Losing Dinner (& My Mind)

Today I almost lost my dinner.

Not in the "praying to the porcelain goddess" sortof way. Literally. Like, lost it. Left it, in a bag, by a bench, on the sidewalk, in front of a busy street. It was the reason Nate and I had left the house, in the threatening rain and distracted by a cup of coffee and the possibility of cut flowers, we were halfway home before it occurred to me that we were missing something.

I am missing something. In my brain. Something is definitely amiss.

I have been fighting a funk for a couple weeks now and, alongside an irrational moodiness, is this pervasive foggy distraction. I am not a forgetful person nor am I disorganized or flighty. Lots of other things, yes, but those things, no. So to leave our dinner on the sidewalk, or my purse in the grocery cart (didn't even realize it was gone until my neighbour - who works at the grocery store - phoned to tell me she'd drop it by), or to double book appointments one after the other all week long - well, these aren't the sorts of things I do. Except I can't stop doing them.

I am tempted to throw the word "hormones" at it but I am tired of that explanation. Between pregnancy, childbirth, nursing and weening I have been a hormonal El nino for the past 3 years and it just feels like a lame, warn-out excuse. But a convenient one. Easy to pull out of the bag when, say: you show up for a pilates class on the wrong night after having rushed to find a babysitter because it's Herb's hockey night after all and why did I book this class on Herb's hockey night-oh well- I guess I forgot- okay got the sitter and we're covered and right - no I didn't book a class tonight - of course I didn't - but here I am anyway and there's a teenager in my livingroom and I can't go home. Exactly.

So I did what the nice instructor told me to do ("You have an entire, free hour!" - she has 3 small children and gets it). I went and bought myself a yummy coffee-type drink and looked at silly magazines in the bookstore. They were "Home Decor" magazines because we are thinking, finally, of putting together our bedroom in a fashion that does not involve curtains hung from untwisted wire hangers or "heirloom" Walmart dressers with a "distressed paint" finish caused by packing tape. As I flipped through the glossy pages trying to identify my so-called style, it occurred to me that what is wrong with our bedroom is also what is wrong with my mind. It is filled with the bad kind of clutter.

Now if you ask Herb, there is only one kind of clutter and it is all bad. But I disagree. I like things, artifacts, objects...of a certain variety. Not surprisingly, I like the kinds of objects that one finds in a kitchen: stubby jars filled with herbs, bowls of lemons, green glass bottles of olive oil and wine, kitschy coffee tins, a stack of blue-rimmed ceramic bowls. In all the magazines I flipped through, it was the pictures of kitchens that appealed to me. The bedrooms were either too stark or too overdone. A kitchen is a real space. A place where people do their real living and working and talking (and eating). Bedrooms are either too private (i.e. strewn with laundry, covered with little piles of coins and ticket stubs and other detritus dumped out of pockets, medicine bottles, old glasses of water) or they are for-show and then they feel forced and false.

In a kitchen you can be yourself and go about your business but still be surrounded by beauty.

Our bedroom is my undone brain. It's filled with all the scraps and leftovers of our life. The things I need to do and haven't done (hang up that shirt, fold that basket of laundry, pack away those baby toys, make the bed, bring that ancient glass of water downstairs). The way our life is - we enter it, drop what we can't hold any more, sleep, wake up, and shut the door behind us. It doesn't get to have a complete thought...it is an interrupted space. My moments of clarity come, of course, in our kitchen where things are timed and ordered. So, perhaps with this little remodeling project, I will try to add some sense and tranquility to my brain. Fill it with things I like to consider (a vase of yellow flowers, a red mixing bowl, an oversized stainless steal pepper grinder) and air out the dirty laundry and distraction- or at least pile it in a rustic wicker basket.

Tonight's (Reclaimed) Dinner:

- Roasted Flattened Chicken

- Stuffing "muffins"

- Steamed broccoli