alone
do you enjoy spending time in solitude?
usually I do. I sink deeply into books, reading for hours on end. I bury myself in projects, happily working away until I realise I’ve forgotten to eat lunch and dinner. I go walking for hours. I just sit and think.
but when tom went away on sunday morning, I really felt like I was echoing around an empty house. I felt the silence was thick and sticky, like syrup. I felt a bit like I didn’t know what to do with myself, and kept myself busy with chores and things until I got tired and sat down and let the internet suck away the time so I wouldn’t notice.
i’ve noticed another hormone shift in the past few weeks, in which I don’t really want to go anywhere or do much of anything. I want to stay close to home, close to my loved ones, and clean up my nest. also, i’m feeling like my emotions are very close to the surface. A friend loaned me The Red Tent (sorry, must update my book list…) which made me totally sob. It’s a great book though, about the family of Jacob told from the perspective of Dinah, the only daughter. Birth, death and midwifery in ancient times, and I did actually become completely absorbed in it for two days, until I’d finished it.
anyway, at one point, I realised that I probably wouldn’t have the same quality of alone time ever again, not for a long long time. nobody needed anything from me. i didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to. i started to appreciate the silences and had a few restful naps. and when the silences became too much, I started picking through tom’s music and playing a few random choices. It’s total pot-luck, because I have no idea what is what, but there’s some good stuff in there.
tom gets back from vancouver tomorrow, and then we will enter into the last push of nesting and thesis writing and decision making before baby arrives.
speaking of which, I’m really starting to wonder if it’s a boy or girl. boy? girl? boy? girl? I’m trying not to get too fixed on one or the other. I had a dream this morning in which I went to pick up our stroller at a warehouse, and the stroller hadn’t arrived but they had a package for me anyway. It was a beautiful black leather bag, the perfect size for carrying baby gear and it was such lovely soft leather. I opened it up, and inside there were crisp white linens, baby blankets and white sheets. There was a baby hat as well, and as I pulled it out I noticed that it was decorated with blue and white stripes. I turned it around and there were pink and white stripes on the other side! Even my dreams aren’t giving away any secrets… 
