and then races onto the rock wall bordering the sidewalk, yipping at the world. It only takes him a few yips, and then he stands quiet, a miniature mountain goat perched on the rocks, nose raised to the wind. The breeze ruffles the shaggy hairs on his forehead that I really ought to trim soon, and catches at his tail as his nose quivers, trying to interpret the morning smells. Wet grass. Desert sage. A hint of smoke from a far-away wildfire. The undefinable smell of late summer.
I stand there for a bit, barefoot in the sun, yawning and watching the dogs, savoring the summer air as it slowly, nearly imperceptibly, turns to autumn. A hint of crispness in the air, hay instead of sage, the fuller, rounder scents of plants that have not been scorched by the sun for days on end.
I call the dogs inside with promises of treats and they sprint to me over the lawn, their little bellies barely clearing the grass. I shamble to the kitchen and make my coffee, and the dogs dutifully trot after me to the office, their tiny claws making little snicksnicksnicksnicksnicks across the hardwood. They settle into their beds or onto the floor almost immediately while I smother yawns and boot up my computer.
We spend the days like this, me on the phone talking loudly or listening to conferences on a muted speaker phone, or the radio playing in the background. Occasional breaks outside where the dogs play and sniff and potty while I inspect the zucchinis and the cucumbers, stretch and touch my toes. Then it's back to the office until we meander back outside again. On slow days when I leave work and there's still time before I feel like I have to make dinner, they boys and I will sit outside on the lawn. They'll run laps around me and wrestle until one of them makes a squeak of protest, and then the big one's tail will droop until it sweeps the lawn, and he'll come and sit so close to me that he's nearly on top of me, chastened. Often we'll walk, a strange juxtaposition with the two dogs on separate leashes--one who wants to walk so badly that you can barely get his leash on because he's spinning in excitement, the other who views the leash as a strange sort of torture and has to be quite literally dragged until the feel of grass hits his paws, and suddenly he can walk on his own.
Then there's the call from my husband as he's on his way to get dinner before he goes to the hotel, and we talk for a few minutes before he has to pay for his salad bar from Whole Foods and I have to scrounge something up to eat. It's far too much work to cook for just one.
It's TV, and dishes, and maybe some reading. It's thinking about everything that needs to be done, and then not doing it. Or it's starting a little bit of it, enough to get stressed out by it. Then it's back to TV, or the book, or whatever, because I just. don't. want. to. think. about. it.
Me and the boys head out for one last potty break, them scampering across the lawn in the dark while I put my hands in my pockets and tilt my head back, back, back to look at the stars. Above the horizon are two stars that I think must be planets, because they wink at me with red light, and go in and out of alignment across the summer skies. Some evenings the coyotes are active. When they're across the valley it's not so bad, just eerie. When they're on the hillside behind us, it's pretty creepy and I get antsy, quietly urging the puppy to just gogogo so that we can get the HECK inside before they swoop down off the hillside and snap up my pooches straight off the front walk. An unlikely scenario, I know, but it happened to one of my neighbors in midwinter. When I hear the eerie yips, the story alway comes to mind.
Then I head up to bed, the two pooches sprinting and wrestling ahead of me, their little growls breaking the silence of the bedroom. I crawl into bed and read until I can't stay awake any more and I call Sean, or until he calls me, just now heading to bed in a timezone an hour ahead. I close the book, turn out the light, and roll onto my side. The dogs take their places, the little one curled into a half-moon and tucked right against my belly, the big one curled into his own half-moon and snugged up against my back. All the thoughts I've been avoiding all day come rushing in, even though I read myself bleary-eyed. I look at the sky through the bedroom window, counting stars, and then I roll onto my stomach, careful not to dislodge the little fur balls. Take a deep breath in, hold, exhale, hold, inhale, hold, exhale, hold, hold, hold. Inhale, hold, exhale, hold, until I drift off and it happens all over again.
We're getting to the point now when I can't compartmentalize... I have to do. There's shopping and planning for the wedding cupcakes, the meeting with the moving surveyor, the calls and appointments and schedulings, the cleaning and the sorting and the organizing. My best intentions of not waiting until the last minute will fail, and the last week before the move to Texas I'll be in the same scramble that I'm always in.
Life goes on, though, and in a month things will be over and I'll be free to put it behind me and move on to the next adventure. I'm not merely as morose as this makes me sound, but if you send me a text, or an email, and I don't get back to you for days... well, at least now you know why!
