I feel a detachment from the outside world, which dresses itself in an indecisive grey-blue sky. I want it to thunder, with a torrent of rain. Life has gotten dusty.
I dress myself in an equivocal mood: I want to stand in the deluge; I want to rest inside.
It’s a Monday, a quiet Monday, with no visitors and an hour till class. I’m prepared for class, as prepared as I’m going to be. I even cleaned the sticky residue of stickers from my employer-supplied laptop. No chaos, no disasters.
Knock on wood.
It’s the first full week of classes, and if I think things will stay quiescent, I have learned nothing from my 23 years (24?) here. Something will happen, whether it’s me passing out from the residue of Goo Gone fumes, a student with an out-of-commission car (Oops, already happened!), or the Internet crashing. I don’t trust the calmness.
Frighteningly, I don’t relish the calmness. Not wishing a disaster on someone, but I like at least some activity in my office hours. The student who can’t find the supplemental book at the bookstore, the visitor asking for direction to an office, or the visit from a former student —
None of which is happening now.
I’ll keep you posted.
My coffee tastes a little weak this morning.
My husband usually makes the coffee, and he has learned to make it to the strength I prefer. He’s in Kansas at a funeral, however, and I made my own coffee this morning.
My morning routine has been broken — we usually get up around 5 AM (me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, him not so much) and sit together for breakfast and coffee and sharing cat memes on the Internet. Now I’m on my own and it’s 6 AM and very quiet in here. I’m trying to share cat memes with Buddy the Cat, but he remains disinterested.
It’s been less than 24 hours since he left, and I miss Richard. It’s been over ten years married, and I still miss Richard. Not in a huge heart-rending way, but in the little things. I imagine this would be a hard thing, maybe the hardest thing to bear, if he died before I did — the low-key, everyday presence.
He’ll be home about 7, 34 hours after I last saw him. No big deal. Just … when you’re older, love is less about passion and more about sharing cat memes.
Words Like Me 