Feathering the Nest

Inspirational song: It Won't Be Long (v. Across the Universe)

I'm starting to nest. I spent the entirety of the day cleaning and starting to freak out. I've been chipping away at the clutter for weeks, but today was the first time I started to feel panicky about it. In all honesty, the house is not in horrible shape, other than a couple piles of laundry and discarded junk mail. I don't need to stress yet. But I'm trying to do more than just keep up with the dishes that one person generates, or the endless tumbleweeds of undercoat that four cats and two dogs helpfully scatter about the floor (and on laundry, furniture, in the decorations on every horizontal surface...). I'm trying to address the things I let sit for so long that I don't see them anymore. I need to get someone in here to look with fresh eyes. And maybe a fresh nose. There is that four cats and two dogs thing, after all.

I went ahead and brought the lemon tree inside. I didn't notice until I was carrying it in that it had a handful of sprouts in the soil that didn't look like run of the mill weeds. I left them alone, and pushed the tree up against the stack of tubs nearest the grow light. It wasn't five minutes before I had two cats fighting over who got to sit in the container, and roll in the soil. Until that point I had entertained the idea that the "weeds" were bee balm, since I had been growing it near the lemon tree on the deck. No, by the third cat to cycle through and roll in the pot, I was certain that what I was growing was catnip, from the big plant that flowered and turned to seed before it died off in the summer heat and monsoon rain. I hope the three seedlings survive the winter being trampled like that. They're already horribly mangled, and they were vigorous with large leaves when I brought them in seven hours ago.

I'm feeling guilty for wanting to go back to writing early and going to bed early. That experiment was going well until I ran off to Colorado and messed with my schedule (fun that it was). I need to get serious about trying again. I don't have that much longer to be coordinating my waking hours with business hours on the other side of the planet. It's time to exist in my own real world, and not in a purgatory halfway between where I am and where I want to be. Maybe it's just the end of daylight savings time that is making it so much easier to accomplish tonight. The house is absolutely silent, other than the tapping of QWERTY keys. There's not even the sound of dog snoring. It's time to make good on that plan. Good night, folks.