I just don’t want to- -it’s not just for kids anymore!
I’m usually game for all kinds of things- -shampooing carpets,getting a new haircut, planting old carrot seeds to see if they still have the ambition to germinate. But sometimes, I just don’t want To. Do. Anything.
It’s that rare kind of day today. We’ve already made our near-daily trip to Prescott, WA, to meet with yet another repair person and our beloved realtors. Everyone arrived on time and all business was accomplished under sunny skies. This morning, when we left for Prescott I felt game for all kinds of things, but when we returned to Walla Walla. . .
I just don’t want To. Do. Anything.
So I made tuna sandwiches for lunch and read a couple articles in an elderly issue of the New Yorker. One article was about women’s basketball in Mogadishu (where there is much socio-religious hostility towards women who participate in sports). The other one was about the “seed and soil” theory of cancer, how the tumor and the host (that’s us) interact to create either a. malignancy or b. not. I’ve been thinking about cancer a lot lately because my annual mammogram is June 4. My annual worrying starts about three weeks in advance of the screening. It’s been fourteen years since I was treated for a non-invasive form of breast cancer, but we all understand needless anxiety, right? Can you hear me knocking on wood? I’ll do the mammogram on June 4, but today. . .
I just don’t want To. Do. Anything.
Maybe this is because life has been derailed by buying a house, moving to that house and getting the old house ready for sale. This is all we’ve been doing for a month. Every morning I wake up longing for a couple of hours of writing the first draft of my new project, and a couple more hours for working over the final draft of my manuscript-in-progress, followed by a quiet half-hour of solitaire before dinner. This is life as I remember it in the long-ago time of early April. Every day now I do four to eight hours of outdoor projects and physical labor, followed by the realization that, when the mandatory chores and projects are finished. . .
I just don’t want To. Do. Anything.
Next week I firmly believe life will turn the corner. The old house listed yesterday and the last major project on the new house (garage door replacement) happens next Tuesday. The hurry-hurry panic of moving in, moving out, cleaning, and buying and installing the stuff that makes the new house work will, I am confident, be over. Mostly. We’ll be mostly in Walla Walla with a couple of trips a week to Prescott to keep up the yard and tidy up after house-lookers (may they be plentiful and well-heeled). Weeding, planting and watering in the new garden will subside to a dull roar. With luck, I’ll get back to my desk and start writing fiction again. But right now. . .
I just don’t want To. Do. Anything.
