The three pairs of shoes lined up under my office desk tell me where I haven’t gone this week. Time contemplating whether or not to take that walk is a conversation with myself that doesn’t have a definite resolution until I descend to the kitchen and turn on the kettle. Then, I’ve closed the deal on anything aerobic and instead, reach for the box of English Breakfast tea bags in the cupboard and break the seal of the new jar of honey.
Then there are the three or so minutes of steeping, and the light changes fast around here this time of year. I shuffle back upstairs in wrinkled slippers with the mug in my hand. I’ll go out later to get the mail and hope I don’t run into anyone. I’m less than two weeks into the new year and I’ve got no intention to put my party dress back on, real or metaphor. All week, the hues and shades of the clothes I climb into live in the space between indigo and slate.
Thank goodness the stack of holiday cards to be sent has dwindled down to two, which means I could easily make a case against that last pair, which still need personal notes added. Would it really be so terrible to put that particular bed to rest for the time being? I scroll through my inbox and wonder what would happen if I deleted everything except the last month of emails. If it would be like that time Donna chopped off so much of my hair and I came home afterward and almost forgot where I was, and how I’d gotten there, and I stood in front of the bathroom mirror feeling like I was introducing myself to someone I didn’t know, but liked immediately.
It is evening and I’ve just posted a photo of my cat, Peanut, on Instagram. I have become, apparently, a person who does this. Who makes a hashtag out of a pet.
I have turned the fireplace off and on approximately 20 times today. There is rarely more than a span of 7 minutes when the temperature is ambient enough to be unnoticeable. The only time I’ve ever experienced an ambient, unnoticeable temperature with any consistency is Hawaii.
And now I’m dreaming (again) about Hawaii. Four years ago, for about 5 seconds, I almost convinced my wife we could move there. “Our life will be mostly outside,” I said. “But who will come to visit?” she retorted. And so here I am, 6 time zones away from that adorable cottage in Kauai I’d bookmarked on Trulia, flipping the propane fireplace on and off every 7 minutes.
This makes me think of how people put on timers when they boil eggs, and how there are whole articles and books probably devoted to egg timing, and how I’ve never once in my life set a timer to boil an egg.
Speaking of, it is almost time to make dinner. We order these kits from Hello Fresh, and for the most part the meals are wonderful but I really wish you could ask them to hold the scallions. I have zero use for the scallions in the same way I have zero use for Splenda.
This is not to say either scallions or Splenda aren’t useful in their own right.
Regarding usefulness, I don’t know what kind of health benefits the 1-minute-and- 45-second plank I do each morning is offering me. I mean, I have made measurable improvements with time—I started with 30 seconds about a month ago and have worked my way up. But nothing looks all that different on my body in the way I’d imagined. But here’s something I’ve noticed. I’ve stopped looking at the countdown clock until there’s just 30 seconds left. Which means there’s a whole one minute and 15 seconds when I’m just hovering there, doing nothing but being parallel to the ground underneath me, breathing in and out and feeling all quiet inside. Like nothing needs doing and no one is wondering where I am and I’m not thinking there’s some list I should be double-checking and a phone call to make or letter to write. I’m just there, noticing nothing except the fact of my arms on the floor, straight as tree trunks, and the soft nub of the rug under my feet, and what a miracle it is—truly, a miracle—to be alive at this very moment, defying a kind of gravity and, at the same time, be utterly fused to it.
I loved this, favorite line: " I’m less than two weeks into the new year and I’ve got no intention to put my party dress back on, real or metaphor. All week, the hues and shades of the clothes I climb into live in the space between indigo and slate."