Move the couch on an angle

Yesterday, I was finally cleaning up the house after the chaos created by a snow day, a sick day and a weekend. As I finally removed the Christmas tree that had been sitting idly in the corner and tackled the mount of crumbs and craft projects that were clogging up the high traffic areas, my son lamented that he was so bored. He complained loudly. I had to keep my spirits up, I had a lot of tidying and putting away ahead of me, he was not exactly pushing my progress forward. I made a few limp suggestions, you could put together a puzzle? You could play with your tubes? You could make a ramp? But the truth was, the mess was a threat not only to health and safety but also to self-entertaining as well. Suddenly, he exclaimed, "I know! We could move the couch and see if there are any toys under it!" I often move the furniture around a little to sweep in hard to reach places. On a regular basis these temporary re-arrangements do unearth a toy that has been elusive. I agreed, that since we were cleaning anyway, that yes, we should move the couch and sweep underneath it.

He sat patiently waiting for the couch to be moved.

I stopped the laundry folding and walked over to give the couch a shove.

The couch was now on an angle, biscecting the room. He could sit on the angled end of the couch and reach the table.

From his new vantage point he first checked to see if anything re-appeared underneath the couch. Nothing of note was revealed.

He now, though, declared that we should keep the couch like that. Changing its angle, disrupted the boredom and changed his attitude. He proceeded to start making plans and occupying himself based on this new arrangement. He happily kept himself busy drawing and pushing cars, and nuts and mini-skateboards through the Christmas wrap tube again. Moving the couch on an angle made everything different for a little while and I carried on with the work I had to do. The angled couch kept us both going just long enough for me to finish tidying. Now the room is back to rights. The couch is not on an angle anymore but angling it for an hour did us a lot of good.

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I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still. We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue. Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision. They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped. Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...

the words fell out

Despite being an introvert, I do often process big life events (and many many small ones) out loud by verbally hashing out my thoughts with whoever will put up with me. But this morning when I woke up to the big red blotch on the U.S. map...all my /the words fell out. They fell out unsaid, unformed. Got to work and probably , in another time, would have annoyed my co-workers, dominating the conversation with my verbal extrusions, but not today. I just mutely stared across at them and nodded. My dad came for lunch. Normally, we relish a good political diatribe, especially when we feel sure of our perspective, but this time, all I could do was munch on fries and marvel at all the unarticulated thoughts that I was not even bothering to retrieve. The silence inside me was noticeable. Social media was awash with reactions and I just looked away. I couldn't bear to read one word about it. I was not receptive to any reactions, accusations, reflections, words...

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