Truth be told, I’ve been having a rather rough week. It’s nothing specific, but I’ve been mopey, and cranky, and difficult to the point that Nick actually felt compelled to demand that I “talk about it.” And while I appreciate the thought, I feel quite qualified to guess that not even a well-trained professional would have been prepared for the stream of completely unrelated and largely nonsensical complaints that poured out of my mouth.
Sorry about that, Nick.
We have more or less concluded that I’m having another fit of adjustment trouble–apparently the first round was too mild to count. Like with chicken pox.
I’ve got ex-pat shingles, basically.
Anyway.
As I headed up the hill yesterday afternoon to pick up some produce, I felt…different. Not any less mopey; I mean physically different. Truth be told, I felt like a dancer.
Nick will laugh when he reads that, because I am unbelievably clumsy. I am routinely covered in bruises, and you try explaining to the friend who’s glaring daggers at your boyfriend that you got that one when you quite literally walked into a wall, by the way.
There are two main reasons for my many mishaps. The first is that I don’t pay attention to where I’m going, especially at home. Nick will be reading the paper, and hear a crash and a yelp from the other room, and cautiously call out, “Honey? Did you run into the dresser?” I’m always thinking about something else, and so I trip over level ground; I have semi-permanent doorknob-shaped marks on my arms.
The second reason, though, is that I’ve been in the wrong body for the last few years. I won’t go into all of my insane weight gains and losses in the last decade, except to say that: 1) I honestly can not see the difference in the mirror, no matter how huge it may be, and 2) when the roller-coaster finally stopped, it stopped at a high point. And the extra weight makes me slouch, and lose my balance, and make poor spatial decisions, and loathe the feeling of it pretty much every minute.
And what I realized yesterday is that it’s mostly gone. I mean–I knew it was heading that way, because people keep telling me so, but please see the last paragraph to understand why it came as a complete surprise yesterday when I slowly became aware that my posture was unintentionally perfect…and it felt like I was floating. It’s been a really long time since I’ve felt like I was floating. Add in the exact right music and a freak sun shower, and you’ll understand that that turned into an absolute Zen-moment of a walk in a hurry.
I’m celebrating with quiche Lorraine–hell, it’s gotten me this far.
Jolie also got just a bit more unburdened yesterday: her bandage and stitches were finally removed. And she hated it thoroughly; she was shaking and struggling and whining almost all the way through, until she suddenly relaxed on the table with a martyred sigh that made everyone in the room feel just a tad guilty. Once we got out of there, though, and she realized that she was free? She raced crazed circles around me the whole way home. She ran and frolicked and jumped and twisted and pounced in such a frenzy (especially after her bath) that when she finally crashed, we didn’t hear a peep from her for the rest of the evening.
And I met a French woman in the waiting room who was carrying a purse that was almost identical to mine, and we figured out that we got them in the same shop, so now I feel all fashionable.
I can’t help but think that the moodiness has no idea what it’s up against.