Settling into a new routine
It poured down rain last night and the thunder and lightning roused me from my bed to turn off the computer. I haven’t had a moment here in the Red House where I’ve woken up and gone, “Where the hell am I?” It’s felt as comfortable if not more to be here than I would have expected.
I spoke to a dear friend yesterday, someone who is part of my three wise women who have supported me on this difficult transition in my life. She’s someone I’ve known the longest and it always seems when I call, there is drama in my life, and she listens and gives good counsel and then we speak again in months if not sometimes many months later. Lately, I’ve felt the drama subsiding in my life and so I was receptive to hers. It felt good to be able to give back what she has so generously given over the years.
The day was spent reconciling seven bank accounts that haven’t been looked at since July. That’s right, I’m meticulous about reconciling everything to the last detail, but all of this had gotten whooshed up in the drama that became my life in summer of 2012, which was only the culmination of what had started in summer of 2011. A year and a half of my life going on whirly bird tilt.
Now with my head rising above the flood waters, I’ve noticed the beauty of the cupola atop Our Lady of the Rosary and the quaintness of this bayou neighborhood again. It’s really a lovely place to live. The guy who came to fix the washing machine told me as he was leaving, “You have a nice place here and this is a great neighborhood.” Yes, it is, I said and have thought. A lovely place to be.
We’ve fluffed our nest here at the Red House and made it comfy cozy. We’ve chosen to ignore the negativity of our neighbor who scowls and frowns when we see her. We’ve been there before, and know there is nothing like a smile to turn a frown upside down. And her guy friend who sat on the stoop and watched this fifty year old bald woman lugging a large roll of carpet in and didn’t offer to help – I took to be an alien – and possibly the cause for some of that scowling.
In the meantime, I’m raising my son in the Red House and he’s turning four very soon. My bills are paid. I’m putting my head back in the game with work. And my calendar is starting to fill up with fun things to do. Ahhhhhh, life is settling back into its sweet rhythm.