Thoughts from the kitchen table
It will be weird attending without her there. The comfortably-known other is a continent away for another few weeks, and I don't know her plans thereafter. I want to know who was at that meeting. At the "celebration," she discussed things as if I were perfectly normal.
In a conversation that I am sure we will repeat many more times before - if ever - we reach a conclusion, I said that I was good at hiding. Hiding isn't a problem. Being is.
Everyone is moving away. Charlotte, Gander, Ojitas... I suppose three isn't quite representative of 'everyone,' but they're three that matter to me. So here comes growing up and learning to communicate.
It's weird not going into an office. I miss my coworkers; I almost want to take a break at 9 and 3:30 just to honor them. At the same time, there is freedom here. I anticipate overall improvement in my mental health.
It occurred to me that I live - quite arbitrarily - with a miniature living creature that has affectionately been named Bob. I suppose it needed a name. Humans like to name things, and 'once-little, tan mammal that makes a nuisance of itself' is far less emotionally satisfying, not to mention verbally inefficient. The four-legged one was wandering around the kitchen and dining room table meowing at me. It looked at me blankly and kept wandering in circles making plaintive noises. I continued to sit there watching it, and - eventually - quite the curious thing happened: it forgot I was there.
Here I must interject a significant anecdote if you are to fully understand this retelling of my morning. When I was working in an office, I would frequently come home to find the bottom kitchen drawer completely emptied of its contents (kitchen towels, hot pads, things you don't want touching your never-been-mopped kitchen floor). Occasionally, the cabinet under the kitchen sink would be open or the previous residents of the linen closet would be in diaspora. Once, I even walked into pots and pans strewn across the kitchen floor. Apparently, soft materials lost their appeal.
Back to the present story... As I watched, the whiskered fiend started sniffing the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen. It became especially interested in the third drawer, the one housing Ziploc bags. Because the contentedly overweight quadruped was not focusing its attentions on the fourth, kitchen-linen-containing drawer, I held back from throwing a well-aimed, blue, ballpoint Papermate pen at its fuzzy head. Instead I waited (with pen in hand). It managed to open the drawer and tried to dig out the Ziplocs. I debated about letting it have free reign to claw holes in my sandwich and freezer bags, but I was entranced by the problem-solving process, which included much time on its hind legs, of this little living creature.
I am not sure what was so interesting about static-wrapped plastic...