Too Stressed to Blog

The title pretty much sums it up: I haven't got time to update this blog right now and even if I did, it would be useless, because I've gotten to my stress maximum limit and beyond it. I don't even have time to grieve for my mother, which is supposedly a good thing but which, somehow, strikes me as horribly, horribly unfair. So I'm not blogging and I'm not taking pictures and I'm not working - full time, anyway - what am I doing?

I'm hanging out as much as possible with the QOB, on whom the stress of the emptying house is telling, as she's kind of regressing back to where she was two months ago in terms of spatial and other disorientation. I had been trying to make her meals and also feed my brothers, which meant that my son wasn't getting fed and was actually alone at home most of the time with the dogs. This sucks but I somehow cannot be in two or three places at once, no matter how hard I try. Things were going more smoothly a week or so ago. Now, they are not going very smoothly. This is not making any of it easier.

I'm emptying and packing my mother's house. One set of auctioneers has come and gone with a lot of furniture and most of the art; another arrives a week from tomorrow and will probably take all the remaining furniture. The QOB says plaintively, "Will they leave my bed?" and I say, yes, yes. Although it would be easier if they wouldn't but, hey, them's the breaks. The boxes of clothes go to consignment tomorrow; tomorrow I will finish boxing the books and then take them to be sold on Thursday. I've been through all Mom's drawers and I've emptied all the living room chests and bureaus and cabinets. I still have to to do the kitchen and the garage and the laundry room closets and the closet in the QOB's room and, oh god, I don't know. The moving van is coming two weeks from tomorrow. It's starting at my house, unloading at my new house and then going over to my mothers to pick up every single thing that's still there and moving it all to my new house.

My new house, where we'll all be camping in the basement until the polyurethane on the floors upstairs dries. My new house, which needs paint and plaster and all kinds of things. My new house, which I'm both excited and terrified by. The QOB says she doesn't want to live with me. Great. Actually, it is okay, since she's also now saying that she wants to stay in Asheville, just in her own house. That might be eminently achievable and, given the possibility of a live-in nurse/companion, about the best possible solution for everyone concerned. Then I can rent my spare room to a handsome young man. Just kidding. Not.

Meanwhile, I'm also packing my old house. I haven't got time or energy to do all this and clean as well, so it's gotten really disgusting at my house. And Fang died. He died and I couldn't mourn for him either (well, okay, we weren't that close: it's hard to bond with a fish) or even bring myself to get rid of his small floating corpse until my friend H came over and gave him a calm, efficient and cheerful burial at sea. Yesterday I spent four hours working in the garage - and, why yes, of course there was a dead rat and I shrieked and ran outside and filled my son with disgust at my idiotic paranoia. Oh well. Nothing's anywhere near done and somehow, I still have to do laundry and feed young M and the animals and go to the grocery store and the list just goes on and on and fucking on.

So that's where I am. I'm not very happy. I haven't got much to say. I hope I make it through this and back to the blog but for the time being, y'all, I am going to try my fucking damnedest to write out thank you notes and respond to people's emails and that's about the max I can manage.

See you when the floodwaters recede.