All the world is Marystown, and the past is a fever dream

My family has finally settled on a day in July to have my grandfather’s funeral, and now I need to save up to go to Arizona, which does not feel like a real thing a person can do anymore. I traveled through a wormhole and popped out in a snowstorm in alternate-universe 1996, and now they want me to go to Arizona?  I am pretty sure Arizona does not exist in this timeline. Oh, but first I am supposed to drop off Zenny in Hawaii to visit the cats. HAWAII? What in the science fiction bullshit are they even talking about? I am very busy over here collecting grocery store stickers to earn an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, and they want me to do quantum physics to realign the dimensions. I am not going to Hawaii, it will suck me into its gravity well and I’ll be stuck there for another 30 years. The cats are going to need to learn to be time travelers.

I’ll see what I can do about Arizona, though. 

A storm blew through yesterday, and we spent the day baking bread, drawing, doing very bad yoga, and watching terrible movies. In the evening, the storm let up enough for me to go to the store, crawling slowly over the dark roads with sheets of snow skating across the ground and blowing up into whirling ghosts. It was really beautiful. 

It was still beautiful this morning when I woke up in a panic because I had slept past 7am and there were no school closure announcements on my phone. We threw food into our faces and I ran outside to excavate the car, get it warming up, haul the trash up to the bin, and grab snow-covered packages from the porch. In my rush, I lost my feet and went hammering down the stairs into a snow bank. I hope the landlord got it on cctv. My kidneys are mad, but I’m pretty happy because one of the packages was art supplies. The other was a gift from my mother for emergencies: a solar flashlight. I think she has forgotten that the sun doesn’t live here during emergency weather. I could club someone with it in self defense, though, so I popped it in the glove box. She also sent an electric kettle, an upgrade from the little burbling plastic one that came with the loft and spits boiling water all over my hands. In all; worth a bruised kidney.

I’m getting the hang of things at work, appreciating my tidy little library and cozy office even more after spending some time in the ransacked public library. I’ve been trying to find information on the regional library board so I can befriend/overthrow them, but they seem to be some kind of secret society that doesn’t like maintaining a website. I’ll be nosy and ask some questions when I pick up my holds and buy a big bag of .25 paperbacks this weekend. I can’t spend the academic budget on thrillers and romances, but I can spare ten bucks out of pocket to set up a nice rack of honor-backs for the students to read while they’re snowed in.

My cortisol levels are back to normal after years in survival mode. I’m sleeping the whole night without help. I haven’t woken up crying or fighting the air in a week. I haven’t started gaining weight yet, but I should probably start working out again; it’s easy to restrict yourself when you need something to have control over, and I’ve been over here making cookies and bread and chowders like the happy cottage witch I’m becoming. And I don’t intend to stop, so it would probably be a good idea to get some thermal hiking pants and go find pretty places to paint. I’m not looking for less anymore - less stress, less secrets, less calories, less worry about a hand on my shoulder at night - right now I want more. I want to feel full with good things. I will bake the bread and eat it, I will go walk in the woods and feed the crows, I will watch movies with my kid and read books and still have time to paint. 

I am getting to know this life and who I am in it, and I’m really liking it so far.

(14 more stickers for the enameled pot.)