doing hard things

a moment of serenity in the greenhouse when i got home.

dang, today was hard. a very long project is about to come to fruition. a year and a half of work. and weirdly, today, one day before launch, we found ourselves in a holding pattern. there was a major bug and the development team was working frantically, and the rest of us just had to wait. finally, the decision was made to just roll back, without really figuring out what the hell caused the bug. and although most of the day was spent waiting and not really doing all that much, damn, it takes a psychological toll. i swear, we're all going to need therapy after this. i am completely wrung out this evening. i was going to keep editing and checking pages, but instead, i'm telling myself that no one will actually read all. the. pages. tomorrow when we launch in the first two languages, so, as the danes say, "det skal nok gå." (it'll be all right) and i'm taking myself off to bed after a long, hot shower and a rather large glass of wine. i'll put a cozy mystery (this time, the royal spyness series by rhys bowen), curl up with a cat and fall asleep. the hard part isn't over yet, but it will all be easier after a good night's sleep. and thank odin for good colleagues. 

fog rolls in

i have the weirdest sense that i do not know how i feel. after two and a half weeks of acute nerve pain, is it getting better? somehow, this morning, i just don't know. it's like i lost my ability to sense myself. it still hurts in my leg, but is it hurting less? can i walk around for a little longer? stand for a little longer in the shower? maybe, but i'm not sure. am i just used to the pain? are my meds helping? do i feel like myself? what does myself feel like? i don't know if it's a medicine-induced fog or if i've simply lost any ability i had to be in touch with myself and my own body. i feel apart. like i'm looking at myself from a distance and i'm not wearing my glasses...

wednesday witterings

i have wasted 24 hours of energy and sacrificed a good night's sleep over the most ridiculous casual vacancy-esque local control-freak, power-hungry, senseless game-playing situation that should never have been a situation. but i always think of these things as fodder for an eventual novel. or at least a memoir. i do wonder when i'm going to get around to writing that? and somehow, just like that, my brain cleared of it sometime this afternoon. possibly because we are having glorious autumn weather - sunny days, just the right temperature, no wind. i am so affected by the weather, both good and bad. and by a new set of possibilities opening up. dare i say there is excitement and hope stirring in the days ahead? and a trip to copenhagen.

stream of consciousness

seriously, wtf? (even molly thinks so)
and she's also a transplant from the midwest.

when you live your life outside of the culture of your birth, no matter how "integrated" and part of things you think you are, there will always be moments where you are smacked up side of the head with the big old stick of feeling you don't belong. it can happen at the grocery store, in traffic, at lunch, at work, when people are late for a meeting or oddly if the stewardess skips your drinks order on a plane. but it's very worst of all when it happens in your home, among those you love and have chosen as your family. and the problem is that you can never really know when that feeling will strike. it's a feeling borne of a complex combination of factors and there's no way that i've found to predict when that combination will be exactly right, or rather, wrong, and it will hit you that you are still an outsider. and when it hits you, everything is magnified. the smallest thing becomes enormous and has the capacity to grow and grow in your mind, crowding out any of the feelings of belonging you may have harbored, and convincing you that they were never real. it's quite horrible, actually. especially because of how little it takes and how that thing can be so random and so subject to the fragile barometric pressure of feelings and hormones and possibly wind speed and temperature and butterflies in the amazon rainforest and the price of corn futures on the chicago exchange. and it's so distressing that all you've built up over such a long time can be so easily smashed and you feel like you're starting all over again and you wonder if you even want to. but you probably aren't, it just feels like that in the moment itself and the moments that follow. but it likely won't last and even as you're in the middle of it and you realize it's a complicated combination of the obliviousness your husband has to extended family matters generally (which is different than not caring, tho' it's hard to see that when you're in this place) and your own sadness that some of those you considered your favorite family members didn't come to sabin's party or even send her a card or offer a proper explanation of their absence, plus your chosen displacement from the culture of your birth and possibly a teency weency touch of pms thrown into the mix, you still find it very hard to be rational and non-emotional about the whole thing. all he had to do was tell you he received a text that his sister had a new baby girl and it would never have happened. this whole strange avalanche of tears and emotions and being reminded that you're an outsider could easily have been avoided, if only you knew what would trigger it. and ironically, you can't even learn from the situation, because something else entirely will trigger it next time. and you'll ride the roller coaster again. and you'll get through it. and probably the good bits of life wouldn't seem so good without the bits that seem pretty awful. and maybe that mid-atlantic feeling is just a permanent state of being.

unfocused monday

oh my, did i lack focus today. even right now, as i'm trying to write this, i'm glancing through pinterest on my laptop as my fingers rest on the keyboard of my big computer. maybe it was a monday thing. maybe it was that my to-do list is of daunting proportions. maybe it was because i didn't shower, but just got dressed and rushed off to my first appointment. it wasn't a kind of you-shouldn't-go-out-in-public-stinky-woman lack of a shower, it was more of a that-would-have-really-cleared-your-mind kind of need for a shower. after my appointment (where i presented a good picture of being on top of things) i was so unfocused, i drove a strange backroads route home, which took me past a dairy where they have a cheese store. i wandered in and bought a huge block of havarti. not planned. then i got back in the car and noticed a nursery and popped in to see if they had any artichokes. they did and i also bought wormwood (tho' i didn't know that's what it was at the time) it's called malurt in danish and has absinthe in its latin name, so i thought "score." i also picked up a chili plant, some lovage, tarragon and sage. also rather unfocused. i stopped by the store to pick up milk and cat litter. i came out with nectarines, crackers, creme fraiche and toilet paper. no milk. no cat litter. unfocused, i tell you. i picked up the child and two of her friends. they ate some nectarines. we went home. we walked in the door and i was reminded of our need for cat litter. so i went to the feed store to buy cat food. i came home with bunny food and chicken food as well. i decided to go to another grocery store, where i would surely remember milk and cat litter, plus it was close to the library, where i needed to pick up a book i ordered. i got there and didn't have my phone with me, where the number of my reservation was, so i had to look at two entire shelves of books for a title that looked like i might have ordered it. it turrned out to be bakhtin's theory of the literary chronotope: reflections, applications and perspectives (apparently this lack of focus thing has been going on longer than i thought). this time, i left the store with milk, sugar, cream, flour, brown sugar, 4 pears, 4 apples and 2 bananas. and again, no cat litter. by this time, i was getting good at forgetting the cat litter (*silver lining*). home again, where i tried to settle in to work. but a restlessness came over me and i couldn't sit still. i went out and planted the herbs and the chili. and gathered a basket of elderflowers to make cordial. that made me feel slightly less restless, but then it was really time to do some work. so i settled in at my desk and then someone came to the door. it involved a lengthy chat and a wander in the yard. as if i needed to wander. and then it was time to make dinner. and husband came home and had a headache, so he had a little lie down. when dinner was ready, i couldn't find anyone, even tho' i called and called. so i ate by myself while i stared at my to-do list with a creeping sense of doom. after dinner, the sun had come out, and husband's headache was better, so we had to take a walk. that helped. at least with the restlessness. but i still only got about 3 hours of work done, when it should have been more like ten. let's hope tomorrow is a little more focused. and that i remember the cat litter.

is negativity just another word for parenting?

it's very hard to be negative in the face of a delightfully cheery bouquet of surprise flowers from a good friend. but i've been pondering negativity of late. mostly because i feel i was recently wrongfully accused of it. and generally speaking, i think i'm a fairly positive person, tho' i will grant that it is hardest to see oneself, so i may not be a good judge. i can be dragged into negativity by my work environment. and i can feel negative.  i have been known to be cynical for comic effect. but generally, i feel myself as a positive person. so it rocked my world a little bit to have my negativity cited as the reason that one of husband's daughters hasn't been here on the agreed weekends for the past few times. and here, i thought she had to work...

i've written before about the challenges of step-parenting - especially when, like me, you intentionally do not take on the step-mother role, thinking that your husband's children from a previous marriage already have a mother of their own and do not need another one. but it's a delicate balance. and sometimes i think that in my desire not to be mother, i end up a bit aloof and cold. which is different than negative, in my view.

but i can also see how a lack of warmth might end up seeming negative. especially when there is a streak of disapproval in me towards the teenager in question. but you see, when i'm awakened at 4:30 a.m. by loud voices and laughter and go out to look and find said teenager on a video chat on her little sister's computer in her little sister's room, while her little sister sleeps, i'm probably not going to be a particularly happy or positive person. so if i'm deemed negative for putting my foot down about such behavior, then so be it.  and if i think it's a bit ridiculous to stay away for a month because you can't take being reprimanded for your thoughtless behavior, then, yes, call me negative. and perhaps even call me parental, which is another thing i'm not keen on.

part of growing up is taking the consequences of one's actions. so i'll accept that i could be deemed to be negative. but i think i also, as an adult, have a right and a duty to draw the line as to what behavior is acceptable at our house and what's not. even if it makes me unpopular.

i guess as long as there are teenagers humans, there will be negative moments in a home. and that's probably just part of life.  so thank odin for good friends who send you flowers that can put you right back in a positive frame of mind.

this too shall pass...

opening doors. we've got open doors galore around here. it's spring, so the doors are literally open to let in the fresh air. we've metaphorically opened the doors to a new house and new jobs and a new school for sabin and for a whole new life. i remember back in november after a conversation with my neighbor about how sometimes you have to close one door to make another one open, how i made a decision about my job in norway. one which closed that door, but was surely the first step in opening all of these other doors.

but i'll admit that the open doors are also very draining. since i've started my new job and we're using this month to basically get moved over to the other side of the country in stages, it feels both like the new life has begun and like it's waiting to begin - i have a foot in each life at the moment. and that uses my energy in a whole new way. everyone always asks me how i find the time for all of my blogging and i always say that it's because i prioritize it. and i did and i can feel that right now i haven't been.

when i'm not properly writing or properly thinking about writing, i begin to feel cramped somehow. and squirmy and uncomfortable. and i feel that way right now, because i haven't had time to do the writing and thinking that i need to do to feel in balance. but it's just this interim phase that we're passing through. life will settle in and i'll settle back into the creative place. it's good to realize that i'm immediately aware of it and also aware of what it is that is a problem. i think previously, i didn't recognize that and i went around in a bit of a fog, feeling anxious and irritated and not knowing why. this time, i know why and i also know that it's just a period that we're in. and that it too shall pass. we just need to close a few of the old doors first.

high anxiety

i'm having the strangest sense of anxiety today. normally, i'm quite a laid-back person and while i can obsessively over-analyze, i generally don't have much anxiety. but today, i'm feeling quite anxious. my stomach is even in knots. it actually started last night, when i suddenly, out of nowhere, worried about husband's flight (he checked in and is fine and all was well, so there was nothing in it), but it's continuing today. and i can't put my finger on a cause. and i can't seem to shake it. i've diffused lavender (thanks TFM), i've gone for a long walk, i've tackled items on my list, i've cleaned up the kitchen, but nothing is working. it's a really strange, waiting, prickly, uncomfortable feeling, yet not related to any specific worry or anything concrete. does this ever happen to you? and how on earth do you get rid of it?