travel

I don’t know who among you reading this will be shocked and who will stand up and yell ABOUT DAMN TIME, WOMAN.

I’ve been facing this decision for some time, and through a multitude of tiny steps I inched my way toward it, nailing it down by unofficial degrees, but never being brave enough to take a step that would commit me fully and financially. I seeded the ground earlier this week, not explaining to my friends what was going on but saying “if I don’t commit by the weekend, beat me senseless.”

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Oddly, it wasn’t as horrible as I expected. I think I half-expected the potential housekeeper to come in, blanch at the horror, and say in hushed tones, We can make it right … for a price!

It wasn’t anything like that, really. We talked about the square footage of the house, and we talked about how frequently I needed help, and some of the crazier chores I needed help with, and what day of the week was best.

All those antacids and it ended up totally being a business transaction. Which was exactly what I needed. I’d put aside the thought of dealing with this issue while I was in Colorado, and I was so slammed after getting home that I didn’t have much time to obsess over hiring household help.

I made the leap. I hired her.

It has been a hectic few months. Travel enough and you have this constant, vague sense of displacement; wake up, and you wonder for a moment, where am I today? You are frequently a timezone ahead, or a flight behind, or some combination of the two, and every hotel room has an alarm clock that works in a slightly different way.

I am trying to get back into the rhythm of life-at-home. I am trying to learn to pace myself on weekdays, to leave time for therapy and other things, and to cook mightily on weekends. A couple of crockpots full of food on a weekend makes a much saner week.

I am — solitary, these days. I am aware that I really need to get out, maybe work from a coffeeshop for a half day or so, maybe see a movie on a weekend, but the truth is that I've had so few home hours in the past month or so that I'm just not ready to emerge yet. I know I should suggest to Jeff that he get out of the house, even if I'm not ready to just yet.

I finished the top for Pentagon papers tonight. I don't have any photos, because it's dark and it's late and it's Friday and … do I really have to make more excuses here?

… yeah, thanks.

I need to flip the quilt top over, trim any seam allowances that are too large, and then press it … but of course, pressing it means re-filing all of the fabric that I've pulled out this week to finish PP. It does seem like every round of tasks comes with seventeen codicils these days, but it is what it is.

I'll clean off the ironing board, trim the seam allowances, clean off the sewing table, pin the quilt, and get to work.

I'm actually mourning the lack of more pentagons to make — I never thought I'd say it, but life in its current state is often a lonely and solitary beast, and those pentagons have kept me company in a lot of strange places. I toted this project to …

Travel looks glamorous for the first thirty seconds, especially when it’s work travel. New places! New things! The implication of being skilled enough that you need to take your skills to the people who need them!

Except it isn’t really like that. It’s looking at your cats and saying, “Shit, honey, I’m so sorry. Please don’t bite the cat-sitter. I have to go to the airport again…”

I knew I'd flown one too many times this past week when I walked up to the coffee stand and said, "Oh, when did the coffee machine break? It was working when I was here a few days ago…"

I spent a few days in Washington DC, at Matthew's house. It was an actual vacation, albeit a short one. I felt vaguely ashamed at how I roosted on the couch for the entire weekend, barely moving, but I wasn't ashamed enough to actually get up and do something about it.

My vantage point:

It was a good, and needed, rest. My unnamed pentagonal hand-sewing project, code-named Bow Tie Pasta, got plenty of love. We watched the entirety of the UK version of The Office (♥), the Rifftrax for Inception, and more. It was absolutely what I needed.