"God bless the Indian Summer"

It has been so hot. Saturday it was 104, yesterday in the 90s. The Summer is holding on tightly and interrupting our lush Fall life.

It was a busy weekend. Friday I helped my sister and her husband paint, Saturday we helped them move and Sunday I ran errands while Ron taught a poker lesson and did homework. I miss him. Hopefully we will get some time together tonight.

We are redoing our living room. Buying a new couch, two club chairs, and a television wall mount that we are going to hang above our fireplace. We will change the layout and be doing lots of redecorating. I'm excited to get a room set up exactly how we want.

I'm tired, anxious and alone this morning. Oh well.

bee

Ronald is so busy these days. He has school, work, poker coaching as well as trying to help me. Every night he is busy studying. I miss him. Its hard because I don't relax unless I know he is relaxing so I feel rather stressed at the moment.

We need to make an Autumn trip to the beach where we got engaged. I miss it. It has been over a year since we have been there. Its a bit of a drive to get there and we love miniature road trips. Its a beautiful drive with twists and turns and farmland. I just adore it.

In home news we have picked the color for the dining room and kitchen. Its called Russian Blue and is a cold grey-blue which is gorgeous. Now if only we could find some time to paint. I think it will be a few weeks before we can start.

I'm feeling so-so these days. A little muddled, very anxious. Anxiety is really annoying. Its like a constant shot of adrenaline. I'm anxious about driving, earthquakes, Ron dying, getting depressed again. All these little phobias.

crafty

I cleaned and organized my art room after months of it being a little sad unused mess. I even crafted yesterday. I made a big (lumpy) pillow for the dogs. I didn't realize how hard it is to stuff things, especially big things. Its made out of a green thick textured table cloth and tufted in the center with pale pink button.

As my doctor promised, I have gone from depressed to melancholy in the last week. I'm still struggling with finding joy in life, with the reason I am here. I can't find meaning in things like I used to. I can't find satisfaction in anything; this makes me feel different, this makes me feel alone. I feel strange, uncharted, unlike myself, to blame for this. I feel like my lack of satisfaction is my fault. I feel like I want and ask for too much. Is it too much to ask for meaning? Maybe I will never be full. Maybe I am destined to live like this; a robot, a shiftless sneer-eyed downtrodden woman.

clean house

No dust bunnies.

Sparkly kitchen.

Tidy living room.

Made bed.

As you can see, I cleaned yesterday. Now that I did the major cleaning I think it will be easier to do one or two things every few days to keep things tidy. This is the first time I've been able to really clean in about two months so it took a long time to get things looking like this. I love a clean house, it feels so cozy in the evening with the candles lit and the little flowers on the coffee table. I hope my cleaning monologues aren't too boring...

I'm feeling ok today. Tired but not really down. Its nearly the weekend and that's exciting. We have no big plans which is the best. We may paint one of the bathrooms. We will also go read and see the new Tim Burton movie 9.

Our new favorite thing is going to Starbucks to read. Ron is reading The Pilgrims Regress and Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling and I'm reading The Time Travelers Wife, and Lincoln's Melancholy. Its so relaxing to read with him at a little table in the corner with a cup of coffee and the huddle muddle of the people around us. I look outside and watch the palm trees that I remember looking at before we were together. Did I mention the place we go to read is the same place we were at when we first got together? Did I mention that as soon as we got together we both new we would get married? I think we talked about getting married on our second date. Did I mention I'm lucky? Very lucky indeed.

Cleaning lady

Yesterday afternoon we had a cleaning lady come to the house and give us an estimate. She drives up in her brand new Land Rover and gets to work, poking and prodding through our house. She seemed a little surprised at the fixer-upper-state the place is in; wallpaper glue on the walls, old linoleum and drywall aren't very inviting. She said our house was really messy so we would have to pay her extra for the first cleaning. She will cost $200 a month to come every two weeks.

After some more thought I decided to give myself more of a chance to get on my feet and start cleaning again. This morning I went out and bought a planner and a bunch of cleaners. I am using the planner as a cleaning schedule. I think that if I do a load of laundry every day and one other project the house will stay clean.

I didn't realize how emotional cleaning is for me. Having a cleaning lady come made/makes me feel like a failure. My mom really pushed on us the 1950s idea that a woman is in charge of running a tight, clean household. Every morning I would wake up to her deep cleaning the bathrooms, kitchen, mowing the lawn or redecorating. She did this on top of homeschooling us, baking, and cooking homemade dinners practically every night. I am not that ambitious/successful/neurotic. In most ways being different from my mom's ideal is a good thing, in little emotional ways I feel led through the ringer.

Home sweet

I have a love/hate relationship with our house. I love it because of our blue-green and white living room, I love it for its location, for its snug vintage kitchen with the faded orange counters, I love the beams on the ceiling, I love its quiet street and the enormous tree in the front yard. I hate it for its unfinished walls, the holes in the floor, the brown weeds in the yard, the old cracked linoleum and this impending feeling that the roof over the garage is sinking. But its our little bungalow in the midst of an extremely ritzy neighborhood that I feel we don't necessarily fit into, our house definitely does not. That makes me sad and happy at the same time.

Ron and I got food poisoning from some pizza we had the night before last. We both have tummy aches and just feel miserable. Poor Ron had to go teach regardless. I finally want to go grocery shopping but don't know if I can because of the ache. My plans dashed again. There seems to always be something getting in the way of my goals. Oh well.