Thank God for habituated survival instincts.

So I dragged myself out of bed this morning–or more like, the pup’s barking dragged me off the couch this morning–at 7:00. Not bad–she slept 5 hours.

The world didn’t really look much rosier than it did last night, and it was cold, and all I really wanted to do was crawl into bed for the rest of the day. But I took care of the pup then came back in and fixed myself a real breakfast before heading out to Graham for the SWOOP project. I spent the hour’s drive belting out the same King’s X songs I’ve been singing since December. Seems they’ve become sort of meditative. I can sing them without thinking about them and that distracts me enough so that I can think about other stuff, or just settle into my feelings without over-thinking them. I’ve been crying a lot lately, and at odd times, prompted by odd things or by nothing at all.

Yesterday evening I was feeling so incredibly overwhelmed again. I nearly e-mailed Dr. Harrison to let her know I was in a bad spot, as she asked me to do so if I started feeling like I was really going downhill. My reasons for not e-mailing her weren’t particularly good ones, but I didn’t e-mail her and this morning I woke up to a new day.

Once again, SWOOP did a great job. We worked to build a large garden area for an herbalist who had to move away from her other farm. I dug the pit for the water garden, picked up buckets-full of rocks, and helped to dig out the paths between the rows. By the time I left a little before 1:00, so much had been completed. It’s just astounding to me how much can get done in so little time (relatively speaking) when people work together.

I didn’t talk to many people today. I was happy, for the most part, to keep my nose to the grindstone. It gets lonely sometimes, working this way, but it allows me to see/hear what’s going on and get sense for who people are. I felt like I got some good work done, and really look forward to the next project.

I headed to football straight from Graham so arrived already a little dirty. Playing football was great. I could do that every weekend! One woman was kinda scary…I’m not very easily intimidated, and I’m accustomed to being around tall people, but there was this tall woman who wore sunglasses the entire time and never smiled. She just made me really uncomfortable. Fortunately, though, that didn’t effect my playing! I wasn’t anywhere close to good, but I blocked a couple of passes, and probably pulled more flags than anyone else. I guess I caught the ball twice, too, so maybe I wasn’t that bad. Regardless, I had a great time.

After the game, I headed out with a bunch of the women for a drink and some grub. That was fun. Everybody laughed a lot. It was great to just hang out. I’ve never felt as comfortable with any other group of women. Now, there was this one woman who kept asking me questions–not too nosy, but enough to make me clam up for a while. Maybe (probably) she was just being nice, but she just kept at it. The topic of kids came up, and one of the women is a teacher, so at some point I mentioned that I’d homeschooled the boys until recently, and this other woman latched on to that one for some reason and kept pushing to know why I’d stopped–I guess I’m not really interested in going in to the whole reason I chose to stop, so I just said, “Lots of changes.” But she kept looking at me as if to get me to go one, and I nearly did, but just said, “Lots of changes.” again and tried to let it drop. I don’t figure anybody really needs to know a lot about me right now. It’s funny. If she’d asked why I was there, or if I’m still married, or why I’m there if I’m still married, or if I’m a lesbian, or any of that stuff, I’d have been fine with it. But things that have to do more with my family, or my mental health (!)–that’s personal.

I did learn that at least a handful of women in the group have been married and have children. That made me feel better about my own situation, even though I don’t know what their particulars are. Figure as I get to know some of them better, I may learn more.

Toward the end, about half the people had left and there were maybe 10 of us left talking including the woman who’s heading up the backpacking, so I got to talk to her for a little while about the trip and various gear, and we talked about triathlon and duathlon stuff. Then somebody asked if I was going to the lodge in a couple of weeks and I decided right there on the spot that, yes, I was. I admitted that I’d nearly chickened out and one of the women laughed and said, “Why? It’s just us.” That was good. I’d had a great time all day, I was doing something I enjoyed with people who were also enjoying themselves, and I felt welcome–at home. Then she had to freak me out by telling me that everybody goes skinny-dipping though! Not that I have anything against it–well, maybe I do–not sure, have never really thought about it; but all I could think was how f’ing COLD it’s gonna be!

I got home happy , tired, dirty, and sore–just the way I’d imagined. When Allyson and I were talking a couple of weeks ago, I joked that maybe I just like hanging out with gay chicks. Well, it’s true. I do like hanging out with gay chicks–at least the ones I’ve met so far (except for the scary one). But I really don’t think it’s a phase…

So glad I made myself go this morning. Just look at everything I would have missed.

Oh, and I sorted through three baskets of laundry! Really, the wonders never cease.

Now, if only I can put my bike back together, I’ll take a nice ride tomorrow. I wonder if one of the reasons I was in such a funk yesterday was because I didn’t exercise. I know I need to give myself a day of rest, but maybe I need to do something those days, even if it’s super light. I just pray that I’ll stick with it. How many times have I gotten into something like this and had massive energy for it in the beginning, and then within only a few weeks I’m looking around saying, hmmm, I thought I was going to do X, Y, or Z. I don’t want that disappointment again. I really need to succeed.

And part of that is going to depend on getting to sleep at a reasonable hour, so that’s what I’m going to do right now.

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