I had a fairly stressful day at work. Nothing catastrophic or irreparable, just snarly and fairly unpleasant. There were a couple of bright spots: Talking about life for 40 minutes on the phone with a paralegal from another office who is as stressed as I am, while doing other work so I wasn't wrecking my productivity; and receiving the first of a wave of packages from Amazon, the fruits of my annual January baby-it's-cold-outside-so-let's-spend-some-money-on-music-and-sundries spree. The contents of this first package: The first translation into English of the first edition of the Grimm Fairy Tales (available here, in case that news made any of you, my gentle readers, cream your pants the way I did when I found out about it in November); Quartets, a compilation of albums by jazz tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd (why is it called Quartets when it contains five albums?); a Diva cup (because saving money + eco-friendly + menstruation = weird + gross, and curiosity is a curse); and a USB computer mouse (because I love love love my new laptop, but the built-in mouse is as moody as a pimply teenager).
I guess another bright spot is realizing the increasing return to a sense of self-groundedness. The last year has been full of change and upheaval, much of it internal, and all of it unfinished/unresolved and leading up to significant external changes, and like change seems to do, it caught me rather by surprise and threw everything into disarray. So this, following a nice long almost two-week rest at Christmas (taking all that time off was so smart, so wholesome, so restorative), this easing up of anxiety, this settling into a sense of general security, is enormously welcome. Might only be the calm in the eye of the storm, but I'll enjoy it all the more consciously for that.
And there just aren't adequate words to express the simple joy of a quiet evening. I came home from work, reheated leftovers for dinner and ate while watching Archer; bought entirely unnecessary wrist and arm warmers on Amazon (hey, most of them were $5.00/pair, the remainder even less); worked out while watching Cosmos; washed my dishes; got ready for bed; and now I'm sitting in bed listening to Fish Out of Water from Lloyd's mystifyingly-named Quartets (god, this music is beautiful) and sipping tea while Simon reposes next to me with an expression of contentment that only a cat can wear, an expression that eases all the troubles in my mind just to look at it. (Yes, Simon is still around and going strong! I love this cat. Hard to believe he's 13 this year. He still runs around apartment like a kitten.) It's been...it's heartsease, having evenings like this.
Trying not to stay up too late, though; today went well despite its level of stress precisely because I got more sleep last night.
So, not the best of days; but a balm of an evening. These are the times when I know how much I love my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment