Odds and Ends...

I feel Fall. When I wake up in the morning, I don't want to move. I hit snooze at least two or three times...I slam off the "big alarm," and pull the cell phone from the night stand and tuck it beneath my arm. The cell phone has my back up alarm set on low. I curl back into Steinvic's arms and doze easily.

When I finally get out of bed, it's still dark. And when I finally finish getting ready and head out for the car, it's cool out - no humidity to warn me about how hot it will grow during the day.

I feel changes happening in the weather, and I feel changes happening in me. It's an unwinding and a rewinding and a gathering of all those loose strings into something else...trying to keep this loop from tangling with that one.

When I was a kid, I can remember my Dad cutting open a neighbor's stray golf ball and giving it to me to unravel while I sat on the cool garage floor. I unwound the rubberbandish insides carefully at first, then faster and faster. The closer I got to the center, the more quickly that little ball unravelled, bouncing, sporadically and drunkenly away from me and against the garage wall. Did you ever do that...unwind the insides of a golf ball?

Anyway, I feel kind of like that ball. Not that I'm coming apart, or like someone is unwinding me, but more like I've been fiestily working my own way down to that little ball in the center. (Which, by the way, my Dad told me was full of Castor Oil. I have no idea if it's true.) I can't say I've been pleasant to be around...I've been emotional and sensitive. And scared. I think "scared" for me comes out in strange, unappealing ways.

Thursday, I was running later to leave work than I'd planned to. See...I thought I'd go to Clifton tonight to go into some of the jewelry stores there to look for wedding jewelry. (I'm not after anything fancy...something unique, green, sterling and me. Celtic would be great.) And I felt so overwhelmed at work that afternoon and so rushed at the end of the day that I almost didn't go.
But then I thought, why am I so hurried? Steinvic was in Columbus overnight, and he would have said, "just go!" And so I went.

I took the long way, winding my way downtown the way my Grandma had taught me - all backroads. I took my time and visited each store. I smelled all the smells I remembered smelling when I lived in Clifton and walked along Ludlow all the time. I looked at the beautiful jewelry (and hats and shoes and soaps and paper) and thought about how much I'd changed - how my life had changed - in the years since I'd been there. And as I headed back toward my car (I couldn't make a decision on the jewelry tonight, though there are three contenders) I noticed that while a lot of my surroundings were familiar, they looked different.

Those shops and restaurants and signs peppering the Gaslight District...they've changed too. They're different, but the same. And still wonderful.

I think I've been pulling against myself for a long time. Instead of embracing it and going with it, I've been trying to snatch the reins back, even though it was my idea to pull the carriage in the first place. And when I've taken a wrong turn, I've either blamed it on someone else or beat myself to death for it.

I feel calm. Everything feels suddenly easy and quiet and situated. And I'm done pulling. I am letting everything and accepting it.