Doing it Wrong

AWOL

I'm going to have to go AWOL for a bit, hopefully not too long, due to The Great Move (with much move-age) which involves a lot of complication including a pre-move from Current House (which is happening RIGHT NOW PLEASE SAVE ME) to Very Kind Temporary House, and then move to Extended No Real House To Call My Own, then foreign temporary housing, before finally landing (hopefully) in a flat in England. I'd give more details about the homeless bit but it's not all nailed down and frankly even thinking about it gives me major tummy-wobbles of anticipation and total terror. I do not do well with not nailed down, but I'm trying to learn. It'll be an adventure. (a GOOD one I keep telling myself).

So, that means that there will be no local internet for me for a bit which is rather nail-biting since I am rather extensively digital in my daily routine, my job, my research, my communication with distant types etc. But I will be brave, and soldier on, and only drop by the coffee shop up the street that provides superb coffee (and, coincidentally, free internet) once a day. Just once. Really.

Assuming it is possible to sustain life without constant access to really good broadband, I'll check back in on the other side of The Great Move: Pre-Move.

Semi Random Whine (Would You Like Cheese With That?)

Know what?

I hate moving.

I like HAVING moved, but I hate moving.

Haaaaaaate it.

I'd kinda forgotten that, in a convenient, hey, I REALLY don't want to be here any longer so I must LOVE moving, sort of way. I was wrong. Oh so wrong.

Moving sucks.

Even if you're almost getting rid of everything you own it still sucks.

Even if you have known about it for months and have half-heartedly been down-sizing and planning and virtuously not buying [mostly] anything new, it still sucks.

SUUUUUCKS.

Yeah, that's pretty much all that's on my mind this morning, but since it was also on my mind when I 'went to sleep' last night [irony quotes] and when I woke up at 12, and again at 2 and at 3 (which was the asesomest of the wakings up because I became convinced that the house had been broken into - again - and knew that I had left my backpack with my wallet out on the diningroom table, and that wallet not only has all my (fairly recently) replaced bank cards and things, it ALSO has my passport, so the rest of the morning was spent futily trying to figure out what on earth I would do about that at this late date. Good times. ANYWAY, since that's all on my mind, I figured the loving and generous thing would be to share it all with you.

You're welcome.

P.S. Moving sucks.

Packing, Procrastination and... something else starting with 'P'

I'm supposed to be sorting and packing. I NEED to be sorting and packing.

I am, almost without exception, most certainly not sorting or packing.

The exception is yesterday when I went through two small bins and the bits and bobs from my silver smithing class. This is the best kind of procrastination because it is both nearly ineffective at actually getting anything done, AND it still looks active and progressive. WIN!

However I've realized something rather brilliant. When distilling a four-bedroom house down to what can be lugged onto a plane it makes certain decisions really quite easy. Not the sort about what books are so beloved they absolutely must be stored (somewhere. By someone). Nor what paperwork is relevant and will continue to be so through the unseen future (but not so relevant that it has to come on the plane). Nor which knick-knacks actually have value enough - sentimental or real - to justify the irritation of protecting them and stashing them away.

No, the easy bit is the sort of decision I usually find really hard. It's the what-does-this-go-to-it-looks-important stuff. Like that little collection of bolts and screws and washers and things that is neatly boxed up and lives in the odds-and-ends drawer? The stuff that must be vital to something (although the something has happily survived without it thus far)? Although it's the result of several years of indecision and worry, all of a sudden it's worthless. Toss it. Or the bajillion and one cords that get pulled out twice a year, looked at in utter bafflement, and stuffed away again? GONE. It's wonderful, it's fabulous, it's amazingly, beautifully freeing. It's almost worth getting stuck into this sorting and packing thing.

But maybe not today.

Big Doings: Part 3 and Hopefully Part FINALLY DROPPING THE OTHER SHOE ALREADY

So where were we? Navel gazing I think.

Getting to know myself, and what I, me, personal singular upright pro-noun, wanted to do with the rest of my life. (and oh, there is LOADS I leave out. Great heaping piles of loads. Lots and lots and lots. I simplify out of sheer, bloody editorial need)

Fact is, that once I GOT to the point of realizing I needed to at least have a cup-of-coffee-maybe-a-sandwich with myself, it was a lot easier. Because the What I Want To Do When I Grow Up was sort of sorted years and years ago. While Kirk saw university as a means to an end (and a bit of entertainment on the way - dude DID love to get stuck in to the odd academic debate), for me it was the end itself. I loved it - all of it. I was a dusty old history major reveling in things like how changes in illumination techniques reflected changes in politics and philosophy during the middle ages (genuine essay) or what the development of the romantic approach to landscape gardening in England - most popularly represented by the works of Capability Brown - said about British political philosophy vs French of the same or just earlier period (honors thesis! Try to out-nerd THAT, bitches!!).

So while getting to the angsty point of deciding that maybe yes I should think a little bit about what I wanted to DO and not just where I didn't want to BE was very hard and time-consuming, actually deciding what I wanted to do was easy.

The astute will notice that there is a slight trend in the above two essays, and the history academic nerds will spot that I tended toward the fringe of history... cultural or physical history. In other words, I like the bits and bobs people leave behind, and I'm interested in the story those things tell while other (I've heard the term 'pure' bandied about) historians like events. It's a large world, we can all be friends.

BUT

Fact is, I like stuff. I like looking at THINGS and PLACES and noodling out what happened there. In other words, I'm right on the boundary between two disciplines - history, and archaeology, and, frankly, I already had a degree in one and the science and practical nature of the other was making all my nerdy little antennae (do nerds have antennae??) just HUM.

So, it wasn't too hard to realize that I really, really REALLY really, truly and most absolutely, wanted to go back into grad school and get an advanced degree in archaeology.

I enjoyed that easy bit, I really did. 'Cause then we were right back into the hard bit again which was that I had to... gulp, actually apply for graduate school.

No really now, think about that.

I'm not the normal age for grad school - I'm way older. I haven't been an undergrad for ages. The small bit of post-grad work I've done is not remotely related. Also I'm way older. And...um, I'm older?

Also, I knew where I wanted to go, and those schools weren't by any means small-potato schools. Which meant I had to send off my... um, stuff, like my ancient old dusty undergrad records, AND letters of recommend, AND AND AND some writing samples that might possibly be applicable and not make the evaluation committee secretly make copies so they could hand them around at department cocktail parties as ice-breaker jokes.

What I'm trying to say is that, for me, a class 1-A certified perfectionist with a double major in PANIC WORRYING this was a little difficult.

True to form I spent two months writing my two samples which took the following pattern:

1) IDEA! Is brilliant! Am very pleased. Tell everyone how fab ideas is. Begin research

2) Research is FUN! Also research has many and varied paths that one can rabbit down and get lost in. This is GOOD because it is RESEARCH and not at all being distracted by shiny things.

3) Writing. Writing is FOUL. The ideas are foul. Also stupid. Also wrong. Totally wrong. And unoriginal. Odd how many people have written about this wrong idea - stupid people. How could they not see how wrong it is.

4). Fine. Write it anyway. It doesn't matter. Deadlines approach (artificial but I am a slave to my own expectations). Crank it out, there's no hope, it's all useless and they will all laugh and reject you and it will be in a kind letter which is the WORST because you have to supply all the rude adjectives they totally really will mean to say about your work but are too kind to really say outright. But at least it's done, first draft, finished. Don't look at it because it REEKS.

5) Edit. Not... as bad... as I thought. There's actual cogent thought here - only now and then, mind you, but it's there. It might be... okay. maybe.

6) Submit. EXCEPT IT'S NOT OKAY. Not now I've sent it! There are sure to be MASSIVE holes in the argument. Surely someone else has thought of that and REJECTED it already! Probably someone related to that program. Probably the person who is reading it RIGHT NOW.

It's fun, it is, being a perfectionist!

However, I had a couple aces up my sleeve. I had a fabulous man who taught two classes for me - Tropes, and Style Analysis. He runs the arroyo paths through the city with a group of guys who call themselves the Sons of Ditches. He claims to be utterly incapable when it comes to technology, but he writes a Weekly Wonk and can be found on YouTube. And yes, I'm linking, and I'm boosting, and I'm totally suggesting you check this guy out because he not only has a love for language, he has a voice that makes you love it too. (Honestly, have a listen to that third link, if nothing else for an important introduction to The World's Worst Poet).

I also had a woman who delights me, terrifies me, and inspires me. She is in her 80's now, and stands (physically) under five foot tall, but she is truly amazing. A friend of mine went to a conference with this woman and found himself following in her wake as ripples of awed comments spread around her (is that HER? I think it is... is she presenting? She's THERE! I want to... would she mind if I?). He said it was the closest he would get to being a groupie. She is at work on a book on Beowulf that is so revolutionary the Oxford University press has, as I understand it, backed out of publication because she's being too radical. That delights her and infuriates her. She has kept me busy chasing down images from so-and-so's psalter and whoozit's prayer book to support her arguments and I have loved every single moment of it. She rocks my world.

So I don't think it's a coincidence that after I went through the umpteen screens of fill-in-the-blank, and I (trembling) uploaded my two sad essays, and provided scans of my ancient undergrad transcripts, after all that, when my dear Tropist on the one hand, and my delightful Beowulfist on the other had entered their letters of recommendation, it took less than 24 hours for both my first choice schools to send acceptance letters.

So there it is.

That's the Big Plan.

I'm going to go back to school - to grad school. I'm enrolled for post-grad work in archaeology (specifically Medieval archaeology) at a very good school in the UK.

And I'm unbelievably excited.

And terrified.

Truly, deeply, terrified.

But excited. Really.

Big Doings, Part 2

Part 1 is here.

To sum up - suddenly facing kid-less-ness + having the means to kinda/sorta do what I like (within rather a lot of reason) + a certain amount of responsibility not to waste the opportunity (read: LOTS OF RESPONSIBILITY) = PANIC.

It's important to point out though that item 3 in the above equation wasn't there from the start. The enormous relief of having a steady income was so overwhelming that it took a while to recognize the complexities of it all. In fact it took over a year of slow but inexorable realization. That complicates things rather a lot.

So, just coping with items 1+2, I started to plan. Tentatively. Baby steps. Weency little cautious plans that went, sort of, 'gosh, I could... move. Away. From here. Somewhere else.' and then blossomed into, 'like, say, somewhere else?' and solidified (in a weak-jello sort of way) to, 'I could... um... move out of the country. Maybe. OR NOT, you know...' and I tried to think of what I wanted to do, but - and I don't want this to sound melodramatic or woe-is-me-ish or anything, it's just how it was - I hadn't thought of what I wanted to do for years. And I don't mean I passively didn't think of what I wanted, I actively didn't think about it, I spent great time and energy and effort NOT think about what I wanted because what I wanted was unreachably impossible.

Turns out that if you put that much work into something you get really, really good at it and it's rather hard to stop.

Silly, isn't it? But I was finding it nearly impossible to even figure out what I wanted to do much less articulate it in a way that was actionable. For a while the best I came up with was a list of DON'T wants which is actually worse than useless as: first, you can't act on a negative and second, making that list had the unfortunate effect of making me feel like I'd DONE something and therefore could stop worrying about it all.

ANYWAY, and keeping in mind I'm skipping whole novels worth of stuff here (be grateful), it came to the point where I had a single thought: leave; which had been slightly fleshed out: go somewhere fun. And it stayed there for a while until point 3 began to make itself loudly and clearly known. Just going somewhere wasn't enough.

Also I realized that 'go somewhere fun,' is a plan that works for the preparation process and the actual flight but as soon as you're landed and settled the plan, it is done, and one is hurled right back into BUT WHAT DO I DO NOW territory. I mean, you're somewhere fun, but Monday through Sunday you still kind of need to have a purpose, you know? I am not, in other words, a person who can look endless vacation in the face and survive the experience.

Bored yet?

Right, so again, leaving lots of things out, and much angst and stuff and worry and stress, I finally reached a point where I could begin to think not about a Plan, but about what a plan means. I started to actually look at this, this Whadda Ya Gonna DO thing as more than a burden and recognized it in addition as an opportunity.

A mid-life renaissance if you like.

I finally asked not what I wanted to do, but what I wanted to be. I tried to sort out what I valued, what was important to me, what I was passionate about.

I tried, badly, slowly, and with a great many mis-steps, to get to know myself again.

Big Doings, Part 1

Okay, enough with the foreshadowing already.

I didn't MEAN to have it hang on so long, but the trouble is that as soon as I started to write up what's happening I found I needed to explain something and that led to explaining MORE and I realized I might as well just give up and write that damn memoir I've been meaning to write.

So I'm going to try and compromise by explaining enough but not too much - sort of genteel wading rather than drowning sort of thing.

Right.

So the thing is that these kids of mine have done the unthinkable and grown up. I know. I've talked to them about it and they're very apologetic and all but seem unrepentant. What's REALLY stupid though is that apparently this eventuality never really occurred to me. I mean it did in THEORY, and I was all for it, cheering them on as it were 'cause I'm all about them getting independent and having adventures and generally going out and living life all over the place. But what hadn't really popped into my head apparently was that them growing up and leaving and all that meant they were growing up and leaving. In other words I had spent all my time and thought an energy on what it meant for THEM and none at all on what it meant for ME.

Because I'm stupid like that.

So first one child flitted off in one direction and then another wandered away in another and I was looking at just one remaining child - one ginormous, rather good-looking and not-so-much-a-child person - and I realized something. For the first time in years and years and YEARS I can choose to do something that I want to do and do it. Because I want to. Just me. For me. Alone. Aloooooooone.

Wow.

I mean. Wow.

I don't want to say I've been this selfless martyr to parenthood 'cause that's blatantly untrue. I'm as selfish as the next person - probably selfish-er really. It's just that this parenting gig just comes with the rider that the needs of the whole dictate the needs of the one. They just do. You don't get to decide you want to, for example, go on a two year soul-finding tour of outer Mongolia and whiz off and do it. The value of soul-finding has to be weighed against the cost to everyone else you're responsible for and so, often the soul-finding is shelved.

Until the little buggers become independent that is.

So there I am, face to face with my OWN independence and veering wildly between excitement (I can do whatever I want [within reason]!) and terror (I can do whatever I want???) and I realized that I had no idea, not the slightest inkling of a clue, what I was going to do, because for the past several years I hadn't wanted to do anything and I had allowed being a parent - an inadvertent single parent - to consume everything else.

But it's more complicated than that.

When Kirk went missing our family was immediately thrown into major financial difficulties. He had been the main earner - I was a contractor and only did jobs I was really interested in (because his salary gave  me that luxury. It was irresponsible. I deeply, DEEPLY regret it). Because we had had children so young and so early, because we had chosen the things we had chosen, we were not in debt at all but neither did we have much savings. Certainly not remotely enough to live on. The financial worry was horrible. It was... indescribable, and it lasted for years. It wasn't until the investigators gave me a certificate of Presumption of Death of a Citizen Abroad that I was even able to collect social security for my kids and have a small sense of breathing room. But that would stop when they all graduated high school. I had a job, and one I liked, but it didn't pay as well as contracting had (but it was steady) and it was in a city I hated, a city I had spent far too much time being terribly unhappy.

But then, because of a woman who became deeply interested in Kirk's story, a lawyer who specializes in cases like mine contacted me about pursuing a claim I had filed years before (under the Longshoreman's act for the legal minded types). I was convinced the claim was fruitless, and of course I didn't have the resources to pursue it anyway so I hadn't even thought about it beyond doing the small bit I could to publicize the issue for other families who COULD benefit from it. This lawyer however felt it was a good case and he kindly took it on. Months later, and to my enormous surprise, he was successful.

So suddenly I found myself with not only a solid investment account (back payment), but a steady monthly income. Not enormous, not ridiculous, just steady and reliable.

I don't think it's possible to express how that felt - the deep, deep relief, physically and mentally, of a stress and burden that was so familiar I had forgotten how enormous it was until it was gone.

But.

This money is not just bi-weekly checks. It carries so much more with it. It is a recognition by the government of what Kirk was doing - a small bit of awareness on their part that it happened, even if we still don't know WHAT happened. Even more than that, it is money that is inextricably linked to his disappearance and his death.

It is, in other words, money with an obligation. At least to me. I am deeply, enormously grateful for it, but I also feel absolutely that it is not to be wasted.

So, that's where I found myself about six months ago. My children were leaving. I had spent far too long avoiding being myself and no longer could (or should) do so. I needed to figure out who I am now, and what I wanted to be and do going forward. And I had the means, within reason, to do so.

Part II coming soon.

Aggressive

A month or so ago I had dinner with a couple of friends, women I like enormously. We had a great evening and spent hours talking about all sorts of things: politics, history, literature, higher education, religion. It was that sort of evening, you know, where your brain is fully on and engaged and everything is interesting and you just buzz with the energy. At the end of the evening I walked with one of those women to her car since it was on the way to my own and she said, 'you know, I thought it was a bit aggressive of you to say you're an atheist.'

It startled me so much I didn't really know what to say. I mumbled something about being sorry it appeared that way and we said a friendly good bye. But it's stuck with me, what she said, and it keeps rolling around in my brain trying to find a place where it fits, where I can understand it.

To clarify:

We had been talking about politics and, naturally, how religious beliefs are playing out at the moment. This woman knows I was raised Mormon and wanted me to explain a bit more about Mormonism and Mitt Romney. I answered the shallower questions as best I could and then was asked where my beliefs are now. I answered the way I always do, simply and cheerfully that I'm an atheist. Because I am. Because I don't see any problem with that. A-theist. Without belief in God.

I didn't leap up, thump my chest and declaim, 'THERE IS NO GOD.' I didn't say, 'I don't believe in YOUR God,' because that would have been rude and aggressive. Heck, I didn't even volunteer the information, I was asked. But somehow, my lack of belief in any god, the fact that I'm hardwired NOT to have spiritual experiences, is in and of itself aggressive. My lack of belief is an affront to believers.

Mind you, the woman who asked me (a wonderful woman, an absolutely charming woman, an amazing, brilliant person) has, in my hearing, frequently prefaced her statements with, 'as a Christian...' (although only where it is genuinely applicable) She has several very beautiful religious icons on the walls of her home and in her office at work. She wears her faith openly. She would, I think reasonably, be startled to hear that doing so is an act of aggression.

Now, proselytizing? Possibly aggressive - that's taking your belief and actively presenting it to or even pushing it on a non-believer. Dragging your belief into conversation at every turn whether relevant or not? Mildly aggressive and certainly irritating after a while. But simply stating, when asked, what your private stance on God or gods is?

I have to think that my friend found it aggressive simply because I used the word atheist.

Which is exactly why I use it.

Because I reject that idea. I reject that my lack of belief is an affront to anyone else. I reject that a-theists are also a-moral or a-cultural or any of the other *without* labels that get attached. I reject that humanity requires belief in a deity to be compassionate or empathetic or kind or loving. While I will not shove my lack of belief in anyone's face, I will be open and happy and reasonable about owning the description 'atheist' as part and parcel of who I am, in the hopes that people who know me will add their experience of me to the negative image of 'ATHEIST' that has been constructed in their minds. Is that aggressive?

I know non-believers get into all sorts of knots over the meaning of atheist vs agnostic. I know there are people on one side who feel that NO ONE is an atheist (as you can't 'know' a negative) an on another who feel atheism is the natural state of humans. Honestly, I don't really care. To me it's quite simple. An atheist is one who just doesn't have a belief in a god. That's all. I don't say I KNOW FOR SURE there is no god of any kind, I just don't have a belief in one. There might be one, or a few, or a billion gods, but I lack belief in any definable deity (ie one with identifiable characteristics), and I cannot conceive of believing in an entity without definition.

My friend, by the way, defines herself as agnostic, which she said is a non-aggressive stance. I am too. I am a-gnostic (lacking knowledge) about the existence or non-existence of a god or gods. I simply don't know. There are particular beliefs about gods that I am fairly sure are logically unsupportable, but that does not mean that out of all possible ideas of god I am certain that all are wrong.

So I am an agnostic atheist.

Over dinner, once I had skimmed over the very basics of Mormon beliefs the questions started flying thick and fast. The thing about Mormonism is that non-Mormons sometimes find it terribly intriguing (what with the polygamous background, the Book of Mormon, and possibly most of all the sacred underwear [aka holy jim-jams]) so I found I was answering questions about the nature of Mormon heaven (pyramid structure), eternal progression, temple ordinances for the dead, Mormons and feminism, living prophets, restoration of the True Gospel, Mormon priesthood and all sorts of bits and bobs. Both of my friends are very intelligent women and their questions were pointed and probing, and they were not satisfied with superficial explanations of Mormon doctrine. At the end of a lively  hour my Greek Orthodox friend pushed back her plate, took a sip of wine and looked at me fiercely.

'Well,' she said. 'No WONDER you're an atheist.'

I laughed. I'm an ex-Mormon (or former Mormon, or post Mormon) by heritage, an agnostic atheist by nature. But not, I hope, aggressive.

Planning how to Plan the Plan I need in Order to Plan Things

So Rather Big Things are happening [foreshadowing, the return!] in just about every dark and dusty corner of life as I know it, and I find that I'm swinging between constant low-level anxiety (punctuated, for variety, with full on panic) and a weird giddy euphoria that had me walking down the hall at work this week making a high-pitched little eep under my breath and grinning in a way that was probably eerily reminiscent of Lizzie B. just before she picked up her hatchet.

The euphoria I understand, mostly, although it's worryingly buzzy. It feels like what I imagine one feels when imbibing illicit substances (strict Mormon upbringing. I haven't even inhaled - except for the second-hand type of inhaling that was inevitable if one walked the halls of my high-school) It makes me feel guilty even though I wouldn't have the first clue where to go to BUY illicit substances (other than my old high school. And Holland). So the euphoria isn't actually as enjoyable as you'd think. Stupid strict Mormon upbringing - spoils everything.

The anxiety is more interesting though and it's taken me a few weeks to figure out what it is. It's a lack of Plan. I like a good plan, me. One might say I'm a wee bit - just a weency bit mind you - a wee bit of a control-type person. I like lists, lists that are neatly printed out on lined yellow paper with little arrows next to the items that are particularly important. You know where you are with a list. A list marshals things and sets them down and looks at them strictly and lets them know they're going to toe the line Or Else. Mind you, I usually then toss the list because I've forgotten that it was THAT list, or I lose it in with the pile of a dozen or so half-used yellow note-pads that are neatly stacked on my office shelf. Or I transcribe it into my phone, putting it into the right calendar date for deadlines and feeling really organized and clever, and then forget to turn on reminders so three days later I'm looking at my calendar wondering why I have something scheduled for last Sunday when I clearly remember spending the day watching Premier League and trying to decide if I have a logical reason for not liking Liverpool or if it's just a random and meaningless prejudice. But! Making the list makes me happy because then I have Done something and that is a soothing, if utterly unjustified feeling of accomplishment and control to have.

I do have a plan. For me. Sort of. I have a general sort of plan - although it's actually a pretty scruffy sort of thing with rather massive holes in it regarding major things like DATES or PLACES or DEADLINES. The scruffiness is causing some of this anxiety, but not all of it. No the problem is that while I can plan my plan, there is a LOT of other changery type stuff going on that is not MY change and, for the first time in a very, very long time the planning for that change can't be done by me.

I realized a couple of days ago that, while I was never what I would call a helicopter-type mum (my children might do a bit of scornful laughing at this point but they are WRONG), the thing about having kids is that there is a large bit of your brain that is devoted to Knowing the Plan. Knowing which kid has a project due and when the next practice for the other kid will be, and who has to have cupcakes to bring in and who needs to call four friends to set up that service thing and the billion jillion trillion things that make up a kid's life these days. Knowing that stuff, and doing the appropriate worrying about whether the damn kid is on top of it all, is IMPORTANT, and while the details change over time (quantity and consistency of poo, for example becomes - thank goodness - far less important, while complete grasp of the finer points of logical argument construction looms large), the attention and worry remain the same. For YEARS.

And I'm not saying I have stopped worrying about my kids. You don't do that. But I have had to unclench my firm grip on the reins of their lives and hand them over. I'm still working on that actually. I think I had in mind a sort of slow hand-over type thing, like where I would let up the pressure on one hand just a tiny bit and the child involved would maybe be allowed to respectfully lay a finger on the leather of the rein. They seem to have had a different idea and it's been more like they grasped the reins happily, shouted something like 'YEEEHAW!' and are in the process of galloping off full tilt.

So the anxiety, I realized, is not that anything's wrong - actually they're all being frighteningly mature and responsible - it's that I'm aware in the back of my mind, all the time, of this Great and Enormous Change going on and all of my highly trained Mum-ish ninja planning senses are quivering and tense and ready to spring out with The Plan, only it's not my plan to make anymore. It's theirs, their lives and their plan and their journey and adventure they are mapping out. I am a ninja-planner on full alert with nowhere to go. It is a bit uncomfortable. However, I'm hoping that coming to this rather obvious realization will maybe unclench some of that planning-preparedness tension.

In the mean time though, I think I'll go make a few lists. Just in case.

Sorting Derailed by MUCUS

I have a friend who has deep and irrational loathing for certain words and one of them apparently is MUCUS. I discovered this because I was explaining to her how the last week or so has gone and, 'cause I make with the words yo, I was being descriptive and elegant so I used the word MUCUS and she went AUGH! I HATE THAT WORD! And then we spent a happy 15 minutes derailed into just why she hates that word and how it makes her feel (it involves a very detailed sensation that might or might not include slugs and nakedness) and all about OTHER words she hates [and I admitted that I hate the word classy because it sounds like the complete opposite of what it's supposed to mean so it grates me when someone uses it in all seriousness, BUT if used with irony it's actually pretty good - in moderation]. Then I threatened to use MUCUS in a blog title and she actually gasped, and I swear if that woman had been wearing pearls she would totally have clutched them, and she said, 'you WOULDN'T' and I said, 'I WOULD,' and she said, 'but I READ your blog, you WOULDN'T,' and I said 'Oh now you KNOW I'm gonna just to make you squirm.' And then she may have cried and run off saying she was going to tell.

But I didn't do it to be mean, I did it out of journalistic integrity, because this last week there was much MUCUS...

 

... MOIST MUCUS.

 

Sh's gonna totally kill me.

Anyway - it appears that a rogue alien plant form has appeared around my city (seriously, someone said they had NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE) and it's everywhere, and it's the veriest bitch to weed out, and apparently it also produces gobsmackingly enormous quantities of Killer Pollen. Because, although I had huge numbers of days off last week in which I truly intended to get simply enormous amounts of sorting and organizing and getting-rid-of-stuff-ing done, I instead spent the vast majority of it on my bed half-heartedly reading light-weight 1930's British mysteries and making really horrific and offensive noises.

Because of all the MUCUS.

Sorting::Sorted

There are Big Things happening 'round here which make for Big and Rather Irritating Jobs to Do including trying to reduce the contents of a four bedroom house to two suitcases and a carry-on (this is called FORESHADOWING).

Last week the spare room - the weird garage conversion that is generally used for storage and as a place to keep the bike trainer - got a thorough going-through. Today it's my bedroom closet.

It's not that I'm new to moving - I've moved far too many times. It's that this time, with the need to reduce and pare everything down to the bare essentials, really changes how I look at the things I have.

The books, for example. For the past months I've kept (mostly) to a strict diet of e-books only. If I can't find it on e-books then I don't buy it (with the exception of a whole slew of research books that ONLY come in traditional format, darn 'em). But there are all of those books I've carted around for years and years - the Greek and Latin lexicons (a Middle Liddel for those who know the term, and the most un-short of the Lewis and Shorts); the out-of-print books on Faberge which are dog-eared from use but haven't been cracked open in ages; the small selection of  Loeb editions; the weird set of family books - does anyone else have family books that aren't useful or valuable or even read through but are heirlooms for reasons no one really can explain? The books that were in the spare room were easy to go through, although I admit I totally took the painless route and assumed that my anthro son and daughter and my daughter's linguistic fiance would want the volumes on the history of English. It helped not to have to throw those out but lumber the kids with that choice.

Now I have to dig into my own closet which should be easy, but there are the small boxes at the bottom that have jumbled bits of jewelry - totally meaningless really but dragging along this whole legacy of having been worthless pieces in my mother's jewelry box, then mine, then this sort of sad, tatty end-of-life in a plastic box on the floor of a closet. It's so tempting to shove the responsibility for throwing those out onto my own kids. Why should I toss the single silver-and-turquoise earring that my grandfather may (or may not) have made himself? Make the next generation make that call.

But there's part of me that finds this whole process really invigorating and freeing, and that part of me doesn't want to burden my poor kids with a set of Bab's Ballads in really horrible condition or a tangled mass of bad quality rhinestones mixed up with broken bits of silver chain and an enameled heart that I once wore to a dance where their dad may or may not have met me (only to forget me again, as I did him). I don't want to hang these remnants of memories around their necks. I want them to start as fresh as possible, as close to clean and new as they can. And I want, or sometimes I want, the same for me.

So I'm going to keep riding that line. I'll chuck the ten varied suits, even though I've hung onto three of them for ages and ages just because Kaj bought them for me and they remind me that he always believed in my abilities. I have that memory; the clothes don't matter. I'll bundle up the horribly out-of-date lace dress that he bought with the proceeds of sacrificing some of his Soviet memorabilia, and I'll keep it safe, but I'll give away the gorgeous navy dress that is now sadly dated and that I only held on to because we bought it when we couldn't really afford it but Kaj loved the way I looked in it.

The closet will be mostly done today. I'll save out the few things my daughters might fit - darn one for being taller than I, and her sister for being better endowed than I - and the rest I'll cheerfully stuff into bin bags so they can be donated. I hope someone wants them; I hope someone needs them and loves them. I'll be glad when they're gone.

There are other things that I'm putting off. My work has a ridiculous policy that means before I can resign I have to take a huge chunk of leave time off. It's my own fault - accumulated leave is such an indictment, indicative of badly placed priorities. It's annoying, but I can take those hours of forced holiday and pour them into this endless process of detaching from Things, including the monstrous task of either scanning and trying to rescue family photos that were damaged, nearly destroyed in a flood, or throwing them out and letting them go.  My office, which has become a nearly un-used shrine to those photos, will have to be tackled eventually.

But at the end I'll be left with a small anchor of boxes that my loving and patient children will store for me, and with two suitcases, probably packed with new clothes, clothes without any baggage attached of where they were bought and for whom and why, just clothes, clothes that will be appropriate for this next thing I'm going to do.

It's getting there that is so... interesting.