Making myself appear

I just want to say thanks for the friendship here. Thanks for allowing me the sense that we are sitting around on a breezy verandah together sharing our lives. Thanks for the company on long nights, the commiseration on days that outright suck, the cheers on days that don't, days that might even soar.

I'm not soaring right now but I'm trying to stay in the consciousness that life does not suck, even if your house getting flooded does. They came and pulled up 15 gallons of water from the carpet in my daughter's room, and they lifted the corners and blew industrial strength fans underneath, across the padding, drying it out. The carpet however is still wet and cold underfoot, though no longer sopping.  The remediation of this flood is a several days-long affair. The men are coming back on Saturday to saturate the carpet and under padding with special enzymes to prevent bacterial growth, then steam clean and deodorize everything. Saturday can't come fast enough. We won't even mention the expense.

So here's what's good. My girl is coming home tonight for spring break. She and her brother will go to D.C. this weekend for a cousin lime (hang out) to celebrate her 21st birthday. I gather this will involve the bar scene at some point, but I know my niece in particular will watch out for my girl. The kids will be back on Sunday and then I'll have a whole week of my girl being home. Sweet.

I need to get back to writing. I can't seem to focus, but I have got to. Time is ticking away. I have also in the past week been invited to attend two different conferences, one in Atlanta in April, and one Asheville, North Carolina in May, all expenses paid, and I'm saying yes! I'm practicing saying yes and working through the anxiety later. Who knows what gifts may be waiting in the form of new people, insights and experiences? I'd love to blow my thinking wide open. I'd love to shake off my secret social fear, stop being so self-conscious and self-critical, put myself out there, let myself be seen. Most people in my life have no idea that showing up socially is hard for me, because once I make myself appear on the scene I am generally quite functional. The trick is to stop hiding out and make myself appear.

Last night my husband and I lay on our bed listening to music that our mothers loved, choirs singing hymns as familiar to us as our childhoods, and we lay there against each other with tears rolling down, and we didn't have to say anything to understand that we were both feeling like the orphans we both now are. I am so numb most of the time I appreciated being able gain access to the feelings for a little while. Then we both got up and did the rest of our evening, the way people who mean to keep on keeping on, do.