Confession: It’s been that kind of week.
It’s February in Meadville, where we have two options left open to us: to ignore the winter entirely, or to give up and wallow in it like swamp invertebrates. I looked up the weather forecast and it’s unbroken clouds for a week to come. My brain is filled with gray fuzz half the time and I am doing stupid stuff without even trying.
Once I got stuck in my own lane, for the first time in two years.
(“In” my lane may not be entirely accurate. “Completely off the side of” may be more so.)
Once my husband was having a bad day, so I baked him cinnamon rolls as a way to say “I love you, honey. Life is good.”
They flopped.
Once I left home in the morning forgetting not only the trash bags full of my sons’ snow clothes for outdoor recess, but also a Tupperware full of frosting I needed for a cake decorating class. Hey, I remembered the sleds. And the cake… And everything else, but only after arriving at my destination fifteen minutes away.
Once I tried to drive up a hill, in snow, with my e-brake on. It wasn’t a very big hill, and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get traction. I had to back down with a row of cars lined up behind me. And at the bottom I thought– Oh. E-brake.
Once I lost control of my emotions while singing in church, getting red-faced and giggly-panicky over the simple fact that I looked at the composer’s name. In my defense, it was “Kirchengesangbuch.” Which looked to me like rather boastful German for “Ich have made-n dis songbook.”
Once I spent a whole day on a project that didn’t go anywhere. I don’t mean I didn’t get done; I mean it didn’t go anywhere. Toast. Kaput. No can do. At the end of the day I cleaned the supplies and trashed the scraps of fabric and tore up the patterns and cried a while and decided to pretend I’d spent the whole day on the couch.
What project?
Once I got the news that my little brother negotiated a 14-foot freefall on a ski slope and ended up in the ER.
(He’s fine. Just um, sore.)
It’s been that kind of week.
And in the middle of it I spent time laughing my head off at a ladies’ party [delightfully therapeutic] and practicing frosting roses [more like frosting toadstools to a casual observer] and opening a surprise package from someone I don’t even know [the ultimate delight] and often sleeping so profoundly mid-day that I wake up disoriented and drooling, with a severe crick in my neck. I don’t remember ever being so tired in all my life. It’s like being pregnant without the baby.
Yes, it’s that time of year. And that kind of week.
But He has not given me over to darkness. I don’t forget for a moment (and I am not faking this) that I have a really, really nice life and I want to live it all. By this I know I am not going under.
This post doesn’t really have a point except to say that I’m still here. Generally speaking.
Even in Australia.
Oh I laughed so hard. Loved reading this. I’m so glad you feel sustained by God despite the tiredness of winter. Love you sis! We’ve got like 6-8 inches of snow here. Crazy! Just think…you can come to sunny VA in a week. 🙂
This is funny and sad all at the same time! YES to the gray fuzz. 🙁 My brain feels as frozen as the landscape!
Understand the gray fuzz that comes around at this time of year. It keeps hanging on me to. I am delighted you can still laugh your head off. This means not everything is covered with gray fuzz. When the gray fuzz hangs thick, any laughter keeps the fuzz from becoming overwhelmingly gray. Maybe moments of forgetfulness or doing crazy errors is the gift that keeps you from going insane.
When we hit Feb 14th, we always feel as if we just might survive yet another winter at this house . . . Hang in there–Spring IS coming.
Amos actually laughed out loud at this post………so it must be very funny. 🙂 enjoyed it too, of course. 🙂
I keep looking at that German composer and giggling. My church bench would’ve been quaking.
We are kind of wallowing here too. There is just this inertia that goes with this time of year. Even chocolate covered strawberries are only a temporary diversion. And I laughed at the project that couldn’t. But I nod my head soberly in agreement with your last paragraphs.
Someone (Mark Twain?) once said, “Humor, like a frog, can be dissected, but dies in the process.”
I, too, am laughing at the German composer-name story, but unfortunately I know what it means. I’m sorry…. It is not the man’s name at all– rather, the German equivalent of Church Hymnal.
(now there’s a dead frog)
That is considerably less funny, isn’t it? Bummer.