Still February

I'm still feeling kind of shaky. I'm having trouble figuring out if I'm depressed or if this is just life. Feeling extremely mortal, which isn't necessarily bad. I wrote down a quote once that I can't find now (by this I mean I don't feel like going through my university journals and dying of cringe) - oh, looks like it was from the Bible: "Let us know the brevity of life, that we may grow in wisdom". I understand that knowing that life is relatively short is part of what makes it sweet. If we had all the time in the world, then time would mean nothing. On the other hand, if I can't stop thinking about dying, I don't get a whole lot of living done. As with so many things, balance is key. And I'm feeling a little tippy.

It's so hard, understanding the passing of time even though it's so obvious. Now just feels so... NOW-ish, you know? It's so hard to imagine that things will change materially. When I had babies I would tell myself not to panic about them growing fast - tomorrow they would be almost exactly the same as today. Every time we eat too much and feel uncomfortably full we can't believe we'll ever want to eat again. And every January I get such a passion for cleaning and organizing, and I can't understand how I let things get so untidy and out of control because I can't believe that I ever won't feel like that again. And then a few weeks go by and things get a little busier and suddenly I can't be arsed to care about the shit piling up on the dining room table and the downstairs storage closet is close to organized but not quite finished and all that drive and energy is just gone, and here I am again. So much time goes by, and part of it is linear and part of it is circular. That's okay. I've made six trips to Value Village in the past few weeks, and the storage closet really was a disaster. I went through mountains of the kids' old artwork and threw out a bunch and kept the ones I could still remember them making. 

Eve turned sixteen. It seemed normal that Angus could drive at that age, but it seems bizarre to me that she can. I don't know if it's because she's a girl or because she's my youngest or because she's a foot shorter than he was. 

None of this is terribly insightful or new or well-articulated. I'm just trying to force myself to keep writing. But I'm also trying to go to bed earlier instead of sitting at the computer for hours at night, which is what I'm doing now. So I will leave this without an elegant finish and go slog through a few more pages of The Magic Mountain. 

February

I feel a little strange. I felt good through most of December, then happy but exhausted through the Christmas holidays, then surprisingly chipper through the first part of January, then anxious about my fibroid surgery, then relieved that it was over. Now I feel like winter depression might be creeping in. This week has been tough. Husband is away and the weather has felt intentionally malicious - more snow and extreme cold, followed by a one-day thaw and a bunch of rain that puddled up everywhere because all the drains are covered with ice, and the promise of quickly freezing again and turning the city into a bone-breaking ice rink. Every day there's been some kind of weather warning. Most mornings have been not quite as bad as anticipated, which is nice but would be nicer if I could stop anxious-ing about it all night. There was one morning I could have slept in, but I worried that Eve would fall and break herself trying to get to the bus, so I got up and drove her. It wasn't that bad out, and then I felt like a kid-coddling loser. A very sleepy kid-coddling loser.

It's funny dealing with the younger classes as the school librarian, because I remember the mixed blessing that was library time as a mother. The kids loved going to the library, but trying to keep track of the library books in our swimming-in-books house and trying to remember to send them back on the right day in my swimming-in-chaos brain was a constant battle. There's one girl in grade one whose book has been overdue since September. I keep sending notices and getting no reply. The replacement cost is only five bucks, but I half think they've chosen to just withdraw from the whole pain-in-the-ass situation and honestly, I get it.

I'm having a bit of a harder time with Angus being gone. I think it's just the time of the year, when everything seems frozen and difficult and sad. I'm cleaning out the basement and I keep finding photographs and drawings and things he wrote, and in one way I remember it all so clearly and in another way it feels like it might have been someone else's life. Then I text him and it's a little bit better. It's weird to realize that whether you treasure every moment or not, they still go by, and you're washed up on the shore of the future.

Also, it's Eve's sixteenth birthday today. And I have a dentist appointment. Onward.