The Wee Hours

It's 5:32 a.m. I've been awake since 4:30 or so. Too many things jangling through my brain. My home is still for the most part in boxes in the garage. We're hoping to bring our closet clothes in today and finally set up the bed so that we're sleeping on a frame and box spring as opposed to a mattress on the floor.

Carl painted the office yesterday afternoon while I painted 3 different yellow/golds on the floorboard trim in the lavender bedroom. We finally decided on metallic Olympic gold - appropriate choice given what we're missing by not having time to watch t.v. I should take some pictures to post because telling people that the office is Tiffany yellow with Masquerade purple trim and is awaiting a Lipstick red futon couch probably strains the imagination. (I'm just hoping it doesn't strain the eye.)

In the meantime, everytime I cross something off of our to-do list, it seems I also add something new.

Marathon Training

The last several months I have been training for a marathon. A few weeks ago I ran 15 miles (longest distance I have thus far managed). Because of the renovations going on at the homestead, last week I utilized the treadmill at the gym in order to earn the reward of a shower. I now have access to a shower but have to climb through a bedroom window to get to the bathroom. I decided that this week is about nesting and so, rather than run 18 miles today, I am laundering all the clothes that I thought would be safe in the built in dresser in the closet. I peeled the tape and opened the drawers to a layer of sawdust. doh! In the meantime, the living and dining room are wearing their second coat of gloss (two more to go) and the transformation is fairly astonishing.

I'm trying not to feel like I'm slacking on my training but I have to tell you the whole cleaning, touching up walls, floorboards, trim is taking up a lot of my free time.

Regressing?

This afternoon my husband removed all of the wood shutters on the dining room windows in anticipation of us moving to the back of the house tomorrow. The problem, of course, is that we won't be moving to the back of the house until Saturday which means yet another steamy afternoon in the western facing dining room/living room portion of the house. So I told him to go get a sheet we had in the garage so that we could clothespin it up over the dining room windows. A bedsheet for curtains. I'm living in my college apartment.

I opened the door and peeked down the hall tonight - sanding, buffing, one coat of varnish (waiting the 2d and 3d) and the floors already look so beautiful - thank you Dan the Handyman!

The back half, well I should say 2/3ds of my house is closed off. The front 1/3 of my house is separated by plastic sheets...she's dead...wrapped in plastic... (If you get that reference then you get what I'm feeling right now.)

The truth is it's just some minor home upgrades; painted the outside trim a week and a half ago, now the handyman is starting on the hardwood floors. That, of course, means that we have moved most of our belongings to the garage and our bedroom is now the living room, we don't have a bathroom with a shower (good thing we belong to a gym) and we'll be spending the next week feeling displaced. Of course, we've felt this way since July 4th weekend when we started to wrap all of our inner windows to keep the sanding and scraping on the outside of the house.

Perhaps I should look at it from the caterpillar perspective. We have woven a cocoon and soon we'll be free and the place will shine, shine, shine.

Amateur Hour

Last night I attended a Bachelorette party for my friend, Christi (congrats Christibel on your June wedding). It was organized and lovingly given to her by her two truly fabulous bridesmaids, Generous Jennifer & All-Stops-Out Amanda. I have never attended a Bachelorette party. When I married Carl a bunch of friends gave me a sort of BP where they took me to dinner and drinks but it was pretty low key and nobody made me wear a tiara or veil. Last night Christi good-heartedly wore the tiara. The first limo stop was pretty interesting. We went to Isabella's Dance Studio in Santa Monica to learn to pole dance. I'm not going to embarrass myself (or reveal Isabella's technique) by giving you details but I will tell you that I have a new and healthy respect for pole dancers. I also have a triangular bruise 1 inch by 2 inches on the front of my ankle (clutching the pole after wrapping my other knee around it and then......forget it, I can't even explain the position or attempt to tell you how you have to manage to make it look not just graceful but sexy). Oh, and my arms and shoulders were obviously very much engaged in the activity....I'm sorry honey, we can't have sex because I'm sore from pole dancing.....scary.

Sundays

Carl and I haven't had many Sundays the last six months because since early November Carl has had a succession of long gigs out of town. By May 1, we will have spent 6 Sundays together (he's home on the 24th of April) out of 25. Sundays are Carl's and my thing. We're the cliched couple having coffee over crosswords and sudoko.

I guess that's why Sundays are the hardest for me. I do the crossword alone and if there is a Sunday West Magazine I do that one as well. I wait for 1 p.m. so that I can call Greece to be sure to catch him in his room. He has an early set call so is usually in bed by 11 p.m. That means I get the five minutes before he falls into an exhausted sleep.

He sounds good and the shoot is going well. He says he feels he's doing his best work yet. For me, all this freetime means that I've not only finished the first draft of my first screenplay but have managed a second draft and am now polishing it for a third pass. Creatively, we're booming.

But Sundays are slow and seemingly endless.

Forgiveness

I recently did something that I immediately regretted and of course, true to form, apologized to the person whose feelings I had hurt. It was someone very close, someone I love and trust and I suppose that's why somewhere in my tiny little subconscious I thought I could get away with being a brat.

The thing is when I apologized, this person who is warm and generous and who I truly believe thought she was letting me off the hook said "Oh, please, no need to apologize, I completely understand." The problem was that I didn't want to be understood for my outrageous behavior, I wanted to be forgiven.

It makes me realize that I have done the "no worries, no need to apologize" and left someone hanging as well. I think it is important to say to that person: "Thank you for the apology, I forgive you" because then they know they have been heard, acknowledged and, most important, absolved.

Forgiveness is a grace that we need to resurrect.