Fragmentation

Things I'm grateful for today:

Ok, yes, I have cancer, but it's treatable and has a high success rate. If you want to look it up, it's called papillary carcinoma of the thyroid. I'm trying to see this as a grand leveller of priorities...a get-your-spiritual-act-together message from god. I haven't stopped eating fast food yet, but I'm working on it.

I am a little over two months off of all alcohol. This transition has not been difficult, as the only partying I was doing was at home, with Jeff. Since going off, I've lost about five pounds. I don't miss it very much; in this, I am lucky. One of my colleagues quit around the same time, and he craves it daily.

Teaching is going well, in spite of my post-surgery, scratchy, fade-in/fade-out voice. I love my job. I was so lucky to get this job. I feel liked and respected at work. The coffee is free.

I have an incredible partner in Jeff. We're not at our best right now, as we've sacrificed almost every spare moment for the girls, but I'm working on that. We've been through a lot of hard events: being poor for years, infertility, double-whammy parenthood, moving a lot, and now cancer...and we've done none of it gracefully, but I think we both realize that we couldn't have done half of it with anyone else.

Sophie and Lucy. I am sometimes terrified at the thought of the responsibility, and a lot of times I feel I have no perspective on motherhood, but there they are in their perfect Sophie and Lucy-ness. Today I am wishing they would not climb up on boxes to reach things that were previously safely out of reach. Yesterday one of them crapped in the tub, but it made me laugh because I'm sure it was Sophie. She's that kind of kid.

So today is a low day. I had a breakdown in 1999 over a semi-similar health issue, and this is the closest I've come to feeling like that again. I don't mean to sound scary, but I have been taking some solace in the thought that if I die of this cancer, in some ways it would be a relief from the plateloads of plot I've forced into my life over the last few years. Check, please! How maudlin of me. I also feel that if I weren't taking Paxil right now, I would have to be scraped off the floor, emotionally speaking. So the pill gives me the strength to feel ambivalent about death? Yay.

But I didn't start this blog to kvetch. I would like it to be more like a blues song, you know, the one that helps you transcend blue.

Hope looks to me like:

a rake in the forest
a wooden hot tub (I would rather have this than kitchen counters)
a relaxation cd on my bitty pod (please don't laugh)
a smelly candle
an Edwardian couch
a nice old parlor piano on which I can play maudlin ragtime
a regular revolving door of old friends and new friends who will become old friends

Some people have to force themselves to balance their checkbook or whatever. I have no problem sitting in my Inner Station with my imaginary mega screens broadcasting my net worth, calculating the next move like life is a Chinese puzzle, or like your soul can be metaphorized into a chess game. I have a sick knack for that, like I do for fixing people's resumes or timing the market. What I'm not so good at is enjoying the fruits of my labors. Or just sitting around dreaming. Or creating something unusual, on purpose. Fiddling with no real purpose. Slowing down to do simple things. I have an estranged relationship with food.

Don't confuse this with hedonism. I just want to be more wise.

I would like there to be less electricity in my house, but if I lose my job I will probably become an electrician.

Other good news: I am where I belong (or at least nearly there). I'm close enough to smell the conifers.

Lucy has been carrying a pine cone around for the last few days, which I think is healthy.

The girls woke up at 4 a.m. and the giant moon was setting in the west window like a public service announcement from god. Good thing we'd been working on "moon" all week. You should have seen L's face. Yeah, kid, aren't you glad to be alive?