It started EARLY as I left the house Friday at 4:25 am to meet coworkers to drive north to Wausau for an interview. On the way back we stopped at a restaurant, where I wandered into the gift shop. A Gooseberry Patch cookbook caught my eye. Entitled "5 Ingredients or Less," its simple recipes are arranged by season, and each page has a seasonal decorating tip as well. After previewing a few "autumn" pages, I bought it for some pleasure reading on the 3 hour return trip. I was too exhausted to study the class books in my bag...
So I snuggled into the back seat of a monstrous BMW (the seats recline in the BACK seat!), got out a highlighter, a pen and some post-it notes, and started in. An hour later it occurred to me that I was feeling like "me." A palpable feeling of awakening washed over me.
Recipes, seasonal decor, sitting, perusing...no immediate pressures or deadlines. It was, in a word, blissful. I realized that some parts of me have just been shelved this year as I've gone from activity to crisis to activity to crisis. I simply have not caught up with myself. I've not recovered.
I came home and decided to clean the basement for 30 minutes. Make one little dent. In 2008 the basement had been DONE - completely organized for the first time ever in my adult life. Our new house has great built in storage, and all my seasonal boxes, as well as quilting supplies, had been arranged and at the ready. It was an incredible feat of purging and organizing. And then we had the 100 year record rain storm and a basement flood, so everything on the floor had been hurriedly moved to higher ground. In February of 2009 we had the drain tiles repaired, so everything was moved out and then covered in order to minimize the damage of cement dust. In March my uncle was so ill and then died, which involved two week ends in Iowa. My dad began to spiral in March. I was rarely home. In April I brought up box upon box of my mother's photo albums to have out for my dad's funeral. In May I took them all back down, but by then the two college kids, who both have lower level rooms, had moved in with all their stuff.
Somewhere along the way I gave up, and put the basement on "ignore."
And so, this past Friday, inspired by a bit of reading of simple seasonal celebration, I ventured down and began to move the photo album boxes back into place. I folded up my father's clothes and drove them to Goodwill. Something in me began to wake up... it was time to move on, and to start celebrating again. This isn't likely making sense, but this was big... I was coming out of a fog. Little by little. I found some boxes of fall decor, and carried them upstairs. Frank joined in and helped clean - vacuuming as I cleaned my way through areas. We set up a guitar area downstairs for Jake - the pieces had been there since before the repair, but we had just never put it together.
There's still a lot to do. But the "funeral" boxes and remnants of my dad's room are not there in a pile. The spring decor is put away, and those boxes are on the shelves. The upstairs is cleaned, dusted and looks ready for autumn. It's like I've arrived back home - the things that are SO important to me - I'm doing them again. Organizational chaos weighs me down - even behind closed doors in the basement. Celebrating the change of seasons is ME - I smile as I look around the dining room here where I'm typing. Cooking meals - new ones with 5 ingredients or less - it's ME.
I'd lost myself for a while. It's been a hell of a year. Really. I'm glad to be on the road back.
Gotta scoot. I'm going to set the timer for 30 minutes and organize some Christmas boxes which are still uprooted from the February repairs. 30 minutes at a time...it'll be done eventually...
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