Hard

This week has been hard; there's no two ways about it.  I've been feeling stressed, so my psoriasis is flared up (and I keep scratching it), and even my stomach has been hurting.  I've cried several times at work (mostly Monday and Tuesday) due to frustrations with my job and the person to whom I report (I don't do well when given contradicting instructions).

I feel like I'm running out of money; I have a deep-seated, never-before-admitted fear that purchasing the "penthouse" (my condo) was a mistake, that it was more than I can handle financially.  My sister was denied her disability by the judge, and the lawyer we hired (who only gets paid if my sister gets paid, BTW) has basically said that was her best chance.  So I really, really need her to get a job.  STAT.  But she doesn't really do anything "stat."  And that's going to be a problem as I continue to stress out.

I'm back to having hard mornings -- where it's hard to feel good about anything, where I feel like I generally hate everything.  Sure the season/lack of light doesn't help, but we're through the worst of it already, so I'm not sure that's entirely to blame.  But I miss those days when I was like, "Is this what it's like to feel happy?"

News and photos out of Australia are incredibly upsetting.  I've joined some crafting groups to make things to send for the animals, but between shipping costs, confusion over drop-off sites, regulations on what materials to use, and I think the Aussies have put a two-week hold on accepting donations, it just doesn't seem worth it right now.  They'd be better off with a monetary donation (which I don't really have).

I felt a surge of relief yesterday when I realized that it was actually Thursday.  I was somehow stuck in a Wednesday loop, that this hard week was lasting forever.  I was grateful it was Thursday.  But then Thursday itself lasted forever.  By 1 p.m. I couldn't believe it was only 1 p.m. as I had clearly had three full workdays in that time.  Time is a social construct.

As I get stressed, I find it hard to keep up with everyday things.  I haven't been logging my meals or steps in my fitness tracker; my weight is going back up.  I've barely remembered to log things in my ovulation tracker, which is all over the place as my body isn't sure what the fuck it's doing since I had my IUD removed.  Which could also explain some mood things, too.

In other words, it's Friday, it's not a payday, it's pouring down rain, and I really, really want to not do adult things for the next 24-72 hours.  Who's ready to hire a professional napper?  Because I am ready and available.

The Miracle of Laundry (and Tiny Games)

One Christmas, we decided to go to the West Coast for the holiday.  And by "we," I mean my Unit and her family.  Five adults (me, my Unit, Unit's sister and brother-in-law, Unit's mother) and two small children (Unit's niece and nephew, aged 2 and 6 at the time) all sharing a small beach house on the Oregon coast.  If you're thinking "That sounds like a disaster," you're right; we now refer to it as "the worst Christmas ever" (and by "we" I really mean "me").

There were a lot of things that went wrong during that week, but this is not that story.  And there were a lot of things that stressed me out when all I wanted to do was sleep, eat, knit, and relax (having just closed my sixth show of the year literally days earlier and my first year and a half of grad school), but this is only partially that story.

During our week-long holiday/vacation/forced interactions, my sister-in-law kept doing laundry (among other things).  We were staying in a house, not a hotel, so we had laundry facilities and a full kitchen and other regular house-type things that we all had to share.  And it seemed like she was constantly doing laundry, particularly for her two children.

Now I know kids can through a lot of clothes during the day, especially infants.  But these weren't infants, so why was she constantly doing laundry?  And my stressed-out-on-vacation self was all, Who the fuck does laundry on vacation?  Did you not pack enough clothing for all six days?  Did you just bring dirty clothes with you?  Hey, I did that a time or two in college when going home for a holiday or break.

I did not and could not understand the rationale, especially as it seemed to be one of the many things stressing her out, which in turn, stressed everyone else out.

Now let's fast-forward to six years later -- to August, 2016, to be exact.  My Unit and I are just barely recovering from Treepocalypse 2016.  On August 2^nd, we moved into an actual house ("temporary housing" from our insurance company), after spending weeks in both her mom's one-bedroom house and a hotel room.  We walked into a new, larger house, completely furnished -- but none of the furniture (or linens or dishes or housewares or ANYTHING) was ours.  A week or so after that, we were able to get the first portion of our items from the storage company, including clothes and MY SHOES.

And somewhere in there, somewhere between moving into the house with my bags and suitcases from the hotel and getting boxes of items from the storage company, I started doing laundry.  The "temporary" house included a washer and dryer, on the main level no less!  No more walking up and down stairs into a possibly creepy basement for clean things.  So I washed nearly everything I could.  And dried it.  And I happily folded things and stored them neatly in our new (to us) temporary dressers and closets and drawers.

And it dawned on me:  I know why* she was doing laundry!  I finally understood.

Because when things are chaos, laundry is one thing I can control.  When things are chaos, if I can at least get my clothes clean and put away, that will make me feel grounded and at home, at little less "all over the place" and a whole lot less like I'm living out of a suitcase.  That one small thing is done and clean and fresh and "ready to start the day" (or week or month or whatever).  The entire house (literally or metaphorically) might be a mess, but my clothes are clean and in their proper place.
I could have agency over this one part of my life.

And I've come to realize it's also why I often play tiny stupid games on the computer (in the "time management" genre):  because it's one small thing I can control -- a thing I can control and often complete.  They provide a wee sense of accomplishment (as does clean laundry), even if the tiny game is ultimately useless. 

It only took six years, but I finally understood the miracle of laundry.

*Either that, or she really did not bring enough clothes for her kids -- fuck if I know.