Last year we did a lot of renovations on our house. We did the entire upstairs, including finishing the room we added over the garage. We had hardwood floors put in, we made the big bathroom an en suite and put in a big shower, we redid the downstairs bathroom, we even added a nook bed, a la northern Europe. We did not, however, touch the kitchen, the dining room, or the living room. Well, time has passed, and now it's their turn. The living room and dining room were relatively easy. Take out all the furniture, take up the old laminate flooring, and put in new hardwood that looks almost exactly like the old flooring, which I was was sorry to see go because I liked it. Then came the painters, whom we had before and so are used to my rather strange color choices. And then came the fun part. We're redoing the kitchen, 30 years after my father built and installed it. The room is a galley, and there's no real way to change that. The cabinets are ash, built by him from lumber h...
My version of meditating is playing computer games. I play, zone out, and while I'm zoned out, I turn various things over in my mind. It's relaxing and I get things solved that way. I ruminate on relationships, or I solve design problems in my jewelry, or I think about the state of the world. One of the things I had been thinking about, but not so much in the last few days, is a very toxic relationship that ended at the beginning of the summer. It was with a woman I used to work with, who...is very messed up. She had, to be perfectly fair, a horrible family life--her parents regularly reminded her that she was a mistake. Not an accident, but a mistake. Okay. She ended up with borderline personality disorder (diagnosed by my therapist daughter) and she latched on to me as a secondary mother figure. I have issues of my own, so I let this go one, for far too long. I have ruminated on the details, and, as rumninants do, I think I've managed to shit most of it out, ...