One Year Five Days

Monday marked our one year anniversary here in Winlock, WA. I began a post on Monday to mark the occasion but the more I wrote the more I slid into an emotional hole. We are moving along on the house but I thought we would be closer to completion if not all the way finished by now. It is hard living in our little hovel. We went into this "knowing" that this project would be difficult but it is hard in different ways than I thought it would be. I expected delays, contractor troubles, permitting issues, unexpected hurdles. I can deal with that stuff. Makes for good stories later anyhow. It is emotional drains from other sources that are dragging me down.

Tom (my birthfather for those of you who don't know) is building our house. We help when and where we can but the reality is that we are not as helpful as we would like to be. We feel like we are taking advantage of his generosity because we are not more capable builders. Not much we can do about that. We help where we can.

We borrowed money from family to get the property and thought we would be closer to paying it back by now.

Family dynamics in the new family are confusing to me. The first flush of newness and excitement is gone and now I feel at sea wondering how to fit in. I guess I should confront this directly instead of passively aggressively posting on my blog. Maybe that is one of the reasons Ben dropped out. Also, Kathy (Tom's wife) has repeatedly assured me that it took 10 years for her to acclimate to small town life. But all I see is an incredibly capable woman who wakes up at 5am, goes to bed at 1am and never stops for breath. She is always baking, cleaning, caring for the elderly, gardening, running her business, refinishing furniture and a million other projects. Sometimes I rise meet her inspiration but more often than not I get discouraged, eat some sugar and crawl into bed where I feel my belly inching out over my waistband.

On Tuesday I was really taking a nosedive. I cope by sleeping. It took everything I had to stay awake as I ran errands and did whatever else needed doing that day. I felt like a super rubberband was pulling me back to bed all day. I lasted until 5pm before I gave up the fight and went to sleep. I crawled out of bed on Wednesday around 8am and I am sure I had a nap later in the day but I can't remember.

I have been working on getting out for walks more (obviously - see previous posts) and that helps me stay awake all day and feel better about things. But when that downward spiral begins it is hard to stop and hard to find anything to hang onto and once I go down it is so very hard to get back out again.

I am out of my hole now. Feeling better about things. I helped a little on the house, very rudimentary stuff: pulling nails, sweeping, taking scraps to the burn pile. Tom has to spell everything out for me, but it helped to know that I was needed in some way.

Our progression: Then.
We lived upstairs. I loved our apartment in Los Angeles. It was big, light and airy and an oasis from the city.

Now.
Blech. The pink outline shows our living space. It is small but functional. It is a testament to our marriage that Matt and I have not been involved in some sort of gruesome murder suicide.

Someday.
Yes. Someday.