It’s May (happy Beltane, if you didn’t get wished one yesterday) and there’s a double sale going on. So the month has started out brilliantly, but I can’t believe we’re almost halfway through the year. Pandemic time has all but broken me. I mean, regular time was bad enough, but one trauma after another since 2016 has burned up and burned out plenty of my coping mechanisms.
The dogs got me up early this morning by being obstreperous brats, and have continued in that vein. I don’t mind much–it was the sort of weekend where I need a few days to recover, though I didn’t do work per se. A lot got done around the house, mostly things I’ve been putting off, which was great on the whole…but not very good for my nerves.
So I’ll take it easy and work a half-day, maybe. It’s time to go back to Hell’s Acre, and also time to get the second Sons of Ymre put to bed. Fortunately I don’t have to do it all today, I just have to make a stab or two. A few wild pokes and the rest of the day (what remains of it) can be spent…I don’t know, reading on the couch or something. I’m working my way through Anaïs Nin’s diaries, (currently on volume 2) and while sometimes they’re maddening, I also enjoy them very much.
I put off reading them for a long time. I suspect I was waiting for this great current uncertainty, so I could read her own great uncertainty in 1937. Knowing what’s coming and whispering “oh honey, no” is oddly comforting. Life goes on, even amid *waves hands* all this. And it’s interesting to see her fall in and out of love; sometimes I want to reach through the pages and shake her. “Anaïs, my dear, he’s just using you, wake up.” Like reading old letters from a young, terribly damaged friend. Then she’ll write about writing, and describe some of my own experience so neatly, so exactly, that I’m caught in grinding envy.
All writers know the feeling.
The new office chair is working wonders, at least. I’m sore all over, but the soreness is that of changing how I use my muscles instead of the sharp or grinding agony triggered by how the old chair forced me to sit. I can already feel the results in hip mobility, and my back is loads better. The stabbing pains in my neck have gone away, so that’s great. I am going to have to start yoga on a more-than-occasional basis, though.
I’m getting older, and writing is brutally hard on the physical body just as it is on the emotional or spiritual one. My emotional aches require different medicine, but at least I can ameliorate the physical ones with a new chair and some stretching. Not to mention grow lights and moving some houseplants into the office, which has done me a world of good.
“You’re becoming the filthy old hippie lady you were born to be,” my daughter said with great seriousness, which cracked us both up.
I do have to note that a kneeling or cross-legged meditation chair not only has effects upon back- and neck-aches, but also upon digestion. Peristalsis is either aided or hindered by the position one spends most of one’s day in. You can imagine, and I’ll leave it at that. I suppose I should stop eating breakfast at the desk, too. It was only ever meant to be a temporary time-saving device, not a long-term habit.
If I am very, very focused and get the things on the to-do list done today, maybe I can play hooky with the space story. (Since the werelion thing is out of my hair at the moment.) It’s a great relief to be back at “I’m juggling two paying projects and something weird that delights only me.” Maybe it means I’m healing, or at least adapting.
The coffee has cooled and I’m on the dregs, Boxnoggin is whining urgently down the stairs for the Mad Tortie to come play with him (she will not, she is far too wise for any of his hijinks) and Miss B is ragefully chewing on her own hindquarters because she wants me to stop clickety-clacking and get her goddamn toast crusts prepared. She can’t eat her plain brekkie kibble, oh no, but gods help me if I don’t share a morsel of my own habitual breakfast. On the day I switch back to gruel she will be ever so irritated. “You wish the Miss B to eat porridge? Like the peasants? Jail for Mother. Jail for Mother for one THOUSAND years!”
All our animals use the Miette voice. Some of the houseplants do, too.
Bright sunshine is pouring through my office window, too, which seems like the final insult. I’m off for brekkie, my beloveds. I hope your Monday is pleasant, and if not, at least calm and quiet.
See you around.