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An Anomaly of Time
It's only been a week.
It feels a little like forever, but it's only been a week.
John came home today, and in the hot tub, he was nearly as incredulous as I was, about it only having been seven days. With all the things that we did, all the stuff we've seen, all the decisions that were made, and all the life that was packed into the last week, it feels like a great deal more.
And the odd thing is that life just goes on, after death, that it doesn't stop the world the way one might feel it ought to stop the world. The world just keeps going. The snow falls, the wind blows, the sun rises and sets. Meals come and go, exercise has to be taken, and there's a skunk that's now made a home under our house. Tomorrow morning, the pest control people are coming to see what they can do about it. And I have to order my bees and clean out the boxes, soon, and plant all the frost resistant vegetables in the next week or two.
And it all feels so surreal.
I imagine that part of why it feels so removed is that I really haven't slept all that well for the whole of the week. The time alone at night has been important to me, and the days were filled with things that I had to catch up on. Wednesday I had Jet in at school an hour early, so was up at 6:30, and I did grocery shopping, fell over for a couple of hours of sleep, got my allergy shots and heard about how terrifying it was to give shots of stuff that was known to kill the people they were being given to, got my massage from Bonnie, and tried frantically to air out the house because of the skunk and go to the pet shop to try and find light bulbs for Jet's tank. My evening was feeding Jet, helping him with his homework, and doing Legos and One Piece with him and tucking him into bed. I read and wrote for comfort that evening.
In the last two days, my co-author and I wrote a short story: 7000 words of intense interaction and relationship work, and it was worthwhile doing. Usually we strive for about 2000 words a day, but she was good about helping provide some of the distraction I needed as my unconscious has dealt with all the interaction and processing what's been going on. We're going to be doing a promoting thing tomorrow, and today I ran across half a dozen good reviews for our books and stories, which I happily forwarded to our publisher's promotion house.
Today, I went and got John from the airport, we stopped at Sonic for lunch, and I slept on the way home, just happy I hadn't nodded off on the drive to the airport. The timing was perfect, and John was grateful about not having to take the bus home.
We've been very thankful for all the folks that commented with their condolences and support. It's made a big difference. And today, Bonnie, a friend of ours from church, actually brought us a meal for our dinner, and it was just such a wonderful gesture.
My luck has improved in the last little while, too. Oddly enough. I was on I-25 when John texted me to say that his plane had landed, and I was only half of the one hour trip to the airport, but the baggage claim took so long, I was actually able to make a pit stop at the cell phone lot before he actually got his luggage. I was able to get him perfectly on time.
On the way home from Tennessee, I managed a similar trick, the flight came in early, the baggage took a long time to get there, and the minute my bag appeared, I ran for the RTD bus terminal, and just as I crossed the last lanes of traffic, the AB, bound for Boulder, pulled up to the RTD East Terminal stop. Given that I was dressed for Tennessee, and it was 20-something and blowing snow, with inches of snow on the ground already, it was great for me.
Uhm. Yeah. I forgot that I hadn't mentioned that I'd been on a trip to Tennessee from Thursday to Tuesday, to visit my co-author, and I got back Tuesday night, sick as a dog, and took a day or two to kind of recover before hopping on that flight to Seattle. The trip was good. I actually went to a Southern church and was welcomed with open arms and a lovely sermon. *laughs* It was only afterward that the pastor commended me on my courage, and someone else mentioned that, being non-white, I was pretty brave for going to an all-white church in tiny town the South. I hadn't even thought of *that*, especially since I'd known a friend of the pastor's.
I got to watch a lot of the first season of Justified, drink real Tennessee moonshine (apple pie moonshin is awfully tasty), and help plot four books, draw a map for the whole world of New Amsterdam, and come up with a whole other book idea and more short stories. *laughs* That was pretty productive *and* fun.
But it still feels kind of odd, realizing it all wasn't THAT long ago.
That there really isn't a chasm of time or thought between now and then. It was nice to get grounded again in the reality of working on the stories we'd plotted, and find up and down again and just do what comes next with living. Just doing the next day.
It feels a little like forever, but it's only been a week.
John came home today, and in the hot tub, he was nearly as incredulous as I was, about it only having been seven days. With all the things that we did, all the stuff we've seen, all the decisions that were made, and all the life that was packed into the last week, it feels like a great deal more.
And the odd thing is that life just goes on, after death, that it doesn't stop the world the way one might feel it ought to stop the world. The world just keeps going. The snow falls, the wind blows, the sun rises and sets. Meals come and go, exercise has to be taken, and there's a skunk that's now made a home under our house. Tomorrow morning, the pest control people are coming to see what they can do about it. And I have to order my bees and clean out the boxes, soon, and plant all the frost resistant vegetables in the next week or two.
And it all feels so surreal.
I imagine that part of why it feels so removed is that I really haven't slept all that well for the whole of the week. The time alone at night has been important to me, and the days were filled with things that I had to catch up on. Wednesday I had Jet in at school an hour early, so was up at 6:30, and I did grocery shopping, fell over for a couple of hours of sleep, got my allergy shots and heard about how terrifying it was to give shots of stuff that was known to kill the people they were being given to, got my massage from Bonnie, and tried frantically to air out the house because of the skunk and go to the pet shop to try and find light bulbs for Jet's tank. My evening was feeding Jet, helping him with his homework, and doing Legos and One Piece with him and tucking him into bed. I read and wrote for comfort that evening.
In the last two days, my co-author and I wrote a short story: 7000 words of intense interaction and relationship work, and it was worthwhile doing. Usually we strive for about 2000 words a day, but she was good about helping provide some of the distraction I needed as my unconscious has dealt with all the interaction and processing what's been going on. We're going to be doing a promoting thing tomorrow, and today I ran across half a dozen good reviews for our books and stories, which I happily forwarded to our publisher's promotion house.
Today, I went and got John from the airport, we stopped at Sonic for lunch, and I slept on the way home, just happy I hadn't nodded off on the drive to the airport. The timing was perfect, and John was grateful about not having to take the bus home.
We've been very thankful for all the folks that commented with their condolences and support. It's made a big difference. And today, Bonnie, a friend of ours from church, actually brought us a meal for our dinner, and it was just such a wonderful gesture.
My luck has improved in the last little while, too. Oddly enough. I was on I-25 when John texted me to say that his plane had landed, and I was only half of the one hour trip to the airport, but the baggage claim took so long, I was actually able to make a pit stop at the cell phone lot before he actually got his luggage. I was able to get him perfectly on time.
On the way home from Tennessee, I managed a similar trick, the flight came in early, the baggage took a long time to get there, and the minute my bag appeared, I ran for the RTD bus terminal, and just as I crossed the last lanes of traffic, the AB, bound for Boulder, pulled up to the RTD East Terminal stop. Given that I was dressed for Tennessee, and it was 20-something and blowing snow, with inches of snow on the ground already, it was great for me.
Uhm. Yeah. I forgot that I hadn't mentioned that I'd been on a trip to Tennessee from Thursday to Tuesday, to visit my co-author, and I got back Tuesday night, sick as a dog, and took a day or two to kind of recover before hopping on that flight to Seattle. The trip was good. I actually went to a Southern church and was welcomed with open arms and a lovely sermon. *laughs* It was only afterward that the pastor commended me on my courage, and someone else mentioned that, being non-white, I was pretty brave for going to an all-white church in tiny town the South. I hadn't even thought of *that*, especially since I'd known a friend of the pastor's.
I got to watch a lot of the first season of Justified, drink real Tennessee moonshine (apple pie moonshin is awfully tasty), and help plot four books, draw a map for the whole world of New Amsterdam, and come up with a whole other book idea and more short stories. *laughs* That was pretty productive *and* fun.
But it still feels kind of odd, realizing it all wasn't THAT long ago.
That there really isn't a chasm of time or thought between now and then. It was nice to get grounded again in the reality of working on the stories we'd plotted, and find up and down again and just do what comes next with living. Just doing the next day.