Stuff, It Feels So Solid But It’s Not

Beginning to feel like it might someday be interesting to blog about something other than driving around in a car or moving boxes. Life has narrowed down to the single fact of Owning Stuff. Kind of chaffed, reading Matt’s commentary on James to him as he tore down ceiling tiles in the kitchen, internally sobbing over the idea that I am but a breath, a breeze that dies away, and that none of this will last into the next world. This house feels So Solid. It’s one of the things that charmed me completely when we first walked in. How could it possibly be something that will crumble into the ground, like me?

Elphine turns fourteen today and she also seems so solid–broad shouldered, comparatively. In reality she is really short and small, but it’s weird to have a child be essentially one’s own size. How could this happen?

I’m really grateful for her. For her sense, her good humor, her general good will towards babies and all people, for her humility. Feel like she is a lot more humble and more interesting a person than I am. Surprised that humility is the word that floats right to the top of my mind, and that it could be applied to any fourteen year old anywhere, let alone a female one. It was not my defining characteristic at that age. I probably would have been described as Sour.

Before we can celebrate her birthday I have to haul Gladys across town for an acrobatics class. Turns out she is good at flipping herself inside out and into pretzel shapes.

And Alouicious has acquired a crate for his dog. So that’s marvelous. He, the dog, has been driving us all completely mad being underfoot.

As for me, I am ready to think about Stuff besides Stuff. I miss blogging and thinking. I miss order and knowing where things are. I am so impatient. We’ve only been at this three days. In terms of eternity, that’s not even a drop in a bucket, which I did happen to find, but was not what I was looking for.

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