Monday March 2025 Blues.
March 25, 2025
Today, it is raining and cold here in the Boston area. I worked from home, perched on a kitchen chair whose rattan seat sags, the dogs have nibbled on the caning, and three of them are out in the trash in front of the house, (the chairs, not the pups). I could end up on the floor before I’m done writing, or my bottom could fall in, and I could end up stuck, like a sad Winnie the Pooh, with no Piglet around for rescue.
Bernadette, our tiny, weird Frenchie, was chilled after her morning walk. I took her wet collar off and promptly lost it. Or Jack stole it, and it’s now somewhere out in the back yard in the dark, in the mud.
While cooking dinner, searching for soy sauce, I grabbed the coconut aminos from tippy top shelf and dropped them. The bottle shattered, brown, sticky liquid, shards of glass, all over the floor.
I went for the mop. While mopping, I somehow managed to break the mop, the sponge piece came out of the center while I was trying to wring the damn thing out in the sink. There was a lot to ring out, and still a lot left on the tile.
I used all the dishrags, and the floor only sticks a little when I walk across it.
I can’t take the dogs for a walk; Bernadette has no collar, Chanel has already gone upstairs to bed, disgusted with having to do her business in our dark, muddy, back yard. Jack is bouncing from couch to floor, from outside, to his pillow by the pellet stove.
Dinner was good, I guess. I used too much rice vinegar, I think, but hopefully it will taste better tomorrow because I will be eating it for a week.
The world outside my door, and further beyond our own little corner of Massachusetts, is raging. People are scared. People are angry. I’ve saved all the upcoming events at my church to the calendar- the potlucks, the marches, the singalongs. It feels like nothing but it’s something. It’s something.
I had to turn off the notifications from the Times on my phone. The news has to wait until the end of the day on work days, but I work in higher education and who knows what’s going to happen.
It was a Monday, I tell myself. It is time to floss, wash, pajama, slide cool overpriced serum and then cool, overpriced moisturizer on my face. More of them same, but different products, under my eyes.
It is time to take out my lenses. After that, the house will look a bit cleaner.
I feel like a failure because I broke a bottle and lost a collar. I feel like a failure I’m sitting in a chair that should have been tossed weeks ago. I feel like a failure because usually, when I feel like a failure, I take the dogs for a walk; the night sky, and the stars put things in perspective.
I guess I can look out the window.
The gift of tomorrow, for those of us blessed enough to have tomorrows to look forward to, is inestimable. I can’t find it in my heart to feel anticipation, or believe in it’s promise.
But I haven’t looked out the window yet. Or curled up on the sofa, with three, noisy, damp, dogs, who have already forgiven me for not taking them out for their walk.
And the chair didn’t collapse, so that’s something.
It’s been a quiet end of winter/beginning of spring season. The warmth, the sun, the first sight of crocuses, have not left my heart giddy and untethered, anxious for more, and joyful being able to walk a block in a tee-shirt and jeans.
With everything going on, my mood has been both somber and blessed. I have less to say than usual, I’m busy trying to make sense of the world and the people making noise in the world. I’m taking note of everything I have to be grateful for; it seems more important these days to appreciate everything I have to be grateful for.
The dogs make me laugh. Chanel is already upstairs waiting for me to join her in bed. Jack just brought me a moccasin he found in the back yard that looks more like part of a eviscerated rabbit than a shoe. Bernadette shimmies her butt every time I walk in the door, but only some of the time. I need to figure out what inspires her. Maybe she knows something we don’t.
There are the crocuses, the brave flowers of early spring. Ours are purple, and they are hidden behind a bush.
I’m not sure what to say to friends; we commiserate, we talk about our kids, how much sleep we’ve been sleeping, what we do when we can’t, a cold front, the temperature for the weekend and make gentle or barbed comments about the people in our lives. Whose husband stopped shaving. What seventeen year old only calls his mom “bro”. Which parent doesn’t want to move to assisted living but can’t remember to turn off the flame on the stove.
We promise to make time for a meal or a follow up call. There are pauses, long drawn out sighs, and things that aren’t really spoken about unless that can of worms opens, in which case we stay on the phone until we find an excuse to hang up.
There is food to be tended or a dog to be walked. Clothes to be thrown in the wash.
Yes, I am somber. But with all this gravity, there is also the weight and the luxury of blessings.
The obvious ones and the tiny graces like clean sheets, the upcoming Easter celebration at a friend’s, a call from Katy that I wasn’t expecting, coming across a poem I wrote a long time ago inside a paperback novel that I can’t decipher at all so it must be brilliant. There is the sliding my toes inside the sneakers that make me want to skip, the occasional amazing hair day, and the unexpected voice of Joe Cocker blaring out of my radio station, from a million years ago, asking if I’m feeling allright.
No, I’m not feelin’ too good myself.
But maybe I am.
I am somber and blessed, and brave, like a crocus. It’s early spring. Maybe giddy will come along, soon, for a while anyway.
I just need to make space.
julierichmond 