Claustrophobia and Freedom

"I'm feeling lousy," I told my therapist. "I'm not sure I can any longer tell if I'm feeling depressed or anxious or both. It's been so long and they are so mushed together."

I've been feeling like curling into myself. I want to hide, to be small, to wrap myself into a tight little package. I could feel the muscles in my neck pushing my head forward and the muscles in my chest pulling my arms inward. And I wanted Michele to fix it.

So we talked. Mostly, I talked and she listened. Then I would pause and she would ask a question or make a comment that would lead me in a particular direction or spark another idea that I then followed.

I ended up talking about my housemates and my living situation. (From now on, I'm going to give them non de plumes, to more gracefully refer to them. They shall be Griffin and Sabine, which suits her more than him.) About how while I am truly grateful to Sabine for not allowing me to pay room and board — I only have to pay my own personal bills — and for buying me things, like the sweaters and warm socks she's just purchased for me so I will be warm this autumn and winter, I hate being dependent. I hate not being able to provide myself with these things.

And, in a way, there is a price for these wonderful things. Nothing that is expected or demanded of me. No, it is a situational and emotional price. Because my housemates' issues unfortunately trigger my worst issues and are making me want to be invisible and making me want to hide. I'm caught up in their issues and the blacklash of my own, and it seems that the result is that I'm focused more on those dramas than on myself and my own needs.

For example, Sabine is super-sensitive to noise. She also has anger issues. So the other night, when I was trying to manipulate a hot dish from the microwave, one without handles, using silicone hot pads, I was making lots of glass-on-glass noise. Eventually, Sabine exploded, took the dish with her bare hands ("It's hot!" I said. "I know," she said.), removed the lid, and set the dish on a cutting board. She continued to be angry and everything inside of me shrank and shriveled, even as I kept repeating to myself "not my issue, not my issue". When she calmed down later, she apologized. But the damage was done for the day.

Why I Don't Return There

Long drives lead me to long thoughts. Sometimes, they even lead to epiphanies. My recent drive down to Oregon lead me to a surprising one.

I have never been to a class reunion with the class I graduated with. In fact, since my mom moved away from there in '91, I have been back exactly once, for the wedding of my step-niece. I spent my last two years of high school and three summers between college sessions in that town, but have had no contact with my old friends since college, except for a very brief moment in the "greeting" line at my little brother's funeral.

I even looked them all up in Facebook a little while back. I think I mentioned that in a post not long after. Part of me felt an instant compulsion to get in touch with them all, to reignite old friendships if possible. And immediately upon the heels of that came a feeling of revulsion and anxiety so severe it was almost a panic attack and it gave me a pain deep in my abdomen. So I didn't do it.

Still, on occasion, the compulsion comes back. Put up a FB page in your old name, it says. Get in touch. But I ignore it.

The idea wandered again into my mind during my drive down to Oregon and I opened my mind to it so I could explore it. I don't remember why or how I lost contact with the last of my high school friends. I do remember a feeling of anger. After I broke up with my boyfriend, he was all nice to me about it, but managed to turn people against me behind my back. (And I'm sure he never told any of them about how he would call me — collect — from the base after he went into the service, crying about how much he hated it.) I was left with a couple of girlfriends with whom I spent my summers when we all returned home between college sessions. But for some reason, that ended and I don't know why. I don't remember.

So why do I always say no when an old high school (and post-college) friend gets in touch (via a mutual friend) to ask if I want to be found by the reunion search committee? Why the revulsion and the anxiety? I wanted to know.

It boils down to the fact that I hate that place. I hated that we moved there, away from the place and people I'd known all my life. I hated the pitiful excuse for a high school. My cat was shot a few months after we moved there, and I'm sure I know which of the neighborhood boys did it. My dad died of a heart attack in our backyard. My little brother is buried in a cemetery less than a mile from our old house. Even when we first moved there, I hated the house: I could barely stand being alone in it, even in the daytime. It felt bad in that house. I was gloriously happy when my mom and her husband moved away from that house and that town.

The Hard Ones

Nope, this post is not by Tawna Fenske and I haven't taken to writing innuendo on my blog (although if I had her mind and her talent I totally would).

This post is about the hard decisions and how to make them. It's specifically about one decision that has come to completely occupy my mind.

I've become more and more compelled lately to consider whether to stay in Houston or move back to Seattle. There are so many things to consider and the two places are so different that trying to decide how to decide has been making me crazy. So I brought it up in therapy today.

I've been considering this decision casually for much of the year, but wasn't serious because my therapy and my therapist have been too important to me to let go. But as I have begun meeting goals and getting increasingly more healthy, the decision has begun to take on weight.

One of what I consider the downsides to being single is when I have to or choose to make big decisions. I like being able to choose a paint color for a room on my own, but it would be nice to have someone to share in the big decisions, someone who had a stake in the decision, someone to bounce ideas back and forth with, and someone for backup. A decision like where to live is huge and hard to make on my own. So I think it will be a topic of conversation in therapy, as well as how to make big decisions in general, for the next several sessions (which won't start again until January).

Just to start with, my therapist proposed I start thinking about what nourishes me most. Is it sunlight and warmth, or is it relationships? Can I adapt to the cold and dark again to be close to good friends, or can I live with the possibility of not having such close friends where I live yet can grow citrus trees in my backyard, when I get a backyard? Either place I live, I will need more friends and will have to approach finding them intentionally. I do have some good friends up north, but they cannot do it all for me; I'll need a few more to meet my socialization needs, but the ones I find in the north can be more casual types of friends while down here in Houston I'd still be looking for close friends with whom I can spend significant time together.

I think I've had a bit more focused anxiety worrying over wanting to make this decision. I have a stomach ache and have had one since we started talking about it in therapy. But I need to remind myself of what my therapist said at the end of the session. Whichever place I choose, I'll be able to adapt and be happy. I have developed my center within myself, and contentment with myself outside of what my environment is like. So this decision isn't a matter of which place is the "right" place for me; neither is a right decision or a wrong decision. 

Whichever place I choose to live in, I will be fine and content. I will be at home.

Being Home

It's funny, calling this apartment home. It has just been "the apartment" rather than "my home" for most of the time I've lived here. But somehow it's changed.  The change isn't just the framed doily on the wall. After all, there is still clutter I have to deal with all over (yes, my organizer would be a little disappointed, but it's not too bad). There are still 3 plastic totes that I need to sort through and organize. 

The apartment is still beige, except for the doily and the large photo of a yellow hibiscus a good friend gave to me a few years ago and the three smaller photos of purple flowers my BFF gave to my mom when she was sick.

My sofa is still black leather with no slipcover, but my Ikea chair is now in unbleached cotton rather than black. And I have to wash the unbleached ottoman cover because I use it as a table and it's a trifle used-looking.

The Oregon Coast isn't home anymore. That's kind of weird, too, except that neither I nor my mother live there anymore. So it's a place I love where some friends of mine live. Seattle, oddly enough, is still home, as much as I was glad to leave it over a decade ago. That's probably because people I love live there, people who I deem family and who have me there for Christmas and who I've known for a very long time. And because enough time has passed that the dislike I built up toward the city has dissipated. I don't know when that happened.

As much as I enjoyed staying with my friends for Thanksgiving and as comfortable as I was there, I am very glad to be back to my own space. This was not always the case. I mean, here I am alone with no one to play with. (My Houston friends are completely different from my Dallas friends and my Seattle friends.) I'm in an apartment that until recently did not feel like home. But now I feel I am home and I don't feel lonely: I am a text or an IM or a phone call away from many people.

Memories of Mom: Painted

To see the reason for my writing this "Memories of Mom" series, see the first post in the series.

When I bought my house in Oregon, it was a bank repossession and it was in bad condition. The floors had been trashed. The wrong materials had been used in the bathroom tub surround and the wood joists around it had all rotted; the bathroom had to be gutted. The fireplace was not in good enough shape to be a working wood-burning fireplace. Most of the little wall-insert heaters were situated behind doors and were also from the years that had been recalled due to fire danger. Because the house was being bought with a remodeling loan on top of the mortgage, the bank insisted that the tiny, aluminum, 1960s windows in the bedrooms be replaced with windows that allowed egress according to current building codes. A lot of work had to be done before I could even live in it in the barest form, much less in comfort. 

But work went along and the bathroom became a thing of beauty (but that's for another story). I worked as the general contractor for the work, with a contractor friend working as the main contractor. Lots of extra things came along, as things do, and it wasn't until December that I was up to putting in new flooring and painting the walls and ceilings.

This is when my mom surprised me. Never before had she shown any interest in doing this sort of work. She paid to have someone repaint the walls in her own home. But she wanted to help me paint my house. So I let her.

I had painted before; I'd completely scraped and repainted the exterior of my previous house. I had done a lot of research before that to make sure I knew what I was doing. My mom had never so much as held a paintbrush. I just made sure to cover anything that needed covering. The floor was still old linoleum that would soon be covered with floating plank flooring (Mom paid for someone to lay the floor in the living room and kitchen for me, so they would be done at least), so it didn't need covering thank goodness. The amount of paint that ended up on that floor was tremendous and I have to say that only some of it was my fault.

Memories of Mom: Gin!

To see the reason for my writing this "Memories of Mom" series, see the first post in the series.

My mom did not sew or knit or or even cook very well when I was a kid, so I didn't learn any of those traditionally female activities (although I really wish I'd learned to sew). She did teach me how to clean house and do the laundry, both of which I was grateful for when I got older, but they just weren't mother-daughter bonding activities.

Until I hit eight or nine, we really didn't do much in a parent-child sort of way other than the usual go on vacation, go shopping (which neither of us enjoyed), go to Disneyland as a family, etc. But nothing just us.

Then she decided I was old enough to learn to play cards. Perhaps my father had grown tired of being beaten by her because I didn't see her playing with him. Her game of choice was gin rummy.

When she was teaching me, she took her time and showed me which cards to play and why and how to play competitively. Then, once I had the basics down, her killer instincts kicked in and it was no longer Ms. Nice Mom. If I hadn't already learned not to cry when I lost a game, I'd have learned it quickly then.

She beat me — at cards — six ways from Sunday on a regular basis. No playing nice or letting me win. I had to learn and catch up on my own. And I did. Oh, I didn't achieve her ability to completely annihilate the other player: I don't think I have that killer instinct. But I started winning more often. Not as often as she did, but more than before. And I could see my progress, so I figured eventually I might get as good as her.

There was nothing she loved so much as slamming down her last card and shouting "Gin!" at the top of her lungs. Then she cackled her evil laugh. For such a sweet-looking, mild-mannered lady, she could be as evil as they come.

Misplaced Heart

I lost my heart years ago and have been trying to get it back again. My heart is never entirely with me, never completely where I am; it's usually looking out the window or over the wall or across the sea. For awhile, my heart may sit beside me, whether it's in a cottage outside of Seattle, a rehabilitated ranch house along the Pacific Ocean, or an apartment next to a lake northeast of Houston, loving the place where I am. But after a year or two or four, my heart sprouts wings once again and flies off, telling me I don't love where I am, I never loved where I am, and urging me to leave. My heart is always making me chase after it.

I loved where I grew up. I loved my small town as it grew to the size of a small city. I loved my family's house. Okay, I didn't love the pink all over my bedroom, but the rest of the room was fine. I even, when I was much younger, loved myself and was my own friend. My heart was inside of me and in my family and my home. I was content.

But we moved. Daddy died. We fell apart, my family and I. And I didn't love where I lived.

Life changed so much then. I graduated from high school. I went to college. I moved between college and my family's home — which I had come to dislike a great deal — for school year and summer until I graduated yet again and remained in Seattle. There was never time to love a place or to find my heart or my center. And then, for a few years, I moved every time my lease was up until I moved in with two friends. We shared a house, these two young men and I, for a year and a half. One of them moved across the country for a job and my best friend and I found a great apartment to share for the next two and a half years, until we were heartily sick of one another.

I enjoyed the apartment a great deal. I enjoyed my next, with another friend, also a great deal. A year after that move came more changes in where I lived and who I lived with and how happy — or rather, unhappy — I was.

Love is Not Geography

Technology has some interesting uses that I never imagined using it for. For example: late last week, after I'd gotten comments on my previous post, I realized that it would be useful for my therapist to read the post so we could talk about it, and if she did this before our session, we'd have more time to talk about it. So I texted my therapist about the post and she texted back that she was happy to read it. Then, in our session this week, she pulled up my blog on her iPad so she could comment on certain parts of it, or on something in a comment that struck her. So much easier than my trying to remember what I was thinking a week or so beforehand that had seemed so important but I'd forgotten to write down so I'd remember it for therapy!

So we talked about my post. She at first was concerned that I was going to Move Right Now, so I explained that, among the reasons for me to stay was the fact that I have this great therapist who is helping me a whole lot and I'd rather not leave her right now. And that I am just not ready to choose another place to live. I have too many things churning inside my head to be able to make a reasoned and good decision about where to live next. I'm staying here for now and continuing the good fight with my therapist. Not that I'm fighting with my therapist!

One of the main things that struck her was how powerless and passive the first part of the post sounded, where I talk about what I don't like or don't have where I live now, what would or wouldn't work in the other places I'm considering. It's like I'm a victim of circumstance. It also shows me having external loci of control (the weather, if my friends have time to spend with me, etc.) rather than internal. I discussed in a previous post ("Locusts of Control") how having external loci of control leaves you powerless to make your life the way you want and to make yourself happy. 

Home, Buggy Home

Well, I've arrived home from my trip, to be greeted by a beeping smoke alarm, a big cricket, and a big tree roach. The smoke alarm currently has no battery, so at least I the noise won't keep me awake. The cricket managed to escape outside rather than be squished, so at least the thought of a bouncy cricket in the house won't keep me awake. And the roach scuttled back behind the couch. I'm on top of my bed, after sweeping it for bugs.  :)   I may not be able to sleep due to the lights and the thought of the roach and not knowing where it is.

The weather's hot outside and humid and I didn't leave the AC on, just the ceiling fans, so the bugs  inside the apartment are partly my fault. (The poor weather stripping around the doors is the fault of the maintenance staff who can't seem to handle weather stripping correctly.) I've been running the AC since I got home, a little over an hour ago to make the apartment more comfortable for me; I hope it make it less comfortable for the roach. I'm also leaving the lights on in my bedroom and connecting bathroom so that the roach won't come in here. At least, that's the theory. I can wear my sleep mask to deal with the lights, but do I want to do that?

I hope the roach didn't invite any friends.

Sitting on the Couch

I've got anxiety pretty bad these days. I feel anxious about looking for work, about signing up with a freelancers association that could lead me to more work, and about not finding work and going broke.

I feel anxious about leaving my apartment. It's hot outside and I can't be spending money on things I don't need, so I don't need to go out, except for therapy, grocery shopping (which I do on the same day), and getting the mail, which I often let pile up in the box.

My anxiety makes me want to just wrap my arms around myself, around and around until I'm unable to move and I am calm. So I sit on my couch, day after day, and I don't really do much. My comfort zone has become excruciatingly small.

I even try not to think: I go online and see what blogs have new postings, but even blogs with new content run out. So I have to think some. I get bored with blogs and with playing solitaire or sudoku on some electronic device.

And I think I've very nearly hit bottom. There's not a lot of room between me and the bottom of whatever it is, be it the barrel or the Abyss, so most of the space for movement is up. It would help if up were easier or I had help. But for some reason, my life has required that I do most things alone, with no help from others. I think this is quite mean of life.

Home

What and where is home? Much has been written about it: Home is where you hang your hat, home is that place where they have to take you in, home is where the heart is.

For me, I guess it was the last one. The problem being that my heart was with my mother. She was also my center and my anchor (this goes back to my lack of self-differentiation from her). So when she died, there went home, center, and anchor. 

I could pretend that I had a home when I went to visit the house and check it out. I called it "my house." But although I still felt very comfortable there, it was empty besides me.

What about Houston? you might ask. Well, I like it well enough (although the early high temperatures this year are not making me any happier than the flooding this winter). But I don't have friends to do things with much. I have some commitment issues, so my heart isn't really here.

Zenhacking My Life, 2012

I don't make New Year's Resolutions — never have succeeded. I tried a few times when I was younger and I had the success that all articles about the futility of resolutions predict: zero. But there are a couple of sites I follow — one always and one sometimes — that have ideas for changing one's life without resolutions or goals. One of the sites is zenhabits.net; the other is LifeHacker.com. and both offered up a true gem for me to use to change my life into what I want and need it to be.

What I need in order to change my life (YMMV) is new habits. And among the ways to help me make the changes is to implement the placebo effect.

Nano-Lame-o

I haven't written any more. I got up to 1600 words and just haven't done any more. I'm stopped on all fronts — all. No progress. No movement other than backward. The apartment is still shame-worthy (no, seriously, I wouldn't even let a maintenance guy in if I had a problem). I haven't paid the estate bills for no reason at all. No reasons for any of it. Except one.

I am sad.

I am drowning in it. I cannot even take to heart the wonderful advice and suggestions of Julie at JulieLand! Writing creatively has become like trying to claw my way out of a coffin (I've been watching MythBusters on Netflix and there are two episodes with coffin escape attempts in them, so I know of which I speak): impossible. Nothing comes.

So there we are. This is the place that is my life right now.

Where Was I?

So much has happened since my last post, written that innocent day in mid-August when life seemed so much simpler. Full of work to do, yes, but not as complicated as it was to become. I'm very glad I didn't know the future!

Where do I start? I added a week to my two-week stay so I could finish all the tasks I needed to finish. Two days before I was due to fly back to Houston, I had an emergency appendectomy. Luckily for me, I finished all the main things I needed to finish and had sequestered my own things in one place. Sure, a few small things went missing after that, but I hadn't gotten around to sequestering them, and who needs more than one copy of the key to the lock on the storage unit? Only those of us with OCD issues about losing the remaining key.

So I had surgery. And no home to return to: it was being readied for the estate sale. But people offered to let me stay with them, and I was and remain grateful to them for this. My realtor/friend was more nurturing than my mom's friend, so it's good I stayed with my realtor first. Plus, she had no animals, which made my time there very peaceful. I entertained her and her husband, even when I wasn't looped out on Percocet; later on she told me that, during a rather uneventful visit by her nephew, she and her husband looked at each other and said, "I miss Skye!" Aww. They want me to stay with them the next time I visit.

But there went another week and a couple of days before my doctor said I could travel.

Then my friend Steve from Seattle drove down and took me back to Seattle for a much-needed visit. Not only was I not entirely recuperated enough to be sent home, I needed to be with my friends there to distract me from the anniversary of my mother's death. (Actually, I think I did my grieving as I lay in pre-op, realizing that my mom couldn't be there for me then and wouldn't be there for me afterward.)

Finally, five weeks and two days after I left Houston, I returned home. My car, parked under cover at the Park n Fly lot, started right off. For only the second time since surgery, I drove; I got home fine, but I was exhausted and my tummy was sore. And the apartment was just as messy as it was when I left it, unfortunately. Where are those house-elves when you need them?

I've rested a lot since I got home — I can only go so long before I simply fall over, and so long isn't that long. I gave myself the first three days to lie around in my pjs and do nothing. 

I've accomplished things, I've left the apartment, and yet the place is still virtually as messy as before. Tomorrow, my mom's — now my — RAV4 arrives in Houston, driven by a couple of very generous friends. Soon thereafter, they drive away in my Subaru, taking it to its new home. Change, change, change, change. Dammit.

I have projects promised, I have been offered an insane work proposition, and I have a lot of people to reconnect with. But I'm taking it slowly, because my tummy still hurts and my mind is still swirling from the point when everything flew apart and I just haven't landed yet.

I have some posts started when I was still in Oregon that I'll finish and post, later. But I wanted to catch up to the present, before reaching back into the past. I have so much to do, and so much I want to do, that I wanted to at least settle onto the hard-packed earth of right now. I lost my footing. I need to ground myself so I can go on.

So here I am: crazy and tired and swirly and wanting to work and so much less sure of things than I expected to be at this point. I keep reminding myself: this is not my true natural state; this is an artifact of the way my life has been for over a year. Slowly perhaps, I will make my way back to the focused, fun, highly capable, and cheerful person that is me. My current state is transitional and temporary and I'll sweep it out the door just as quickly as I can.

With that, I bid you good night.

Beach-Happy

Even in the midst of anxiety- and angst-inducing situation and activity, I am smiling and I feel like Champagne — little bubbles are starting at my toes and tickling their way upward.

Why? Because I'm beach-happy. It's kind of like being slap-happy, except that I've been "slapped" by being at the beach.

I took a walk today, longer and harder than any of the (extremely few lately) walks I've taken in Houston. There are no hills in Houston. I walked the seven-or-so-story stairway down the bluff to the beach, then walked along the soft sand wayyyy out to the firmer sand. Then I played tag with the waves because it was almost high tide and the water kept changing the edge of the firm sand. I took pictures of waves. I watched the people and dogs enjoying the sun and sand and waves. I watched the waves. And I just couldn't stop smiling. 

You might think that means I should really be living at the beach, and I couldn't say you're wrong. But note that I am ecstatic on a sunny day at the beach. I am emphatically not ecstatic on a gray, windy, wet day at the beach, except on occasion. 

If I could live anywhere I wanted and had the money/income/ situation to do so, I would live at the beach, but I would probably move further south. Supposedly it is warmer and less gloomy on the southern Oregon Coast ... I've never been there. And I've never been on the East Coast beaches.

I have things to do in Houston; I am not ready to leave there. However, I can easily see myself continuing to live and work in Houston, and visiting the Oregon Coast throughout the stormy parts of the year (the Autumn storms are amazing) and living here all summer, because summer is hell in Houston.

Being at the beach, in good weather or during torrential storms, makes me very, very happy. Which is why I feel like a cross between a grinning fool and a very fine bottle of Champagne.

The Estate Saga

Finally, I am near the end of my time as Executor of the Estate. It hasn't been fun and I haven't been great at it, but nothing's blown up and I made it through alive. (I was going to say "no one died" but that isn't quite accurate.)

I've got many tasks to accomplish in less than two weeks and I'm hoping for help that may not manifest for my hardest task. I thought to myself, what else can I do to make my life easier? That thought ran away as fast as it could, so I then decided I should blog about these next two weeks. Because it will all be so fun!

I flew into Portland Airport on Wednesday at about 11 am, but had to wait until 2 for the shuttle to the coast. A friend picked me up and took me to the store so I could buy some basic groceries, then brought me home. I ate ice cream for dinner; it just seemed the thing to do.

Thursday almost killed me: I spent the day and much of the night fearing and feeling as if I was going to barf. I stayed very still on the couch and I slept as much as I could. I did manage to get up long enough to see my realtor and sign a couple of things and talk. She rocks. She even volunteered to be "my place to stay" so I'm not losing the beach after all. 

My friend Sierra spent a few hours texting me amusing thoughts and pictures, and sent me a truly bad joke, just to amuse me and make me feel better. Sierra rocks, too.

Now it's Friday. I don't feel like barfing, but I'm being careful, which means I've accomplished nothing on my planned tasks. Nor did I walk on the beach. But I haven't moved backwards, so that's something. And the appraiser came by: they had better say that not only is this house worth what the buyers are paying for it but that they are getting a damned good deal! (Click through to see the interior shots, especially the living room and kitchen!)

As much as I hate giving up this house, both as my mom's home for 20 years and as my place to stay at the beach, I realized that I really couldn't live here on my own or keep it comfortably. It's my mom's home. Well, even tho' her second husband shared this home with her for more than half of that time, she re-did it after he died and it really is her house. I don't think I could ever make it my house, and it isn't exactly the house I'd buy if I were just out here picking out my own place. So it is okay that someone else will own it.

I also need to get over my anger and resentment over having to split the estate equally with the Steps. Here's why I'm angry and resentful: nothing in this house came from their father. When he and my mom got married, he had virtually nothing. My mom had a nice house and nice furniture that she bought with my dad. Second husband retired a year or two after marrying Mom and pretty much brought nothing money-wise to the marriage. Proceeds of the house my mom and dad bought allowed Mom and Second Husband to buy this house outright. And yet my mom, from some misguided feelings of being "fair," left equal shares of this house and its furnishings to her second husband's two daughters. And while they have both said a few times "let me know how I can help," they were empty offers because we all live in separate states and they weren't around or able to help me at all. Once the shares are distributed, they will add to the lives or retirements of the Steps, who have homes and jobs. My share will keep me from having to live in my car. In trying to be whatever her mind was thinking of as "fair," my mom practically left me hanging out to dry and was exceptionally unfair to her own daughter. Yeah, I really need to get over it. I just haven't figured out how yet.

I do love this house for many reasons, but not for the design or layout — it is pretty dark inside and completely misses most opportunities to bring light into the interior. (It truly is beautiful, it's just not my style.) I would happily take the kitchen and dining nook and place it into any house I ever live in again. It's within four or five blocks from the bluff overlooking the beach and out onto the ocean — with a several-story set of stairs down to the beach. And it's within walking distance of a grocery store and the main downtown strip, including my bank.

I'll continue the story of my love-hate affair with Lincoln City in another post. 

It's Friday night, and I'm signing off for the day.

Newton's First Law

• A body at rest will tend to stay at rest
• A body in motion will tend to stay in motion

... Unless a force acts upon that body.

I could use a good force, because I am truly a body at rest.

I did move today. After a late shower, I folded a few loads of clothing and put them away, organizing containers for them (I don't have a dresser, so I use those open boxes on a shelf in my closet. This is a less than ideal situation.) I was doing pretty well, moving around organizing and all that. Then I hit the end of what I could easily do and had to move an overly full and deeper container off the shelf so I could put the organized containers on the shelf and suddenly, I felt a need to sit down and take a break.

I didn't do more with the unorganized box than place it in the middle of my bed. I didn't clean anything in the bathroom as I intended to. I didn't pay bills or make phone calls. I didn't use my iced tea maker (yet).

The one interesting thing that occurred was that for the first time in about a week, I became very hungry. So hungry that I went out for food — part of it nominally healthy, part of it not — because I wanted food now and nothing in the house seemed to suit. The fast food didn't entirely suit either. I don't know what I wanted; all I had (and still have) to go on is a set of sensations, which are not terribly helpful.

It was a nominally productive day. If I could stay in motion for a longer period before I took a break, I could accomplish even more.

Body At Rest Seeks Gentle Force to Change Inertial State