We're moving into the new building at work this weekend. I had to clean a bunch of crap out of my desk, since of course we're moving to a smaller space. As I was cleaning off a shelf in my cube, I ran across old cards. Little florist cards Michael had sent me with flowers through the years. I had just stuck them up there and forgotten them. Faded "I Love You"'s from a time when I was cared for and belonged to someone. It seems like a lifetime ago now. A lifetime of empty evenings and talking to the cats. And it's only been two years.
I just shoved them in my briefcase to take home, and put them on a shelf at home without reading them. It broke my heart a little to see them. It made me think about my Grandma Shumate and the strawberry seeds. She said about six months after my grandfather died, she ran across a packet of strawberry seeds he had bought and tucked away, thinking to re-sew their strawberry patch in the spring. She said it brought him back so vividly for a moment she just had to sit down and have a good cry over those little seeds.
Of course the seeds were symbols of lost potential unfinished plans that (literally) never came to fruition. I also think it was coming across them unexpectedly. After a death or loss, you start trying to prune that person out of your heart. Running across a little piece of them unexpectedly breaches your defenses. Those little cards went right to my heart in an in little shards, instantly.
***
In other news, I saw the doctor today. Usually this time of year I'm over there every other week; but since my surgery, I haven't had any throat infections this summer or so far this fall (knock wood). My weight is worse than I feared. I couldn't help but think about those macaroni pie lunches, pre-packed in my fridge at home. I stopped on the way home and got stuff for a salad for dinner. Suddenly I was truly ravenous for salad. Truly. Usually, dire news about my weight makes me instantly depressed, but since I have been getting laid (indeed with surprising regularity, and relish) lately I'm not as upset about it as I might ordinarily be.
The good news is that I don't have cancer. I have a cyst in my back, which was what stimulated me to make the appointment in the first place.
I spent the evening listening to TV and fooling around on iTunes. I'm working on a CD for Justin, and mulling whether or not I should give it to him.
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"Of course you should," says Justin as he wonders when he became the person who rises in the middle of the night to read his friends' blogs and refer to himself in the third person.
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