Everyday life is easier than it was two weeks ago, for which I am grateful. Nevertheless, the simple mechanics of daily life--particularly the mechanics of getting the kids out the door with the correct items each and every day--are pretty much absorbing my entire brain space right now. We have friends that we have not seen or contacted in weeks, for which I feel a pang every time I remember them. We have new friendships that were just beginning when we started work on the house, and these friendships have pretty much been shelved for the time being. Although I can't help but notice that other families with multiple children in sports (the only families we see currently, as they are sharers in our current all-consuming hobby of Getting the Kids Out the Door With the Correct Items) seem also to be completely absorbed in their daily mechanics with little room left for socializing or making new friends. And these people have functional kitchens. So I can't blame it all on the house.
However, I
can blame one of my latest preoccupations on the house: the need to find and hold onto good doggy bags. Not the food kind. My MIL's house has no fence and no real turf space to call its own, which means that Costi needs to be leashed up, walked, and scooped at least twice a day. This activity involves a lot of poop bags, and I'm constantly fretting about running out. Especially since I don't actually take her on walks in places that provide bags (she's getting old, and prefers not to walk far, and while I suppose I could load her into the car and drive her to an open space nearby...well, see the paragraph above. The planets might align to allow such an activity maybe once a week, at best. Meanwhile, her intestines keep working.) So I'm always dashing out to get the company paper at work, so I can strip off the encasing plastic and stuff it in my pocket. I'm always furtively tugging doggy bags from the stands set up in the neighborhood walkways around my work. I'm always pausing in my predawn runs to pull a few bags from the trails in the neighborhoods beyond the golf course (this is complicated by the fact that I adhere to a doggy bag karma: use only what you need, so that when you really need it, bags will be there. So I can't stock up.)
See? Brain space.
