This week feels like it had nine days.  Already.  And it’s not even over yet.  I think I’ve lost my love for shopping.  I think PMS-y drama during furniture shopping ruined it for me forever.  Probably this will not hinder my ability to spend money, I just won’t enjoy it as much anymore.

I’ve slept poorly the last couple nights.  Some which  can blame on the new house.  I mean who knew there’s be cats fighting and screaming while chasing each other cross the roof outside directly outside my windows.  Like not even in the  yard or anything, but right outside my second story window. At least I assume it was cats, plural.  It could have been my magic cat protector chasing possums that were trying to get in my window or something.  Still it was very loud in that way that makes one feel panicky and unable to get back to sleep.  I’ve stayed up too late working both at the restaurant and on (paid) sewing projects at home.  I’ve been waking up early, despite lack of sleep the night before.  Mostly I just feel unrested and ready to spend many evenings in a row reading and relaxing in my house.  Alas, I’m working a bunch this weekend, heavy duty work starts in earnest at my day job next week and, of course, despite having purchased furniture, I won’t have it for at least another ten days.  Yeah, so no real household relaxation for me for a while.

I have been making an effort to cook, or at least eat better at home.  I’m still drastically lacking in the exercise department and I haven’t called the physical therapist yet. I guess I really do need a minder.  Maybe therapy isn’t where my money should be spent, maybe I need a one day a week personal assistant to make my appointments for me and manage the parts of my life I”m really bad at.  I am actually considering hiring a once a month house cleaner.  Not because I’m dirty, just I think I’d feel better if I didn’t lose a day a month to massive cleaning overhaul of my home.

Mostly I have too much I want to do, not enough time/money/energy to do it and I’m starting to overwhelm myself again by worrying about getting things done, rather than just simply managing running  to-do lists like I was doing during the moving process.  I have the paid sewing project to work on this weekend, but otherwise I think I’m going to watch movies and organize nail polish.  Nothing too overwhelming, you know?  Hopefully enough, small, non-taxing things to give me a sense of accomplishment without further wearing myself down.

And I started my period today, so some of the sluggish ick I feel could easily be attributed to that, too.

For the last 18 years I have periodically wondered about, and half-assedly looked for a high school friend of mine, Cedar.  I have often wondered where he ended up and who he ended up becoming.  Through a really quite random chance a couple weeks ago I stumbled on some information that helped me find him pretty quickly and we’ve been corresponding for about two weeks now.  This has been a really interesting experience because it’s a real correspondence.  Not the usual, oh there’s so and so on Facebook, say hi, be amazed at how young/old they look, exchange and email and then just read each other’s updates that seems to happen.  Cedar isn’t on Facebook or any other social media and hasn’t reconnected at all with anyone from his past so the reconnection part is exciting a novel to him.  And I guess that’s rubbed off on me a little, but really I think I’m just very glad to have found him.

As I was driving home the other day I was thinking of something funny he’d written in one of his emails and suddenly I could hear him saying it, see how he’d move and what he’d do as he said it and I was really overcome emotionally, on a near physical level, with missing him.  Like I’d somehow been really missing him for the last 18 years and something just completely opened up to reveal both the loss I’d had when the friendship went away and the gain I had in it returning.  I mentioned this to him and said he’d had a similar experience when reading the first message I sent him, including hearing my voice, and that our entire correspondence had been sort of a rush of old memories and curiously easy new pieces fitting together.

Part of what’s been most surprising to me is how unjudged I feel by Cedar and the realization that our friendship even was like than when we were very young.  In a back and forth of emails that has been mostly a tight combination of 18 years of catch up and windows into every day life, I don’t feel the need to edit myself or gloss over anything bad, I just speak.  I have often realized in relationships as an adult that for me I know a friendship (or relationship) has deepened when I can be totally silly with that person.  Stupidly, ridiculously silly, without feeling at all judged or, rather without worrying what the other person will think of me.  I find in my conversations with Cedar that I am much, much more silly and more dynamic, moving from seriously, to funny, to teasing, to sexy, to haughty, to goofy and all around, without a care at all.

There is something to said for interacting with people who knew you when you were a teenager.  Rose has been my best friend for close to 25 years, here and there as we find each other. And I certainly feel safer and more comfortable with her than anyone else in the world, some of that is our connection as friends/sisters, the length of our friendship and some of I think literally does come from knowing each other as teenagers.  It’s like once you’ve been through something with someone and they’ve seen you at your worst, you’re just a little more bonded and being a teenager is sort of an extended ‘worst’ that fortunately eventually ends.

And Cedar appears to have grown up into every bit as good of a man as he was as youth.  I have very strong memories of feeling very protected by him as a teenager, as he somehow stood between me and what was bad in the world.  And so even if it ends up as nothing more than a long correspondence or a mildly renewed friendship, right now it feels really good to have someone around again who I feel like is actively looking out for me.  I mean, not that that the rest of you aren’t, I know you are, just this has weirdly magic connection to it, like something leftover from a childhood dream.