Sumer is icumen in…….and I am not prepared

ARGHHHHH!

That is exactly how I felt yesterday morning.  I settled down.  A period of morning meditation, or at least stillness and deep breathing, helped, as it always does.  I don't necessarily expect profound thoughts, or even necessarily anything akin to medication or prayer on a daily basis, but I do feel that even those mornings  when all I can do is be still and quiet have a profound effect on my equilibrium during the course of the day.

But still.  We are getting into crunch time.  In roughly seven  weeks the house will be finished, at least, supposedly, finished enough for me to move in.  In 8 weeks I will be home, fully home.  I need to start packing.  There are still tons of things that need to be decided, chosen, tended to and so forth and so on, and even so, in my head "move-in" remained some amorphous future goal, not yet fully formed, distant and obscure.  Until yesterday morning, when I awoke in a panic.

The kitchen cabinets were (are) being installed.  Having seen them I knew my first choices for pulls and knobs were not going to work and I was jolted awake, filled with nervous, buzzy, vibrant, jittery energy.  I swooped around the web, looking at cabinet hardware, simultaneously worried but oddly calm.  Calm because for the first time, at least in terms of doors and knobs and pulls, I knew exactly what I wanted, knew the feelings that cabinets and their hardware should evoke.  I had vision.  

I had been asked to select cabinet hardware a few weeks ago, but at the time there were no cabinets in the rooms, just empty spaces.  Selections and choices had been made but those choices held only an ephemeral place in my thoughts.  Too many choices and decisions had been made but had not yet materialized.  My brain felt simultaneously overflowing and empty.  So my initial choices were made based on an abstract vision.  Some of those initial choices were good, others not so much.  I had a better sense of the library, for example, or the guest bathroom, than the kitchen.  But both of those rooms were evolving steadily, whereas the kitchen remained a blank box, white and empty. And then, with the appearance of cabinets, even standing around like awkward teenagers unsure where they were to go in life, clarity descended like a clichéd vision of clouds opening, and I pulled together a new hardware list.  It is not yet final, there are still a few samples to see on site, and final decisions to made.

Bur hardware was not my only source of panic.  Summer seems to have suddenly peeked its head around the corner.  The weather went from cool to hot, at least according to my mind.  I am not a good southerner. 80° is hot; it is my ideal of the perfect (maximum) summer temperature.  Alas, I have never lived somewhere where this was the reality of summer and it may exist only in my imagination.  Come August I will look back and think how pleasant the world was when it was only 80°.  Yesterday morning I pulled out a step-stool and climbed to the top of my closet, pulling own boxes of summer clothes.  Piles materialized as I struggled with questions.  What fits? What doesn't? What can I wear now?   Eventually I found something to wear but my summer wardrobe, with all its unanswered questions, remains, waiting for answers and yet more decisions, in piles around my bedroom.

The good news is that I have scheduled the movers.  I need to start packing.  As I shift my closet, my winter things can be packed for the move.  I shan't need them.  Well, I am going to Chicago, so I can keep one or two outfits.  

Actually many of my winter clothes are showing substantial wear.  They may not last another season.  I was thinking of making something new, but I see no point in that now, at least not in making cool-weather clothes.  The hot season beckons.  If I make something it will be for wear in this season.  Right now, I simply need to balance my thoughts of making with my thoughts of moving.  My dreams remain in creation mode, imagining art and craft and a world of possibilities, while the reality is that I need to be pulling in and putting away. I am moving into make-do time. I can make things for current use with the materials at hand. Nothing new comes in unless it is specifically needed for the house, but my time really needs to be in preparation, not creation.

It is morning again.  I am not in as much of a tizzy as yesterday morning.  I have a plan.  I have boxes, although some of them are still in my car.  If I want to pack the apartment and remain sane, if I want to pack without excessive back pain, I need to start now. I need to work slowly and steadily throughout all the other decisions and activities that are yet to come.  I am not yet quite calm, but I have taken that all-important first step.