I awakened at two, then at four. I realized by 4:15 that I would not fall back asleep. We know when we can and when we can’t. Our bodies tell us. I got out of bed at 4:45 and headed for the stove and a cup of instant espresso, the kind you buy in a pack of five at Family General. Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.
I once asked my son if he thought I might be a little obsessive-compulsive. Luckily this conversation occurred over the telephone so I couldn’t see the look on his face.
“Mom, I’ve watched you spend fifteen minutes re-arranging the pillows on the couch,” he replied. “And then scold me for sitting down.”
I have to co-host an event which starts just five hours from now. Ten residents of the tiny house community in which I live will open their homes for tours. I spent two days cleaning my house, which includes an intervening four-day work week that produced a resurgence of tiny house clutter. I’ve checked on the other folks as well as I could. I experienced a silly sojourn testing Facebook live. I checked on the layout of the community room. I made mental notes about where to place the chairs for the panel discussion.
I should be sleeping.
Luckily, I don’t have any obligations tomorrow. I know from experience that a full day of chatting about #mytinylife while standing in my tiny kitchen smiling at the #tinycurious and the #goingtinyoneday people will exhaust me. Tomorrow my spastic muscles will clench and my asthmatic lungs will heave. My fluttering heart will skew wonky. My arthritic toes will curl inside my slippers. It will not be pretty.
I should be sleeping.
Instead, I’m wondering about the new doctors whom I’m scheduled to see in the next few months. I’m changing from the Stanford wizards to closer though perhaps lesser angels on this side of the Bay. I’m scrolling through Facebook counting the likes on the video from yesterday’s inaugural deployment of my new tripod. I’m getting current on Josh Pray and his hysterical, often painfully accurate view of life. I’m crying a little about the death of my cousin Jim’s wife Anne’s mother. I’m thinking that sometimes, just sometimes, I wish that everybody whom I loved could live both forever and closer to California, so that they could come sit on my porch and drink dollar store espresso from my chipped mugs.
It’s the sixth day of the sixty-fourth month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
I took this photo yesterday while I was fooling around with my cell phone and the auto-clicker that my son gave me. So many symbols of my life here: My mother-in-law’s ring; the spoon ring that I got by sending 12 Minute-Maid pull-tabs fifty years ago; my niece’s ring; a pen from my law firm; a Chicago coaster. So much joy in my journey.