Working From Home During Renovations

I have been a bit untethered, of late, as could probably be well evidenced by the unbalanced nature of the newsletter and overall spotty social media presence of our stationery shop, which, once again unfortunately, is my domain. We are undergoing some renovations at home, after having waited literally years for permits to pass and now, long after the euphoria of moving into a new place has left us, we are forced to move our furniture around, upstairs, downstairs, plants blocking every available window, everyone’s personal spaces colliding into each other’s. We’ve received some terrible news about Tuna’s health, and all of Jon’s admonitions about not getting too attached to a stray have come back to haunt me, drowning me in self-pity and the meaninglessness of humanity. I have spent my days, as usual, languishing after the cats, only now with a heightened sense of existential angst, if you could even believe it could heighten. Both cats have been feasting on high fat treats and kitten food, I have been hanging laundry to dry on banisters, drywall dust in the air has been leaving us all in the fog and fug of mortality and change. I have become Miss Havisham, and the comparison is not to my advantage.

We forge on through the murky and silty path to warm weather, outdoor patio season and green leaves on trees, notebooks at the ready for blankets at the park or books for reading out on the fire escape. Even as familiar seasons come and go again, life seems to bring with it immutable strokes and the inescapable passage of time, Fee Fi Fo Fum, gobbling us all up one at a time, and so we return again and again to our journals and books for constancy and reminders, hopefully with a pleasant spring breeze in our hair, and hopefully also your life’s partner and ship’s captain will bring home a bubble tea or some other tasty snack, and if not you will just write through the devastating and bitter disappointment in your journal.