Aging

Our bed and our cat make coming home appealing, though honestly there’s something wrong with my pillow and my neck hasn’t felt right in weeks. Still, most nights I sleep better in our bed than I do in hotels.

We spent a wonderful week back in Orange Beach, a place we originally visited in 2022 after several missed chances during the previous years. The weather was lovely several of the days and crazy windy one of them, so much so I couldn’t stop thinking about the scene in The Devil Wears Prada when Miranda Priestly demands to leave Miami in the midst of a hurricane. (Orange Beach was NOT a hurricane. No rain, just wind making palm trees blow sideways, though at home the trees were covered in snow, so I’ll take blowing palm trees any day.) We went with friends this time, making logistics more complicated when it came to driving places but also a different kind of fun when we sat around with cocktails and had people with us who like playing euchre.

Still, we were all ready to see the cat (maybe not Ryan as much as the rest of us), so much so that we ended up doing the drive straight through for the second time in a week. I say I hate it, and I do, but I also loved being home all day on Sunday instead of counting down hours in the car. Our laundry isn’t all the way done (almost but not quite), and my grocery shopping lacked conviction but maybe will get us through until Friday.

I miss vacation already. Laughter and the warmth of both sunshine and being around people that make us laugh — and make our kids laugh. I miss the lavender gin cocktail that banished my hatred of gin and fresh seafood and the ability to eat pizza at random hours, even though it makes my stomach hurt.

Perhaps vacations wouldn’t feel so good without the promise of home lurking on the other side, but I definitely miss this one already.

The last time I wrote here, I talked about my puzzle. It’s finished now and still on my dining room table, because it’s bright and colorful, and it makes me happy to see it. A few pieces are missing. I’m not sure if they’ve been lost in the borrowing and returning of puzzles that happened for a while during and right after Covid, if they’re on the floor somewhere, or if they’re partially digested in Max’s belly. No matter, the puzzle is finished.

I finished yesterday night, on a Friday. Abbey danced, ate, and went to her room. Dylan and his friends waited patiently, then not-so-patiently, for a Fortnite update, then played other games. Ryan read To Kill a Mockingbird. Reading isn’t usually his Friday night pastime, but we’re seeing the play today, and he wanted to finish the book first.

We’re still in the dredges of winter, where spring pops up in days or sometimes hours, but it’s mostly cold and not green all over. I finished the puzzle and then watched a movie, one for which I had high hopes that didn’t materialize, but I let it go and crossed it off the list. (We’re not talking about an Oscar contender or anything like that.)

The night sounds cozy, but the day was not. I’m dealing with some major anxiety surrounding a decision (vague, but not mostly my decision, so vague it is), and I vacillated between tears and worry throughout parts of the day. Still, as I finished the movie, I felt unaccomplished (definitely didn’t meet my workout goal for the day) but content.

Maybe, it crossed my mind, I’m doing things all wrong.

Not all the things all the wrongness, of course, but maybe daily life isn’t about constantly striving for personal and familial betterment. Maybe I don’t need to check off daily habits with military precision that sometimes makes me feel like I’m failing more than crafting better habits. Maybe I should be doing more puzzles, reading more books, staring out the window more if that’s what I feel like doing. Maybe those little moments are what makes up a better person, not steps logged (or even words on a page, though I do want to be writing more). Maybe living more will actually make writing more a little easier.

Maybe.