Off Balance

Ballerina Warming Up by David Gilbert

Fuzzy left for DC early this morning, from an airport shrouded in fog, and landed in an airport being dusted with snow. I am home, because his trip is for work, but I feel the way I always do when he’s gone: off-blance.

The house is too quiet. I have a white noise app on my iPad, but I can’t listen to it 24/7. I can’t get the temperature right – all day I’ve been too cold, or too hot, adding and subtracting layers as needed. The thermostat for the ground floor of our house, which is where our bedroom is, is above my eye-level; I can move the control that makes it warmer or colder, but I cannot see to pick a just-slightly-higher temperature, and while we own three stepstools, I never remember to bring one to the thermostat.

As well, getting up early to tke him to the airport has completely disruped my schedule, but the dogs are still on their usual schedule, which meant I couldn’t just veg and sleep all day.

I hate it when the rhythm of my days is disrupted. I hate that Fuzzy being gone for three nights makes me off-balance for a week.

Fog and Firelight

Fireside Cafe

We haven’t had more than a drizzle in days – maybe weeks – and aren’t likely to before this weekend, but yesterday was the perfect day to have a cold, because it was chilly and grey.

Normally, I’d have retired to bed; instead I puttered around the house, doing some tree decoration, making an uber-garlicky chicken soup in the crockpot, baking pumpkin spice cake, and sitting in a wing chair in my living room, my hands wrapped around a mug of coffee and the fireplace snapping and crackling, hissing and popping, beside me.

Our fireplace is more decorative than designed to actually provide heat, but it takes the chill out of the room, and makes everything feel cozier. I couldn’t focus on writing, had no voice – still have no voice – for recording, but I watched Debbie Allen’s Hot Chocolate Nutcracker, and really enjoyed it, and then we watched the penultimate episode of The Newsroom and the first episode of The Librarians, and then I went to bed to curl up with dogs.

Sometimes puttery days are the best kinds of days there are, even when you have a cold.

Holidailies 2014

Not-so-Manic Monday

Today I…
– queued social media posts for one of my employers, through the end of the month.
– wrote two articles.
– wrote chapter 41 of a fan-fiction epic I’m writing for fun.
– made chicken soup.
– recorded and submitted two auditions for audio dramas.
– taught the puppy to stand from sit.
– started teaching the puppy DOWN.
– recorded and posted a podcast.

You wouldn’t think such non-physical things would be tiring, and yet they are.