My life feels a bit fragmented right now. I was going to talk about my writing - I've been having the dickens of a time writing at all, and when it do it's random stuff that doesn't seem to fit into any of my working worlds. I have all these story fragments and I don't know what to do with them. As I was thinking about that, and trying to solve it, I realized it had to do with life in general for me. It's been a wild year.
My son and I were talking about how we can't believe it's already August. He said he feels like it should be just starting summer, not getting ready to go back to school. We pulled up in front of a grocery store, and there was a Halloween display spilling out onto the sidewalk in front of it. I'm not ready for that. We decided that we had so much disruption this spring, we lost track of the days and suddenly! it's nearly the end of summer. Or would be, if we weren't so far south. That's part of it. We moved from one area of the continent to another and our internal sense of seasons is off. The cool rainy welcome to Texas that was so unnatural made it feel like spring far longer than a normal year would have. With the move, and my shift schedules changing, then changing again three months later, my sleep schedule is off and my sense of passing time is as well.
On top of that, I don't know where things are. The rolling pin, from my pie post. Books I want to refer to, which are... well, over half my library is in storage for the foreseeable future. My other pair of sneakers. Honestly, I'm not sure *where* those are. I'll find them, I hope, I have one, I just like backups. It's silly stuff mostly. All of that contributes to this feeling of my life being torn to pieces. And the biggest empty hole of all is not having my husband here with me.
I'm hopeful it won't be too much longer. A walkthough with the realtor is planned for Wednesday, so he can show her what's been done. We've had some help there from wonderful friends, since a contractor was not available for love or money. We hadn't anticipated that, back in April when the decision was made to move. I left him behind to do the work, and the realtor balked at selling the house as-is. I told the First Reader that if she's not willing to list the house on Wednesday, to fire her and find someone who will. It's as good as it's going to get, we're pouring money into it, and we need it gone. At that point, when the albatross is set free, all he has to do is wrangle the little house where we'd lived before the kids came back into our life. It was my writing office briefly, and a launchpad for both the Ginja Ninja and the Jr. Mad Scientist. Now, it'll be the last tie to Ohio and when the First Reader sells it, we'll all be in Texas and coming home.
It's a strange feeling, this. I'm used to it, in my own way. It's not just that I've made a major move three times in the last decade, from NH to OH and now to TX. Between Dad being Air Force, and my parents having itchy feet, I had 19 addresses by the time I was 18 years old. I don't remember some of them - too small! - but I have memories of Florida, where Dad was stationed at Homestead AFB. I can remember Nebraska, not from being born there, but traveling through to see family. Oregon, of course, and Washington, and camping in Northern California. Sliding off the road in the Yukon Territory coming back from a Dentist visit in Whitehorse. Traveling over the Chilcoot pass in a whiteout with my Uncle driving white-knuckled and bent forward trying to see past the hood of his car. The amazing three-story antique shop specializing in antique tools in Liberty, Maine. Hiking in New Hampshire, and Vermont, in the warm pine forests up until we broke out of the treeline and into the fogs and icy winds of the peaks. Driving the Blue Ridge Parkway on my way to college as a teenager with a friend.
Fragments of memories, mental images, so many places. So much I've seen, and yet, I still have more than I'll ever manage to see. Or to write. I never lack for ideas, just impetus. And the discipline to weave the working worlds until I've tucked in all the loose ends. I need to work on that, not just pick threads out of thin air and start spinning like I've been doing recently. It may have to wait until my Evil Muse is here, though. It's not that I can't write without him. It's that I use him as a sounding board and I'm not good at that on my own.
I'll get the puzzle put back together. Well, mostly. There are always missing pieces. I have some gaps in my memories, and I'll never fill them all in. It's weird, knowing that time passed, but you... weren't there. That's another story, though. Maybe not one for the blog. Perhaps in a few years I'll be ready.
Tonight I think I'll wrap this up, having warmed up my fingers with typing whatever fell out of my head, and maybe I'll be able to write something coherent on a story. I mean, if I can do a short in, um, thirteen days, I'll meet a deadline for an anthology? Eep.