Post-Funeral Brain Dump
Phew, that was a long week.
I haven’t been getting up early to write, instead sleeping until just before I need to be up for work the past two days, thus no update. Chris’ brother and his family were here until yesterday, so the evenings were taken up with sitting on the deck drinking beer and eating whatever crazy concoction I threw together, while the kids played in the sand and on the swings. Having them here made the weekend bearable, and while I wouldn’t wish for them to move back here (would never happen) I do wish we could all spend more time together. They’re terrific.
My brain is fuzzy, my thoughts a confused tangle of threads, all vying for attention:
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- We have two baby raccoons trying to get into the chicken tractor every day.
- The rabbit has now moved on to the Chard, one leaf per plant, so the decimation of that crop is only a matter of time.
- I haven’t planted enough beans or basil.
- I need to figure out a game plan for alternate work.
- Have to line up child care, September 7 will be here before I know it.
- There’s a mountain of laundry to put away.
- I say too much.
- I miss my family.
- I don’t know how to fit into Chris’ family.
- I love our little house and our land, but wish we could move it closer to my family.
- Every time someone in LA asks me for help now, I want to snidely say, oh sure, you wanted to get rid of our department, but you still want me to rescue you. But I don’t, because that person probably has no idea.
- The growing disconnect at work is making me want to go back to waiting tables.
- I need to refocus that thought on how to generate some freelance corporate writing.
- I’ve had a few ideas about a corporate writing identity/brand for myself, and want to take some time in the next couple of weeks to set up a website.
- Grieving for someone who was so difficult to live with is exhausting. I didn’t think it would be so exhausting. I thought it would be much easier. I was wrong.
- I wonder if he can hear my thoughts now, and find myself apologizing in my head all day, looking up at the sky and around at the trees and thinking, sorry man, but it’s the truth.
- I just realized last night that Father’s Day is Sunday and haven’t done anything for the Dads back home. Shoot.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll have more than one related thought in a row and will be able to string together something more coherent than a demented-sounding list.
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
June 14th, 2007 at 9:01 am
Not demented, just merely overwhelmed.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:10 am
I say too much too. I’m sorry you’re so far away.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Sounds a lot like life at full tilt.
I’m am completely infatuated with the honesty and elegance with which you write…
June 14th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Crap, your head sounds like my head right now. Minus the funeral and other Kelly-specific details.
Sometimes it’s perfect to just get it out of our heads. I kind of feel like doing that right now.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I would be happy to brainstorm with you on any of the writing-related stuff.
Sorry it’s been so hard. Sorry honesty is hard. I mean, it is, isn’t it? But insincerity makes me ache dully for a long time inside. It’s ultimately easier for me to be truthful, even if I’m just talking myself, than to have to untangle words without depth.
Not to turn this around to me. I do that a lot. Honestly.
What is Sept. 7?
June 14th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
In-laws. I assumed it was up to me to ‘fit in’ and then after years of ‘fitting in’ I realized that I had lopped off alarmingly large parts of myself to do it. Dear girl, your list is long enough; put this item on another list along with world peace, saving the planet, etc.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:16 am
being alone with our thoughts can be daunting! Sending you some positive energy…….